Chapter 136 – Hollow Connections

Everything about the little boy before Ren felt wrong. A normal young master would never be unaccompanied. So he had either escaped his minders or he was actually a powerful cultivator. As a rule, the younger one was when they reached the higher realms of cultivation, the more talented they were. Their youthful appearance was preserved longer and was in itself an indicator of their prowess. The child’s actual cultivation was utterly hidden, possibly behind protective talismans, so Ren had no better means to determine his strength.

Additionally, there were inconsistencies in his story.

‘How could this princely child be related to that slovenly old grandpa? Even their mannerisms are as different as heaven and earth! Though there is something about their face that bears resemblance. Was that old man a hidden powerhouse? What would he have done if I had been rude to him back then? Thoughts were racing through Ren’s head, but he knew he needed to reply, so he relayed his interaction with the old man.

“I met an elder here a few months ago who was searching for something, but I was in the southern quadrant of the outer sect ever since. Perhaps you could ask those guards of the Sacred Ground?” Ren was hoping to pass off the bother to those standoffish guards so he could return but to no avail.

“Those smelly fellows? Hmph! Idiots! I’ve followed all kinds of rumors, even tracked down some brat in the outer sect who they told me recently made a miraculous recovery thinking it was because of Grandfather's trinket. Waste of time!” The boy launched into some kind of rant. His darling appearance was at odds with the foul curses that spewed from his mouth.

Ren might have enjoyed the incongruity at any other time, but he was still reeling internally from what he had just heard. ‘That old man said it was a dangerous object that could corrupt or make creatures violent. So why is this boy looking for an object that helped with the unexpected recovery of a disciple?’ He tried his best to act unbothered, but there was a growing suspicion in his mind. He acted decisively to end the interaction.

“I extended the use of a small pavilion to him last time. I can see that he indeed spent some time there. It may be unworthy to stay in, but perhaps he might return?” Ren worded it carefully, avoiding titles or anything that might seem like a suggestion. Before waiting for a reply, he bowed low and injected his voice with a small portion of the urgency he was actually feeling. “Pardon me, but I have stumbled upon an opportunity to breakthrough and need to return forthwith. If there is nothing else…?”

He could feel an extremely dense divine sense wash over him. That, if nothing else, told him the boy was a powerful cultivator. Ren only raised his head after the boy reluctantly allowed it.

‘Huh?! He let me go just like that? Perhaps he could detect the signs of breakthrough? Either way, I should seize this chance!’ Without delay, Ren jumped onto his sword and raced home.

He opened a small aperture in his security formations and disappeared inside, but in that instant, he felt a sharp glance coming from the direction of his departure.

‘Curses! Did he detect something about my abode?! Argh, why does this have to happen now!!’ Ren worried he had made an irreparable mistake in his urgency, but knowing there was nothing he could do about it, just then, he forced all thoughts out of his mind except his imminent breakthrough.

As he ascended the mountain towards his cave, he could already tell that the mountains had grown further in the time he had been away. It wasn't just the mountain that had grown. The qi on his mountain had increased not only in thickness but also in volatility. Ren felt a constant prickly sensation on his skin. It likely had to do with the significantly stronger qi signature of the two foundation establishment plants on the 1st and 3rd peaks. Ren no doubt would have his hands full in the days to come.

All of that had barely sunk in when he released his hold on his dantian in the safety of his home. But to his horror, nothing happened. All was still, only some minor flutterings of qi. Ren experienced a certain amount of dread as it occurred to him that he might have been repressing his breakthrough too long. Without his grip on it, the fluctuations of qi should have resumed on their own, but they remained weak.

He flew into his cave and jumped onto his meditation platform, activating the arrays he had designed for such occasions. He felt a mild sense of belonging and calm wash over him, and the density of qi around him increased sharply as the arrays began their work. The flagging fluttering of qi surged, and his breakthrough finally resumed in earnest. Ren heaved a huge sigh of relief and focused on entering the right mindset to make the best of this opportunity.

‘That was too close!’ he felt sweat pouring down despite his body cultivation.

It had been nearly a year since his last breakthrough to the 8th layer. By the standards of the Heavenly Sword Sect, that might have been considered a lightning-quick progression, but in the abundant environment of the Azure Mountains, that was just above average. And that was only when comparing himself to those cultivators of the outer sect, whom the sect considered to have lower potential.

After he solved his inner dilemma of whether to consider potential when forming connections, Ren had started to form karmic strand constructions with those he met. Anybody he liked and he felt he shared fate with, he extended a seed of intent. The intent was to climb together towards the heavens, which he used to filter out those who had already laid their ambitions to rest. Many seeds of intent had failed to blossom, but a few did.

It was a little depressing to see just how many people in the outer sect were utterly content with their lives, not interested in exploring, learning, or cultivating themselves, but Ren couldn’t fault them. Cultivators lived a harsh life, filled with death and loneliness. Who was he to begrudge someone their happiness?

But there were others like Hawk, Crow, and his classmates from the lectures he attended who still harbored hope of advancing. The increased number of connections might have played a part in his breakthrough today, but Ren had also noted a complication in recent days. Once the seeds of intent bloomed into a karmic strand, it was supposed to absorb wisps of their merit or sin and pass it to him. But he received less than half the usual amount of either type from certain people!

It had taken days of studying books on karma to understand why that might be. Through his studies, he had even learned to appreciate certain nuances of his own manual, Causality of Karma. Ren discovered that not everyone acted in their daily lives with such significance that they garnered either karmic merit or sin. Most just went about their regular activities focused on themselves, interacting with no one or thing. Perhaps calling it a bland life might be rude, but it boiled down to most people living a simple life, despite harboring grandiose ambitions. The dreams they didn’t pursue let the seeds of intent bloom but provided nothing further afterwards.

Ren had been shocked at this unexpected category of cultivators. This had never happened to him in the Heavenly Sword Sect, but something about the Azure Mountain Sect created such an environment for such people to appear. He had 4 such connections amidst the 17 other connections he had formed in the past months. 4 connections that gave him nothing, yet upon his breakthrough, they would likely gobble up the refined merit.

As the fluctuations in his dantian increased in frequency, both the golden and black suns began to gather the shimmering clouds of semi-formed strands around them. Ren could now confirm them to be the natural karmic connections he had formed without the use of qi constructs. It was these that sometimes solidified into actual strands during breakthroughs if he had enough fate with them. It was how the bonds with his closest friends had formed, even without his intervention.

Ren had internally debated the significance of the hollow connections many times. At first he naively thought his breakthrough would help them regain lost momentum or change their fate. The refined merit he would return to them would likely not be enough to change their lives and would mostly be squandered, but if even once could succeed, wouldn’t he be changing their entire destiny?! Hadn’t he learned from his experience with Subo just how much power was generated by changing one’s fate? He had merely brought forth a guaranteed reward to an earlier date, and Ren had used it to slay a demonic beast and earned much merit.

But he soon had to temper his expectations. People did not change so easily, and changing fate’s design was even more grueling. He could send all the refined merit he had, and it still might not have any effect. On the contrary, by sending them the precious little refined merit, he would be diluting the benefits he gave to those who genuinely contributed to his progress.

Ren could have broken the connections prior to his breakthrough, but just like he had with the strands bringing him sin, he wanted to witness the outcome with his own eyes at least once. His breakthrough this time was much smoother than the previous one. During that last breakthrough, Ren's sect had just fallen, and he had been faced with a lot of karmic repercussions, of both his own doing and of others like Elder Yun Peng. This time around, it was relatively calm, no great influx of merit or sin.

With two Fire of Life constructs, Ren was perfectly capable of managing the strain. His heart cultivation had also come a long way, giving him the increased willpower to endure. The smaller black sun of sin didn’t have nearly as much weight as the golden sun of merit, but they spun around each other, exerting a pull on each other regardless. Together, they compressed and expanded repeatedly, slowly increasing in that mysterious sense of weight.

This weight that Ren had never been able to identify had also finally been identified. Ever since Elder Yun’s final message had mentioned that term, Ren knew it had to be important. And when he finally learned what it was and what it meant to him, it was like an explosion had gone off inside his head! So many things had fallen into place.

The many quirks and puzzles of karma he had been forced to accept blindly without choice were given depth and context. The question of why the increased weight drew in qi faster into his dantian and why splitting it into even more Fire of Life constructs was a mistake and more. Moreover, one of the biggest questions Ren had struggled with, why his cultivation kept the refined sin and only sent out karmic merit, had finally been answered.

The answer to it all lay behind the principles of that weight. Or as it was formally known, Cosmic Destiny.