Chapter 389 Messengers from the soon-to-be Deceased
Shoutout to Harjas_Sidhu for beta-reading and providing extensive feedback for this chapter!
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"Is this the place?" A muscular, dark-toned man asked his partner who walked on with confidence. He bent under a branch, which his partner carefreely walked under, silently cursing his uncommonly high stature. The two then leapt up and covered a hundred-metre-tall tree before them with just three steps.
Rianna Maddi nodded and said, "We're close."
"Why would a great cultivator like Mage Nara live in such..." Shay-Hade searched for the right words to say but was quickly silenced as Rianna picked up speed and swerved through the treeline with the lightness of a monkey. He furrowed his brows with focus and followed his partner.
They traversed over three kilometres solely above the canopy of the woods until they eventually reached a clearing. Rianna leapt forward and transitioned into a backflip before landing forcefully on her knees. Shay-Hade did the same though he landed with greater grace (contradicting his brutish form) on his toes.
"Just in time," a voice greeted them, causing the two to look up. Before them, sitting cross-legged on a rock was their intended target - Mage Krish Nara.
""Mage Nara,"" the two greeted in unison, giving the man a deep bow of respect.
The man, in turn, extended his hand with his palm open. "Give it."
Rianna nodded and approached the older mage, though with cautious steps. A Tesseract Transformation realm mage was akin to a bomb with a capricious fuse. One couldn't predict when it will go off, or what may happen when it goes off. A person who has to walk the path to reach the peak that is the Tesseract Transformation realm is guaranteed to have lived a colourful life rife with decisions that make one question the very nature of humanity and the limits of a person's morality. Take the easy-going and tranquil Mage Jace, the Leader of the Mystic Celestial Sect.
At first glance, one would assume the demure figure to be a pleasant scholar who handles any conflict with the power of the word and pen. However, hidden beneath the angelic clothing and marbled skin lies a musculature that is at least a hundred times denser than a regular human's, held against bones with tendons as elastic as iron if it were ten times denser, and bones with rigidity that is yet to be determined. How does someone build a body so strong?
How does anyone build their body? By taking it to the extreme limits that a body can reach and then taking it a step further. When the body recovers, its limit will have moved an inch further. But you don't stop there, you take the body to this new limit and take it a step further. It is a mundane yet gruesome process of quite literally breaking the body and letting it rebuild itself stronger than before.
The Sect Leader's cultivation method wasn't a secret in the Sect. In fact, everyone who joined the Sect after Mage Jace took its helm was handed a booklet that described the Sect Leader's exact cultivation method. Rianna herself was shocked to receive such sacred information so freely - she even assumed it to be a fake and a trick by the seniors hoping to cull the incoming horde. But reality proved otherwise. Even the Sect Leader corroborated the fact in the welcoming address.
What surprised Rianna even more was the simplicity of the cultivation method. It did not call for any unorthodox strategies, just the plain basics of body cultivation.
Cultivation is often broken down into two paths, although they both achieve the same goal. The first path revolves around getting to know the world, the reality one lives in. The other revolves around getting to know the self, the body one lives in. While it is easy to assume that the depth of the latter cultivation is shallow, meaning that the extent to which one can advance in their cultivation by walking down that path is limited, the fact is far from it.
One's knowledge of one's own body is in fact just as limited as one's understanding of the world. The brain has levels of autonomy in place that make it so that your consciousness doesn't have to worry about most involuntary processes like breathing, salivating, blinking, sweating, digesting, and so on. Knowing which muscles to contract to achieve a specific motion is also simplified by the brain. It takes lifetimes just to understand how these mechanisms work even with the magic of mana sense.
It is easy to assume that with the secret to the Sect Leader's success so easily available, everyone in the Sect could grow to be as powerful as the Sect Leader. However, the reality proved otherwise. While basic, the cultivation method described took the concept to inhuman extremes. Basic bodybuilding requires reaching failure - a point where the muscle can no longer contract concentrically - and then taking it a step further. You then let the fatigued and torn muscle recover while providing sufficient nutrition (usually proteins). The recovery is painful, hence the soreness, but the rebuilt muscle is stronger and bigger.
The Sect Leader, however, took this practice to the point that the muscle itself was torn. He would then soak himself in a medicinal bath that accelerated the healing process while nourishing the muscles with nutrients, though its side effect was that the accelerated healing caused you to experience an amplified level of pain.
There is a natural limit to how much a human body can develop with this strategy. But the Sect Leader broke through that limit through sheer force of will (and of course with the Sect's proprietary Meridian-based cultivation methods).
"As I expected," Mage Nara said, breaking Rianna out of her blank trance. "Thank you for delivering my friend's final messages."
"Sect Leader has left for his final pilgrimage. He declared his passing, and wished everyone the best of luck to find the Inheritance Artefact he will leave behind upon his Ascension," Rianna explained.
The elderly mage hummed and nodded in affirmation.
"Pardon my insolence," Shay-Hade cut in at this point. Rianna nearly slapped her forehead in irritation. She had expressly warned him to keep quiet. Why risk angering someone who can delete you with a flick of their fingers to quench a rogue thought?
"Did Mage Nara already know of Sect- Ex-Sect Leader Jace's Ascension?" Shay-Hade asked.
"I did," the elder mage answered.
"Then Mage Nara should already know what the letter read before we delivered it too," Shay-Hade said out loud. Rianna was sweating crazily as her eyes darted between her soon-to-be-dead boyfriend and the elder mage. "Does Mage Nara also know where the Inheritance Artefact is going to be?!"
Rianna quickly jumped in and pulled her man into a tight headlock while covering his mouth. "S-Sorry Mage Nara, I didn't teach my junior well-"
"The letter is something written from Jace's heart. I didn't foresee it voluntarily, because I wished for his message to reach me the way he wanted it to," Mage Nara interjected calmly. "And as for the location of the Inheritance Artefact, I know the location of twenty-two including Jace's that haven't been discovered yet. Though I don't wish to share it with you, because-"
The mage turned the parchment and placed his finger over a line written in all capital letters: "DO NOT TELL ANYONE WHERE I AM GOING TO DIE."
"-I must respect a man's final wishes, after all."
The moment dragged on in awkward silence, as both parties looked at each other with a blank expression.
"So..." Shay-Hade said with a muffled voice through Rianna's palm. "...We should get going now."
"As you should," Mage Nara affirmed. Rianna quickly proceeded to turn, but just as she was about to leap onto the tree line, a voice cut through through woods.
"Master!" Rianna recognised the voice immediately. It was Marie's. "There you are! If you're planning to deviate from your usual schedule you need to warn me beforehand. I wasted an entire hour searching for you."
"I left a letter by your bedside," Mage Nara said to the arriving girl.
"You were in my room while I was sleeping?" Marie snapped back in shock. "That's creepy... Hold up! Is that you, Mage Maddi?"
"I'd assumed we were on a first-name basis by now, Marie," Rianna responded with a smile. Marie jogged forward and gave Rianna a tight, welcoming hug.
"It's been so long! How have you been?" Marie followed up. "I see that you've brought your... 'partner' along."
Rianna noticed Marie's eyes examining Shay-Hade's form, and an itching feeling crawled up her spine. "Should I be worried?" Rianna blurted out.
Marie's eyes left Shay-Hade and landed on Rianna. A silent message was exchanged, following which the younger girl let out a laugh and said, "Don't worry. I like them less... manly."
After a second of silence, the duo burst into uproarious laughter.
As the clamour settled, Marie quickly asked, "Did you guys just come?"
"We did. We had a message to deliver to Mage Nara. Since that is finished, we were leaving," Rianna explained.
"Nonsense!" Marie denied. "You are our guests! Technically, this could be classified as a diplomatic mission between sects. It would be impolite and improper to let you guys leave empty-handed and with empty stomachs."
She then turned to her Master and admonished him, "You're representing the True World Sect now. You can't be this callous!"
Both Rianna and Shay-Hade froze with their eyes nearly out of their sockets in shock. The scene was like watching a rabbit admonishing a manticore.
"Please forgive me for my Master's impropriety-"
""NO!"" Rianna and Shay-Hade exclaimed. "I mean," Rianna picked up. "I don't know if calling it a diplomatic mission is correct. We're just running an errand-"
"Whatever! Come, you've arrived just in time. Matron Reva just cooked up a huge pot of Spiced Chicken Rice."
"What?" Shay-Hade asked.
"It's what we're calling it. It's basically spiced chicken with vegetables, layered underneath seasoned rice covered and cooked in a brick oven. It tastes delicious!"
"Sounds like Bihr-Yahnn," Shay-Hade followed up. "The preparation method sounds similar. What spices do you use?"
"I... don't know. I just eat the dish," Marie answered sheepishly.
"It's been years since I last tasted the food of my people," Shay-Hade admitted with a nostalgic tone. "Can we stay for lunch, Rianna?"
Rianna looked into her hunk boyfriend's puppy-dog eyes and the denial that was at the tip of her tongue melted away. "Sure. Why not?"
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