Cultivation Nerd-Chapter 246: A Casual Dinner

Walking through endless green fields in another part of the Blazing Sun Sect's territory, the soft spring sun beat down on us while a gentle breeze cooled the air.

Fu Yating gulped down a glass bottle full of water, as she didn't have the internal Qi or the physique to handle the unnatural dry heat around here. She had been drinking quite a lot of water recently.

I wanted to ask if she was okay or if there was something I could do about it. But decided against it since it wasn't like we could turn around now or do anything about this situation.

We ended up near a river with a few trees scattered around; despite the dry air, the trees were lush and green.

A soft, croaking sound from a frog caught our attention.

But before the croaking could become too annoying, Speedy, out of nowhere, extended his neck so fast that I barely saw a blur. He bit into the frog with a sickening crunch and swallowed it whole.

Fu Yating watched the whole thing and cringed in disgust. Then she gagged and looked like she was going to throw up.

In my previous life, I had a reflex where if I saw people throwing up, then I also felt like throwing up.

Would those kinds of instinctive things transfer even in a new body? Would it mean that even our habits are something engraved into the soul? Though that habit might have been culled since I had seen countless mangled corpses by now, the research would end up inconclusive anyway. But it would be interesting if the habit had transferred.

Yet my thoughts ended up being for nothing, as she didn't throw up.

"Hey, don't judge Speedy just because he eats with his mouth open. The guy's just following the laws of nature," I said.

"Laws of nature? Nature doesn't have laws," Fu Yating frowned. "Also, why do you always have to take his side? I didn't even say anything this time."

I turned to the big-ass turtle and smiled, giving him a thumbs up.

Most people saw Speedy as just an animal or a pet. But I saw a best friend, someone who had actually saved my life more times than I could count during the beast waves last year and plenty of times after that.

Honestly, I treated him as more human than most humans.

Walking up to the big guy, I scratched his chin and thought back to when I got him. It was one of the best decisions in this life.

It's been quite a journey…

Just as Speedy and I were having a bro moment, I sensed someone heading our way, fast. A second later, I heard them too. They weren't even trying to hide their presence. From the sound of it, they were moving erratically, like they were being chased.

A handful of seconds later, a middle-aged man with a scruffy beard and a mess of tangled hair dropped down from a tree. When he saw us, he stopped and leaned over, panting hard.

"I'm from the Flaming Cloud Sect!" he declared once he'd caught his breath.

Just from the tone of his voice, I had a feeling what kind of person he was. But I gave him the benefit of the doubt. Judging a book by its cover, or by its voice, wasn't exactly smart.

"If you help me escape, the Sect will repay you a thousandfold!" he said, glancing around nervously. "We might have to sacrifice one of you, but trust me, it'll be worth it."

His eyes moved over the girls' bodies when he said that last part. And when the word "sacrifice" came out, he looked straight at me.

"What, or who is chasing you? And how did you get hurt?" I asked, ignoring everything else he'd said.

It wasn't wise to get involved in other people's messes. For all I knew, some Core Formation cultivator could be after this guy, which was a shortcut to death's door if we got involved or were around for that incident.

“Peasants should just listen to my orders,” he growled.

I looked at the guy as a strange feeling welled up inside me. It wasn’t anger...

It had just been a while since I’d seen someone this dumb.

Strangely enough, it didn’t feel bad. I’d been dealing with so many intelligent, scheming people lately that coming across someone this stupid almost brought a tear to my eye.

I mean, this guy didn’t even know who I was and still tried to demean me? Why couldn’t more cultivators be this dumb?

“Are you the son of a Sect Leader?” I asked, hoping for a positive answer.

“No, but I’m the second son of his seventh cousin,” he said, with a weird kind of confidence, like that was something to be proud of.

“That’s... somewhat disappointing,” I sighed.

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“Fucker! Come here and help me, you bastard! If you don’t, I’ll have your whole family flayed in front of you! No matter where you run, I will–”

Whatever he was about to say next never left his lips.

Without warning, a translucent green barrier shimmered into existence above his head, its edges glowing faintly with a sickly light. For the briefest moment, it just hung there. Then it dropped.

No warning. No time to react.

The barrier slammed down with brutal force, the air cracking on impact. Bones shattered, flesh gave way, and in the blink of an eye, the guy was reduced to nothing more than a crimson smear on the grass.

The ground trembled slightly from the force, and silence followed.

Did he say flaying someone? That dragged up some old, gruesome memories… memories of a certain melted tower…

Sure, the world needed its stupid people, but it deserved a better standard of stupid. A village idiot was cute. A local tyrant bully? Not so much.

“Sometimes people don’t know how to keep their mouths shut,” Fu Yating said, staring at the red sludge without blinking.

All that pretense of being grossed out by Speedy eating a frog? Gone.

I shrugged, and a rectangular crimson barrier formed at my palm and shot toward the scattered flesh on the ground. It was an overcharged heating array that burned everything inside it. With how dense the fire Qi was around here, it charred the body to a crisp without me needing to use more than a flicker of my own Qi.

Once the evidence was gone, we left.

I kept an eye on Wu Yan, trying to gauge her reaction and see if she needed reassurance or a bit of a talk. Killing someone like that could be jarring, especially at her age.

She didn’t seem affected at all, but I’d still have a quiet chat with her later. She was at an impressionable age, and I didn’t want her developing any weird tendencies.

Oh, and I should probably do something to reassure Fu Yating, too. Just so she wouldn’t get the idea she might end up like that guy.

“For a second there, I thought you were going to leave the idiot alive,” Fu Yating said after we were far away from the murder spot.

“I was more curious about what was chasing him,” I said. ƒreeωebnovel.ƈom

Sadly, I wasn’t strong enough to take a risk like that. Maybe if the situation had demanded it, I would’ve gambled with my life out of curiosity. But with Wu Yan, Speedy, and even Fu Yating here, I wasn’t about to charge recklessly.

The most likely scenario? The guy was being chased by some Qi Gathering monstrous beast.

“You and your curiosity,” she muttered.

Leaving enemies alive was dangerous. Even if they were weak, who knew what kind of backing they had? They could have a third cousin who was a cultivator, and that cousin could be the personal disciple of a core elder, and that elder could be sworn brothers with the Sect Leader.

As the sun set in the west, we continued walking south, its final flickers painting the sky in a crimson-orange hue.

However, something was strange; even after the sun dipped below the horizon, the crimson light didn’t fade. It was like another sun was setting in the south, casting that same burning hue across the sky.

We had to be close.

After walking a little farther, we finally got a proper view of what lay beyond the hill.

There was a sea of flames.

The sight stretched before me, vast and terrifying, an endless, heaving mass of liquid fire.

It roared with a voice that drowned out thought, a deep, guttural sound like the world itself was burning from the inside out. Waves of molten flame rose and crashed, not with the rhythm of water, but with violent, chaotic force, sending up showers of embers that danced like dying stars in the thick, smoke-choked sky.

The heat was unbearable, pressing in from all directions like a living thing. It wrapped around my body, searing my skin even from a distance, turning every breath into a struggle. The air was thick and dry, scorching my throat and lungs with each inhale. My eyes watered, stinging from both the heat and the blinding brightness of the inferno, until everything blurred into shades of orange, red, and white-hot gold.

The smell was overwhelming too. With ash, charred earth, and something almost metallic, like scorched blood and molten iron. It clung to my nose and tongue, thick and acrid, making it hard to breathe without gagging.

Beneath my feet, the ground trembled with every surge of fire, rumbling like it was in pain. I felt the vibrations in my bones, like the land itself was cracking under pressure. My hands tingled from the raw energy in the air, like my skin was moments away from blistering.

It was destruction in its purest form, alive, devouring, and utterly unstoppable.

Holy shit! This was amazing!

The Sea of Flames... this was something I’d wanted to see for a long time.

But it wasn’t just the sea of fire that amazed me. On the shore, massive iron rods were driven deep into the sandy ground.

A huge chain, each link bigger than a truck, stretched from those rods toward the sky connecting them to a floating island above the clouds, hovering over the Sea of Flames.

Normal people wouldn’t have been able to see the city so high up and hidden in the clouds.

The scalding heat kept us from getting too close as we approached the Sea of Flames. Especially Fu Yating since she had no Qi to protect herself, so I had to form a Qi barrier around her, shielding us from the worst of it.

“What the hell is this?” Fu Yating asked, her eyes wide as plates.

“Haven’t you ever read the books on the wonders of the world?” I shrugged.

“Well...” She bit the inside of her cheek, thinking. “I heard about the Sea of Flames, but I never looked into where it was, or if it was even real. At the time, I... had bigger problems to deal with.”

“This world is beautiful,” I said with a smile. “You should read more about it and, later, explore it. It’d be a shame to die without seeing the Sea of Flames, or a space crack that drives people insane just by looking at it, or so many other things.”

“Perhaps...” Fu began to say something, but stopped herself.

“Stick around long enough, and we’ll see all the wonders together,” I said.

Fu Yating smiled. “You’re finally acting like the husband you’re supposed to be.”

I tilted my head, clearly confused.

“I don’t think there was any hidden or backhanded romanticism in what I said. I literally meant it.”

“I know,” she said, still smiling. “But this was one of those moments where lying might’ve actually helped your case.”

“I see no reason to lie,” I admitted.