novelraw Chapter 1145 - 1144 - Space and Creation
Chapter 1145 - 1144 - Space and Creation
Lind found Mills had returned to the palace but Jur was still in training. He saw no need to interrupt her but left a message with her jade stone. He quickly returned to his courtyard and updated his companions on what he had learned.
He also gave them a stern warning inside heavy wards made by his weaving. He tested them first but as he feared, the location ping went off despite his best efforts. Still, it hardly changed much given their most recent battles.
The enemy still knew where they were but the very Corruption that weakened the world, locked them away too.
Their agents were pathetically weak as the battle at Crescent City had proven as well. Without so much to protect, Lind would rend them apart if they came at them foolishly.
Still, he took severe precautions for everyone. Oz seemed to contemplate something afterwards and asked permission to look into a few things. Lind nodded and he left for the lower city.
Katerina and Nana went back to the former's lessons as she had just turned 2. She was going to break through any day!
Lind could see Qi gathering in her dantian steadily and calmly. He was not sure which elements she would awaken as he had no precedent to follow but based on the flows he saw, he wondered if he had made a new problem!
He took the jade slips Maester Atla gave him as well as some notes he made on their experiments. She also gave him a few requests but he had to research if they were feasible or not himself too!
It was only fair after all the help she gave him.
The Stonelight Guild has also made a hard sell for his services but he only promised to send them some elixirs to sell in the future if he wanted to.
He had given them a sample of each grade he could make, including Heaven Grade versions. Fpr Law Grade, he only gave them a natural Qi version as the others would cause a riot if exposed.
His Forging was a similar but more limited affair. They wanted weapons but he refused. He gave armor and some tools for everyday use. His Forged weapons would be a nightmare at the moment in the current world.
His imprint would allow far more power than the cultivators could safely defend or use!
Armor had no such issue and mundane items were entirely safe.
He had a few weaving plates but that had lower demand than most. Formations had a myriad common uses but weaving was so rare that it was more niche or request only for work.
Even at his level, that could create a more efficient result with weaving for an alchemy lab or refining furnace, it was still not in high demand. The issue was also the Corruption.
Weavers could still work in the current conditions but their products broke down far faster compared to formations.
His weavings would reveal his unique ability to resist the Corruption so he only gave some functional plates like regulating a fire temperature or cooling a room with air flow.
Now, he could focus on his studies for creating his own spatial fold. Compared to a special realm that would be tied to an entrance, Immortals in the Stonelight Guild protected their secrets by having pocket dimensions littered around the floors of the tower.
The main reason was due to the fact that experimenting at grade 6 and above could lead to entire cities being wiped out if done in normal space.
An Immortal expert could safely experiment and if things went badly, they could escape while preserving the city around them.
Lind could tear through space and work with artifacts like the new gateways or a teleportation array, but actually creating such a space was a new thing for him. It was not as simple as carving out a place in the void either.
He had to literally fold space until he had the volume he needed and then he could fill it with what he wanted.
The jade slips Maester Atla gave him were a basic foundation for actually sensing and then manipulating space but he knew most of it already. In fact, he frowned at some of the nonsense he was reading.
"Space is not separate from normal Qi you idiots." He knew he should not feel superior but even basic science understood all matter was shared across space. Even space itself was made of matter although it became strange the smaller someone studied it.
Quantum mechanics, at least via George, was something he never wanted to ponder but cultivators could make intuitive leaps with the information they theorized on. Once they got it to work, they could then replicate it.
He needed more.
He needed to understand it.
He tried doing a small scale experiment but all he did was tear through space like normal. He could create small bridges with ease now but folding it produced no result at all.
"Maybe they think of it like folding but it is just compression?" He took up a lotus position as he began to simulate how to manipulate space without an anchor to tie it down. It still needed relative coordinates but there had to be a way to grasp his goal.
The slips had a few more lessons at expanding his control but it was essentially gibberish about picture space like a fabric.
"What was that theory? String theory? Space was a bunch of strings?" His mind went down the path of both his old and current world as it had not done in many thousands of years. He had once focused on mimicking the effects of natural phenomena with his Qi but later he used real Arts.
He now found help from his old world in trying to master his new technique. It was not a direct correlation like before. It was more about trying to grasp the principles.
Cultivators had succeeded so it was more than possible. Still, he did not want a teacher to muddle his thinking. His theories were still spreading and he long ago learned how flawed the old Arts were.
If he tried only to replicate what had been done, he would never truly learn what it could become!
A thought suddenly occurred to him as he tried Celestial Qi. As if it had been waiting for him to ask, the Celestial Qi flew from his meridians like a wave and space became like clay! Shock made him lose control and the sound of thunder was followed by a force launching Lind across the floor!
His hair was splayed wildly with his robes now torn as if their defenses were nothing!
"I should probably do this somewhere a bit more remote." The room was intact but the low table was now kindling and 1 of the couches had its stuffing blown all over the room! He Forged them back into 1 piece each but he could not keep breaking it as he failed.
[Chu, I need to go somewhere a bit safer to practice. I will return.] He felt her ascent before he slipped away. Tearing through space outside of emergencies was forbidden. If he tried, the kingdom would know, but flying was a different matter.
He had authority to fly and did so from his courtyard.
Inside the fallen land, while still draining more than it should, his natural flying ability worked much better. Being so close to the Crimson Harmony Law Crystal helped immensely but as soon as he was beyond the outer wall, his stamina consumption leapt upward.
He had to land or he would fall out of the sky! The swaying grasslands and forests were looking quite healthy in the area he had fought the fungus before.
He chose it as few beasts had taken up a home but also because he felt it as the most familiar place due to his Arts permeating the entire area.
He took up a clearing and erected several weavings to reinforce the defenses so he could minimize any issues later.
It turned out to be a good idea as even though he was no longer surprised by how easily Celestial Qi manipulated space, he could not make a stable area no matter how he tried. It always collapsed or slipped his control as he tested all aspects of the control he had.
The once serene brush and grass were reduced to striated soil. There were a few tufts still clinging to life but Lind was not much better as he was now topless.
It was just easier to rely on his body as his robes could not handle the power being unleashed at such close range.
"Celestial Qi can move it at my will but the folding space is still wrong. It is more like trying to inflate a balloon than fold–" Lind froze as he paced.
Inflating like a balloon? He used darkness and earth to use gravity manipulation around him as he combined Celestial Qi to create a small pocket in front of him. Due to gravity being higher around the newly made pocket, space actually shifted!
High pressure would always move high to low naturally but as he watched with his aura, he was amazed to see a pocket of space expanding inside a thin boundary! It expanded until his own gravity effect dispersed all on its own!
Why did that work?!
Just as he was about to celebrate, the spatial boundary shivered and he was sent flying into his own wards! He felt his bones crack and blood spurted from his mouth and nose!
It was a thousand times more powerful when it collapsed but it was taking shape in his mind. It was not folding, it was creating a flow in space! Now that he knew the theory, he could test it!
It was not tearing through space but creating a balancing act! He could see why it felt like folding to them but how did they stabilize it?
He smiled like a mad scientist seeing their goal in sight!
The crashing of thunder increased for a week straight but no one could find the source of it. Months passed as it became infrequent but only after 6 months did it finally stop.
Some said a crazed man left the forest after that but no one could find any trace of him to confirm it, yet the legend was born of a place in the forest lightning would blast someone until they survived or died!
Lind, the man that caused the commotion, looked exhausted but smiling as he made his way back to the outer wall. He had finally succeeded in creating a small spatial fold and now he could make a proper one in his courtyard!
After that, he would focus on his body modification. Before all that, however, he would take a very long rest! His face paled as he saw a dark figure standing on top of the wall with a tail slowly swishing.
"Oh crap." It was the last he spoke before a dark blur snatched him up and vanished back into the city.