Matt noticed that his ‘sis’ was acting even weirder than usual. She kept insisting that he eat some of the food that she made, though by the looks of it it just looked like some nuts and berries she found in the forest. She even tried feeding some of those berries to him, treating him like a baby.
“Say Ahhhhhh~”
Matt evaded the feeding attempt, the woman was holding some sticks that were used as chopsticks. He started seeing a pattern in this woman’s actions soon enough.
‘It’s as if…’
She bumped into him with some food in her mouth, she tried feeding him some homemade food, she kept falling down while trying to act all cute for some reason…
‘Aren’t those just bad romance manga tropes… are those the secret texts …’
The gears in his brain started turning, this would explain why the clan women all looked like Japanese gyarus. Maybe the old ‘ancestor’ was someone that actually lived there, maybe due to the total worship these cultivator nuts have for their ancestors they decided to copy her looks.
‘Well saving a girl from bad guys is a popular trope in novels… those two did say that the way I carried her was important too…”
He wasn’t sure what this woman wanted from him before, but now he had the reason to believe that it had something to do with romance. The things she did and the way she acted sounded like stuff a manga protagonist would do, the going to school and the two leads bumping into each other was a really old one at that.
‘Why do these people have to take everything at face value…’
He wasn’t sure how this female clan ended up with this mindset exactly, did their ‘ancestor’ play some kind of prank on them, or was it some kind of weeaboo nut instead. The woman even tried luring him into peeking at her when she was taking a bath, though he didn’t take the bate and just evaded that flag the other day. He started getting worried, would she move on to worse tropes, like those bipolar ones and he would end up getting assaulted whenever he glanced at the girl’s cleavage.
‘I need to nip this in the bud otherwise, she might end up stalking me later on… or even turning into one of those murder heroines that stab people for looking at her love target…’
He wasn’t sure how he should go about this, how do you explain to a cultivator bimbo that the thing she is doing is total hogwash? Would they be seriously offended if he told them that their ancestor was an idiot? Or that they just found her manga stash and interpreted it wrongly… maybe he could go with that angle.
‘Ugh… I still hate talking to people…’
He groaned and palmed his face, contemplating on the bs that he should tell these two Feng clan members, would probably talk to the two at once otherwise they might talk themselves into some nonsense later when he isn’t around. He found the two going through some large leaves, the elderly lady was pushing vines through it, it made the large leaf look like a green apron. The younger girl with the healthy tan was looking at some coconuts, Matt didn’t really know where she got those from or what she needed them for either.
Matt loudly caught into his hand to get the two ladies attention.
“Could I have a word with you two, it’s about your Ancestor and those ancient texts…”
The two women looked at each other, their brows furrowing as they stopped doing their preparations. The two just nodded at Zhang Dong and followed them into the cave, somewhere where the two Huo clan members couldn’t hear them. The two then looked at the white-haired cultivator, that was standing to them with his back and looking slightly upwards, his hand resting on his chin.
“I overheard your previous conversation about your ancestor, Firstly, I have to apologize for eavesdropping on you two. Secondly, I think you are interpreting the teachings of the senior wrongly…”
He didn’t want to talk while facing the two for two reasons, one he looked more mysterious that way and two he was bad at keeping eye contact and he might break character if they stared him down too much. The tranquil will technique didn’t do much for his sweaty palms. First to speak out was the granny, giving off a somewhat grumpy and annoyed tone.
“You dare? How did our Feng clan wrongly interpret the teachings of old, the old texts have been passed down through generations, they have been throughout studied by the previous Matriarchs, are you saying that they were all wrong? Do you even know what the old texts are?”
The granny started getting quite angry, this man was saying that the old seniors were wrong. That they somehow translated the texts wrongly. She wasn’t even sure if this man knew what the secret texts were, there was nothing like it in this world so she was skeptical of his knowledge, but then he spoke up.
“You might refer to the ancient texts as texts… but in reality, they are mostly drawings… with the writing portion placed in white bubbles of sorts… aren’t they?”
The Zhang Clan Patriarch cut her off
The woman stopped, Feng Liena also looked curious. The ancient writings were in manga form, this form of art was something foreign in this kind of world setting, thus the two women were quite surprised as the man talked even more.
“Is it mostly about young teenage girls and boys, the girls wearing short skirts, everyone wearing a uniform and they seem to go to some kind of place of teaching where they spend time in a group between twenty and thirty, everyone having a desk…”
Matt wasn’t doing much besides describing the usual high school setting that most of those manga’s had. The uniforms varied but the school remained the same, there would always be some recurring things that he could mention while keeping the rest vaguer as he had no idea about the core characters in this story, but he was sure that the female lead was a gyaru.
“How could you know that… did you sneak into our clan and steal out secret writings!?”
The woman’s eyes were turning bloodshot, even Feng Liena was looking strangely at Matt that didn’t like where this was going.
“Nothing of the sorts, I’ve just come across similar secret writings in my travels, so I just thought I could offer you some insight into your own.”
The two women looked at each other, Feng Liena nodded and replied in an uncharacteristic mild tone.
“Please continue.”
Matt swallowed hard as this would be the point in which he had to explain everything to them.
“I also came in contact with similar secret writings, in it, there was a certain youth he was carrying a strange rectangle bag in his hand and rushing to the stated place where the was tough by his elders…”
“I wondered why the ancient elders created it, was there some kind of secret technique buried in the teachings? I wondered and then also tried following the instructions, but then I realized that it was mistaken!”
He grasped his fist tightly, looking at it for more dramatic effect.
“The seniors didn’t want me to follow the secret texts literally, it was all a test! In reality, they wanted me to follow my own path. Pave it with my own two hands and awaken the greater Dao that slumbered in me…”
He moved his hands apart, the greater Dao of lightning radiating from his being as the two women gasped.
“So you see, I think your ancestor wanted someone from your clan to create their own way. Following into the footsteps of your seniors is a noble cause, but only when you follow your own Dao the real path will lay in front of you.”
He wasn’t sure what he was rumbling about, but the two women had strange solemn expressions on their faces. Was it working? He wasn’t sure, but he at least hoped that Feng Liena would stop bothering him with her silly antics.
“Well, this is all that I wanted to discuss, maybe if you pave your own path you might awaken the greater Dao of wind, instead of using those derived techniques that you are cultivating at the moment…”
He quickly left the room, leaving them with some vague explanations hoping for the best, well at least it couldn’t get any worse than this, right? Feng Liena stopped interfering with his affairs after that, mostly hanging out in the back with a complex expression on her face.
Later that day Matt relaxed and thought to himself about his surroundings and this secret ground. He had gotten used to life in this strange jungle, the monsters capped out at the late stage so he didn’t have any problems with those. He was even able to defeat people of that level when he was at the middle stage mostly with ease. Time went by and they kept exploring, they even started drawing up a map on one large leaf so that they could keep track of the places they visited. They had to do this, as this place was highly disorienting and huge in scope.
Soon enough they came across the last survivors, though they wouldn’t last for long as they were tightly bound up in spider webs. If it wasn’t for Matt’s aura detection capabilities he would probably think that the people inside those cocoons were already dead, but he could clearly feel life force radiating from them, though it was quite dim.
The young fire lord wanted to jump right in and trash those monsters, but due to the fiery nature of his attacks, they had to change plans. The webs were highly flammable, so one wrongly placed fire uppercut could incinerate the cultivators that were paralyzed in the spider webs. There were quite a few of those human-sized spiders up in the trees, the webs were spun all around them and one false move would alert those monsters.
Huo Qiang wasn’t out of the loop though, it would be a waste to not use his skills that were clearly the bane of these spiders. They only needed to get the people out of there first. The plan was quite easy, the three men would distract the monster spiders first while the women snuck up to where the captives were.
It didn’t take much to set off these creatures, as the moment they poked some of those webs and made some noises they appeared from the treetops. They were spitting venom at them, wiggling their spider legs in various directions as they came at the trio. Spiders always gave Matt the creeps, there was something deep down that made him fear that form even back on earth. This made him fight at a distance, firing off multiple Qi filled sword strikes that sliced and diced the large arachnids to pieces.
Zhang Dong didn’t notice the looks the two men were giving him as they looked at his swordsmanship. The man himself got all of his skills thanks to the system so he didn’t think anything of it but to the two the superb mastery of the art was mind-boggling. This man was about thirty years old and he had already mastered sword intent.
The system had a strange way of inserting the knowledge into his brain. It was as if an old pro boxer picking up some boxing gloves and throwing a couple of punches after years of rest. The knowledge and skill were there, but it took some time for all of it to come back to him. The techniques that he bought came with the required knowledge to perform them, the sword arts had a requirement of sword intent so after practicing for some time he naturally was able to use it.
This sword intent was the most basic one, but even then he would probably have some large sword sects trying to recruit him as a disciple if they knew that he was able to do that at such a young age. Matt knew that his fighting strength increased by quite a bit when he was wielding his sword, but he didn’t really correlate it to the sword intent that let him chop up his enemies mostly in one clean cleave.
Soon granny baked potato sneaked up to where the cultivators were being held captive, she had quite a nifty technique to fade into the surroundings. Thanks to this she was able to cut up the web that the two were hanging from with the help of Feng Liena. They carried the two to safety while the men unleashed on the monsters. Huo Qiang unleashed his fiery wrath, setting everything ablaze around himself, the screams of the spider monsters could be heard almost instantly.
The spider webs were even more flammable then expected, thus the trees they were connected to them were quickly burning with them. The forest fire continued to burn, the spider creatures scattered escaping the flames the group of cultivators didn’t give chase as the reason for the attack were the two wrapped up people.
After they brought them to a safer location they removed the white outer shell and saw two pale-looking men inside. Their veins were bulging out slightly from spots where the spiders injected venom into them. The elderly lady was handy for such occasions as she had extensive knowledge about healing. She found out that the two males were only paralyzed and should recover within the next 24 hours. The two were wearing a different kind of robe, making Matt think that they weren’t from the same clan or party. Both of them looked to be in their late fifties with a cultivation level in the core formation middle stage.