Cultivation System: Elder Edition

Chapter 446

Tales of Blood (XI)

Yin Tao had been rather confused for the past few days. Then again, he'd always been a bit confused. Even as Master invited him to her chambers, he was fully convinced she had started fancying him before being told that he was to follow some random nobodies into some realm he'd never heard of before, where he was to seek some kind of a dagger that was long lost and was some odd inheritance of their Order that he didn't even know had inheritances.

In fact, he was convinced that the entire Order was only as old as his Master, and that she was the many-armed monster controlling everything.

Luckily, he hadn't voiced his thoughts and the subsequent rejection of his Master--though she was a lovely woman of her own charms, Yin Tao had... stranger cravings.

As such, he happily accepted the mission just to get out of there and figured he would stick with the people he was sent off with until it was time to get out of the realm. Once back, he'd sorrowfully inform his Master that he was unable to locate the dagger and accept the punishment--whatever it would be.

But... once that strange wind sucked him in and as he blanked out for a second before coming to, he had to reckon with a new reality: he was alone. More alone than he had ever been before in his life.

When he was a child, there were Mother Wu and Grandma Lye and Big Sisters Cha, Guiying, and Ruogang. And as he grew, there were other Big Sisters, all until he met Master when he was fourteen. In the Order, he had a lot of Big and Little Sisters, and he was never truly alone--even when he wanted to be.

Now, he didn't want to, but try as he may, there wasn't another soul near him. To make matters worse, he was in some kind of a desert that never seemed to run out of daylight--endless dunes of sand rolled on and on while the sun above continued to scorch everything below, including him. As someone who much preferred eating grapes and drinking wine in the shade, now sitting directly in the beam of inferno... he was miserable, more so than almost ever before.

He never needed to learn how to navigate places since Big Sisters always told him where to go... but there was nobody to tell him where to go now. As such, he picked a random direction from where he appeared and walked, and he had been walking for nigh four days now without a single change of anything. No people, no beasts, nothing, just continuous, endless, rolling dunes.

For a while he thought he'd been bewitched into an illusion, but he was not. He used Master's super secret illusion-breaking art, and it didn't do anything since he wasn't under an illusion.

It really was just the biggest desert he'd ever seen in his life, and this was his hell. Perhaps he was to pay for the sins of making so many Sisters cry when they would confess their hearts to him and he would have to reject them.

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But he truly had to--for his wants were rather strange.

Yin Tao, from the first time he looked into a mirror, had fallen in love with himself... and he found that he could not love anybody else. It made sense--he was handsome, more than any other man or woman he'd met in his life, and he was clever, and he was talented, and he had a rather peculiar, smoldering look that was as effective as an actual soul art.

Of course he would fall in love with himself. Though he would never admit it. Not out loud, anyway.

But... he was beginning to hate himself a bit and his inability to find a way out of this hell. If he couldn't figure it out soon, he might truly go mad...

**

Zhao Yun was happy.

She was so happy she could fly.

When she opened her eyes and she saw she was utterly, completely, unequivocally alone... she literally burst out into a song. It didn't last long--just a few notes--but her joy overwhelmed her so much that she had to sing for a moment.

She didn't care that her surroundings were truly putrid--rocky, cracked ground stretching out in every direction, with strange overhead miasma floating about forty feet up and cloaking the sky, and with jutting rocks forming strange, unnatural, twisting walls, and an even stranger mountain eastward that seemed to be wholly manmade as it curled inward in even more unnatural shapes, with beacons of flames occasionally flickering through the fog, and clouds and more miasma blocking everything else--she was simply glad to be alone.

No Father, no that other strange man, no other cultivators—just her by her lonesome. She spent most of her life dreaming of this day, when she'd become unchained, and to think it had finally come...

She didn't even care that it seemed as though everyone present there was dragged in against their wills, or that there might be some plot afoot--that man she came with and those monsters he calls Disciples, there was no way they were dying. So long as she survived and stayed careful until the end, she'd be able to get out, slip away, and say goodbye to who she was before, becoming somebody new entirely.

She didn't meander for long, though, quickly stilling her Qi and slowly retreating toward a less open terrain; even if she felt alone, it wasn't impossible that there were some cultivators around with amazing cloaking arts just lying in wait for her. The first thing she had to do was figure out roughly where she was--north, south, east, or west. It was paramount as she wanted to avoid going north if at all possible, since that was where those monsters were going to be.

And where those monsters went, other monsters were likely to follow.

It wasn't as though she had a map, however, and since there was thick miasma blocking her from seeing a potential market in the sky, she couldn't really tell where any general direction was. She wasn't familiar with any of the 'landmarks' in the realm but one--there was a phoenix tomb at the very heart of the realm, and best she could remember, most Disciples would head there as soon as possible since there was a way to get a temporary blessing.

She didn't care for that, however, just that there would likely be a way to discern directions.

But... to get there, she would need to know cardinal directions, anyway.

Sighing, she realized what she had to do--meander, roam, and explore.

... perfect! Like a true adventurer! No map, no directions, just her own two feet and a will to move forward!

Carefully, of course.

She was free, not stupid. What good was freedom if she were to die days after acquiring it?

Step by step, she was bound to find her way.

Far away from those monsters that will undoubtedly cause pure chaos in this place and probably piss everyone else off in the process. She shuddered, thinking what it would be like to have started alongside them.

A nightmare, for certain.

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