Chapter 57: Zhen
I turned my head.
Standing on the flat rock behind me was a girl.
No more voices anymore. Not an omnipresent presence in the walls of a cave.
A girl, of my height, her striking blue eyes shimmer beneath long black-and-white hair, giving her an ethereal and mysterious charm.
With fluffy cat ears, wearing robes that looked like they had been only made for her.
She looks both adorable and quietly enchanting.
She was looking at me .
"Who the hell are you now?"
Tsk tsk.
"This world is not good, people forget their helpers easily."
"Wait."
I pointed at her.
"You’re Zhen?"
"Congratulations. Your observational skills continue to improve."
"You’re a girl."
"I have been this entire time."
"You never mentioned that."
"You did not ask."
I was lying flat on the rock with my arms spread out.
I decided this as a reasonable position.
"How are you outside? You said you were trapped."
Hehehehe
"I said leaving required dealing with what is outside and I had not decided it was worth the inconvenience,"
"You became the key for me, come here lemme give a hug.."
"I just climbed my way out."
"You created a disturbance by existing, The climbing was incidental."
I had been in that cave all night.
"Lemme ask something."
"The Core Fundamentals reward, What does that actually mean."
"Your skill tab has received the theoretical framework for Foundation Establishment cultivation specific to a pure fire root," Zhen said.
" It is the correct method ."
I checked my skill tab.
"Status Window"
[Core Fundamentals: Pure Fire Root Foundation Establishment: The correct structural method for constructing a Foundation Core from a pure fire spiritual root.]
[ Reading time: approximately forty eight hours or the skill disappears. One month limit.]
"What hell..."
"Depending on the cultivator," Zhen said. "For most people, two to four weeks. Possibly longer."
"I have one month to reach Foundation Core, And I still have no core. Should I kill myself."
"Yes."
"....."
"Let me kill you first."
"You can’t, did you already forgot my identity?"
"Hmm..."
"So I need to read four hours of cultivation theory and then implement it in under four weeks."
"Approximately."
I sat up. And started walking. Zhen was following me
A thought arrived.
"Zhen,"
"Yes."
"Why are you following me?"
She looked at me with the expression I was beginning to understand was her default the expression of something that had existed for long enough that most questions arrived already answered.
"I am not following you, I am walking in the same direction."
"So you’re stalking me. I didn’t expect a divine beast to be a stalker."
"Following implies I am oriented toward you. I am oriented toward the world outside the cave, which happens to currently contain you."
"Shu...Shu you stalker."
"I am extremely precise, The precision is a feature not a flaw."
I stood up and looked around.
The sect was visible in the distance.
Today I needed to not fail to register on a crystal.
I needed to start reading four hours of cultivation theory and then figure out how to implement it in under four weeks.
I also needed breakfast because I had not eaten since yesterday and my body is filing a complaint.
"The divine fire in your spiritual root," Zhen said, walking beside me without appearing "It is not simply sealed it’s sleeping."
I looked at her.
"Yeah. Yeah. Sounds like bullshit."
"Sealed and sleeping are different things," she said.
"A sealed ability cannot be accessed. A sleeping ability cannot be accessed yet. The distinction matters because sleeping things wake up."
"When, after I die."
"When the conditions are correct."
"What conditions?"
"Unknown. That depends on who put it to sleep and why." She was quiet for a moment.
"The Divine Fire affinity at S grade pure root is not something that occurs naturally."
"It is cultivated across generations, a bloodline that has been specifically developed over many centuries to produce a single carrier with the correct configuration."
I thought about the body I was in.
"Wei Xue’s family,"
"They were building toward her."
"Building toward the potential to produce her," Zhen said.
"It takes multiple generations to concentrate the bloodline correctly."
"Her family produced what they were working toward and then declined because the goal had been achieved and the resources had been spent."
"You said this would create ripples," "Yes."
"What kind?"
"The kind that draws attention, There are people in this world who have been waiting for the pure fire bloodline to produce a carrier. They have been waiting for a long time."
"When a carrier appears and begins cultivating in the correct method, it will be visible to anyone with the sensitivity to perceive it."
"And those people will come looking."
"Yes."
"Are they the kind of people I want to find me?"
"Are you dumb? Lemme check your brain."
"Hey stop, just tell me."
"Almost certainly not," Zhen said. "But they will come regardless. The question is whether you are prepared when they arrive."
I looked at the sect.
"The tower," I asked. "What is it."
Zhen was quiet for a moment.
"I do not know everything," she said. "I was in a cave."
"You said you were choosing to be in the cave."
"I was choosing to be in the cave, which did not provide me with updated information about what was built on top of it."
"The cave is under the sect."
"Yes."
"You have been under the sect for three hundred years."
"Under the sect and then the forest before it and the village before that," she said. "The location has had various uses. The cave predates all of them."
"And the tower."
"The tower was not there when I went into the cave," she said. "Which means it was built in the last three hundred years. I do not know by whom or for what purpose."
I filed that.
"The sect leader, Nobody knows his face. His orders come through two people nobody knows either."
Zhen looked at the tower.
"That is fishy."
"fishy?."
"Almost certainly relevant, I adjusted the phrasing because I do not have enough information to be definitive and I prefer precision."
"Do you think the sect leader is connected to the people who will come looking for me?"
"I think you should read the Core Fundamentals today," she said.
"And I think you should begin the foundation establishment tomorrow. And I think you should draw as little attention as possible until your core is established,
because a coreless cultivator is considerably more vulnerable than one with even a Foundation Core, regardless of the quality of the spiritual root."
"In other words, stop asking questions and start cultivating."
