Chapter 274 – Moon Lake (I)

Chapter 274

Moon Lake (I)

These were days of silence and solace, I must say.

Ever since handing over the cultivation method, we barely spoke–only doing so perhaps once a day during the communal meals. For the remainder of the day, however, we either walked (during which they still seemed to be studying it, regardless), or they meditated in silence, in their own little corners.

Even as we ate, they’d have their heads caved into the tomes, and it was kind of funny since it reminded me of going out with a bunch of friends only for all of us to whip out our phones halfway through the meal and barely speak to each other.

… Okay, that was a bit of a line. I mean, I remember it being somewhat of a joke, but even if we did pull out our phones, we’d usually still chat, just doing so in smaller clusters.

Regardless, there were a few moments here and there when all of us would be looking something up, and I imagine this is sort of what we looked like from the outside looking in.

A whole lotta people, a whole lotta nothing between them.

In their defense, it was a difficult thing to comprehend–though I was just ‘given’ the immediate understanding by the system, I did try advancing it a bit, and doing so quite literally gave me a headache.

I’m not kidding.

It gave me that topside-pressure headache, the one that’s not so much painful as it’s just outright annoying.

As such, I just sort of gave up; my hope was that by the kids making their advancements, the system would give me rewards, and at least one of those rewards would be advancing my understanding of the method.

Wow.

I might just be the most incompetent Master ever, huh?

Ah, whatever.

According to Lao Shun, we had about a month-long journey ahead of us to the Moon Lake, and that was supposing no interruptions and very minimal rest. We were still deep in the forest, beholden to darkness practically, as we’ve run out of the lanterns, which meant that, no, we were not likely to make it in a month.

But, strangely, it wasn’t… that bad. I mean, it was scary, especially when all of them went so quiet you couldn’t even hear them breathe, but there was something eerily liberating about only having my own thoughts to accompany me.

… did I say liberating? I meant terrifying.

Though I’ve had moments like this before, they were fleeting–and for a good reason. I haven’t really processed much of my life on Earth and its rather ugly end just yet.

I left behind a lot of people who genuinely loved me–how will they react when they get a phone call? Or, what if my body was so mangled in the crash that they can’t even identify me?

… or what if there’s no body at all? What if I was yanked wholly, and they’ll forever think I’d gone missing, never to learn the truth?

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

Yeah.

It’s really not liberating.

The more I think about it, the more I realize I’ll never really have closure. My life over there, miserable as it was, will forever be severed, its finality uncertain. Would I have gotten better? Would I have found someone else? Or would I be one of those unfortunate stories in the newspapers with a title, ‘Neighbor smells something strange; severely decomposed body found next door’?

I’ll never know.

It might even be that this planet and Earth exist within the same universe, but what of it? Even if, by some miracle, I do eventually become so strong that I can travel like a spaceship and become a bit of an interstellar explorer, and in the even less likely scenario that I do find Earth, just how many thousands, if not millions, of years will have passed?

Will there even be anything there? Perhaps a few derelict traces of a once middling civilization that tried its best but could never truly get out of its own way for long enough to make anything worthwhile of itself.

A plastic bag there, a steel beam here, and little else in between.