[MA] 109. Incoming (Patreon)

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Shen remained sitting for a long while, unsure of what to think about those revelations.

To say he was in shock would be an understatement. Everything he believed in had been challenged. He had expected his father to be involved in his long sleep but not in betrayal.

Feng Yang had spit on his own honor—the very same honor which Shen thought mortals couldn't understand because they lacked the perspective of culture and experience. But just how old did cultivators need to be before they grew wiser?

Shen's father had talked of a time span of three thousand years. For three thousand years, he had hoped for the best and thought of everything he could do. That hadn't been enough for him to reconsider crushing his own clan for love.

Shen recalled his teacher's words, "Accept what you have, do the best with it, and move forth. Regret your bad decisions but don't dwell on them. Seek the best but don't envy what you don't have or can't achieve. Never compromise your morals for anything. Acceptance, purpose, and honor are the keys to a fulfilling life. A Path without any one of them leads only to ruin."

And wasn't she right? His father, one of the strongest men in the Eternal Empire, had come to the end of his life in disgrace, inside a dark cave beside an unconscious son, running from the consequences of his actions.

He had saved Shen, but at what cost? Shen didn't hate the man—how could he?—but he couldn't agree with his decision.

The Feng Clan had acted against Feng Yang, but it had been a crime rather than a daily happenstance. Feng Yang had said it himself: we don't cull the weak; we just don't use as many resources on them. An elder had culled his mother because she wasn't useful and was too weak to resist, which was immoral, dishonorable, and a crime. Then, Feng Yang himself had culled the entire clan because a few people had failed his expectations and were too weak to resist him.

Yes, in a way, he had culled them. The Feng Clan was probably gone unless the Immortal Emperor had intervened. Shen guessed they would've used the Eternal Token to survive, but how long would the Emperor keep the clan under his wings for a single token? Had they produced another powerful cultivator in that time, or had they ended up assimilated, after all?

Shen's father had acted out of love, but Shen didn't think the man had the moral high ground in that situation. He was wrong in a matter of numbers—one life over many—and honor. His feelings had corrupted his resolve.

And yet, Shen couldn't help but wonder if there was something more to the man's emotions.

Cultivators didn't show their feelings in public unless it was deliberate. The wrong emotion revealed at the wrong time could be exploited by an enemy. His father had been exemplary in that, an unreadable golem unless one knew him enough to see the emotion in his eyes. Feng Yang knew much more than Feng Shen living with honor and giving it up for love. Even as Yang stared death in the eye, he had said he didn't regret it.

Shen felt lost.

His thoughts and feelings warred inside him. What he knew as the right thing to do and what his father had considered the only path forward simply weren't compatible. Shen felt grateful for being alive but hated that it had come at the cost of his mother's life and maybe even some clan members. It felt wrong.

He hugged himself, lay on the ground, and kept thinking about everything.

Shen cursed the learning ability that let him make so many connections so quickly, yet didn't help him shut up the doubt in his heart.

= - = - =

After a long time, Shen concluded his father was objectively dishonorable, but he couldn't determine if the man had been completely wrong. Dishonorable, yes, but wrong?

The issue was that when mastering War, Shen had accepted the terrible truth that he would kill a larger group of people for his own if he saw no other choice. In a way, his father had done the same. Feng Yang had considered only his wife and son his people, and the innocent Feng Clan's members had been sacrificed when Yang saw no alternative.

The betrayal made things harder to accept, but Shen would also betray allies if he saw no other way out. The survival of his people would take priority.

War, especially an existential one, was truly terrible, wasn't it? And he had made it a foundational Concept of his Path.

It gave Shen food for thought, but it also helped him rebalance himself. Whether his father was right or wrong didn't ultimately matter. What was done was done. Shen could only live on.

So he stood up and started walking close to the cave walls. He knocked and tapped, trying to find a hollow or something. There was nothing.

Then he had an idea. He climbed the altar where his coffin was and knocked the ceiling there. It was a different sound from the walls.

A trust of Shen's E+ spear pierced the rock there, and sand rained down as if a dam had broken. He jumped out of the way, grabbed his backpack and extra E- spear, and went to a corner of the small cave. He didn't touch the pieces of armor, shield, or coffin, hoping his father would predict his need to hide the B++ object.

Indeed, sand kept running down until a big pile rested on the middle of the cave.

On the ceiling, the hole Shen had made with his trust had become a tunnel a little wider than him, going straight up until it made a turn. That was his way out.

Shen climbed the pile of sand and took a last look at the cave.

The ground was entirely covered by sand now, and his father's ashes were underneath it somewhere. Strong cultivators didn't decompose as fast as mortals upon death; their corpses could remain around for a long time. However, those who found themselves one step away from their end in any place an enemy could find their corpses to use as resources knew better than to just die. They would use their last breath to burn themselves into cinders.

So Shen bowed and said, "Thank you, father. May you rest in peace."

Then he looked at the tunnel. It was so tight he could barely fit and didn't let him carry his backpack on his back. He tied it to his leg, held his spears in one hand to leave the other free for more dexterous movements in such an enclosed space, and entered the hole. He used his barely open arms and legs to crawl upwards towards freedom.

The path didn't always go up. It took turns and twisted like a snake, sometimes even going down. There were many metal plates and support structures on the way, clearly enchanted to withstand the test of time and prevent cave-ins. After a while, Shen reached a dead end with a rock.

He broke it, and air rushed into his tunnel from the other side. Fresh air. For all the enhancements his body had gone through with rank-ups and advancing in cultivation, it still needed to breathe to survive. Not as much as mortals, but still some. Only Ethereal Harmonization realm cultivators didn't. His father had even thought of that.

The air pocket was closed by another thin rock a dozen feet ahead. It wasn't a large area, but it was very oxygen-rich.

Shen kept going.

Even with his time perception dilation, it felt like he had been crawling for a long time when he finally reached something different. It was a small, round room surrounded by rock, another oxygen pocket. It was heavily enchanted; he could feel the qi concentration in the place was even higher than usual, though he couldn't see any symbols. Qi formations were almost always invisible.

The middle of the "cave" ceiling had an X. He broke it with a fist to find tightly packed earth. He guessed that was his way out.

Shen dug upwards for a short time and soon reached a strange solid dark substance.

"Inspect," he said.

=

Road

Tier: G

A standard road mainly made of asphalt.

=

Shen punched it, breaking it easily. Air rushed into his hole, though he found a metal place a few inches above. "Inspect," he repeated.

=

Car

Tier: G

A simple human transportation machine.

=

Alicia had told him about those. The bottom was so close to the ground that he couldn't even see around. So he punched the car too.

The metal gave in pretty easily. Shen then had to go through cushion, fabric, and more metal, all packed together like the hamburger Alicia had given him. He was confident cars weren't supposed to be like that.

Something else was on top of the vehicle, squashing it like a bug. Shen had to use his spear to slice the top metal cover and create an opening for him to punch the thick concrete wall—according to Inspect—over the car.

It took him a single punch with his D- strength to go through it. The wall shattered into pieces. He was about to pull himself up when a hand grabbed his.

They pulled him.

Shen could resist but found no reason to. "Found another one!" the hand's owner yelled.

Shen looked at his surroundings as he broke free from the car and fallen wall. The person pulling him was a middle-aged man wearing a vest full of pockets with drawings of grey squares that made him blend well with the surroundings—clearly camouflage. He was tall, muscular, had light brown skin, short black, and a scar on his chin. He carried a long black cane with some attached wider parts, and Shen recognized the firearm from Alicia's descriptions. By the size, it should be a rifle or shotgun.

The man looked at Shen's spears before following his look to his gun. "Don't let all that talk about mana and stats fool you, son," he said as he put Shen on the ground. "You can still die quickly if shot. Trust me on that one."

The man's clothing had many more details. It was clearly a uniform, going by the few others around wearing the same thing. His had different details, though, and the way he carried himself set him apart from the others too.

Shen had come out in the ruins of what had been a wide street. Alicia had talked about tall buildings that reached the skies, and he could see them on both sides of the street—or rather, what remained of them. All of them were missing big chunks and charred, evidence of heavy explosions. There were signs of smaller explosions everywhere, on the buildings and on the very asphalt, the latter of which was almost impossible to see. It was covered by the fallen chunks of the buildings, glass, broken cars, and all sorts of things that had come down from the buildings. Broken tables, chairs, paper, and some metal plates that Shen guessed had been computers, among many other things, could be seen all around.

An entire building had fallen down the street, creating a small hill of concrete and debris.

Shen had never seen mortals waging war, but his Concepts of War and Combat let him know that it was definitely the aftermath of a massive battle.

He was in an artificial corner created by three big chunks of concrete fallen from the nearby buildings. He could only walk one direction to leave—unless he used his superior stats to jump over the ten-yard-tall fallen walls.

"By your confusion, I can tell you just came out of the tutorial," the man said as a female uniformed woman carrying a suitcase with a red cross approached. "Late bloomer, are you? Lieutenant Parker will bring you to date with the situation." He nodded and started walking around, pulling and pushing debris, probably looking for other survivors.

"Hello, sir," the tired-looking blonde in her mid-twenties said as she approached. "Do you need immediate medical aid to walk?"

"No," Shen replied while putting his backpack on. "Who are you? What happened? Where am I?"

"Confusion is expected in your situation, sir. Please come with me, we have a safe location nearby, and I can—"

"Incoming!" someone yelled a moment before a loud explosion hit a place nearby, shaking the ground. "Main firepower is an E-rank fire mage wearing a yellow robe! Five supporting E-ranks, twenty F-ranks! Nine defenders, five archers, others unknown! Incoming!" There was another explosion. "Second firepower is E-rank lightning mage wearing leather armor!"

Lieutenant Parker almost fell when the explosions shook the ground. Shen helped her to stay on her foot. She looked a little confused for a moment, then yelled, "Run!" and tried to pull him by the arm.

Shen wasn't interested in doing so, so she didn't manage to move his arm at all.

Parker looked back in surprise at Shen, who asked, "What is going on?"

There was a sound of repeated explosions that didn't shake the ground. From Alicia's descriptions, Shen guessed it was the sound of firearms being used.

Suddenly, a boy no older than Shen appeared ahead in the street. He was wearing a yellow robe and saw Parker and Shen at the same instant they saw him.

He immediately yelled, "For the Sorcerer King!" and threw an enormous fireball at them.

[A/N: Long live the Sorcerer King!

About the delay, the reason is simple: terrible time management on my part. Yes, stuff™ has been happening in my life, but it all boils down to me not being in control of my day. I'll strive to do better. Sorry.

Ps: 5 extra chapters are schedules for release this week. The four I released today are from last week.]

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