Chapter 49 Scars of the Past
"I uh," Tang Ze began. It was a bit of a sour topic for him to discuss those events, and again, in this world, he had wanted to leave that stuff behind. He had not told anyone this - but despite his attempts to bury the story deep inside him and the feelings associated with it, it had not gone away. The fact that he still had nightmares about it nearly every day, just like back on Earth was proof that ignoring it hadn't made the problem go away. Changing worlds had not changed things as much as he'd have hoped. He hadn't seen a reason to tell anyone else regardless because it would just lead to a hundred more questions like where he came from, which were questions he was hesitant about answering. But to Xian Yue, who already knew he came from another world - maybe this was a good chance to get things off his chest? He couldn't see it hurting at least. "Well, back on Earth, two years before I came here, I was in charge of babysitting my younger brother over the weekend. During that time - I used to be really into making costumes, you know, like the other ones I make here."
Xian Yue nodded. Even she had no idea why Tang Ze had this strange talent when he came to this world - she had never heard of anything like it before. She could only assume it had been a strong desire within him back on Earth which had somehow manifested when he transmigrated across worlds.
"And so that weekend, there was a convention, where well, a lot of people like me came to dress up and I guess just have fun," Tang Ze continued. "I wanted to go, and my parents basically told me to take him with me since I was supposed to be taking care of him. I agreed, and he complained throughout the way, but he still came along. Only…" His voice cracked for a moment. Talking about it was harder than he had anticipated. He had tried to shove his feelings away much like someone would try to clean their room by shoving everything underneath their bed - in other words, it hadn't worked very well.
The memory of the two of them walking down the street, while he suddenly saw the crowd in front of them part as he saw the glint of steel to which he reacted far too late…
He could remember it as if it had happened yesterday. His brother had looked quite annoyed at the time - he probably would've preferred to stay at home watching television or playing video games, but Tang Ze had been planning to attend this convention for quite some time. He had protested to his parents about this, and they had basically told him, "Take him along with you." Neither of them had been too happy about that - but though his younger brother grumbled about it, he still went along with Tang Ze.
'If only I'd stayed home that day,' - Tang Ze thought for what felt like the millionth time. Maybe then he wouldn't be here, in this place, and the two of them would still be playing video game back home.
"Well, some lunatic in the crowd decided that it was a good day to go on a killing spree. He had a knife with him, and ended up stabbing my brother. He uh, didn't make it." Tang Ze licked his lips. "I uh… have dreamt of that day a lot. Wondering why, you know, I didn't just push him aside or step in front of him. Or if I had just decided to not go to that convention that day…"
The vivid image of his brother's blood on his hands and clothes came once again, along with the feeling of helplessness and despair as he watched hid brother bleed out on the pavement returned in full force at that moment.
Tang Ze had to move away from the dress, otherwise his tears threatened to fall on the fabric, potentially ruining it. 'Damn it - I really am pathetic, breaking down like this,' - he thought to himself as he attempted to compose himself.
Xian Yue was silent. She could tell that this was not easy for Tang Ze to talk about, though she wasn't sure how to comfort him.
Xian Yue had spent the better part of her lifetimes isolating herself from human contact whenever possible, though never to the extent that she had right now.
Still, she had experienced and seen so much hardship, pain, and suffering, that what Tang Ze was describing did not move her heart in the slightest. If anything, life in this world was far more dangerous than back on Earth, and so stories more tragic than Tang Ze's were commonplace. She had seen entire villages wiped out in a breath's time, thousands of people being refined by demonic cultivators to make pills, and some of the most agonizing deaths imaginable. Tang Ze's story seemed tame by comparison.
She could not say such of course. Even if she wished to tell him that everyone had tragedies in their lives and that he needed to get over it - while that was her instinctual reaction to the story, she could not voice it aloud.
Every cultivator had to deal with grief and loss, even mortals had to deal with them as well. They were an inescapable reality of life.
In her multiple lifetimes, she had personally witnessed several bloodcurdling incidents. She was not a callous person, but a story like Tang Ze's, after all her experiences gathered over several lifetimes, could not move her heart in the slightest.
She could tell that Tang Ze was not ready to hear those kinds of words.
Not yet at least. He didn't have her millennia of experience to place such things into perspective.
'Is this-?' she thought as her eyes widened ever so slightly. Tang Ze's Qi was fluctuating wildly - in any other circumstance, she would think that he was either doing this on purpose, say, to deal with something like a mirror match; if he was breaking through a minor realm, or if he was dying.
Needless to say, none of those three things was going on. It could be one thing else though - the sign of a developing heart demon.
Xian Yue had not specialized in any field that would allow for detection of heart demons, nor was she someone like the sect janitor who had managed to acquire a talent that would help her do so.
Xian Yue's demeanor was usually like ice - it had become so after thousands of years of cultivation, yet, her frigid personality melted ever so slightly as she spoke.
Even as she wanted to chide Tang Ze, she couldn't deny that there were several incidents in her own lives that she felt still stung even after all this time. That was despite them, objectively, being less tragic than Tang Ze's story.
It was easy to minimize things when it came to someone else's sorrows, but not one's own.
"Don't blame yourself," Xian Yue said. "It wasn't your fault. You can't be blamed for walking down the street, ah, unless that's something dangerous and routine that happens back in your world."
Tang Ze actually laughed at that, despite himself. "I was going to say that no - it wasn't, but, thinking of everything that happened, I guess I'm wrong." His tears had stopped and he let out a wry smile. "No, walking down the street wasn't risky. At least, not as much as it is here." In this world, there were always stories of roadside bandits or monster attacks, at the very least Earth didn't have things like that. "But… I still always wonder why it was that I didn't do anything. If I… had acted in any way to save him, how things would've changed." He turned to Xian Yue. "There's no way to go back in time, is there?"
"I know of no such method," Xian Yue said. "Even if it could exist, it would take you back in time in this world, not yours. But if you ask me, you will get nowhere dwelling on what you cannot change. As painful as it might be to hear - time will wash away those wounds of the past."
Tang Ze could only nod. "I hope so."
Tang Ze then went ahead into describing other things from back on Earth, like planes, and computers, and the like.
"Your world is mildly interesting," Xian Yue said. "Perhaps one day I would love to see it."
"Really? Because I can think of many people from back on Earth who would love to escape to a realm like this," Tang Ze said. He said 'escape' because it was the truth - even he had wanted to come to a place like here where he could leave his worries behind. Only the ghosts of the past refused to die, and he was still as haunted by that day the same way that he had been back on Earth. "And the Qi there is so thin you can't really cultivate." That said, most of the people who would want to 'escape' from Earth would be quite disappointed if all they ended up as was cannon fodder for some rogue cultivator in a place like this. If it hadn't been for Tang Ze getting a unique talent, he too would not have gotten far in his journey.
The desire to cross realms was less about getting actual power, and more about the hope that maybe, somewhere out there, you would find something that might finally take the pain of modern life away.
"Maybe," Xian Yue said. "Or your people from there just haven't been trying hard enough?"
Tang Ze chuckled. "Yeah, there were people who tried to achieve immortality - though I don't think there was a method to succeed."
"Or, again, did your people just not look hard enough?"
"Maybe one day you'll travel to Earth and find out," Tang Ze said. He turned to her. "Maybe, if one day, we're both there, I could show you around."
"Then at the very least I'll have a guide," Xian Yue said.
All of this talk was pointless - the two of them knew it, as such a scenario was never going to happen. But they enjoyed it regardless. To be in a world away far away from their troubles, where they could imagine living entirely different lives…
…maybe in that scenario, both of them felt that they would be happier than they were right now.
It was easy enough to imagine yourself happier in whatever fantasy you created, after all.
Tang Ze did not end up making any great leaps of logic when it came to solving the problem of the dress, though Xian Yue did not chide him for the same.
"With time, I'm sure you'll solve it eventually," she said to him as he left to go back to the sect. He couldn't stay here for very long as there were always things that Initiates had to do, and he didn't want to take the dress with him back in case something happened to it. He wasn't always there in the common living quarters - even if someone didn't steal it, what if one of Yin Tiang's experiments went wrong and there was a fire? Given how important the dress was to Xian Yue, he felt that he could not take that risk.
Chapter 50 Condensing Qi
After Tang Ze was done with his chores, he still had some free time before he'd have to go to bed in order to wake up on time.
He could go back to see Xian Yue - but he felt quite embarrassed right now about his emotional outburst. He had thought it might be cathartic to get the feelings off his chest, and while he was slightly relieved after sharing them; he was more concerned with how Xian Yue now thought of him.
Crossing that off the list of potential activities, the next most logical one would be to work on a costume.
However, reliving that tale had reminded him of why he had abandoned making them back home for the last two years in the first place.
It might have only been indirectly, but his hobby had been what had gotten his younger brother killed. If he hadn't gotten into making costumes, he never would've wanted to go to that convention - and they never would've ran into that knife-wielding maniac. It was several massive leaps of logic too much to actually be reasonable, but Tang Ze had found himself dwelling on this train of thought whenever he looked at his costumes back home regardless.
And ultimately, he no longer got any joy from his hobby.
Because of that, he had lost all interest in it after that incident.
Now that he could get a tangible benefit from it in this world, he had started doing it again. His passion had been somewhat reignited when he had discovered that it was a method to make himself stronger.
That moment when he was able to do good - by saving Jin Zhen through wearing a costume, had been the turning point for this change in his attitude.
But, with those bitter memories resurfacing from when he had opened up to Xian Yue, he didn't want to look at them again.
That left the next most logical choice: cultivating.
He hadn't been paying that much attention to it up till now, unfortunately, despite having escaped the confines of the Zeroth Realm a while back. The reason was that unfortunately, he wasn't that good at it, and that led to him focusing more of his energy on making costumes. But, even if he was bad at it - he knew deep down he would just have to keep trying. And if he didn't make any effort to improve, he would always be bad at it.
And so, he went to his room, and then began meditating.
Actual cultivating at this level involved trying to take in Qi from the environment, condensing it, and then driving it towards one's meridians. After that, the remnant Qi would leak out of one's body and then into the air - with a portion of it being used to develop the meridians.
This sounded simple in theory, the issue was putting it into practice.
Manipulating Qi took concentration, as did driving it towards one's meridians.
Per his teachers, it was far easier to first condense some Qi within your dantian, and then drive it towards the meridians rather than doing so continuously.
Qi was present in the air, and Qi Condensation cultivators would first drive this into their dantian. After doing so, they would focus on the Qi and condense it into small beads of liquid. As with water, the vapor form occupied far more volume than the liquid, so in one go one would find only a few drops had formed and dropped to the bottom of one's dantian.
The Qi in liquid form had been modified after interacting with Tang Ze's dantain when it was being condensed.
Everyone's Qi network was different - even among twins it differed ever so slightly, just like fingerprints. As such, this condensed Qi was slightly different for everyone. For Tang Ze, it was a light blue color; though every shade of the rainbow was possible depending on the person.
Even if it was the same color, it would not be the exact same shade - even if at first glance it appeared so. Between relatives the condensed Qi was usually similar though not always exact.
Because the condensed Qi was different from person to person, you could not transfer your Qi after condensation to another's dantian.
If you tried, you would get the same result as if you had transfused someone with a unit of blood of a blood type with which they were incompatible - it would end up damaging their Qi network! The extent of the damage depended on how different the Qi was.
That was why you couldn't give someone your own refined Qi at this stage to help 'power level' them to the next realm.
As one moved up the minor realms of Qi Condensation, the middle and upper dantians would also become available. In that way, one could condense Qi faster. However, it was entirely possible to get through all of the Qi Condensation realm using only the lower dantain. Where they became essential was for Qi Refinement stage cultivation, in which the main focus was passing the liquid Qi through each of the dantians in a stepwise fashion to practice 'purifying' or refining it.
Some people like Guo Jia and Zhang Long were able to use one or even two of the other two dantians before others could, which allowed them to advance in their cultivation faster as they had two dantians with which to draw in Qi.
Once a few drops were formed, Tang Ze then drew in more Qi from the air, and then condensed it to add to the pool that was developed at the floor of his dantian. He repeated this over and over. Once he had accumulated a satisfactory amount, he began to drive it towards his meridians at a steady rate.
Too fast and it might end up damaging them (such damage would only be temporary, though he wouldn't be able to cultivate for a few hours thereafter otherwise he'd risk causing permanent damage), too slow and it would accomplish very as his gathered Qi slowly returned back to its vapor phase and leaked out of his dantian. At his level, he couldn't hold the liquid Qi in his dantian for much longer than a few hours before it would escape into the environment.
All of this was mainly a game of concentration, which is where Tang Ze had most of his problems.
He found it difficult to clear his mind of distractions, and could only focus on the Qi for a few seconds. By the time he had gathered it up, he was already losing control of it, with it running amok instead of condensing properly. Even when it was condensed, he would end up wasting some of it as he didn't drive it to his meridians properly, with the wasted Qi turning into vapor and leaking into the air.
It was the cultivation equivalent of trying to drink soup with a fork. Yes, it was possible, but it was extremely inefficient.
Basically, his efficiency at doing so was very low, to the point where he was only able to effectively use about ten percent of the Qi he took in. Yin Tiang and Chen Yu could use about twenty-five percent, while Zhang Long was able to focus enough to use thirty percent. Experts could go even higher than that.
This was not for a lack of trying on Tang Ze's part, but he had never been good with paying attention to a specific task for very long, and in the days of the Internet which is where he came from, it was easy for one's mind to grow wild and easily distractible. Watching one too many TikTok reels had greatly compromised his ability to focus on anything for longer than a minute.
There were ways to expedite this process. One was to cultivate somewhere where the Qi was thicker, so that even if he could only utilize ten percent of it, he could take in more in the same amount of volume.
The other thing was to simply cultivate for longer periods of time, the only issue was that Tang Ze had problems with that as well.
He had managed to leap into the first minor realm of Qi Condensation, but all that meant was that his journey had just begun, not that it was over.
Sure, he could use some shortcuts like pills to try to bolster his lack of practice, but that was just a temporary solution.
At Qi Condensation, high quality pills were ubiquitous enough that some very wealthy families could afford to have their descendants just chug pills every single night so that they got to Qi Refinement extremely fast. These pills were essentially filled with liquid Qi which could be digested after which it would interact with one's own Qi network to make liquid Qi without the cultivator having to put in any effort. They were designed to dissolve and release it steadily so that the entire process that Tang Ze was trying to do happened on its own.
Perhaps the Imperial Family and a handful of other cultivators could also afford enough pills at the Qi Refinement level to let one skate through that as well.
Tang Ze did not have such resources - and while for the first time he was actually able to use some of the pills that the sect distributed to them, he quickly realized why the first three that he had gotten from the sect janitor were considered to be 'high quality' when he tried them out.
He popped one before sleeping, thinking that it would be a good idea to use it when he was asleep and couldn't cultivate. If you tried to use a pill you couldn't cultivate at the same time, because the Qi from the pill was running through your system all on its own. If Tang Ze tried to direct the Qi in any way on his own, it would just lead to the pill's efficiency declining. So why not use one when he couldn't cultivate to save on time when he wasn't doing anything anyway?
That had been his line of thinking, but what he hadn't counted on was the side effects. The burning sensation that he had felt earlier when he had taken a pill was extremely mild compared to this - and it was so bad that he ended up fidgeting all night and not getting a wink of sleep. The pill only had about a fourth of the Qi as the one the sect janitor had given him - and it was really only at this point that he truly appreciated the difference between a high-quality and an ordinary pill. It felt like his meridians were burning well into noon the next day.
Sooner or later though, he would reach a point where it would no longer be feasible at all to use pills. He would have nothing but his innate skill at drawing in Qi during that time. He might as well work on that right now, because it would only become more useful in the future.
His cultivation teachers had a couple of pointers for him in that regard. "Focus on a rhythm and help it empty out and clear your mind."
This could be something like a metronome, or water trickling down at a steady rate. Even if those things were not available, every cultivator still had the rhythm of their breathing or their heartbeat to rely on.
Tang Ze would try this over and over - sitting down and focusing on his own breathing, controlling it, before moving on to gathering Qi.
His thoughts just always had a habit of moving elsewhere. Like towards stories he had heard on Earth, or what was going to be served for lunch in the cafeteria. And on the worst days, his mind might end up dwelling on something more morbid and darker - like his brother's face as he bled out, or the face of the assailant who had caused all of that.
That wasn't to say that he wasn't making any progress whatsoever. He estimated that within a couple of months to maybe a year, he should be able to climb to the next minor realm.
Tang Ze wasn't the only one who was working hard.
Zhang Long spent long hours dwelling on the technique he had learned. While he could use it at the Qi Condensation level, it was only really going to be useful towards the Qi Refinement level when others would actually have techniques that he could borrow.
Still, it wasn't like he couldn't start working on it right now. It might be a decade or so before he could actually start using it, depending on when he would break through the next major realm, but whenever he did, he would already have a leg up on other people as most other people did not know even a single technique by that point.
Chapter 51 Arranged Marriage Meeting
Yin Tiang and Chen Yu focused on their own respective talents as well in addition to cultivating - Yin Tiang on alchemy, and Chen Yu on using and developing his bloodline attribute technique.
A few weeks later, and very little progress made on Tang Ze's part in either cultivation or in solving Xian Yue's issue, he awoke to see Chen Yu perusing a letter, looking worried.
"Everything alright?"
"Not really," Chen Yu said, sighing as he folded up the letter. "Is Zhang Long still out?'
Zhang Long had gone back to his village for the past few days because they were finalizing his and Jin Zhen's engagement, for which he was given a temporary reprieve from sect duties.
However, this meant that for the time being, the squad was leaderless.
"Yeah, he's still gone," Tang Ze said. "What's bothering you?"
"I got a letter from my family," Chen Yu replied. "They want me to meet this girl some distance away."
"Meet up with a girl? Like an arranged marriage?" It was a bit odd for Tang Ze to think about, but then again, the others were older than him by several years.
Tang Ze was about to turn twenty back on Earth, and if time worked the same in this place as it did there, he would've crossed that age a few months back. This world didn't have the exact same calendar as Earth though, so it was a bit hard for him to pinpoint an exact birthday and when that would fall, but that time had most definitely passed at some point.
As for the others - Zhang Long was twenty-five; while Chen Yu and Yin Tiang were twenty-six. It made sense, especially in a world like this, that they would be moving forward in their lives.
"Yeah," Chen Yu said. "I don't know why, but they've started to become obsessed with the issue. Maybe I'm just getting older - and they're seeing that all my other brothers are all married."
"If you get married," Yin Tiang chimed in from the background. "can I use your room to keep some of my stuff once you're gone?"
Chen Yu glared at him, to which Yin Tiang simply waved his hand and said, "Don't worry - I jest. Of course, if you happen to leave they'll just find someone else to shack up with us."
"So, what are you thinking?" Tang Ze asked.
"I don't think there's any harm in going down to see her," Chen Yu said. "But, usually I'd have someone tagging along with me- like one of my brothers or family members."
"And they can't come?"
"It says here in this letter that they can't spare anyone right now, and they asked me to take someone from the sect with me," Chen Yu said. "I would've taken Zhang Long but it doesn't look like he'll be back in time..."
"Not to worry," Yin Tiang said, clasping a hand to his chest. "I will accompany you. And don't worry, if you don't like the girl, just give me the signal, and I'll make sure to tell them all I know about you. They'll be sure to give you a 'no' then."
Chen Yu turned to Tang Ze and asked, "Mind coming with me for a day?"
"Uh, sure," Tang Ze said. "We can even tele-"
Chen Yu shook his head. "Let's try not to go around dressed up like wizards, or we really will be kicked out before even reaching the front door."
"Are you sure?" Tang Ze asked. "You guys have a really negative preconception about wizards, haven't you considered well, that maybe... they might not be all bad?" Tang Ze really felt that they were being unreasonable when it came to magic. He had once teleported into the nearby marketplace only for the other cultivators to ridicule him - 'Look at that mage, he's so poor he can't even afford a proper flying sword or flying carpet!' they had mocked. Someone even added: 'He's so poor he can't even afford a real beard!'
"I'll see it when I believe it," Chen Yu said. "So the answer's still 'no' on that front."
"True, true," Yin Tiang said, nodding along. "But think about it - with Tang Ze's luck with woman, aren't you worried that they might consider you a catch when comparing yourself with him? What if the girl really falls for you and you wanted to say 'no?'"
Both Tang Ze and Chen Yu glared at Yin Tiang as the latter chuckled.
However, Yin Tiang could not resist. He loved needling Chen Yu, and now he could poke fun at both him and Tang Ze simultaneously within the same joke. It was like hunting two birds with a single arrow. When Heaven had granted him such an opportunity, how could he resist?
"What are you thinking by the way? I mean, if you'll say 'yes' or not?" Tang Ze asked Chen Yu.
Chen Yu shrugged. "I don't really want to get married right now - but I can't just say no to this request from my family unfortunately. I have to at least go see her - I do owe them that much. I don't think that they're too crazy about the idea either - they're likely just doing this to see what options I have." He didn't seem to be taking the whole thing very seriously, so neither did Tang Ze for the moment. Anyway, he doubted that even if they agreed to things, that things would move at anything faster than a snail's pace.
As an example, Jin Zhen and Zhang Long already were childhood sweethearts, and yet even with that fact and the families already being agreeable from beforehand it seemed to be taking forever for their engagement and marriage to be finalized. There was still a long list of ceremonies that the two had to go through.
"Got it," Tang Ze said.
Yin Tiang walked over to Chen Yu and then clasped him on the shoulder. "I want you to remember one thing if all else fails - just be yourself. I'm sure you'll be rejected immediately afterwards."
"Alright, Tang Ze, let's go," Chen Yu said, turning to him after dismissing Yin Tiang as a hopeless cause. "We just need to wake up early in the morning and-"
"-on second thought, you're on your own Chen Yu, I think that would be for the best," Tang Ze said. "You should go in to meet this girl alone - to show her and her family you're not afraid of anything and to really demonstrate your alpha male status-"
Tang Ze and Chen Yu arrived at the mentioned place. Tang Ze complained about having to wake up so early nearly half of the journey there, but get there in time they did; and that too without Tang Ze having to dress up as anything weird (not for lack of trying mind you, but Chen Yu dissuaded him from trying anything).
They both chose to come in their sect uniforms, simply because showcasing their sect affiliation was another way of showing their status.
It was a manor in the opposite direction of Zhang Long's village, so they couldn't plan to meet up with him as he returned. As it was, the place looked relatively affluent, though that was to be expected of any family trying to marry in with Chen Yu's.
These people were farmers, though this was only in name - they owned vast quantities of farmland, and loaned that out to people who did the actual farming while they collected the crops and paid those people a fixed salary for their work. Since they owned land within the territory controlled by the Rising Phoenix sect, it stood to reason that they had good relations with them as well. That was part of the reason that the two had chosen to come in their sect uniforms, though they had made sure that they were neatly pressed and clean.
In the Raswatian Empire, next to one's familial affiliation, one's sect came in at a close second.
"Remember," Chen Yu said. "Please don't do anything that would embarrass me, Brother Tang Ze." Tang Ze's eyes dropped - why was it 'Brother' in this situation?
"When have I ever embarrassed you?"
"Let's not open that can of worms, else we'll be here till tomorrow evening," Chen Yu said. "And let's go meet them."
The two of them were led inside the manor by a group of servants.
It was immediately clear to Tang Ze that the family had pulled out all of the stops to impress them. The garden's hedges looked like they had been freshly trimmed, and there was a koi pond in the middle with a stone by it that was said to be excellent for meditating beside. There were also several famous plants whose names neither of them could remember though had Yin Tiang been here he likely could've been able to tell them what they were at a glance. They were then led into the main sitting area where food was laid out for them, before the girl's parents arrived.
The two of them seemed to be pleasant enough, and there was some general back-and-forth though nothing of real substance was said until Chen Yu gently tapped Tang Ze on the knee.
That was the signal that Tang Ze had been hoping for!
He didn't really understand this whole arranged marriage setup, though per Chen Yu, his role was that of a sort of 'wingman' or to say things that would be considered untoward for Chen Yu to say himself.
"Ah, all of this talk is good and nice," Tang Ze said. "But, where is the potential bride-to-be in question?"
Tang Ze found it odd that the girl wasn't even involved in anything till now, but that was apparently just how it went. After saying so, the mother brought someone down the stairs, who was wearing a thin veil.
"It's alright, you can show your face dear," the girl's mother said as she lifted her veil ever so slightly. The girl was blushing deeply, and as Tang Ze turned around he could see that Chen Yu was also fidgeting somewhat oddly.
However, Tang Ze was taken aback by something.
It was odd... but he was sure that he had seen this girl somewhere before.
But where? He had only come to this world a few months back, so it was weird that she seemed familiar to him though not to someone like Chen Yu.
It was customary to give the prospective bridge and groom some time to talk alone, though this turned out to only be a period of five minutes before everyone came back in.
The two sides then made some promises to keep in touch, and Tang Ze and Chen Yu declined to stay for dinner.
It would've been nice actually, Tang Ze felt, to stay overnight to see how the family actually was, though Chen Yu whispered to him that this wasn't a 'real' offer and the two made their way back to the sect.
The sun was close to setting by the time they got back, and overall, Tang Ze had found the entire process to be quite boring.
"Are all meetings like this?" Tang Ze asked.
"Most of them are," Chen Yu said. "I used to go with some of my brothers along with my parents when they met prospective brides."
"Isn't it... kinda odd that the two of you only met for five minutes?"
"Not really. The first time my grandmother saw my grandfather was on their wedding day - not everyone marries like this, but it's is the usual norm with uh, I guess you would say 'people like us?' I mean, on the other hand, Zhang Long and Jin Zhen have known each other forever, but they're more of an exception aren't they? Still, even their whole show is taking time while their parents go through the formalities." Chen Yu said. He then frowned. "But you say that you've seen her before?"
"Yeah," Tang Ze said. "I just can't remember where." He strained his memory, and the more he did so, the more he was convinced that he was not mistaken and that he, as a matter of fact, did know the girl from somewhere.
But the question still remained - from where?
"If you happen to remember, let me know," Chen Yu said.
"And so how do things proceed from here?"
"Well, my parents would then go over things in more detail, there would probably be a couple more meetings, then we'd announce an engagement formally to all our relatives, then the engagement and all the meetings and logistics that involve, and then the actual marriage - if it gets to that point," Chen Yu said.
"I see," Tang Ze said.
Chapter 52 The Grimoire of Heaven: Part One
Nothing more of interest happened the rest of the day, though the next morning, for the first time in recorded history, Tang Ze woke up on his own before anyone else - and before the sun had begun to rise as well.
He got up and knocked on Chen Yu's door.
Chen Yu stifled a yawn as he opened up the door to his bedroom. His eyes widened in mock shock as he saw Tang Ze. "You woke up before me? Did the sun rise in the opposite direction today?" Chen Yu then made a big show of looking out the window to check. "Nope - it rose in the west just like it always does. What got you up so early?"
"No, I remembered where it was that I'd seen that girl before!" Tang Ze said, ignoring the jab.
"Oh?"
"You see, a few months back - when I met with Xu Feng's ghost-"
"-are you still on about that?"
The others still didn't believe that Tang Ze had met Xu Feng's ghost; which Tang Ze had come to terms with - but to think that was related to this girl was something he never would've imagined.
Xu Feng had told him that he would pay Tang Ze back for his kindness, and though at the time Tang Ze had been too busy getting beat up by Tang Ru to notice - Xu Feng had told him about a certain cluster of trees which were very good for bird watching.
Even when Tang Ze had been able to recollect this fact after the matter, he couldn't understand what was so great about a place to watch birds.
He visited it after he was able to teleport, though didn't notice anything strange, as a matter of fact, it seemed that the location was actually rather poor for watching birds because of the foliage that would obstruct one's vision.
It was very good at keeping the watcher hidden, however, and this was what Xu Feng had really meant by 'bird watching.'
You could not only peep on some of the female sect members bathing, but also spy on a spot that was popular for couples.
Naturally, Tang Ze had disregarded the place and written Xu Feng off as someone who was truly hopeless after he figured this out, but that was where he remembered that girl from.
When he had realized this while half-asleep, he had immediately woken up to tell Chen Yu.
"She already has a boyfriend!"
"Whatever," Chen Yu said. He hadn't been planning on saying 'yes' anyway, and so he then immediately went back to sleep, a rare instance of Tang Ze not being the laziest member of the group for once.
Oh well, Tang Ze thought to himself as he too, went back to bed, yawning.
Hopefully Zhang Long was having better luck than they were.
Meanwhile, with Zhang Long
Zhang Long was rather tired from all the meetings, wishing they'd get straight to the point.
The two families had gathered at his house, and Jin Zhen was wearing a veil. Why? He had no clue - they had known each other since they were children, but this was 'traditional' so he had to go along with it.
He tapped his foot as he was getting antsy. When he finally couldn't take it anymore, he voiced his concerns. "I'm sorry, can we please get this done faster? The sect won't give me a break forever, you know."
It was true - the prefects might have a favorable opinion of him, but there was a limit to how much they would accommodate him There was a pause in the flow of the discussion.
"My, my," his mother said, which immediately made him realize that he had made a mistake. "I apologize for my son's behavior - he seems a bit too eager in his anticipation to enjoy his wedding night, I think you can excuse his impatience, you know how young boys tend to be," she said to Jin Zhen's parents.
Zhang Long wanted to throw himself out the window right then and there. Just two days back, Jin Zhen had a bit of nausea after eating something off - and his parents had glared at him the whole day, thinking he had gotten her pregnant hence her symptoms.
A few weeks later, after Zhang Long had returned, there was a large commotion within the sect.
"Eh? What's going on?" Yin Tiang asked, poking his head outside of the squad's common living space and checking to see what was going on in the hall. He had been making a Leaden Semi-Heavenly Elixir, whose manufacturing process was quite sensitive to loud noises like this. That was why he wasn't making it in the alchemical library as there would be too much noise there what with the occasional explosions - but he hadn't been expecting things to be even louder here. "Can't you idiots keep it down for an hour!"
As he said this and opened up his door, he saw that everyone was hurriedly rushing somewhere.
"Didn't you hear? They're selling raffles for the Grimoire of Heaven!" one of the people he had yelled at replied before resuming going wherever they were.
With that, Yin Tiang, who had been annoyed by the noise disturbing his latest project, immediately abandoned it to run after the others in the corridor.
After all, there was no one in the sect who would miss out on a chance to view the Grimoire of Heaven.
Eternal Soul cultivators were quite rare - with only four of them in the entire Raswatian Empire currently, not counting Xian Yue.
In this day and age, the Rising Phoenix sect did not have a single Eternal Soul cultivator to its name, which is why it could not be counted among the top sects of the Empire.
However, this had not always been the case in its history.
Thirteen thousand years ago, the Rising Phoenix Sect had an elder by the name of Song Xian. He had a rather remarkable life story. He had been born to a family of average means, though he had a total of three fortuitous encounters in his life which had allowed him to get to the second-highest echelons of cultivating known to be achievable by man.
One was that he had found the inheritance of a Nascent Soul cultivator in a secret realm. The second was being chosen as the disciple of the Seer of Ten Thousand Li. The third was to have found the Grimoire of Heaven in a ruined library.
The Grimoire of Heaven was part of a trilogy of long-lost texts related to cultivation, which were: the Grimoire of Earth, the Grimoire of Heaven, and the Grimoire of Man. The Grimoire of Earth was the least powerful of the three, followed by the Grimoire of Heaven being in the middle, and the Grimoire of Man taking first place.
Only the Grimoire of Heaven was currently known to actually exist, with the other two volumes having been lost to time. They were mentioned within the Grimoire of Heaven itself, which quoted some of their passages, but no one knew where the originals of the other two grimoires were or if they had even survived the ravages of time.
The grimoires had been made with special technology by the civilizations that predated not only the Raswatian Empire, but the Mercury Kingdom as well. The books were made of Qi itself; allowing them to stand the test of time and meaning they were nearly indestructible unless they were attacked with special means.
They contained various secrets to cultivation - to the point where Song Xian had said that he would have absolutely been stuck at the Nascent Soul realm if he hadn't found the Grimoire of Heaven.
However, while he got far with the help of the grimoire, that was the peak of how far he progressed. Song Xian left the Grimoire of Heaven not to his children (he had none for that matter) or other descendants but to the Rising Phoenix sect as the sect's own property.
It was for this reason that he was highly revered within the Rising Phoenix Sect, perhaps next only to its founder - even though the sect had had six other Eternal Soul cultivators in the past.
Although Song Xian left the Grimoire of Heaven to the sect, he still remembered his roots, and how he had been lucky to find it in the first place. As a matter of fact, were it not for those other two fortuitous encounters as well, he knew that he would not be the cultivator that he had become.
As such, he did not want the Grimoire of Heaven stored in a sect vault somewhere where only a few could benefit from it - he wanted it to be given to the members of the sect, with even the most ordinary member getting a chance to peer at its contents.
The Grimoire of Heaven was entrusted to the care of a high-ranking Nascent Soul cultivator, who, in according with Song Xian's wishes, rotated the Grimoire of Heaven through the various divisions of the sect.
Naturally, not even a fraction of a percent of the sect's members could actually spend any time with it, but Song Xian wanted the decision of who got to read it to be left up to pure chance rather than based on merit, talent, or money. Otherwise, he felt, it would turn into a situation where those with connections or money would be the only ones with any opportunity to use it - meaning only those who had already accomplished much leading to a 'rich get richer' scenario.
Going against the widely-held philosophy of this world, he did not want the grimoire to go only to those who were already good, but also wanted those who might be weak to have a chance at using it.
So, instead, raffles were set up - whose tickets could be bought with sect points.
To keep things fair, there was an upper limit on how many one could buy, and anyone who had not bought a ticket during a prior event would automatically get one the next time around.
In this way, Song Xian wanted for things to be more equitable among the sect members. "Let Heaven have a chance to pick new favorites - instead of those already chosen by Heaven alone moving forward!" Although it might seem counter-intuitive at first glance to say that giving out opportunities at random was more egalitarian than giving them based on merit, by simple fact, there were more average people in the sect than there were people with strong backings.
Given this, this sort of system did help with evening the odds a little and giving the little guy a chance, so to speak.
It was so valuable that Yin Tiang had completely forgotten about what he was making and left it aside, as he absolutely did not want to miss the chance to possibly get a chance to read it.
Chapter 53 The Grimoire of Heaven: Part Two
Naturally, all four members of the squad had rushed to buy tickets, with Yin Tiang being the last to the party. The Rising Phoenix sect had many divisions - and this chance might only come once every seven or eight years.
The 'prize' for winning was six hours that one could spend with the grimoire. Although it may not seem like much, given how valuable a resource it was, many people greatly longed to get a chance with it, spending all of their merit points to buy as many tickets as was allowed without a second thought. The knowledge that one could obtain from it could potentially propel one's cultivation forward for several years or even decades to come in the future.
Given this, there was a huge line to buy tickets. Even though the number of tickets one could buy was limited, people still jostled in the queue.
Yin Tiang found Zhang Long and Chen Yu standing slightly away from the crowd with morose expressions on their faces.
"What happened?" Yin Tiang asked, though he could already guess what had happened from the looks they gave him.
"No dice," Zhang Long said, shaking his head.
"Maybe you'll have better luck," Chen Yu said.
However, by the time that it came to be Yin Tiang's turn to buy a raffle, he was told that the winning tickets had already been sold, so he may as well save his sect merit points for now.
"Ah, well, looks like none of us got in," Yin Tiang said. If there hadn't been enough winners, everyone who had bought a ticket would have been able to take another one for free until all the winning ones were sold out, but it looked like unfortunately, all the winners had already been picked.
While disappointing, this was not unexpected. For even one of them to be able to get a winning ticket would be an incredible stroke of luck given how many were competing for so few spots. However, Yin Tiang realized that there was someone missing from their group. "Where is Tang Ze?"
"I don't know," Zhang Long said. "Is he still sleeping in?" It was nearly noon, but it was not unheard of for Tang Ze, during his days off, to daze off till this time if the others let him. Which, given how much he complained when they tried to rouse him early, they had learned was more trouble than it was worth; and as such, they no longer really tried to do so unless there was something urgent that needed to be done early.
"No," Yin Tiang said. "I didn't see him in his room, and the smell of what I was making is something not even he could sleep through." He frowned. "At least, I'd be quite impressed if he managed to sleep through that."
"Maybe he left to go see this girlfriend of his," Chen Yu said and they all laughed.
Tang Ze had told them that he had found the spirit of an Eternal Soul cultivator by the name of Xian Yue who needed his help to ascend to the Hinayana realm in a cavern far away - naturally none of them were willing to believe something so far-fetched and they each had their own theories on what he actually did when he vanished for some periods of time after dressing up like a wizard.
'Most likely off playing with his wand'- is what they assumed was the most likely possibility.
However, it turned out that Tang Ze was not only awake, he was not too far from where they were standing.
"How's it going?" Tang Ze asked. The others turned to stare at him in bewilderment at what he was wearing.
He had dark green shorts on, a similar blazer, and a four-leaf clover emblazoned onto his coat as well as a green top hat atop his head.
Needless to say, compared to the other members of the sect, he stood out like a sore thumb.
Tang Ze was wearing this outfit for a good reason - it was based off a character on Earth by the name of Leonald the Lucky Leprechaun. He appeared in a series of very short cartoons - most of which revolved around him showing off his amazing luck. And not only was he lucky, he was absurdly lucky to the point it would have you pulling your hair out while watching some of the episodes.
The general episode format was that either he needed something or one of his friends was in trouble, and then they would end up fighting an evil wizard or whatnot who would cast a powerful spell on them that had a one in ten million chance of backfiring, and it would just happen to backfire that instant. Either that, or the writers would come up with some other truly ludicrous ways that he would somehow stumble his way to victory.
It was not a serious show, but Tang Ze had wished to borrow the character's obscene luck for this little contest.
So what if he looked completely out of place dressed as a leprechaun given this country's fashion was based off of that of China in the Middle Ages? What mattered was the abilities that this costume gave him! If any of the other cultivators out there had his talent and could guarantee a shot at being able to use the Grimoire of Heaven, they too would've dressed up like him without a second thought.
As such, given the benefits, why shouldn't he take this chance?
"We're fine, well, we all lost the chance to get a look at the Grimoire of Heaven, I guess," Zhang Long said with a gloomy look. He did not voice his thought that Tang Ze somehow looked even more ridiculous than usual - it was safe to say that this was his most outlandish costume as of yet. Still, Zhang Long wouldn't say that to Tang Ze's face, and as it was, his attention suddenly shifted to the black ticket that Tang Ze was waving around. "Wait - you actually won?"
The raffle tickets were specifically made to be nearly impossible to forge given their importance. The way they worked was that a few winning tickets were mixed in with a large number of identical blank ones - if you pulled a winning ticket out and injected your Qi into it, if it was a winning ticket it would turn black. Else the words 'Bad luck!' would appear on the white paper.
Additionally, the winning tickets were all numbered. Tang Ze's winning ticket had the number '3' on it, meaning he would be third in line to get a chance to use the Grimoire of Heaven.
As such, if you tried to forge a ticket, you would also have to forge a number which hadn't been picked yet before. It was also highly likely that the elder in charge of the Grimoire of Heaven had a way to tell the actual tickets apart from the fakes through some process only he knew.
"Well, that's great," Chen Yu said.
"Yeah," Yin Tiang said.
All of them tried to look happy for Tang Ze, but they still had a tiny bit of regret within their hearts.
"Does this costume give you amazing luck or something?" Zhang Long asked, piecing together why Tang Ze would be dressed up like this.
"Yes," Tang Ze said.
"Amazing," Zhang Long said. Even if someone accused Tang Ze of cheating, no one else seemed to fully understand how his ability worked - as such, there was no one who could prove that Tang Ze was definitely cheating. Basically, it was the perfect power to have in this circumstance. 'Oh, you're saying that Tang Ze has a lucky costume? I also have a lucky pair of socks I wear sometimes, but that didn't help me win a ticket,'- would be the usual response if someone tried to accuse Tang Ze of underhanded behavior.
"In that case though - couldn't you have tried a few more tickets?" Zhang Long said those words jokingly - he guessed that Tang Ze had likely bought multiple tickets just like he had, but only one had been a winning one. He wasn't truly insinuating that Tang Ze should've bought more in case he could possibly win another winning ticket.
Those words might've been said as a joke, but Tang Ze replied, "Why, there are only four of us, right? Did you want to invite someone else along?"
"You do realize that each ticket can only be used by one person rig-"
Those words died the moment that Tang Ze reached into a pocket and pulled out three other black tickets - marked with '5', '7', and '9' respectively. "I did buy four - I figured if I was lucky enough that I'd manage to win with all four of them," Tang Ze said.
Four had been the maximum that he could buy anyway as it was with the number of sect merit points that he had - he had gained a fair number from when he had helped the Komainu as a reward, but being someone who had recently joined, four tickets was still his limit. This meant though that in terms of sect merit points, he was basically nearly bankrupt now. But in the face of the benefits he could gain, this was still an excellent deal for him.
"Wait - you won all four?" Yin Tiang asked. Chen Yu and Zhang Long had both bought the maximum of twelve tickets and Yin Tiang had bought eight (he was a bit short on sect merit points compared to the other two as he usually spent them on reagents for his alchemical projects) - yet, none of them had won with even a single ticket, but Tang Ze had won with all four of his?
This went beyond just being lucky, this was truly heaven-defying fortune!
And though others might think that this was ridiculous, if Tang Ze remembered correctly, this was still less fortunate than some of the things that happened to Leonald the Lucky Leprechaun in his stories.
A prefect walked over who did not have a pleasant expression, mainly because he was talking to Tang Ze - but also because naturally he was envious of Tang Ze's luck. "Junior Tang Ze - the rules state that you cannot use more than one ticket."
Although highly unlikely, there were scenarios in which some people had gotten multiple winning tickets before - though no one could boast as ever having matched Tang Ze's one hundred percent win record. Each person could only use one, so anyone who won more than one had to either cash it in for sect merit points or trade it with someone. They could not, unfortunately, be stored or saved away for later use.
This was another way to make sure things were more equitable when it came to the Grimoire of Heaven.
Alternatively, you could just give them away. "Yeah, I'm giving these other three to my other squad members," Tang Ze said.
The prefect sighed, he had wanted another chance at getting a ticket and was considering buying an extra one from Tang Ze, but not only was there nothing he could do because what Tang Ze did was perfectly within sect rules - there would be many people who would commend Tang Ze for such an action.
After all, the purpose of the squad system in the first place was to get people to work together with their squad members, and learn to put the collective good their own personal gains.
As such, there was nothing the prefect could do regarding Tang Ze's choice to give his spare tickets to his friends. The prefect simply grumbled and reminded Tang Ze that Tang Ze should be wearing his sect uniform during this time before walking off.
"Alright! Thank you Tang Ze - don't worry about being single, we'll all help you find a girl so you don't have to make-believe anymore!"
"I am not worried about being single," Tang Ze said, and then frowned. "Wait - what do you mean by playing make-believe? Are you talking about Xian Yue? Because she's real. She's just somewhere far away from here."
"You don't have to do the 'I have a girlfriend, she just goes to another sect' routine with us, Tang Ze. We understand."
Chapter 54 The Grimoire of Heaven: Part Three
"Of course she is," Zhang Long added, not the slightest bit convinced by Tang Ze's story.
Tang Ze sighed. He had repeatedly told them all that if they didn't believe him, he could teleport them to where she was so they could see her in person.
However, they had all declined this offer, because they thought that using wizard magic might weaken their cultivation bases somehow.
Sure, they might be Tang Ze's friends, but they had also been raised to believe that wizards were these weird, strange, creatures antithetical to cultivation.
As it was, Tang Ze hadn't had any of his cultivation progress stalled by dressing as a wizard… at least, he didn't think so. He was worse than the others at cultivating, though he chalked this up to other things.
Whatever, he thought finally, it didn't make much of a difference whether they believed that Xian Yue existed or not.
Some of the other sect members tried to buy their winning tickets off of the four of them, only to be given harsh glares by the prefects.
People were not allowed to sell tickets to each other - otherwise what was the point of the raffle in the first place? You might as well just auction them off directly then. The only reason Tang Ze might have been allowed to do so with the three extra that he had was because they were extra. Now that each of them only had one, they could not be exchanged or sold.
As a matter of fact, the rules were so strict that they could not even give away their winning tickets if they wanted. After all, what would prevent someone from being 'gifted' a ticket and then two years later returning that gift with a hefty sum of money? The winner's names were recorded, and only they could use the winning tickets.
The most they could do was refuse to use their chance, but in that case, all that would happen was that one chance would be wasted. And why would someone who had purchased a ticket do something like that in the first place?
The next question was to decide in which order the four of them would go to use the grimoire.
"Tang Ze was the one who won the tickets in the first place, so he should go first," Zhang Long said, and the others nodded.
They could agree on that well enough, the issue was how would the rest of the three of them decide among each other? Going before someone else wasn't really that big of a deal, but everyone was eager to try it out first - especially as there were a few days of waiting time between each number.
They drew straws for this, and the sequence was Zhang Long, then Chen Yu, and finally Yun Tiang.
Zhang Long couldn't help but bemoan something though. "If you had told us that you could do this earlier, we wouldn't have spent so many of our sect merit points on buying tickets."
"I uh, honestly didn't know beforehand that it would work," Tang Ze said. "And not that it would work to this extent either."
"It's alright," Chen Yu said. Though they had paid a lot of sect merit points, the fact that they had all won made the points spent well worth it. "We'll just think of it as each of us having paid to win one of them."
"Right," Tang Ze said. "Still, I'm sure that this costume has more uses. I think we should go to a rock gambling den one day…"
The thing about such dens was that Tang Ze knew that he could not use his ability over and over in such places, else people would either get suspicious, or just throw him out.
Of course, they couldn't prove that his outfit was the reason why he kept winning nor would they ever think that as being any more real than someone who said that they had a 'lucky jacket' back on Earth - but they didn't need to. They would just straight up refuse to service him after a while.
For something like this sect raffle, though, it was perfect.
"Tch! Can't believe I didn't win anything."
"Did you hear though? Zhang Long's squad all won a ticket each."
"Really? That sounds impossible!"
"Maybe Zhang Long really is some kind of favored son of heaven..."
"Nah, it wasn't Zhang Long who won them. It was Tang Ze."
"They say he got four winning tickets in a row!"
"That has to be a lie - no one's luck could be that good! I would eat my hat if that ever happened!"
"Nah, I swear it's true!"
"He's right but tch, there's no way that someone could actually be that lucky! He must've cheated!"
"How though?"
"Dunno, but no one else seems to be able to figure it out either."
"He must've had someone helping him!"
"Who though - he doesn't know anyone else in the sect."
"Maybe he's secretly the sect elder's son or something?"
"I have a better question - what's he wearing?"
Talk like that echoed throughout the place as the squad made their way back to their common living space.
Tang Ze re-evaluated how useful Leonald the Lucky Leprechaun's outfit was.
He had not used it before because he had difficulty getting some of the materials for making the costume - it was extremely hard to find a vibrant, dark green fabric for some reason in this place. The best he could find were fading light green clothes, which were not how Leonald the Lucky Leprechaun dressed himself. There were other such colors which weren't easy to get his hands on as well, such as deep purple, and he had to find a workaround for them.
Thankfully, he had managed to finally make one before the sect raffle. He had not considered how powerful just being lucky was, or if it would've actually helped him out, but it was clear now that he could in fact, increase his luck by wearing this outfit.
Doing the math in his head, he calculated the odds of him being able to pull off four winning tickets by just buying four tickets as being less than one in several hundred billion.
That made this outfit a perfect candidate for something he could try to passively gain once he was done absorbing strength.
There was a reason why he wasn't going to focus on gaining this power though - luck was a rather nebulous concept and he was not sure how much something like zero point one percent of this character's luck would mean in practical terms.
Compared to that, increasing his strength seemed to just be more reliable and something he could actually wrap his head around.
As it was, it would take about one hundred and fifty years to fully passively absorb this character's powers to the fullest extent that he could, which made him think that it wasn't all that powerful in the first place.
Several things influenced how fast he could passively absorb a character's strength. For one, the stronger they were, the longer that it would take. The better the costume, the faster he could do so, but it did not increase proportionately.
For example, if a costume he had made could access twenty percent of a character's powers, it might take him a hundred years, hypothetically speaking, to be able to fully absorb that twenty percent. If he made a better costume, say, one that could access forty percent of said character's power, he could now fully absorb forty percent, and at a faster rate too, so that rather than taking two hundred years like one would expect, it might only take one hundred and fifty years.
Still, those were very long time intervals. For now though, at least for twenty or thirty years, Tang Ze felt, it was best to passively increase his strength as much as possible.
After all, if he did well in the Novice Tournament using feats of strength, he could easily gain resources that might make up for his lack of cultivation talent for the time being. The Grimoire of Heaven was just an example of such a thing, though he had earned it through manipulating his luck rather than strength. But, there were other such similar things he could access if he got stronger.
He had initially thought that after increasing his strength to a certain amount, he would then try to absorb the powers of a spellcaster (as blasphemous as the other cultivators would think of this) so that he would have another avenue of attack. However, it might be worthwhile to boost his luck instead.
Still, that was something that would come up in a few decades. No need to stress his mind over that right now.
The day for using the Grimoire of Heaven came soon enough.
The sect was already buzzing about the grimoire's benefits. One of the people who got to use it before Tang Ze jumped through a minor realm just from using it, and that was at the Qi Refinement level!
Even if people did not experience breakthroughs, they would often find their speed of cultivation accelerated, or their future horizons broadened through using the Grimoire of Heaven.
Without a doubt, it was a first-class tool for cultivators, which is why it was so much in demand, and why Song Xian had set up this kind of system in the first place.
Access to the grimoire was given out in six hour intervals, with two of them occurring per day. For the other twelve hours, the elder who oversaw the grimoire had to sleep and it was locked up for safekeeping.
As such though, Tang Ze got to use it the second day after the winners could start using it.
This involved waking up early, and though Tang Ze would normally complain about such, the benefits were to the point where he seriously considered just not going to sleep all night so that he would not miss a moment of the time he got.
He didn't go that far though, and just had his squad members wake him up.
He arrived at the designated place half an hour before he could actually use the grimoire, which wasn't too out of place for the winners. As it was, the grimoire was kept in a remote area, so it was very hard to infiltrate, and Tang Ze hadn't wanted to get lost and end up being late for his turn. Any time that he lost from being late would be time he would not be allowed to make up..
"The person before you came in two hours early," the elder in charge of the grimoire said as he finally let Tang Ze in after verifying via his ticket that he was the winner, and matching his name with the records he had to make sure that it wasn't stolen.
The elder was really all the security that one needed for the grimoire - he was a Nascent Soul stage cultivator, meaning he could likely fight all of the other members of the sect here and still win. The Nascent Soul cultivators of the sect took turns to keep guard over the Grimoire of Heaven, because, as a great treasure of the sect, it had to be kept under close watch.
'Oh, but maybe if I could get a blow in with my strength if I could wear a costume, we might have a chance,'- Tang Ze though idly, though there was little point to pursuing this imaginary scenario in which this elder fought against the rest of the sect.
"Come with me," the elder said, and led Tang Ze to a room.
Tang Ze had expected the room where the Grimoire of Heaven was being kept to be fancy or at least giving off an air of spirituality, but instead, the walls and the floors were made of what looked like iron but had a dark glow to it - meaning it was likely some kind of magical alloy and not just steel.
This was not a room - this was the inside of a vault!
Chapter 55 Tang Ze Uses The Grimoire: Part One
The only thing that didn't make the room look like a prison cell for one of the world's most dangerous prisoners was a single chair, and a pedestal upon which a single book was propped up. It was about three times as big as a textbook back on Earth, and glowed with a gentle blue aura.
Tang Ze could feel the Qi emanating from the book even from here.
"Remember, not a second over six hours," the elder said, and lit an incense stick to measure the passing time. Strangely enough it didn't seem to give off any smoke, which was a relief given the near claustrophobic setting that the book was in. "If you need to use the restroom, let me know. The person who came before you hadn't wanted to waste any time and simply pissed on the floor instead." The elder frowned. "The grimoire is a very useful tool, but I request that you not stoop to such levels to simply eke out a few extra minutes with it." He clearly was not happy with that kind of behavior, and this served as a warning for Tang Ze to not do the same.
"Uh, right, I'll keep that in mind," Tang Ze said. He had made it a point to use the restroom before coming here, and had not taken a sip of water since then, preferring to go thirsty for six or seven hours rather than risking interrupting his time with the grimoire.
Truly, that was how valuable each second with it was! Tang Ze had even gotten up early willingly just so that he wouldn't risk being late by even a second! Though he had to admit, peeing on yourself to save a few minutes really was taking it a bit too far… no wonder the elder was quite upset.
Tang Ze did not waste any time as he walked over to the book the moment the elder left, the air of QI that it emanated getting stronger as he approached, to the point that he felt that the Qi was four times as thick near the book as elsewhere on the mountain.
That meant that even if you disregarded what was actually written in the book, and only considered it as a source of Qi to cultivate in close proximity to, it still had its uses as it would make cultivating four times faster!
So how good was it going to be when he actually got to read it?
His heart was already pounding as he turned the cover and began reading the first page.
The secrets of the earth are difficult to decipher, though with patience one can elucidate them as one originates from the earth and it is easily accessible. The secrets of heaven are more mysterious still, as the entity that crowns over us and rules over us with an iron fist. But above both in terms of difficulty to understand are the secrets of man, for man is the true spirit and offspring of the union of heaven and earth. This volume shall delve unto the second layer of mysteries, the mysteries of heaven.
Tang Ze figured this paragraph was one of the allusions to the Grimoire of Earth and the Grimoire of Man within the book, both of which were currently lost.
Before he could go about reading further, white light washed over him.
For a moment his heart nearly jumped out of his chest, but he calmed down as he remembered that this was something he had been told could happen.
The Grimoire of Heaven was no ordinary book, and the way it often helped one understand the secrets of heaven was through array formations or other such functions. It was more like working on a supercomputer that could simulate various scenarios and tap into the secrets of cultivation rather than reading a simple book.
After the flash of light, Tang Ze was no longer sitting in that room which looked like a vault. He was sitting atop a rocky crevice under a cloudy sky.
There was nothing else in front of him as he glanced around, only to find a chameleon sitting right across from him the moment he glanced there later.
He found that after that, he couldn't turn his head to the side, and was fixated on the chameleon.
Clearly, the grimoire wanted to show him something here.
The chameleon turned red, then green, then blue, then orange - and then began changing into a mishmash of colors with a spot of blue here and a spot of green there, etc.
Tang Ze watched the lizard shift colors over and over like this, with the color variation becoming even more erratic with each iteration, until finally, it disappeared completely.
Above him, the clouds finally burst, drenching the landscape in rain.
'This feels so real-' Tang Ze thought, as the gentle rain drops assaulted him. Of course, none of this was happening in real life, it was like being in a very detailed dream while awake, but the powers of the grimoire were already making quite an impression on Tang Ze's mind.
The scene shifted, and he found himself dressed up in armor. Not real armor, mind you - some kind of replica, with a cape billowing behind him. He took a look down at his gauntlets and felt the helmet that now adorned his crown.
It took him a moment to realize who he was dressed up as; it was only when he saw the crudely drawn monitor on his left arm that it really sunk in.
Space Emperor Cygrixous!
He was the main antagonist of a video game that Tang Ze had played - and there was very little depth to his character. He was a Saturday morning cartoon villain if there ever was one, but his power set was actually quite neat.
In the canon of the video game, he was said to have been so strong that he had once wiped out an entire moon full of rebellion soldiers on his own. He was defeated by what amounted to a gang of four teenagers in-game, but that didn't diminish the fact that he was still very strong.
While he was powerful and had some useful abilities, Tang Ze had not tried to make such a costume because a lot of his gear, including his armor, would be difficult to try to make replicas of and was also time-consuming. Not to mention that while he was strong, there were stronger characters that Tang Ze knew he could draw inspiration from.
He also looked quite ridiculous- now, that was true of a lot of the characters that Tang Ze dressed up as, but Space Emperor Cygrixous was on a whole different level. It was clear that the character designers had had a lot of fun when it came to designing him - but the issue was that this design was quite difficult to try to faithfully replicate in real life.
Tang Ze had seen photos of other people dressing up as Space Emperor Cygrixous, and they just didn't look right. Some things just didn't look good at all when translated from animation to real life.
These thoughts were interrupted by a spear that was chucked his way.
Tang Ze instinctively activated his forcefield ability, the spear shredded to atoms before it could even reach him. Space Emeperor Cygrixous's forcefield was so strong as to repel missiles - what could a lone spear do? However, he was pretty sure that the 'armor' he was wearing would not be as strong as the Space Emperor's, so it was good that he had intercepted that spear in time. The fact that his clothes did not carry any special powers, making them especially vulnerable as a weak point, would apply here as well.
The perpetrator of the attack was one among over a hundred thousand soldiers who were now glaring at him. All of them were dressed up in the way of this world, carrying swords, axes, spears, bows, and other weapons that Tang Ze didn't even know the names of. Some of them were empty-handed, eager to fight with nothing more than their fists. Some of them were mounted atop horses, but they all seemed quite disorganized - there was no pattern or formation to how they were standing.
It was surreal to be fighting them as a man wearing space armor, even more so than dressing up as a leprechaun had felt earlier, but not difficult whatsoever.
Tang Ze went with the most obvious strategy - flying out of range of their weapons and then blasting everything with his palms, as he rained purple lasers over them that vaporized huge swathes of people wherever they landed. His lasers, if they were at full power, could break off huge chunks of the earth itself.
It was a cheap tactic - but one that worked, and the opposing 'army' if it could be called that was blasted to smithereens within what felt like an hour.
Then, his perspective suddenly shifted.
Tang Ze wasn't himself anymore - he was watching his own body from a third person perspective now. Nor was he in control of his body as he watched this other version of himself, after finishing off this army, fly near a village in the distance.
Where had that village come from?
Before, all Tang Ze had seen was an endless plain and an army that had spawned out of nowhere to try to attack him. That was why he had done the natural thing, which was to attack them. He had thought of them as nothing more than faceless enemies like you'd find in a video game - this was all just like a dream, after all? That was why he felt like he could go all out against them without any restraints or moral quandaries.
He didn't figure that his actions would matter in any shape or form - just that it was some sort of test from the grimoire.
Perhaps it was a test - but not in the way that he had expected. Maybe the test had not been about how to defeat the army before him, because that would have been easier than going on an afternoon stroll.
Tang Ze now had to watch as his body double completely nuked a nearby village, bathing the area in crimson flames. There were some screams of the people caught up in the fire, though most of them were slain instantly, not even having a breath to yell out as their existences were snuffed from this world.
Tang Ze frowned - he couldn't see what this 'other self' of his was thinking or feeling, but after this other version of himself was done with this village, he moved to another one.
And another one.
The scene shifted, to one of Xian Yue floating above the clouds. It was not her spectral form, but she was in a real body.
'Is this world flat?' - Tang Ze wondered, as at this altitude, they should've been able to make out the curvature of the earth if it was round. Instead, all he saw was a flat plane below them.
However, he only noticed this detail for an instant as his attention turned to Xian Yue; admiring her appearance.
Tang Ze had to admit, though he wasn't fond of the beauty standards of this world, Xian Yue somehow managed to really make them work.
Also, did Xian Yue really have brown hair? Did the Grimoire of Heaven really know what her hair used to look like? Or did it think that Xian Yue wanted her to be a brunette? He had thought that her hair was black, though in her spectral form, this was hard to really determine.
"Ah, will you marry me?" Tang Ze watched as his doppelganger said these words, and Xian Yue laughed softly before nodding.
It was then that he noticed how his doppelganger had reached the clouds in the first place - he wasn't flying, no, he was standing atop a huge pile.
A huge pile of bodies. Men, women, children, many of them not even human, but belonging to beastmen or other demihumans.
He had been told that no cultivator had ever ascended to heaven without standing atop a mountain of bodies, but it was usually not interpreted so literally. As he looked at the dead, many unanswered questions in their eyes - the foremost of them being 'Why did you do this to us?' the scene shifted.