[MA] 387. Incomplete (Patreon)

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They weren't flying very fast, but it was still beyond what anyone would consider a Gentle Breeze. He recognized he could do so because he wasn't bound by some limits as others might be. He was Truly Boundless, and it affected the Laws under his command.

He ignored the implications of lacking boundaries for now and focused on the electricity in his heart. That thing affected how he interacted with the world, and thus, it controlled him in a way. He tried to reach for it—

He found pain. A pain that filled his every cell and threatened to break his mind. Pain from a higher order, from the very Heavens, demanding him to obey the rules or be killed.

He was to bend or be broken.

Shen was surprised to find he had to think about what to do—at least as much as he could think as the pain overwhelmed his senses. His survival instincts didn't automatically win. Bending didn't come naturally to him.

Accepting a leash went against his core beliefs.

Thus, he chose to break.

He grabbed the lightning with his Will and tried to push it out of his body—

His mind cracked, and he fainted.

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Shen woke up. His mind hadn't shattered into smithereens; lightning filled the crack it had caused. Evidently, the Heavens would keep him alive during this... tribulation?

Yes, he realized; he was undergoing a Heavenly Tribulation.

His mind was part of his soul; thus, he had to find a way to heal himself before the tribulation was over. He didn't know if the Heavens would heal him after the tribulation, but he felt ill-disposed towards the Heavens right now. He didn't know why, but he knew he shouldn't leave his life to the Heavens' whims.

The lightning perfectly filled the crack in his mind, so he should be thinking straight. Yes, he wasn't. He was ever-so-slightly dazed, and a sweet smell filled his nose. He could see the world's Laws through his closed eyelids and wasn't surprised to find the bronze-skinned girl naked on top of him.

Her body shone like a beacon to his senses, qi circulating in a specific pattern that felt hungry to him. Her technique filled the air with Conceptual aphrodisiacs, something Shen was confident shouldn't be possible. It was impressive. Concepts of different Laws came from her, all trying to pierce Shen's... Path.

Yes, he had a Path.

The Concepts tried to pierce through the inexistent seams of his Path and get a grip on him. At the same time, her body released biological substances that should make the dead aroused. Unfortunately for her, Shen...

Shen walked a True Path.

His instincts wouldn't go against him, and he wouldn't bed an unknown woman, much less that one. That likely saved his life. He had seen nothing wrong inside her before, but now he glimpsed Void Energy in her uterus. Whatever the Void intended would not be beneficial for him.

He slapped her with the back of his hand, and her head exploded. She died, but it created another issue. Her blood dirtied his body.

Lightning was the solution. The  Heavenly Lightning in his body whispered to him about purity, and fainting because of it had stirred something in him that he only noticed now. He had Lightning in his Path, too.

Shen willed the Conductivity of his body's electrical currents to leave his body and burn everything above him into cinders.

Only ashes were left of the corpse.

He stood up and looked around. He had fallen from the skies just a few miles beyond the town's outermost farmland, the plains that separated the farms from forested hills. No living being was in sight except insects and small animals.

The scroll he had been given was nowhere, but he could infer more ashes nearby were what remained of it. The girl had destroyed it while he was unconscious. So, the old lady hadn't been willing to part with it. The girl would've found a way to get rid of it even if he hadn't made himself faint.

Speaking of fainting, should he try to remove the Tribulation Lightning from his body again?

No. There were myths and legends of people who overcame the Heavens or turned tribulations into unexpected opportunities, but he wasn't one of them. Shen knew he was arrogant, but he wasn't confident in accomplishing that after failing once and already getting his mind injured. He needed to at least heal that damage before attempting anything else.

The leash had come to stay whether he liked it or not.

He looked at the dead girl's ashes and considered revenge against the old lady for lying about the trade. Was she a greedy asshole who had failed to properly assess his power? Or had she been legitimately terrified of his power and made a mistake?

Ultimately, it didn't matter; he had to cleanse this place of Void influence.

Shen found he hated the Void. It was a visceral feeling, entrenched deep into his most profound beliefs. He hated it more than he distrusted the Heavens. The Void meant to cease everything, including himself. That couldn't be allowed.

He turned in the city's direction and Conducted himself towards it.

He ran as fast as his Lightning could make him. The air didn't resist him, for he knew the path of least resistance to keep going. In but a few moments, he was back in the town.

The old lady was surrounded by about two hundred female cultivators in the castle. Another hundred were killing everyone else in the city.

She turned to look at Shen as he approached...

...and died as his hand became a Killing Weapon, bisecting her from head to waist.

Shen couldn't see Void Energy in the other women, so he tried to feel it instead. He had to be able to expand his rulership over his surroundings; that was only natural for one as arrogant as him. He called for it, and his aura was deployed.

Whatever scheme the old lady had been concocting wasn't simple. Shen felt Void Energy inside everyone, including the men and women being murdered. There was also what felt like an orb of pure nothingness deep underground, and he guessed this operation was a farm of sorts. The leading women were eating people, turning them into Void Energy, and pushing it into the orb.

Shen killed everyone with a twist of his will on his aura, then left.

Void Energy wasn't something he could deal with. He would report it to someone else instead. As for pillaging the place? He would rather not be around as a potentially strong supervisor came to check on the town. The old lady called him "Great One," but he was still... C-rank.

C-rank?

There was little to no information about that classification in his mind. For instance, he had no idea who had created that classification or where it was used. He only knew C- and B-ranks represented the two stages of the Ethereal Harmonization Realm. Anything further blocked by Heavenly Lightning.

He could barely infer it was related to that big "thing" he also couldn't recall, but that was it.

Anyway, he was still C-rank. B-ranks could easily kill him. Because...

Because he also hadn't mastered any of his True Path's Laws.

That irked him. Why hadn't he mastered any Laws? He should be better than this. He would work on it as soon as he figured out how. Power called for him, and he felt like he should pursue it. Not at all costs—as he had refused to steal from the old lady—but at least more vigorously than he was doing. He didn't know how old he was but was confident his body was twenty-four. A twenty-four-year-old C-rank without a mastered Law sounded pathetic to him, though he also had no comparison parameters.

He felt incomplete in his weakness, and it sufficed for him to judge himself as lazy and pathetic.

He didn't like to find out that about himself, but there was no denying who he was. He instinctively knew he could be stronger if he had focused on cultivating before he came here. He refused to believe he hadn't had the opportunity to cultivate more—not if he had legitimately sought such opportunities. Instead, he had wasted time on other things—though, again, he couldn't recall what.

Anyway, the weak, lazy, pathetic Shen was arrogant, but not enough to stay around. He rushed toward the opposite direction the girl had pointed, believing she had been more likely to point him at a trap than the actual province capital.

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Killing suited Shen.

He had already felt so when killing those sapient beings, but it hadn't felt as pleasant as killing the D-rank horned tiger-wolf-like beast that pounced on him. He looked at its dead body for a moment before pulling its horn with Gentle Breeze. He connected it to a long pole he removed from a nearby tree.

The moment he grabbed the makeshift spear, he knew of its Shaft and its Extremity as much as he knew about it being a Killing Weapon.

Almost as importantly, the connection he felt to the spear allowed him to remember qi could be used for more than feeling how strong people were. He had seen the girl do it, but it hadn't felt personal enough. Just witnessing something wasn't enough for him to remember who he was.

Qi was the underlying material of the physical realm; metaphysical matter made manifest. Shen willed his qi to enter the spear and make it a perfect whole, and it obeyed.

Horn and wood blended into a substance that was neither and didn't exist. He could tell doing that weakened the weapon, but he didn't care. His qi would surround and strengthen the spear if he used it; he only needed it to be a spear.

He searched and killed a few more beasts and realized the enjoyment had significantly decreased. It wasn't killing that he liked, after all. It was triumphing over his foes. The stronger they were, the better. All these beasts were D-rank, and after killing the first one, the sense of accomplishment was greatly muted.

Killing for killing's sake didn't bring joy, but he also wasn't averse to it. Killing innocent sapients would bother him. Killing irrational animals for fun was also starting to get uncomfortable, though not as much as when it came to sapients; he valued intelligent life more than unintelligent one. But killing, in itself, wasn't an issue; the target was.

Shen took to the skies and checked his surroundings. There was no smoke anywhere, but the vast sea to the East called to him. He could learn something about himself there.

He returned to the ground—as he would be an easy target if a pursuing B-rank searched for him—and started jogging towards the sea.

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Stream.

The word and Law came to his mind as soon as he stepped on the beach's sand and witnessed the ebb and flow of the ocean. Or rather, when he saw the undercurrents below sea level, the Stream of Water occupied by countless fish as they went about their daily lives.

Figuring out the seventh—and last—of his Path's Law sent a shudder through his body and soul. The world felt more solid. More real. He felt there, more connected, more anchored. His mind became less cloudy, his thoughts more focused.

He also recalled something. He had lived something like this once before with his Concepts. Dealing with Laws this time was ridiculously easier because of his True... Path?

No, his True Self.

Shen didn't know what a True Self was, but it was better and more whole than a True Path. Truer, too. His True Self must've been why the girl hadn't managed to infiltrate his Path and absorb him.

Alas, he also became aware that his Will was part of his True Self, and the next stage of this tribulation would only be complete after he figured out what his Will was.

Shen felt it had something to do with beating his opponents. He would have to find some to test his theory. That made finding civilization even more important—as if reporting the Void Energy wasn't already crucial.

He frowned at that thought. Although he hated the Void, he had focused more on himself instead of reporting the Void Energy. The potential consequences of delaying such a report hadn't mattered as much as himself.

He didn't like to find out how self-centered he was.

Shen sighed, took to the skies—uncaring whether an enemy B-rank would see him, for reporting the Void was that important, now that he thought about it—and flew at maximum speed in a random direction.

It took him but a moment to find a city that spanned dozens of miles to all directions.

Hundreds of cultivators flew around the city, but except for the occasional curious glance, none seemed to care much about him. The city's ruler disagreed with that nonchalance, though. A mile before Shen crossed the city's tall walls, six armored and armed C-ranks flew from the city walls to meet him, all wearing capes with the same coat of arms as a few flags visible throughout the city.

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