Quest Maker: 393 (Patreon)

Title: Ja Sun’s Idle Thoughts

“So, why did you kill him?” A youth questions with an amused smirk, not bothered by the sight of a grotesque corpse whose head is caved in, teeth stabbed into the brain, torn jaw hanging loose, and a torso torn vertically from the shoulders till guts spewed out, accompanying bile and all.

“I think you said you won’t kill him,” he chuckles at the battered man kneeling beside the corpse. He watches the man’s distraught expression and questions, “Teach, did you lose control?”

The sentence stirs the man regarded as ‘Teach.’ The youth sits on a nearby boulder with a complacent expression.

Slowly, regret recedes from Teach’s expression. His grimace transitions into acceptance as he looks at the fallen Guardian of the Federation, his oldest friend.

“It is as you say, Jason. I lost control. Maybe you could have done better. This man would still have lived.”

“Maybe,” Jason shrugs carefreely. “But I don’t kill just because you asked me to. I’ll repay all the ‘kindness’ you’ve shown me by destroying the Federation, and we’ll be done.”

Teach looks up to the youth with a thinly-veiled torn look before nodding and whispering, “We’ll part ways once the objective of the revolution is complete.”

---

“Losing control is really a shitty feeling,” Ja Sun huffs softly, feeling moderately irritated with his consciousness surrounded by the sensation of patchiness. It’s like he rubbed his eyes a little too hard, and all he can see is greenish blotches filling his vision—but for a long time. He has no sense of time, sight, hearing, smell, touch, or taste. He only has one sense—thinking. He doesn’t even know when his consciousness returned to him.

“I wonder if they are alive,” he muses calmly. He simply cannot go insane, left with his own thoughts. Even now, he couldn’t empathize with his Teach. Ja Sun technically did not lose control.

“That’s right! My body lost its sense of reason—me,” He hums and chuckles. “I think I jinxed myself joking about my death and pranking other girls. But hey, I wouldn’t have found Lan Ruo otherwise.”

“I wonder if Yin named our son already. Too bad I’m not there to give him an impressive name. The poor soul will be bullied for the rest of his life with the naming sense Yin has.”

“Should have impregnated Bibi, too. Studies in my previous world showed that single children easily fall depressed. But then again, Yin may just stab the depression out of him.”

“I even had a bet with Xan and Oscar about the martial soul Oscar’s son will have with Jun’er.”

“But, despite all this,” Ja Sun introspects, “Why don’t I feel a shred of regret at the prospect of dying?”

He can imagine his body going berserk to nourish itself. After all, he possessed his external skin bone for a reasonable time and limited its use to his body alone. In theory, with enough spiritual energy, the external skin bone can expand continuously like a blob of slime!

So, his current consciousness must be nurtured to this level by his body eating and devouring everything in its path. However, Ja Sun is aware of his enemies far too well. They won’t let go of this weakness. Of course, he couldn’t imagine the Lady of the Lake attacking him. But Xunji?

This is a situation that can be considered one of Xunji’s wet dreams!

But even this threat of death did not make Ja Sun feel an ounce of regret.

“And I don’t think I can use the reincarnation technique again. Just who created that technique in my world? Maybe someone with a really messed up trait?”

“And Divine Trait, I remember the notification flashing right before I lost consciousness for good in my home world. Teach must know something about traits I don’t.”

Images of the women he’s been with and his current family flash in his ‘mind.’ There is a high chance that he may never see them again. If they cannot find a way to leave the spatial artifact, they die, too.

“My child, too, dies. Xie Yue, too. Lana and Jun’er must have completed their pregnancies. Or if I’m lucky, only a day has passed in the real world.”

He could not easily use the sensations of the Temporal Law to understand the current flow of time like before because of his fractured mind, soul, and body.

The realization of a lack of regret does not unsettle him by any means. Not that it makes him heartless.

But…

“I refuse to lose control of what emotions I have,” he affirms his one true belief. “If they are alive, I will be happy. If they aren’t, I…” He sighs before shaking his ‘head.’

“But I’m not going to act crazy because of a lack of information. For all I know, my wives are kicking some serious ass. They rarely get a chance to shine.”

He starts snickering before diverting his attention.

“But this issue did allow me to confirm for final that my trait—all traits—are embedded in the user’s soul. No, to be exact, they ARE our souls.”

It has been a belief that a trait can be activated after the age of 6, but Ja Sun now believes it is false. It is likely that whoever compiled such results couldn’t find anyone under the age of 6 with a trait at the time this result was published. And from then on, this falsity became a truth.

But why didn't Ja Sun find anything strange in his soul when he experimented with Soul Origin to increase his cultivation?

As he said, his trait IS his soul. Martial spirits are a part of his soul origin, but his soul origin itself is the expression of his trait, or so he found while loitering around in his head. After all, even the prospect of certain death wouldn’t stop Ja Sun from using his time to learn more.

“Soul is unimaginably powerful, but we can barely make use of it as is in the form of Spiritual Energy. But traits must need some power source to create their miracles, or so one thinks. But if traits are the user’s soul, it means traits are a source of power! Certain triggers unique to the user allow them to tap into this source of power in pre-programmed ways. After all, you cannot change the nature of your soul. You are born with it.”

“This means my child won’t have a trait. He’s likely a denizen of this world. Not that I’ll raise some otherworldy fucker like myself,” he scoffs. “Where was I? Oh, yeah, traits. Man, I think there is a way to use my second Martial Soul to find a way back to my previous world. I can research more about traits then. Is there a way to fuse two traits? Two souls? Hmm.” With his knowledge, Ja Sun can think of one method.

“What if one trait has no echo? What if one trait is forced to sublimate after a refining of sorts that removes all the kinks of a soul… wait, that doesn’t work and contradicts all my findings. Ah, understood! The reincarnation technique from my world works by sending an echo of one’s soul to another world and letting it assimilate with the new world for a while, preparing itself a container to house and fuse back to the true soul. But this echo does not have the trait itself. What if we do the opposite?”

Ja Sun chuckles.

“Remove the echo of the user and just the trait in its purest form. The other trait to be fused can remain as is. Maybe it could work? But this kind of fusion would also depend on luck. What kind of trait would I like as a secondary one?”

Ja Sun thinks for a while before shaking his head.

“No good. I guess I’m addicted to making quests for myself and earning rewards. Man, I can’t wait to be a God and create another quest.”

He groans aloud.

“I should have tried a Hail Mary and rushed the portal to the divine realm to slap Poseidon at least once.”

But even Poseidon fails to make Ja Sun feel regretful.

Life is simply too short to feel regret, apparently, even a second one.

“I’m definitely tapping Bing Bing if I get out and she’s still alive.” His thoughts take him to wet places now.

A spot in his consciousness where only Intrusive thoughts reside.

“Oh!” He grows excited, “I bet MY priestess would look sick in my blessing. Heh, she looks somewhat similar to Yuehua~! Now that I think about it, I need to carefully consider what to do after I hel Ja Yin complete her array. She wants a litter of kids, but that’s power too much to handle by one person alone. On the contrary, Yin only wanted one. How can they have the same face but so different ambitions. Maybe, both of them should have six each—balanced, as all things should be.”

Then a thought strikes him.

“But, can I handle so many kids? I guess it’s no issue. I’ll keep Master with me. So what if my kids acquire the taste of centipedes? It’s a small price to pay to have a damn good nanny.”

“Master’s Law of Comfort can easily deal with any crying baby. So can Yuehua’s domain that calms the weaker targets.”

“I’ll name the first ten kids based on elements, the next ten on weapons, and the next batch on colors. Or body parts? Too gory, maybe.”

“I miss Xiao Wu flashing me.”

Some thoughts are more dignified than the rest.

“I’m going to create so many scamming missions once I become a God it’s not even going to be funny, for my targets, that is.”

And among his thoughts, Ja Sun feels his mind still as a very gentle sensation swoops over him. Nay, from him!

“My body,” Ja Sun blinks. “It’s trying to protect someone. Her!” He realizes in an instant there is only one being who can have such a hold on his body, and it’s not an emotional concept like Yin or ‘Dong Dong’ but his newest Priestess—An echo of his Martial Soul. The result of his mortal blessing after he fucked Poseidon out of her and used the same technique as Xunji to ‘corrupt’ and free her martial soul from all her previous divine affiliations.

“If my body is protecting someone, there must be another bitch trying to hurt her. Hmm, it’s been a long time since there has been a change in my body. Let’s wait and see.”

His limited consciousness focuses on anything he can feel from his surroundings, but the only thing he can sense the clearest is his body's intimate need to protect Saixi. Not that Ja Sun found anything wrong with the notion. His body is displaying a level of intelligence it did not before during its feeding.

“Is Xunji here?” Ja Sun grunts. “A mindless body can’t deal with him, even when he is injured. I suppose the difference in our existence should also be prominent now. I believe he did not suffer as greatly as I did when Asura attacked us.”

“Ooh!” He stirs. “I felt something else. Is that conflict? Do Priestess and their Gods share such an intimate connection? It should be one-sided. Is that the basis of a prayer?”

And finally, he hears a gentle voice phase through his consciousness.

“They are your allies.”

“She is your enemy.”

Ja Sun feels his consciousness tremble at the startling familiarity. His body’s reaction must be even more intense!

“I suppose it’s karma for putting her in this shit. Now she controls my body,” he huffs.

However, the changes do not end here.

Ja Sun, for the first time, feels a wave of nourishment reaches his barely functioning consciousness.

Since his body’s priority is the soul… it must mean his soul is healed!

“How?” Ja Sun blinks. “What the fuck did I devour to heal my soul already? Don’t tell me I devoured one of my own.”

Before he can think any further, for once, he feels someone whispering to him directly.

This whisper is unintelligible. It does not come from a place of words but words. A gentle coax of want and aspiration, a whisper of faith, a bundle of reluctant respect, and hope for normalcy—A Prayer.

Please let us heal you.

Ja Sun’s mind buzz before lets loose a bout of a laugh.

“Damn, what are you waiting for?” Ja Sun feels his mind connect with his body for once using this thread of faith, and all the aggression in his vast body sizzles away!

A torrent of green, blue, and silver fills his mind and body as Ja Sun closes his ‘eyes.’

Whatever his body has done and faced fills his memories, his fractured mind healing at a rapid pace, his mental and physical core healing rapidly, just enough to drive out the remnants of Asura’s slaughter energy that made self-healing too damn hard!

And all that’s left in Ja Sun’s mind is a surprising sense of victory.

And a seed.

A seed his Teach implanted in him, carefully nurtured by his master, and cultivated to initial mastery by his will and unwillingness to make the same mistake as his teachers—

A Law.

The Law of Control.

***

Alternate Title: The Wet Corner; Secret of Traits; Ja Sun Casually Plotting More Stories and Theories for the Author; Karma is a Bitch; Succeeding Where Teach Failed; Regret is an Expression of Losing Control; No More Regrets; Ja Sun Really Wants To Feast on a Scorpion—Daoliu is Proud; Faith; A Prayer; Restored; Family Planning at its Finest; The Three Laws of Parenthood—Comfort, Calm, and Control; The Three Cs; Return; Becoming One’s Own Man; Driving the Slaughter Away; Ja Sun’s Fever Dream

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A/N: Just wanted to have some prelude of sorts before introducing Ja Sun back. It’s been a few chaps, after all!