Chương 29: Babyrage

As Jin walked to the sect library, he pondered on how quick Lung Junior's response or whoever was backing him had been to divest him of any possible teammates. The boy had only seen him at the army camp this very morning but had acted incredibly fast. He wondered for a second if other inner disciples had been similarly targeted. He had never asked Elder Flower how many potential allies he actually had in the inner ring.

But, he was finding this faction battle between the two sets of ideas that he had been told existed to be very blurry in their lines and definitions. Was he not being given access to the resources of his faction because he hadn't inserted enough into it yet? Or simply because there weren't any to share? For all he knew, Elder Flower could be a strong enough combatant in relation to all the other Elders of the sect that her opinion alone meant that she was the head of a political movement.

After all, no one was bothering to tell him shit. If that were indeed the case, then what exactly was he signing up for? Although, it wasn't that bad of a deal. In the end, everyone needed a backer, and it wasn't like these petty rivalries were going to devolve into killing. Paying people so they wouldn't collaborate with him was a relatively minor offence. He walked through throngs of other disciples on the way to the library. They were acting like a hive of bees whose nest had been kicked. All agitated.

Maybe this competition was a bigger deal than he thought. He ignored the odd looks he was getting, probably because he was the disciple who had been singled out as undeserving of teammates for the upcoming challenge. This was actually the reason why he was going to the library alone. Hashimi would come later, and they would first act independently in public. He arrived at the large and ornate building. The library for the sect techniques was the same place as the library for the Illusion Rooms.

The general idea was that there was no need to split things for operational security when there was always an Elder manning the post to catch any misdemeanours. And even if there had been no such security, would the martial cultivators visiting their sect for a fee truly waste their time trying to steal the techniques of the Illusion Room creation rather than using the library for its intended purpose? The fact of the matter was that a single person could only master so many techniques and cultivation paths.

The only sensible reason to steal the techniques of the Illusion Room Sect was if they were planning to become their direct competitor. However, considering that there currently was no direct competitor, the amount of time it would take to build a reputation as such utilising the very same techniques but without any of the infrastructure or historical precedent would be a thankless task.

In this way, the Illusion Room Sect was actually one of the safest ones to be in, as they didn't particularly have anything worth stealing. Considering that they were selling their services to martial cultivators for spirit stones, he sincerely doubted that the Illusion Room Sect had any more liquidity than them either. Martial cultivators were directly at the source of the cash, whereas the production sects were downstream.

Who'd ever heard of the ones selling products being richer than those providing the wealth in a feudal society? It just didn't add up. Jin entered the library through the grand doors and found himself in the hexagonal reception room. He paused in his steps as he saw himself confronted with Lung Junior, someone he hadn't expected to see here.

Behind the young/old man was a gaggle of other disciples, all of them wearing the non-standard disciple robes that Jin now knew, indicating that someone came from a cultivator family with their own traditions and, most importantly, their own money.

"Alone?" Lung Junior asked with a sneer.

"Let me guess, you're here to find a Jiangshi Room and to repurpose it for the current scenario. I'm afraid to tell you that won't work, as there have been new developments in the threat ratings of the zombies. I'll let you figure that one out yourself." The boy pulled out a fan from a ring on his left index finger and held it up in front of his mouth to hide his giggle. Jin simply looked at the man and wondered if there was a way to screw up one's cultivation that made one lose a significant amount of IQ.

Unfortunately, such a simple answer would have meant that the base attributes of humanity included being smart, which he doubted. For some reason, the words of Sun Tzu floated through his head as Junior looked at him as if expecting tears or something. When strong, pretend to be weak. Jin pulled his face into a rectus of agony and fear.

"Wah, I am terrified of the upcoming challenge. Whatever shall I do," he said, stretching out both his arms and weakly waving them around as if they were landed fish. Rather than being satisfied with his display of weakness, Junior ran red in the face.

"You'll see," he snarled.

"Someone with no pedigree like you cannot get anywhere in this sect, or any sect," he said before rushing out of the library past Jin. He took extra effort to crash his shoulder against Jin's as he did so. That particular move turned out to be quite unsuccessful as it was Junior who stumbled from the meeting of physical forces, along with all of his cronies who followed behind him and, out of obligation, committed to the same physical assault. You might be reading a stolen copy.

Visit Royal Road for the authentic version. Jin was simply left standing there unmoved with a confused look on his face. Considering that his faction was the one proposing a higher focus on martial strength, had they really expected to be stronger than him? He wondered. This wasn't Earth. Cultivators who focused on developing their physical attributes here could very easily grow as strong as a hundred men.

"Are they dumb?" he asked himself as he continued onwards to the technique library.

"They've always been like that," a voice suddenly said from beside him, causing Jin to turn his head and lock eyes with another inner disciple idling about in the relatively sparsely populated library. He found himself looking at a lanky and tall man with long brown oily hair that partially covered his eyes as well as his cheeks.

"The whole group?" Jin asked confusedly. The man nodded, putting up a hand to swipe away a strand of hair, which immediately fell into the same place again.

"They are all descendants of Illusion Room Sect Elders who have sired over the last millennia enough progeny to create clans which focus on different parts of the creation process. Maybe one of them gets promoted, but then a new one comes in. They're always behaving like a group of little piranhas. Don't underestimate them, though," the boy warned. He was just about to walk off when Jin suddenly interrupted him.

"Hey! Don't walk off mysteriously after giving such a vague warning. Tell me why exactly I should be careful, or don't bother making me suspicious in the first place," he demanded. The disciple seemed to consider the words before nodding and crossing his arms in front of his chest.

"You're that new kid who they decided to single out by paying everyone not to collaborate with you, right? Well, then, you've already felt some of what they're capable of. If they really dislike you, what they're going to do in the future is go through your Illusion Rooms when you submit them to the library before introducing the slightly superior version, which the librarian will then have to put in the active room, whereas your creation will go in the history room.

That means you earn a much smaller commission, and they'll have to do less work."

"And no one's tried to stop them before?" Jin asked curiously.

"There's no Alliance of non-heritage disciples or something?" The other disciple shrugged.

"Not that I would know; I don't think they'd let it exist long either. They don't harm our goal of becoming core disciples, and while they may sabotage someone every now and again, it's just one person at a time. They're not really worth dealing with," he said, another helpless shrug.

"So what, I'm just the most recent sacrifice?" Jin asked dubiously. This conversation was something straight out of a nature documentary where the presenter, with a heavy British accent, said that the oldest zebra in the group would sacrifice itself to the lions so that the others could get away. Of course, the only reason the older zebra was caught was that it couldn't run so fast and so long anymore, and maybe one of the younger ones had given it a helpful nudge to fall down.

"I wouldn't say that; maybe it's just a fixation. They'll leave you alone if you don't react long enough. They get bored very easily. I think it's due to a life of easy stimulation," the disciple muttered.

"Anyway, I should be going. Good luck out there."

"Thanks for that advice, I guess," Jin said begrudgingly, shaking his head. It was a good warning, although he did wonder how exactly a bunch of spoiled young masters would go through Dragonslayer Ornstein and Outlast when he decided to add them to the library. Maybe he was underestimating then? Surely, they had some skills if they were in the inner ring. The thing with copying someone else's Illusion was that one had to experience its entire complexity first to make the copy.

Everyone essentially coded their Illusions in a language that was incomprehensible to others, unless, of course, they were collaborating from the get-go and made sure to be at least legible to the other person they were working with. Such was life when all coding essentially ran through one's brain, and thus also one's culture, history and opinions first, in a way. The best encoding, the entirety of your life.

Jin didn't really imagine that the group of heritage cultivators that he had encountered would do very well against Dragonslayer Ornstein, or Outlast for that matter, despite them technically being on a higher level than the mortals it was designed for. They seemed like the type of people whose only superpower was nepotism, not any other sort of mental or physical quality.

To copy his rightfully gained copyright infringements, they'd have to play them long enough to discover every variation and interaction through several playthroughs. It was still a simpler process than coming up with something on your own, but not if you struggled with the difficulty level of what you were copying. In the end, there was nothing he could do about it, so he simply shrugged and headed towards the library section, which held the techniques of the sect.

Perhaps in martial sects, this part of the library would have been oriented towards different combat techniques held in exactly the same type of jade slips that he found opening up before him as he entered the large space which consisted of three entire floors. However, Jin had already glanced in here once and had found a disastrously low amount of actual combat techniques.

The slips were mostly concerned with showcasing the variety of ways in which one could collaborate with others, the most simplistic of which was the memory-sharing technique. It was a technique that one also needed to record the memories of various monster battles that one had fought. Or to decipher the memories of someone who had fought the monsters for you if you had paid them for that. Jin already knew how to read jade slips like that; he just needed to learn how to create them.

Considering it was one of the most basic techniques that inner disciples needed to know. Jin only needed to take five steps inwards before he could take one of the heavily inscribed slips of jade from the wooden shelf it rested on to take a closer look. It was interesting how, in this world, without having discovered electricity, people had figured out so many other ways to store information with the use of magic.

He could store information in his mind, he could put it in a Room, and he could also put it in a jade slip, or at least that was what he was here to learn. A bit awkwardly at first, Jin inserted his qi into the magical slot that the jade represented before finally managing to gain access and mentally blanking out to review the data inside. He wondered what Elder Flower was doing while he was running around at her orders, working like a maniac. Probably just relaxing.

Relaxing sure as hell had been the only thing he'd ever seen her do at the Mad Monks Sect. And that had been someone else's territory. How bad would she get when she was at home and feeling comfortable? -/- Unaware of the current slander allegations against her work ethic, Elder Flower idly swung her sword to deflect a black scale the size of a carriage wheel flying straight to her neck. She used the kinetic force of the block to backflip away and stabilise herself from the surprise attack.

Standing on top of a snowy mountain, reaching way past the clouds and almost touching the line where the blue of the sky became the black of space, she frowned as she beheld the owner of the flying scale reveal himself to her as he flew from beneath the mountain to just above it, thus unveiling his whole body to her eyes. First came the black lizard-like head, as big as a house, with a wicked row of sharp teeth that were grinning an ugly smile at her.

Then came the long serpentine body, spanning endlessly like a valley between a mountain chain. In the end, came a tail that ended in a halberd-like attachment, swinging dangerously in her direction.

"So you can block the paltriest of my attacks. But, little cultivator reaching for the heavens, you think yourself ready to face the true eternal darkness?" the gigantic flying demon mocked, its presence suffocating any joy and happiness from the surrounding area, like a black hole of misery. Flower frowned up at the snake-like demon who dwarfed her in size like a skyscraper did a mud-house.

"Demon general Hao Shun, what a pleasant surprise," she said mockingly.

"I wouldn't boast just yet. Didn't you know that being bigger only means you'll fall harder?" The demon's acid green eyes narrowed themselves at her from where their owner was placidly winding and unwinding in midair. They were almost as big as Flower, those eyes. The hideous mouth beneath opened and unleashed a roar that started an avalanche across the entire mountain range.

Tsunamis of snow rushed towards the earth below, shattering the previous quiet only interrupted by the harsh winds which would cut the flesh of any non-cultivator to shreds. The thunderous sound of snow crashing on rock and glaciers cracking was then muted by the swing of Flower's sword and the beam of darkness escaping that jagged maw meeting in midair and exploding with the force of a nuclear bomb. The world shattered around the Elder and the General as they met in the skies in open combat.

-/-"Lazy bitch," Jin quietly complained to himself with shifty eyes in the library so that nobody would hear him, even if they wouldn't technically know he was cussing out an Elder.