The man's pride was too high, and I knew for a fact that he had no other option but to apologize. If the man in purple knew of what happened between us, it could probably be this guy's head that will roll on the ground.
Just as he was about to speak.
"Stop," I said, "I was just joking, mistakes happen. I'll go and fix it myself, you can tag alone if you wish," I said.
The man's eyes brightened up. It was of course two birds with one stone.
The first was the fact that I showed magnanimousness and didn't force him to apologize in front of everyone, gaining favor towards him. The second was the fact that I'm going to allow him to see how I inscribe which for most inscribers was a great boon to their knowledge.
"Follow me," I said as I stood up.
I didn't need to make enemies, especially from the Heavenly Academy. It will only hamper my progress, and having allies is good, you can never know when someone might end up helping you. And it's good to sow some good karma.
I stood up from my table, paid my dues, and walked outside.
The man in blue hurried after me and said, "Thank you for not making it difficult," he said.
"No worries."
We both walked silently towards the pods area. There didn't seem to be many other pods left besides mine.
I opened up the hatch and pulled a brush.
Then began explaining, "The basic Pod setting allowed it to gain maximum speed by converting the user's Qi. However, the problem was some of the older inscriptions written there," I began explaining and showing the 'faults of the system.
"The old Qi conversion inscription is a great inscription, but it will only show great performance in the hands of cultivators with higher cultivation stages since they have a lot of abundant Qi to feed to it, as for young ones, they'll suffer the drawback of it sucking their Qi with constant use,"
"But what about yours, it doesn't look any simpler?" he asked as he began showing me, "Isn't this inscription, Spatial Fold Mitigation, a special inscription? What's the use for it, in such a diagram?" he asked.
"It's this," I said as I placed my hand on the inscription, then twisted my palm.
The spatial inscription opened up, revealing hundred more inscriptions. Which caused the cultivator's eyes to widen.
"There isn't much 'space' to write all of the inscriptions, it's like trying to fit an elephant through a needle, so I only needed to increase the size of space to insert the elephant," I said.
Then began explaining how the intricate inscription works.
"Can I take notes?" he asked.
"Of course, go ahead," I said and then continued on with explaining.
The man's eyes were bright as he took notes of what I said, and asked question after question, disregarding the fact that he is a 'blue' robe, and looked like a student learning from a teacher.
This wasn't a bad feeling, I smiled.
I enjoyed the company of people who wish to learn more, who read more.
So I full-heartedly explained every detail he asked about and even filled him in on things he might have missed.
It took several hours before the 'lesson' was over, and I left after repairing the damage to the inscription and leaving a very happy blue robe man.
"My name is Huang Yu, if you ever join the heavenly academy, I'll ask my master to sponsor you, and do your best in this race, sadly as much as I wasn't to help you, it's against the rules." He said.
"It's okay, you don't need to worry about me, I'll make sure to be among the winners," I smiled at him.
"Right, you should rest, morning is soon to come," he said.
I nodded and left.
There were a few houses for cultivators that they could use to rest for the night. So, I headed out first.
My lodging was a simple room with nothing but a bed, a stool and a table with an oil lantern over it.
I sat on the bed and meditated for the rest of the night and until morning.
When dawn broke, I heard the engine of a few pods rumbling.
It woke me up from my meditation. As I used my divine sense, I felt the presence of a powerful person looking right toward me.
He was a man wearing dark robes, young of an age, about twenty years. A Soul Formation cultivator, a stage higher than mine but it seems that he is close to breaking to the Soul Transformation stage.
There were a couple of cultivators next to him who also noticed my divine sense.
I retracted it immediately and continued my meditation. I felt that something was strange with the way he was 'spying' on me. But I didn't heed it any attention.
These people were the first of the bunch, they managed to cross vast distances and will be among the top when this race is over.
They were fast and even with me closing the distance, my pod will only be movable after several hours from now.
But it's okay, with my speed, I can make it to the end among the top one thousand allowing me to get the right to participate in the second trial.
I rested for a long while, then had my breakfast, soon the time of my departure was nearing. And I headed out.
I found Liang Yu already waiting among the people next to the pods.
"Good luck," she said.
I nodded back at her.
But looking around, I failed to see the guy from yesterday among her group, I wanted to ask her about it, but it wasn't my place to ask.
So, I left.
My departure was smooth, and the pod seemed in perfect shape. I sped out of the city and headed towards the red regions.
It took a few hours of eventless flight before I reached the first area of the first red city.
The Scorched Lands.
A full swath of land full of nothing but canyons and magmatic currents flowing robustly underneath.
The heat was incredible, and it was only going to rise the deeper we go.
The pod featured heat resistance, but that doesn't mean that we can't feel the heat inside the pod.
This trial was very fearsome as it not only forces the cultivator to use unholy amounts of Qi to protect themselves from the heat, they have to be very careful not driving to close to the lava.
The flight over the canyons was nothing but suicide, as it appeared from the moment I got into the canyon range there were hundreds upon hundreds of small wyverns flying around. These things, we're fast, strong, and pretty damn powerful from what Liang Yu had pointed out on her map.
They aren't faster than the pods but they can keep up with its speed for a while, not to mention their talons are strong enough to rip through the pods and the cultivators inside them, with the addition of them having a fire breath attack.
The wyvern won't get too close to the lava, however, since it also wasn't without its dangers.
Within the lava rivers, bubbles could be seen coming up.
And once I used my divine sense I realized why the wyvern won't be dumb enough to get closer to the rivers.
There were creatures inside the lava. Very, frightening creatures.
I continued my flight between the lava and the skies, trying my best to stay away from either of the two.
At this point, everything was progressing smoothly.
Until something happened that was slightly outside my expectation.
"He's here!" spoke a familiar voice.
My divine sense spread out immediately and realized that there was a group of cultivators waiting in the ambush they were the same cultivators as the guy from this morning.
Among them, was the guy I took half of his top-grade spirit stones.
Several sword waves were sent towards my pod which caused me to hastily dodge. Only for more of them to follow after.
A domain spread out to trap me in it, but I forcefully rejected it, causing whoever used it to bleed out from their nose and mouth from the sudden domain disruption.
"Don't use domains! Hit his pod!" another spoke, and they fired all their spells at me.
I dodged to the best of my ability but the area I could move around was too small.
And then, I got hit.
The damage wasn't too much, but the back of my pod was shattered, forcing me to slow down.
The cultivators then got on their pods and followed after me as fast as they could.
I didn't have time to think about why this was happening, but I had to move fast.
I continued dodging and forcing my pod to speed up as much as possible. But the worse came to happen.
Our fight pulled the attention of the creatures in the lava, and they began rising up.
A massive Serpentinian creature emerged from the lava, it looked at us with its eyes as the lava poured down from its skin.
It then opened its mouth and shot a massive fireball towards us.
"Fuck," I cursed as I desperately dodged the fireball.
There wasn't enough space to the sides, so I had to risk it.
I pulled my pod up and dodged the fireball with the skin of my teeth.
The heat from the fireball was enough to fry my pod's bottom, and I lost even more speed as the inscription began going haywire.
Once I was above the canyon level, I was easy prey to the wyvern, but I pivoted the pod and dove back down to the canyon where the wyvern followed after.
The cultivators behind me didn't leave unscathed, the fireball managed to take out two of them, but six more were still following after me.
"That fucker!" I cursed
I should have killed him when I had the chance.