[MA] Changes to previous chapters (Patreon)

This is not relevant if you're reading this after March 30th.

After some awesome feedback, I noticed two big mistakes on my previous chapters, so I had to change things according.

First, Shen didn't swim, he ran on water.

A human can theoretically run on water as long as they are as fast as 100m/s or so. Shen is much faster.

I also added a tiny bit of world building by having Shen claim cultivator kids ran on water as soon as they could, as the first exciting cultivator act in their lives.

That also changes how he dealt with the storm. Here are the relevant bits:

Shen ran on water through the few miles between some Canadian islands first.

Running on water was common enough for cultivators that it was the first cool thing children did when they got fast enough—and Shen had been very jealous of that. Likewise, modern Earth people had started having fun with that as soon as the first F-ranks arrived. There were many online videos showing people running on lakes.

The ten-mile journey between Ellesmere Island and Greenland was a little more challenging than a lake. The sea wasn't still water, and he had to deal with waves of multiple sizes. After some trial and error, he concluded it was best to just use small waves as ramps that made him leave the "ground" for a few moments; it was fun. Then came the tall waves which he could jump over.

He used his spear to deal with the single wave too tall for him to avoid. A powerful thrust, a twist of his pulse, and rotating his arm correctly created a corridor that let him go through without feeling like he had struck a wall at three thousand feet per second; that would've hurt.

And

They found a terrible storm on the high seas.

Dealing with the chaos of water, wind, and thunder was challenging. Shen decreased his speed even before the winds made the waves tall because hitting the raindrops while running as fast as a bullet was uncomfortable to Alicia. They didn't pierce her skin because they weren't actual bullets, but she complained about the constant pain.

She was okay with hitting them half as fast as a bullet. That was still fast enough that they didn't take too long to leave the storm. Shen spent considerable stamina and qi to create one tunnel after another in the enormous waves. Those tunnels weren't always perfect either, and the length of the waves had the water falling over them as they went through.

The water destroyed the maps no matter how much Alicia tried to protect the backpack, but at least nothing worse happened.

Also, when they get to Iceland and have the little talk, Alicia ditches the seat and ropes because she wants to see where they are going. Shen carries her again:

"Can we continue?" he asked, already turning his back to her.

"Actually, I would rather you princess carried me," she said with a flushed face. "It sucks not seeing where we're going, and hugging your neck hurts my arms."

Shen felt a bit frustrated. Alicia had complained so much in Canada, and it had been an enormous stroke of luck to find a chair and some rope on the streets. They had had no money to buy them, just as they didn't have any now. Alicia had left her wallet in his penthouse, and most of her tutorial items were back in the training facility. Only her E+ weapon, a ring that turned invisible, was still with her.

Still, he understood her point. They got rid of the things, and he grabbed her. Only then did he realize how her wet white T-shirt clung to her body—the storm hadn't happened too long ago. It made him uncomfortable, but the training he had gone through helped him not let that affect him—much.

Second, the missile attack happened differently.

A reader pointed out some inconsistencies in the missile attack Shen defended against.

I had left most of it without details to implicitly let it to "mysterious secret tech." However, it was immersion-breaking to at least two people who pointed the inconsistencies out, and another one who liked a comment about it. So I changed things.

Now, the outlawed explosive yield is 1,000 pounds of TNT instead of the previous 50 tons. (I also made it so that's how much the lizard suggests to Marzia on the reunion.)

Instead of dealing with two missiles with a yield of over 50 tons, Shen deals with forty hypersonic missiles (the US theoretically doesn't have the tech, but I just gave it to them in this novel) with a yield of over 1,000 pounds of TNT. It's a far cry from the previous output, but the result is the same. The US also threw a nuke at him, but it didn't explode due to system interference.

Shen things about most of these things during the scene development, which changed slightly, but the conclusion is the same.

If you're interested, check out the scene at chapter 124. I won't post the relevant parts here because they are too many and spaced from each other.

The most relevant bit is that Shen uses his Zephyr-filled qi field to change the trajectories of incoming metal shrapnel when the missiles explode. He considers it might also make him immune to bullets.

Bonus third (minor) change: Observers

My description when Marzia meets the Observers was lacking.

There were six observers and one empty seat. Liya was the only elf in there. I changed the description to better reflect that:

Six were occupied, and the most beautiful elf Marzia had ever seen—the only one she had with dark skin in the palace—commanded the girl's attention at a glance.

And that's it.

Yesterday's chapter will come out in a few minutes, and today's chapter will come out later.