Chapter 126: The Fifth Technique

Once they had all gathered, Father took them up into the air. It was only a short flight until they reached the Hidden Peak Sect again.

This time, though, they didn't go in. Father dropped off the sect members, then took off again. Paike noticed that a couple more stayed with them than he had expected. One of the fourth-realm men stood close to Lin Yue. It appeared that some of the ones who wanted to get away had found it.

It told him that the situation was more dire than he had thought, even after the big threat was removed.

Paike could tell that Shengbai and Yue were both nervous but excited at the same time. He could only imagine what they were feeling, leaving everything they knew behind. Would they ever go back?

As cultivators and talented ones at that, they could live a very long life, so there was a decent chance. They could live long enough that there would be plenty of chances to find them again.

However, a cultivator sometimes also lived a very short life. Those lives were often cut short in violent ways. Like what Paike had just taken part in. They could die fighting demonic cultivators, or maybe they would fall to the temptations of such a path, knowingly or not. Then they would lose their minds and maybe be hunted down in turn.

More likely, though, that wouldn't be the problem that prevented them from going back. The Hidden Peak Sect was already in decline. What they had just done only bought them some time. They would need to grow stronger and quickly if they wanted to get strong enough to make a difference. The cousins would grow fast in the empire, but was it fast enough?

There was no way to know. But as wards, they now had a duty to the Kongs, so there wasn't anything they could do for now. They could only be glad things looked much brighter for their sect than they had a couple of days ago. Not only was one of their biggest threats taken care of, but they kept more of their promising youth than they had planned; that gave them a more real chance, even at the risk of their lives. It was a complicated mess, in Paike's opinion.

It might not end up being the absolute best outcome, but it gave them time. And from a long enough perspective, there was an exceedingly low chance the Hidden Peak Sect would survive long-term even if they could replace their failing patriarch. For the highest-ranking cultivators with that type of lifespan, getting as many of their members to the empire as possible was the best outcome. Given how many they were bringing with them, it seemed the sect members agreed.

The wind howled around them, and Paike closed his eyes; there was nothing else to do but work on some cultivation. He had plenty of ideas.

One issue was that he needed to catch up on his physical cultivation, but this was not a great place for a breakthrough. Things could get messy, and with how much higher his spiritual cultivation had gotten, it wouldn't take much for him to push it over. He didn't think the trick that Father showed him for removing blood from his robes would work on the impurities he would expel.

Something about that caught his attention. Father's qi was impressive, of course, but he had no need for such a technique. It would have always been trivially easy for him to clean himself with qi the traditional way. So why did he have such a technique?

It wasn't something he created for Paike was it? No, that would be silly, even for Father.

Still, it would be disrespectful not to use the gift. So Paike took what he remembered and tried to imitate it. It took a few attempts, but he got it rather quickly. And he still had a ton of time left.

There was a lot he could work on. Improving his techniques was a good standby. He could start trying to figure out his next breath, though. Advancing realms again was probably not a great idea yet. He would hold off until he had worked on his physical cultivation some. If it got too far behind, he would have to abandon it, letting it become dangerous for him to use too powerful qi in his fragile body.

Leaving it behind was a valid choice for many cultivators. It was mostly useful for combat, but it also helped improve the aging process, which gave you more time to cultivate to the next realm. However, it divided your focus.

It was generally accepted that if you would see frequent combat as a warrior, it was worth it. But if you wanted to be at court, then it was better to push to a higher cultivation faster; it was more important, and fighting styles could be adapted to be very effective, if not as versatile, even without it.

Paike obviously was going to be seeing a lot of combat. Not every Kong did; some chose to work steady jobs in logistics and have a nice, quiet family life that supported the family. They were honored and respected for their sacrifice, but they were not warriors. Not that all warriors were more respected and had more influence. A mediocre warrior was about the same level in the hierarchy. But everyone in the Kong family who held positions of real power was a warrior.

It wasn't that Paike wanted the power, though; combat was just what he was suited for. Even if he was forced to live as a mortal, he would serve his family in the best way he could.

And to do that, he needed to keep getting stronger. Looking at how Taka was still a realm and stages above him told him he had far to go to be seen as on the same level.

He was starting to feel certain he wouldn't be flattened by Taka like he used to. His sudden jump in power with his last few breakthroughs and his newer techniques would let him survive. Taka might win, but he would have to work for it now.

After all, he was pretty sure that Taka had never killed a fourth-realm demonic cultivator while still in Topaz. That was the stuff of stories and legends. Sure, Paike had every advantage he could possibly hope for. They had been weakened, too focused on defense, off balance, and took his fully prepared blow with no defenses. But it still shouldn't have worked unless his strength was well within what was typical for the upper edges of Emerald.

And it might have been... less messy if he had been stronger. Then the kill would have been cleaner, and he wouldn't have any problems after.

Regardless, it was time to get stronger.

Paike needed to carve more meridians, and he wondered if internal circulation would make it easier, but he left his pills at home to help with that. Besides, doing delicate work on his soul while Father sent them hurtling through the air struck him as rather foolish.

After a bit of reflection, he realized he was in the mood to work on something new. One of the many things that caught his eye during this trip, and that wouldn't get him killed or branded a heretic, was Shengbai's aura technique.

Now, as it was, it was underwhelming. But the idea of how it interacted with those around the cultivator was fascinating to Paike. Also, he thought it might make an excellent addition to his main art. The Acknowledgment of Worldly Matters could use a fifth technique.

Getting five distinct techniques out of one meridian was astonishing for anyone besides people like Father and Guan Li. Apparently now Paike as well. That was still astonishing to him. Sometimes techniques could share one, but more often there were more meridians per technique.

It would take him some time to unravel the complex web of knots the technique was. So long that it might be more efficient to start from scratch rather than reverse engineer it. All he really needed was the interaction mechanism. Everything was simple, and he would have no problems emulating it with his own cultivation. In fact, he knew he could do much better.

His meridian and qi were exceedingly well fine-tuned to the cessation of motion. If it worked as he thought, then he might find all of its works overkill, and he could add other aspects while still having a better slowing effect. He just needed to understand how it propagated out into the world around him.

He had only gotten a brief look at it, so there wasn't much to go on about how tangled the rest of the technique was.

The obvious solution was to flood the area with qi. Paike didn't like that. It felt lazy and wasteful. More importantly, it wasn't how Shengbai did it, so there was at least one other way. It might not be better, but Paike wanted to know his options.

For the rest of the trip, he experimented with ejecting a tiny mesh around him. Or a cloud of evenly spaced particles. Maybe just defining a technique zone. There was nothing conclusive, but he did learn a few things.

Maybe he could get her to show it to him again. That should be a reasonable ask, right? They were sort of family now, even if it was only until they were fully grown.