Chapter 841: Goodbye Time Looper (Patreon)

A/N

Thank you all for the kind words on yesterday's post. I had felt a lot of anxiety prior to writing it, but I am very glad that I opened up to you all. I am very blessed to have such supportive readers!

Chapter 841: Goodbye Time Looper

Even though it came as a surprise to see the former Skybound living life on a farm with a former Lightweaver, I could figure out why Kal had gone out to search for him.

Li Bin was many things, but I wouldn’t necessarily class him as an evil person. He had been in a difficult situation and had decided to follow orders rather than question them. That wasn’t inexcusable, considering the destruction it would have caused had Hiron’s plan succeeded. But from my past experience with him, I knew that Li Bin was open to putting behind cultivation and its politics to live a simple life where he didn’t need to hurt anyone.

And I guess with Li Bin’s natural influence over plants, which I had sensed when I had first met him but still didn’t understand, there wasn’t a better partner in farming for Kal than the one that plant-life served.

“There’s no need to do that,” I said, helping the middle-aged-looking man back to his feet whilst conveniently moving past the question that would be too complex to answer. “A normal greeting, like hi, is good enough for me.”

The former Rank 5 clearly didn’t know what to do, he just stood there looking between me and Kal, struggling to accept what he was seeing with his own eyes. Like most, he had heard the stories about me, but he probably never expected to see me in person. I was like a myth to the people of the world, despite still walking amongst them.

“You…you saved us all,” he said quietly, struggling to meet my eyes. “You created a new sun…”

“It wasn’t just me,” I clarified. “There were quite a few of us fighting for you all. Like Kal, he had lived through something much worse than me. If I’m being fair, I got the easy end of it. He deserves more credit than anyone else.”

“Do not listen to anything he has to say,” Kal waved a mud-stained hand in a dismissive motion. “The boy has a habit of doing this.”

“What do I have a habit of doing?”

“You can’t take a compliment without turning red,” the former elder folded his arms. “It must be a medical condition. Li Bin, the day after the sun went up, thousands bowed to him, and he tried to physically lift the Head Monk off the floor to make it stop."

My head snapped towards Kal, he was the last one that I had expected jokes from, the man was usually too serious to waste his time with what he would have deemed ‘pointless’. It seemed that farmer Kal had a sense of humour, unfortunately, it was at my expense.

“I'm going to go play with the goats. They were nicer to me...”

“He also cried.”

“I did not—”

“Everyone cried,” Kal cut in, patting my shoulder, which only made me turn a deeper shade of red. “It was that sort of afternoon. There is nothing to be embarrassed about.”

From the twitching of Li Bin’s mouth, he was trying very hard to keep it all under control out of respect for me, but from the way his body shook, I could tell it was a losing game.

“Go on,” I sighed. “Laugh. Everyone else does.”

He laughed, and he laughed so much that he had to place his hands on his knees. Honestly, I didn’t mind because that broke the last of it, and after that he was able to speak to me properly, which was all I had wanted.

***

When Kal was halfway through showing me the water channel, we heard a terrible noise that made us all tense up.

The goats were screaming, all seven of them were hitting the far corner of the pen, trying to merge with the wood. Turnip was the only one standing her ground, her head low, her front hoof digging into the ground as she stared down the grey-brown thing that was coming through the grass.

I didn’t really have a name for it. It was the size of a large dog, it had a long body and a flat head, and there were short blunt horns curving back from the skull. From what made me tense up more than its unusual appearance was the thin gold energy threading through its muscles.

With a frown, I moved my hand to act even though it looked like Yggy was already prepared to defend its new friends. We never got the chance to make a move because Kal stepped past me and looked down at the animal with that calm, assessing gaze that reminded me of his old self.

A wave of pressure rippled out from his body, flattening the grass in a perfect circle and pushing the water in the channel back up its own slope. The beast stopped so hard that its back legs slid out from under it. It scrambled, got its feet, and went back through the treeline at a speed that left a torn line through the undergrowth.

When the pressure dissipated, the grass came back up, the water followed its natural path, the animals returned to their playful state, and Kal picked up a water jug to take a swig out of it like nothing had happened.

“I am sorry that you had to see that,” he said, water dribbling down his chin. “It has been growing bolder. That is the third time this week.”

“I thought you said you had given up being a cultivator…”

“I have.” He poured the rest of the water along the row. "But I never said I had given up on being alive."

That made sense to me. After all, Kal had lived in a time loop for who knew how many years, that experience had taught him that power was necessary to survive, and without it you were at the mercy of others. That didn’t seem like something the former elder would be comfortable with, so he would always make sure that even if he didn’t become the most powerful being in the world, he would remain as someone that nobody would want to cross.

This was the trope where a powerful mage retires at the end of the story, buys himself some land, and tries to live a peaceful life. Yet it never ends up being that simple. The story doesn’t end. Trouble finds him whether he wanted it or not, but I trusted that Kal would be able to deal with it.

If anything, I felt sorry for those foolish enough to challenge him.

***

After Kal had turned his focus back on the rows, my gaze turned to the treeline where that thing had disappeared into.

Humans hadn’t been the only ones affected by my actions, the entire world had, that included the spirit beasts. They no longer had the poisoned wells to drink from, so they had dropped to being close to ordinary animals, but not quite since they still had their physical advantages that years of evolution had bestowed upon them.

However, the difference was what would come next.

If a human wanted to grow in power, they needed to learn how to do so. That required a lot of time, effort, and practice. As for animals and plants, they didn’t need any of that. They were adaptable. All they had to do was stand in front of the holy light and let it go into them. But animals were special in that they could devour others to increase their progression if they got the opportunity to do so. This meant that even though the humans had the Head Monk on their side, the most powerful populations in the world right now were other than humans.

From the countless novels that I had read back on Earth, I had a sinking premonition about a possible future of this world, a very likely one if I was being pragmatic. As the beasts rapidly increased their cultivation, they would drive the humans into walled settlements, and beast tides would become a daily occurrence rather than a monthly one. There would be whole regions marked off on maps, no-man's-land, somewhere humans were forbidden to enter, and those who did would never return.

I had guessed that it would take a half-dozen years before this world had monsters again, but there was a good chance these monsters would not be human. Monsters in the truest sense of the world.

“Master, calm down,” Azure piped up. “That isn’t your problem to solve.”

“I know…”

“If you did know, then why are you making that face?”

“Face?” I blinked innocently. “I’m not making a face.”

“You’re not fooling me,” Azure continued. “You’re making that face you make when you decide this is somehow your fault and that you need to deal with it, but you can’t keep doing that. You have to trust the others.”

My inner world spirit had pointed out a bad habit that I had fallen into, which was that I tended to take everything upon myself. But this wasn’t my responsibility to carry. There were many competent people native to this place, and I was sure that more ‘heroes’ would appear as time passed. They would have their own stories to create. They didn’t need me. I had friends back in my own world who needed me.

“You're right.” I let out a long breath. “I won’t worry about it.”

“Say it again, slower.”

"Don't push it." I watched Li Bin coax a hen back through the shed door with two fingers and a lot of patience. "But I’ll admit that trusting people is easy to say, but a lot harder in practice."

“Then practise.”

***

When the time came to leave, the sun was going orange over the ridge while Kal walked me to the gate in silence.

“Ke Yin,” he said, stopping at the post and turning to look at me properly. “This isn't your world.”

“I noticed,” I replied with a smile. “Mine never had two suns.”

“I am being serious,” he shook his head as the hand on the gate tensed up. “From what you showed me, you got thrown into a body that was not yours, in a place you had never heard of, in a loop that had nothing to do with you.”

I nodded, remembering the first time I had woken up in the body of a dead teen as an arrow tried to pierce my skull. It had been a disorientating and traumatic experience. It was strange realising that it had only been over a year ago. The time loop really distorted my perception of time. It almost felt like I had been here for decades.

“You didn’t owe us anything,” he continued. “This is my home. I had to keep fighting no matter what I went through. I didn’t have a choice. I was trapped in a time loop. But you…you could have left and never returned, yet you didn’t…”

The question of why was unspoken, but I understood.

“I did what anyone should have done,” I gave the same answer that I had been giving the past few days.

“Most people wouldn't.”

“That's what Beric said.” I sighed. “And Cairan. And Thorn. All of you have clearly been comparing notes.”

“It is because It is true and you keep refusing to hear it." He let go of the gate and looked me deep in my eyes. “I wanted to say thank you…if it had not been for you, I don’t know if I ever would have succeeded. I would probably be stuck in that time loop now, until there was no loop to protect us.”

For the first time since meeting Kal, his expression was completely unguarded. The fear, the trauma, everything he had experienced was laid bare before me. I saw insecurities that I had never expected to see from a former demi-god. It was telling that no matter how far one climbed the mountain of cultivation, there would always be some humanity left inside.

“Y-you’re welcome, Master,” I whispered, meeting his gaze with a similar unguarded expression. “And thank you for taking me as your student. Thank you for everything that you had taught me.”

“You taught me more than mere skills,” Kal shook his head with a small smile. “One more thing. If you ever come back to this world, for any reason, at any hour, you come here first. There will always be a home for you here. Just be careful of Turnip, she will eat your clothes, and I will not apologise for her."

The open invitation made my throat close up and a warm feeling clench around my heart. Blinking fast to keep my emotions from spilling over, I held out my hand towards him with a shaky smile.

“I’ll remember that,” I promised as his hand enveloped mine in a tight grip.

As I walked past the gate, halfway down the track, I could still hear the goats, probably complaining that their vine friend had left them, and I couldn’t help but take one last look back. What I saw was a former Rank 8 Lightweaver arguing with a female, stubborn goat, while a former Rank 5 Skybound chased after a chicken that had escaped the pen to race in the direction of the road towards freedom.

Taking a deep breath, I shook my head and turned towards my own destination. There was one person left to see, an old lunatic who had created the vine that was now purring in my inner world in anticipation. Honestly, this was going to be difficult, because he was the first master that I had ever taken since waking up as a nobody in a Cultivation World.

It was time to say goodbye to Elder Molric...

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