Master Rain and the retainer kept on moving, not caring the least bit about my exhaustion, but I wouldn't ask them to slow down. I kept on chugging pills and moving after them.
This small moving technique is pretty good to cross big distances and if I'm correct it could also be used in battle, but I'll have to test that out when I have time.
We were currently in the upper island of the Heavenly Academy, though it looked small when I looked at it from below, it's pretty damn big now that I'm on it.
We've been moving for a while, crossing the skies through steps until Master Rain stopped in front of one of the very few buildings in the Heavenly Academy.
The building in its entirety looked so vast and big I could swear it could easily host an entire city inside it.
We looked like ants compared to the building and the doorway to the inside was so vast it looked like the gates of heaven.
The doorway was already opened as people seemed to be walking inside and outside the building each minding their own business.
Master Rain's arrival however notified a lot of these cultivators and you could clearly see everyone making damn sure to keep their distance from Master Rain.
Master Rain moved up ahead and the two of us followed after him. His destination was a small teleportation circle within the insides of the main academy building.
When we got there, Master Rain pulled something from thin air and the formation making the teleportation circle began changing.
I couldn't fully understand the entirety of the formation since I didn't have enough time to study it, but from what I could glean from the change occurring to it right now, its end destination was being forcefully changed.
"Get on," Master Rain said, and both I and the Attendant got onto the formation.
Soon, the world turned white and then darkened. Not long after, I found myself in a dusty-looking room.
"God damn it, why didn't they clean this up," Master Rain spoke as he spat on the ground.
"Probably because you promised to kill anyone who enters your room without your permission?" the attendant said.
"Oh, that's right, well… they should have cleaned it up without entering, anyway," Master Rain said then waved a hand sending a torrent of Saint Qi spiraling through the entire room that we were in gathering up all the dust, grime, and filth in one large globe of dirt, he then clenched his hand and the dirt condensed itself into a hard solid spherical stone.
He threw away the stone into a nearby corner where I noticed many other similar stones there.
With the dust removed from the room, I could finally see what was in there.
Compared to the massive room in the Lesser Celestial Realm where I found X, this room was far smaller and held far fewer materials.
But that didn't mean that the quality of the materials here was any less. There were tools aplenty, books about cultivation, and inscriptions placed neatly in a large shelf that covered the entirety of one wall of the room. And then a massive vat that seemed to be full of a green liquid.
This whole place looks like the lab of a mad scientist.
Master Rain then pulled up a chair and sat down facing me.
"Tell me kid, who are you?" Master rain asked.
"I'm Shen Bao, an average everyday cultivator, there is a lot of me in case you didn't realize," I said.
"You don't seem to understand my question, what are you? Who are you? Why is your thought process so different from everyone else," Master Rain said.
"How can you judge that my thinking isn't like anyone else?" I asked back.
"The way you inscribe, it's convoluted, and unlike anything I've ever seen," Master Rain said.
"But how does that makes me have a different thought process?" I asked.
"It's because you're not using any of the styles of inscription that any of the cultivators before you have done. There are many schools of inscription, some try to look at the problem and then backtrack to solve it, some try and slowly devise a solution to an inscription problem by trial and error, and some even try and throw a wrench within the inscriptions to make them malfunction, these are the basis of the schools of inscribers, and no one can come up with something that they hadn't thought of because they had been here for eons and many thought that should ever come up to a cultivator should have already crossed these schools at least a few dozen times…" Master Rain said.
"Yet you, your Style-less Style is strange. You don't address the problem at hand, you actually cause the inscription itself to bend to your own will. In matters where a few inscriptions could be used to disable a function, you devised an entire letter of inscription to actually use the function you should be disabling to your own advantage. It's like you're controlling the inscription like they were normal…letters or even some sort of-"
"Coding," I said.
"Coding? What is that?" asked Master Rain.
"It's hard to explain… especially since you probably won't understand the jargons. But to make it as simple as possible, it's like using mathematical formulas to solve a problem. There is no such thing as one answer," I said.
"Care to explain?" Asked Master Rain.
"What's one plus one?" I asked.
"Are you mocking me?" he asked.
"No, I'm being serious, just humor me for a bit," I said.
"That's two," Master Rain said clearly annoyed.
"Then let's say Two is the answer to your 'Formation' problematic but is one plus one the only answer to that problematic? No, you can say that three minus one is also two, and that of course is also an answer to the same problem, if you think about it this way, there is no reason to think that there exists only one answer that will lead you to your desired result. There are many, many ways you can arrive to a definitive answer and I use that to solve inscriptions," I spoke.
Master Rain opened his mouth to reply then quieted down, "If anyone else had said that to me I'll mock them and call them an idiot, but I've seen your inscription on the Demon Slaying Puppet and I'm sure that you actually are using this method. Who taught you how to inscribe?" he asked.
"Euh… technically speaking it was you," I said.
"There is no way that is possible, I've never shared my knowledge, besides my inscriptions and a few books I have left within the Lesser Celestial realm, even if you bring a thousand inscriber genius they'll be unable to realize the same amount of compound knowledge you showcased in the puppet, don't take me for a fool, tell me who taught you?"
"As I said, all I've learned the majority of it was from your inscriptions within the Lesser Celestial realm, the grass, the houses, the buildings, even the streets, you had so many inscriptions there, I only took my time learning them, replicating them, then modifying and adjusting depending on my personal needs, there is nothing more nothing less. Hell, before I entered the Lesser Celestial Realm the most I knew about inscription could only help repair a few treasures and that was because I learned Inscription letters, nothing more," I said.
"Wait, you're telling me all you know the inscriptions are the letters you've learned from my writings in the Celestial Realm?" asked Master Rain.
"I suppose, I do know a few other letters that weren't used in the Forbidden City, but your own letters are far more usable than the ones I used especially since the ones I know come from the Barren Lands so the quality is bound to be different," I said.
Once I finished my words Master Rain and the attendant both looked at each other in confusion.
"So… you don't know how to do Imperial Inscriptions?" Master Rain said.
"What is that?" I questioned.
Master Rain rubbed the bridge of his nose, "This isn't making any damn sense."
"Master, how about we try something," the retainer said.
"What?" asked Master Rain.
The retainer then turned to me and said, "Do you honestly speak the truth when you said you didn't know what an Imperial Inscription is?" asked the Retainer.
"I really don't know what's that," I said.
The retainer then pulled up a large parchment and placed it on a table next to him.
He then began drawing using his finger, the inscriptions looked rather confusing, they were like some sorts of letters that didn't have a definitive shape, they were squares that looked like circles, and triangles that looked like rectangles, it was the strangest thing I've seen so far.
Then from all that chaotic writing there seemed to be some sense to what was being written, though I had no idea what was the purpose of such an inscription.
The attendant kept on writing and writing some more inscriptions enough that the whole parchment was full of them, then soon he handed the inscription to me.
"Could you tell me what this means?" asked the attendant.
No sane man would ever say that this jumble of crap written on the parchment would mean anything but jack shit.
"I have no idea," I said.
"Damn, it's hopeless," said Master Rain.
"Well, at least you tried Master Rain," said the attendant.
"Then there is no use keeping you alive anymore," said Master Rain.
"Wow! Hold your horses old man, just because I don't know something doesn't mean I have to die," I said.
"Well, you did punch me in the face, and I have a lot of witnesses."
'Well he is right about that, and I can't say it's because he stole Y since it was his in the first place.'
"At least give me some time to look at that inscription," I said.
"Many had tried to decipher it, but no one managed to do so, not even I, nor my attendant, who do you think you are," said Master Rain.
"Well at least let me try, but before you go ahead and kill me, tell me, did you guys find this inscription written on a wall, a stone slab or something?" I asked.
This immediately caused the two of them to be on alert, "How do you know that?" Master Rain asked.
"Because I could tell that these inscriptions weren't written due to understanding but due to memory these inscriptions were memorized by heart, and then written down, if this is exactly how the inscriptions were found the first time, then you see here," I said as I pointed at one of the inscriptions.
This inscription looks unique, however, if you add this, "I said as I drew my pen and then added a few scribbles to the inscription.
The letter that looked unique at first now became pretty similar to another one on the parchment.
This caused Master Rain's eyes to widen up.
"How did you figure that out?" asked Master Rain.
"It's simple memory can be eroded and so can stone, if this was written on some stone treasure or some other thing, probably an ancient inscription, with time it could have been corroded, and what you're looking at aren't the exact same letters that have been written a long time ago, but the remains of the letters after being eroded, so if you could restore the letters then maybe you can glean a better understanding of the inscriptions as a whole then understand the reason why this formation was made or the purpose of it," I said.
Master Rain for the first time smiled.
"Good lad, today you earned your life," Master Rain said.
"So… now what?" I said.
"Well, now you'll stick here and won't come out until you figure out the meaning behind this formation," Master Rain said.
"Wait, what? I still have to finish my visit to the Ancient Sect," I said.
"No you don't, sit here don't you dare leave, that is if you can, anyway I'll come back in a week, I want you to have made at least some progress here, I've already figured out that this thing was eroded but I couldn't manage to fix it, I want a new set of eyes to look at it and see if you can figure out something I couldn't since you're a person who likes to arrive to an answer using other means and methods. Show me your one plus one," Master Rain grinned then disappeared from sight alongside his retainer.
"For fuck's sake!" I cursed.