Chapter 271 – Enduring Eternity (III)

Chapter 271

Enduring Eternity (III)

We continued navigating the dark scape of the forest without light, all while one of us always had to also navigate the damn alchemist because he would not lift his head off the recipe. He must have read the damned thing a billion times by now, but he just kept staring at it–no doubt running simulations in his head.

As such, the kids took turns guiding him–making sure he didn’t ram into a tree or slip against the root.

I mean, they tried their best–but the man was on his seventh change of robes in the span of two days, so they weren’t doing a particularly good job.

In the meantime, I’ve been busy trying to sew together a cultivation method that I won’t replace quickly and that can be a founding block for if I ever want to start an actual sect.

I mean, even without it, I’m already at, like, what, six–no, seven disciples–now… well, no, six, ’cause I really shouldn’t count Long Tao. Still, that’s only really in the span of around nine months of living in this world.

Yes, I was a bit accelerated initially, but Rayce and Xing Feng were relatively recent additions to the roster.

All the same, I do want the created method to be fundamental, first and foremost, and I can then create more specialized ones based on individual disciples.

On the fourth day, I started doing some experiments with the system–namely, I wanted to know whether I can create ‘linked’ arts, in that one is a prerequisite to another.

My idea was to create a central, core art that other, more specialized arts can inherit the base logic from, sort of like how systems in the games are linked together.

And–to my shock and awe–it was actually possible. I sacked about 180 points by creating two absolutely lowest-tier methods to test it, and it actually worked.

The second art required the first and then built on top of it by specializing it further.

… wow.

Okay.

This actually kind of changes the nature of the ‘game’, as it were; the system never really gave me a rundown tutorial of its functions beyond just stating its general purpose. I’ve mostly been using it rather rigidly (because points weren’t exactly falling from the sky, to be fair), but if something like this is possible… then just how many other possibilities are there?

Is it possible to create a long-chain method that slowly stacks benefits from the start and is completely ‘broken’ by the ‘end game’? Or create something like a central movement art by investing a lot of points into it, ensuring that it’s as perfect as possible, but then throw some less-than-perfect addendums on top of it whose flaws are hidden due to the original art?

Though I’m tempted to test, I don’t go through it. Though I’ve gotten quite a lot of creation points, I’m fairly certain I’m going to run through them just as quickly–kids are growing up, approaching the next path of their journey, and will probably need more sophisticated arts and methods soon enough.

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Forget it.

For now, I just need to create one central method that will be the future foundational block for everything.

As such, I didn’t spare any points wherever I could, but I also intentionally didn’t really add anything special to it–so, it’s rudimentary, shorn of any external concepts, but it’s also extremely complex and, most importantly, stable. That’s where I invested most of the points–adding the resistance to anything going wrong during a breakthrough, ensuring that it was extremely difficult to get a backlash while cultivating, and prioritizing stability over incessant speed.

Was it going to work? Honestly, I don’t know. My understanding of cultivation in this world is still fundamentally rather flawed–perhaps, in some small capacity, that’s a benefit, as I also don’t have any inherent biases, but it’s also a major shortcoming since I don’t have literal millions of years of foundational knowledge that’s been tried and tested throughout generations.

I’m sort of like a consultant brought in to evaluate a company–sure, I can more easily spot ‘redundancies’ and some flaws in operation, but I also don’t have intimate knowledge of how the entire thing works, and by maybe twisting that one gear to fix something, I break sixteen other things in the process.