Chapter 1001

Chapter 1001

Any time someone told Chidi he couldn’t cut something, he liked to prove them wrong. That hadn’t actually been Aconite’s point with an offhand comment she made, instead being more to herself. She was speaking about how certain compounds got stuck together, which was either exactly what she wanted her poisons to do or completely ruined them depending on the context and particular poison in question.

Now she had spent a month watching him cut apart dust. Well, the majority of the time was spent on her own studies and meditations, but whenever she looked over to her friend he was effectively swinging his sword at empty space.

She couldn’t tell if it was better or worse that he wasn’t using a lick of upper energy in his motions. If she pretended he was practicing his sword forms it made sense, except that he never really repeated any motion. She wasn’t even sure he was locked onto any target in particular, his blade never slicing through the same area for long.

It was distracting in a way his training usually wasn’t. She’d long gotten used to Chidi’s energy around her, and more recently she’d gotten used to energy suddenly going away. Or at least, that was always what it felt like. Apparently, it was all still there- Chidi just somehow managed to make an entire area balance. Even inside other cultivators, which was the truly astounding part.

Then again, she shouldn’t have expected anything less profound from an alternate path to Augmentation. Being incomprehensible was almost a given.

Aconite wasn’t looking for anything like that. She thought she would be most effective in Augmentation, simply empowering herself and her poisons. In truth, most of her poisons were already strong enough, it was delivering them to her enemies that was the issue. It was either simple, if they were careless enough to let an unknown gap slip past their defenses and breathe it in, or nearly impossible if they were vigilant of all outside intrusion.

Breaking down an opponent’s defenses only to poison them was simply a waste of combat potential. If you got through enemy defenses, it was better to just kill them. Of course, that wasn’t always feasible. Cultivators didn’t always have just one layer of defenses, even if they weren’t persistent. Someone about to be stabbed through the chest might focus all their energy internally, leaving them with broken bones and rent flesh but not a punctured heart or the like.

That was where Aconite’s claws came in, carrying with them poisons. Subtle poisons, where just traces of them were left behind for when those internal defenses dropped, pumped through the bloodstream.

“I need more dregs,” Chidi declared.

“Seriously?” Aconite asked. “You have a whole barrel full.” She looked over. “Did it all get mixed in with the dirt?”

She was obviously going to provide what he asked for. If he wanted a whole pouch of her best poison for something, she’d give it to him. If he wanted two? Well, he’d need a pretty darn good reason for that. And she was pretty sure he wouldn’t bother poisoning a whole lake or inland sea.

Sne sniffed the remnants of what Chidi had been experimenting with. She couldn’t really call it anything else, because he was serious. It wasn’t playing around... but it sure didn’t look like much of anything.

It smelled like something was missing. She couldn’t quite place why. How odd. How very odd indeed.

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Trying to cut something too miniscule to be seen would have been a bigger problem if Chidi could see. It wasn’t exactly simpler without sight, but he didn’t weigh himself down with figuring out how close he was to doing what he wished. He either was successful in his cuts, or he was not. ‘Close’ meant nothing.

He really couldn’t comprehend structures smaller than a certain size. There were also huge issues with air particles slamming into whatever he was trying to cut at first. But if he let himself get bogged down in the details, he’d never get anywhere. If his master had been around to ask for advice, he could guess it would have been along the lines of ‘just cut it’.

So he did that.Nnêw n0vel chapters are published at novelhall.com

It really wasn’t an issue anymore. He could cut what he wanted. Any one thing, at least. Maybe two, or ten, or a hundred or thousand things along a path. All of those numbers were practically the same compared to what he was actually dealing with. Same with a million or a billion. That’s what happened when you wanted to cut individual particles.

A sword slashed. Chidi smiled. And Aconite forgot all about everything around her as she swirled energy within her, locking memories in her brain. Alone, it wouldn’t be enough for Augmentation, but she had many other insights already.

She subconsciously moved forward towards her waste barrel. What she did would have been incredibly foolish if she hadn’t immunized herself against everything she used- even those things that were normally impossible to develop a resistance to.

She buried her head in the powder and transformed it. It came naturally to her. A rush of energy filled her. Then she spent the next several minutes catching the now extremely potent toxins before they swirled away on the wind and devastated the local ecosystem. Chidi helped too, of course, slicing the winds that were most problematic.

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Despite their prominence in the Scarlet Alliance, neither Timothy nor Catarina were frequently in the public eye. Of course, that didn’t mean people weren’t paying attention to their activities. For security reasons they attempted to keep the movements of most people private, though the Scarlet Alliance rarely managed anything more than preventing such news from being precise and current.

Too many people were interested to entirely obfuscate most things, and they merely did their best to keep enemy spies from having information more recent than a few weeks. Many cultivators would feel that such information was quite timely, but the Scarlet Alliance tended to work on shorter timescales than that.

If they truly needed to, they could slip away on a private vessel, avoiding populated areas. But the thing they were trying to keep secret wasn’t something that affected national security interests. Nor was it entirely secret. They just avoided making any sort of announcement.

They chose their timing based specifically around Chidi departing on a training expedition. But he returned somewhat earlier than expected- and came straight to see them.

Obviously they weren’t going to refuse him entry.

“Aconite broke through to Augmentation!” he said excitedly. Obviously the two of them had already felt that from the wolf standing alongside him.

“Congratulations,” Timothy said, nodding. “It’s difficult, especially as you haven’t had a proper master, and very few of merit along a similar path.”

Catarina agreed. “It’s really something. Nobody could have expected much faster.”

Aconite sniffed. Chidi tilted his head.

It wasn’t possible for Catarina to hide anything without making it obvious she was hiding something. So she’d gone for the most subtle approach she could.

Chidi looked like he was trying to say something. Catarina could imagine that if her son had eyes, they would be locked on her lower torso.

“I- was that what it was for?” Chidi was flabbergasted. Surprised, certainly, but not upset. “You could have just... wow.”

The two parents smiled.