Cultivation Nerd: Chapter 245

Chapter 245 - British Premium

As soon as I flicked the girl and my fingertip brushed against her forehead, a jolt ran through me. In the next instant, images began to bloom within my mind, soft and blurred at first, like a painted canopy slowly unfurling in the wind. Shapes took form. Fleeting moments and flickers of memory until everything sharpened into clarity.

Scenes unfolded one after another, flowing with a dreamlike rhythm. It was as if her mind had opened a window, and I was now standing at the edge.

Eight Mind Phantoms. It was a very overpowered technique that I no longer had much trouble using. Like a muscle that had been torn and rebuilt stronger, the same thing happened with my brain after countless times bearing the surge of information.

Well, maybe it wasn't really my brain adapting, but more like I'd figured out exactly how far I could push it before I started bleeding from my nose, eyes, and ears like some emo ghost.

As the girl had explained what the two likely candidates for Sect Leader looked like, she had their images at the front of her mind. That was something I could access with a simple tap on her forehead.

Using the Eight Mind Phantoms technique was dangerous since it opened my mind to invasion, but it was mostly safe in short bursts like this. It was generally safe most of the time. But the technique could leave me wide open if someone like a regressor or an immortal in disguise was the target. They could flip the script and force their way in through that opening.

"What did you do that for?" the girl asked, frowning as she rubbed her forehead.

"Sorry, but you shouldn't be revealing sensitive information like that to outsiders. What if I was an assassin?" I warned her.

She pouted and looked like she was going to argue, but stopped herself. Then she stomped the ground and walked away without saying anything.

Fu Yating sent me a strange look, and before she could speak, I stepped in.

"I didn't hit her hard enough to even sting. It was just her pride that got hurt," I said.

That girl was a friendly kid, but she needed to be more cautious. While I had my own reasons for choosing her, mostly because she looked like an easy target, my words weren't entirely without truth. What might seem like common knowledge to her was still sensitive information to someone like me.

At least she had the basics down. She didn't curse at me or yell as she walked away, which was smart. Better not to offend some unknown cultivator. For all she knew, I could have been someone important, and I doubted her Sect would try to justify a fight on her behalf.

Hopefully, I didn't come off as a bully. Ideally, she'd take this as inspiration to train harder so something like this wouldn't happen to her again.

I noticed a few people around us had started openly staring. But none of them said a word.

It wouldn’t be surprising if the more informed among them already knew I was from the Blazing Sun Sect.

“If you keep acting like this, you’ll lose a lot of husband points,” Fu Yating sighed dramatically.

“Husband points?” I raised a brow.

“Think of it like a good husband scale.”

“Does less points mean good or bad?”

“Bad, obviously. Do you even know how basic games work?”

“Cool it with the passive aggressiveness. We’re in public,” I warned her.

Fu Yating humphed and gave me an angry look, but I knew she was just playing along. By now, most people would remember it as nothing more than a lover’s quarrel, rather than focus on the questions I asked about the two possible candidates for Sect Leader.

Even if Fu Yating hadn’t figured out exactly why I was doing all this, maybe she sensed that I wanted to keep my real intentions hidden. So she gave them something else to latch onto, something louder and more dramatic.

It was strange how someone with no modern knowledge understood human nature so well. People tend to remember the drama in a show over actual news unless said news affects them directly.

I wondered what it would be like if someone like her used Eight Mind Phantoms, a mental-type Sky Grade Technique.

I had a feeling she’d be insanely compatible with it. More than I could ever be.

If I were drowning in Sky Grade scrolls, and if she wasn’t the kind of person who’d probably kill me instead of saving me, I might’ve been tempted to hand her one just to see what she could do with it.

Of course, I’d never actually give something that precious to Fu Yating or even let her get too close to it. But it was hard not to wonder.

I knew firsthand how much compatibility mattered when it came to martial techniques. Two people using the same technique could have results as different as night and day.

At its core, Eight Mind Phantoms was designed to seal, manipulate, and even enslave the minds of other living beings. A technique like that had never been a perfect fit for me.

I’d made plenty of rookie mistakes with it, like creating a jade cube to process the information. It was slow, left me frozen in place and dazed, and the data still had to pass through my brain just for me to understand what was going on. It worked, but it was clunky and inefficient.

But now wasn’t the time to get lost in thoughts about martial techniques. Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted one of the people I was looking for.

Looked like both of the Sect Leader candidates were here, trying to win over the younger generation and get them to pick a side.

I could hardly believe what I was seeing. The so-called “competition” between the two looked more like a fan meet-up. They even greeted each other, with people casually switching sides, with no drama or tension. Nothing.

This could all be a ruse, but any slim chance I had of stirring up a real rivalry between the two was practically nonexistent. The competition had a friendlier vibe than I was used to.

Compared to the mess Song Song and I had to deal with, this felt downright unfair. Oh well, different Sects, different cultures. I just had to play the hand I was dealt. It's not like our wild west style of competition didn't have its own perks.

Either both sides got eliminated, or an absolute beast of a Sect Leader rose from the ashes. That was usually how it went with the Blazing Sun Sect's rules.

I counted the people on both sides of this friendly rivalry. It was almost perfectly balanced, which meant the current Sect Leader hadn't interfered yet. At least not in any significant way to swing things in his son's favor.

Usually, support like that would make the candidate look weak, like a daddy's boy. And showing weakness in the leadership of a strength-based society? That was basically suicide.

"Can you stop looking at people like that? You're creeping everyone out," Fu Yating pointed out.

Sorry. I just had a bad resting bitch face. I mostly blamed Song Song for that.

There was a reason people in my old world used to say; you are who you hang out with.

"At least it keeps any of the annoying ones out of the way," I said.

"Sure, sure," she waved me off without a care. With a cultivator's hearing, half the people around us had probably heard the whole exchange.

In this case, Fu Yating brushing me off like that gave off a certain impression. It made me seem less threatening, less like someone worth worrying about. Subconsciously, people would lower their guard.

Of course, there were always those who noticed the cracks, but those people usually had even more reason to keep quiet.

Still, I wasn't here to play coy. I had to hedge my bets.

I turned my attention to the Sect Leader's son. He was tall and had a solid four fingers of height on me.

As I walked closer and focused on him, I could sense his cultivation through the crowd. He was at a Qi Gathering, but the way his Qi moved, erratic and unbalanced, showed a level of control even Wu Yan had surpassed.

He looked to be in his early twenties, so his raw talent probably wasn't bad.

Had he damaged his potential by brute-forcing his way through every minor bottleneck with pills? His foundation was so shaky I doubted he could ever reach Foundation Establishment.

Unfortunately, his competitor wasn't much better. So it came down to picking the least terrible option between the two.

And at the end of the day, one of them was the Sect Leader's son. That alone made him the most likely to win. Even if the father acted fair, unless he was missing a few screws, he'd be working behind the scenes to give his son an edge.

The Crimson Pill Leader's son turned toward me as I approached, wearing a sunny and friendly smile as he nodded my way.

"Hello there!" he greeted.

I nodded and smiled back. "Sorry if we're interrupting. It's just that we've never seen a place like this before."

"I bet you haven't," he said confidently. "This place braved the terrors of the Dark Ages for centuries, defeating endless hordes of monstrous beasts."

"It's a monument," I agreed vaguely.

"Probably nothing compared to the Blazing Sun Sect," he added. "Also, you should try to apply for the free Alchemy Classes that are open during the summer. Believe me, you'll be surprised by how much they build on the basics of our craft."

The guy already knew I was from the Blazing Sun Sect, and his last line was clearly just for show, probably to steer the crowd's attention elsewhere.

"By the way, I forgot to introduce myself. My name is Lian Zi. Another journeyman on the endless road that is the art of alchemy," he said.

He had a fancy way of speaking. It was the xianxia version of a British premium accent.

...

In the end, we came to a deal. The guy was surprisingly cooperative and even said he'd support Song Song when he took over as Sect Leader.

But the next head wouldn't be chosen for maybe a hundred years. That kind of support would be useless by then.

And I couldn't and wouldn't kill someone just for the sake of it. Especially not a Sect Leader like the one in charge of the Crimson Pill Sect.

After that small meeting, we left the town peacefully. No one tried to stop us under the guise of politeness either. 

As for why we left so soon? Once the novelty wore off, the place was honestly pretty dull. Sure, there was mass-produced alchemy here, but no real alchemy masters. None above tier four or five, at least.

Still, we had no trouble getting out, and the whole place ended up being a pretty decent vacation from the chaos that usually followed oddball Sects like this.

I had half-expected some ancient monster to show up and try to use our bodies to refine pills or something. But that was just my overactive imagination kicking in.

As we walked away, I glanced back at the glowing walls of Lianjing Town as the arrays flickered gently.

Interesting town. Just filled with a lot of uninteresting people.