novelraw Chapter 272 - 271 - Mistaken
Chapter 272 - 271 - Mistaken
Lind had a splitting headache. He had been enjoying teleportation a bit now that he was in the World Realm. Iron Tier was the true level where it hardly bothered a cultivator anymore. He had never been so glad to make the progress he had when he learned of that.
Whatever happened at the entrance of the Inheritance, however, made even his worst teleportation in the Soul Realm a calm dream. His head felt 3 times larger than it should and even a sliver of light like an explosion of pain scraping nails against a chalkboard.
"How did it go wrong? It never did that before…" A voice nearly made Lind vomit as it set off his disorientation once more. Suddenly, soothing emotions covered him and gave him an anchor to clear his mind.
It felt like an eternity before he finally opened his eyes to something both familiar and alien.
It was a massive control room! There was a circle of monitors, panels with switches, meters, and other displays as well. The lights overhead would not have been out of place in an office building! Had he come back to Earth? !
An electronic beep pulled his attention to find a short and dark haired man leaning over one of the consoles. His pale skin was due to lack of sunlight than any technique he knew of.
"Again, no issues. If there are no issues, why is there a damned man in my control room?! Damn, gaijin everywhere." Lind snapped onto that word. He had heard it before but not in his current life.
What was it? He thought of George and his hobbies. The man would go off on a tangent for hours if you let him talk but Lind had mostly just nodded at the right spots or sometimes asked for clarity when he really was lost.
"Japanese!" Lind yelled the word but then felt a massive aura slam into him yet pulled away instantly. The short man was in good shape but his dark eyes looked at Lind with confusion before joy came across them.
A flow of words he could barely grasp came out of his mouth but Lind held a hand up and he stopped.
"American, USA to be precise. I recognized the mobile suits after looking over my old memories." The man seemed a little disappointed but then happy once more.
"So you are also an otaku! That is great! I have been without anyone to go on about the latest manga or anime. Well, not that I can really reach them here. Did 'One Piece' ever end or what about that cute one, Cardcaptor I think it was called…" Lind felt like he saw a flash of George for a moment but the man in front of him might as well have been speaking gibberish.
"I think I am from later than you. I have heard about One Piece, but had more of a mecha leaning." Lind did not correct the mistaken notion in the man's head. The aura from earlier was powerful but not nearly as strong as Delenn.
He was an Immortal, but not farther than the first tier. He would be a Sliver Tier.
"Ah, one of those! Still, so damn glad to meet you!" Lind felt his arm was about to be shaken off. He looked around and it really was a control room, but that was not all. He saw a much more complete mobile suit!
It was leaning in a corner of the room, almost discarded. His curiosity must have been clear as the man laughed.
"Ha, you really are a mecha fan! I am afraid it is only a fancy paperweight. Oh it can recreate some effects with elements or Arts but it can't move. The mobility thing just never could be made to work." A deep sigh escaped the man and Lind realized his manners were severely lacking.
"Sorry, I am called Lind Frey. May I know your name?" The man slapped himself on the forehead before smiling, himself.
"I have been here alone so long, I forgot manners! I am called Yu Katashi." Lind frowned as while he had encountered a wide range of names that were familiar, none were as clearly Japanese as that one. His look gave him away as the man patted his chest proudly.
"You don't remember your old name, but I do! I discarded the name from this life since I am still me! Also, it makes it harder to find you if they are looking for a name you no longer use. The lack of internet really works against these people." Lind confirmed the man in front of him was at least from the 20th century if not the 21st.
The internet was already a powerful tool in the late 20th, but it was hard to say how accurate his information was for other parts of the world back then.
"If I can ask, uh, Yu-san, what kind of teleportation was that?" Lind was now trying to bring the conversation forward but his question seemed to derail Yu Katashi for a moment as he whirled to his console once more. A few buttons were pushed and the readout said something in Japanese that Lind could not read.
"Nothing. Well, maybe being from Earth confused it. To answer your question, you likely felt a harsh displacement since you were not supposed to arrive here at all. You are at the heart of my Inheritance." Lind was about to nod when the words sunk in. Inheritance? An Inheritance might have the body of the creator inside of it, but never the living man.
"What legacy did you intend to teach? I admit I did not come willingly but I am happy to learn." Lind kept his voice calm and his interest high. He really did have questions so it was not too bad but Yu Katashi simply waved it off.
"Not important. You are way too weak to worry about that. Maybe in a 1000 years I can teach you what you need, but for now, just recover and I will send you out in a bit. I have to get ready." Yu Katashi then seemed to grow serious and move around the many consoles and displays.
Lind looked at the monitors and saw the 5 cultivators from before! Bastion was currently in a jungle of some kind but was injured. He was clearly fighting with something but Lind did not see anything.
As he looked at Bastion, one of the other men died screaming at nothing. Lind was confused but then 2 meters lit up near the monitor.
"Excellent! I got darkness and water with that one. I was damned low on those!" Lind watched as 2 more cultivators died to nothing. Another water, then 2 earth, 2 fire, and light were collected. In all, the meters showed the Qi Lind had seen as part of their dantians.
"Damn, one shy. Well 2 more to go and they should have what I need." Lind felt sick inside. It was different, but he was willing to bet Yu Katashi was the same as the Artificer. It was not an Inheritance at all, it was a death trap!
Something was off though. Yu was clearly alive and seemed fine. He was still young looking and his aura was plenty strong. The Artificer had been a spirit trying to get a new body, but Yu was clearly alive without issues. Why was he doing that?
"What are they dying to? I don't see anything." Lind's voice made Yu jump but then he looked sheepish.
"Ah, well holograms are not exactly known to these barbarians but they can still kill with Qi if used correctly. Basically they are dying from Qi extraction while trying to defend against something that isn't actually there." The dry and calm way Yu talked about what he was doing made Lind nearly vomit.
"But what could you possibly need with such low quality Qi?" Once more, Yu looked sheepish but then proud.
"I can improve it. It will lose a lot of quantity, but it will be enough to keep advancing my cultivation!" Lind was confused. His nausea and anger evaporated as it was clear something was wrong. Why would anyone go so far for so little gain?
The technology around them was not easy to replicate and vastly resource intensive. Such resources could be applied to cultivation directly. While Lind knew nothing about Immortal Realm cultivation, he did know massive resources when he saw it.
Yu seemed to become reluctant to speak but Lind was getting nervous as Bastion was getting harried. His face suddenly began to bleed from a fall that he could have avoided easily normally.
"Do you know about Fiends?" Lind nodded but then also shook his head.
"I think I encountered an incursion in my mortal realm. It was a horrifying experience and I confirmed a trend in some Ruins and Relics I found to encourage empowerment to an odd extreme." Yu nodded as he summoned a steaming tea set.
Lind was curious how that worked as he could not store tea as is and summon it without loss of heat and some fluid. Yu sipped at it as he seemed to collect his thoughts.
"I think it best for us to clear up something. How many years between us, if you were to guess?" Lind pondered and tried to recall what year he had died but like his name, that was just gone. Still, he knew roughly what it was not.
"I died after 9/11 and I recall the near civil war battles. So at least 2030s or 2040s." Ye looked confused but nodded.
"I died in 1996. I was about 25 years old. You are not the first reincarnator I met. They were only 2 years older than me but he was thousands of years old. He theorized that a lot of time has passed since we died and we were reborn when our next life would begin, or something like that." Lind felt shocked.
He had never considered it before. He had never wondered if time had passed before he was reborn. From his perspective, he died and then was born. The memories were a bit foggy but he distinctly recalled death and birth.
"I can see it in your face. You are having the same thoughts I had back then. I think a better metaphor is sleep. You go to sleep and wake up. From your perspective, it was night and then suddenly day. Hours passed, but to you it was instant." Lind nodded and accepted it.
"So thousands of years passed from one life to the next?" Yu nodded and sipped more at his tea.
"I clear that up to explain how I am an Immortal but you are only a World Realm Iron Tier. So what I am about to tell you is not a secret exactly but it is explicitly withheld from lower realms." Yu then sighed and he looked exhausted. He also looked afraid. "The Celestial Fields are dead. It is just called the Desolation, now."
Lind felt shocked. He could not feel any lie in what he was being told as it aligned to pieces of information hinted at by those around him. It also explained why so many Ruins and Relics existed to encourage the growth of the following generations.
"The Fiends?" Lind whispered the question but Yu seemed conflicted before waving it off.
"It was 100s of thousands of years ago so I can only confirm Fiends were involved but not the details. The important part is about the Qi. All the Qi that awaited Immortals is gone. Cultivators can't advance anymore the normal way." Lind felt nausea as he put it all together. He kept his face calm but Ethry was coiling in rage on his skin.
He calmed her as neither of them could affect this being before them. They were not even an ant to him.
"So what is all this then? Why become an Immortal?" Lind was honestly confused so Yu suspected nothing and smiled wide.
"Ah, well I don't want to die again. I will teach you as the other guy taught me. I will be nicer too, he was mean! You are still a long way off from worrying about it though. Still, it is simply refining living Qi from cultivators to a quality you can use." He turned in pride to the circle around them.
Lind saw the woman keel over in death. Three meters filled with air, water, and darkness.
"Ah bingo! All 6 with some duplicates. I can finally prepare to break through!" Lind's tea cup shook with his rage.
"How long did it take?" Yu was not looking as he waved the question off as inconsequential.
"Time is not bad, but quality varies with cultivators. These were good ones. I wonder why, but I should finally cross into the Shard Tier! Awesome!" The joy, calmness, and ordinary conversation made Lind feel horror. This thing was not a man at all, it was looking at people like resources!
The Artificer at least was simply trying to cheat death. Lind did not like it, but he could wrap his head around it. What he was seeing here was a parallel of that horrible lair beneath the streets of Cimmeria. A soul cultivator treating living beings like simple resources to improve cultivation.
Lind saw Bastion was on his last leg and he could not wait anymore.
"Ethry, whatever happens, do not interfere. Do not come out. Do not get involved. Save yourself if I die here." Lind was strangely calm. Ethry was panicking but he simply patted his chest and conveyed his calm to her.
"Well, I need to prepa–" Yu was smiling but then the control room changed. Emerald light was filling the room as the meters began to resonate with something. He whirled to his guest and was shocked to feel pressure in a way that was hard to quantify.
"I do not care what price I pay, but this slaughterhouse falls today!" Lind's eyes blazed with emerald light as all the control panels began to spark as the Qi inside each meter answered LInd's call. Yu was about to crush the bug when he saw something surrounding the boy.
It was a vague shape but it put the fear of God into Yu. It was massive and it was unbending.
"Stop! You will break it! You don't know what will happe–" The meters shattered as a storm of Qi flowed to Lind outside of Yu's control. How?! How was any of it possible, but Lind looked at him and Yu realized he had to kill a fellow Earthman.
He began to gather his own power but then the panels began to shatter and his eyes filled with fear as he glanced above. The distracted gaze drew Lind's Eyes and he knew there was a secret.
A secret that could swing the battle in his favor.