Chapter 843: Goodbye Master Molric (Patreon)

The memories of how Professor Thara had explained to me what a Cerulean Vein was and how blue sun cultivation worked were fresh in my mind. Unfortunately, she didn’t remember a second of it. To her, I was a myth. The man who saved the world. So, her reaction didn’t surprise me in the slightest.

“S-Saint—” her eyes widened, and she froze like a deer in headlights. “I…your…I didn’t…Master, you didn’t say that the Saint—”

“Hey, don’t point fingers at me,” Elder Molric cut in. “I didn’t know he was coming.”

“You didn’t know? But he’s your student. He’s the Saint—”

“He’s a boy who stole my vine.” The elder yawned.

Shaking her head, Professor Thara realised that she still hadn’t bowed. She attempted to, but then remembered about the crate, so she tried to put it down, but it missed the table in her rush. Finally, on the third attempt, she managed to place the crate onto the table, then she put her hands together, and bowed so low her glasses fell off.

Before they could hit the floor, I caught them and handed them back.

As she straightened up, she saw the vine, and all the pain drained out of her face and was replaced with pure awe. “That's it,” she whispered. “That’s the vine. The one that everyone from all four corners of the world saw how it devoured the two suns…”

Without seeming to realise, she took a step forward in what looked like a trance.

“Can I?” she asked, her hand reaching forward.

I didn’t say anything. It was Yggy’s choice to make. The vine slowly unwound from the elder’s chest and turned its tip towards her. It considered the request like it was a decision that would decide the world’s fate, then it flopped one loop into her open hands.

“Ahhh,” Thara let out a breath as she turned it over, running her thumb along a vein. “Beautiful. It’s beautiful. The way the gold is integrated into the structure, holding the red and blue energies together. They should be tearing each other apart in there, but they’re somehow just sitting there getting along.”

“I still don’t understand it to this day,” Elder Molric shook his head. “My experiments didn’t bring back anything worth mentioning. I even tried to ask it, but the stubborn little thing won’t give up its secrets.”

“But Master, it…it doesn’t talk.”

“That's no excuse. I know plenty of people who are mute and can answer questions. The vine simply refuses to!”

While Thara continued to stroke Yggy, the vine noticed something on the table. It was Constantine flexing in its direction. Like a cat that had caught sight of its prey, Yggy slowly slid out of her hands, its entire attention focused on its rival.

 “Oh no,” I sighed, flashbacks of their battles coming to mind. “Not this again.”

The two plant beings were locked in a standoff. On one side, there was Constantine with all of its six muscular arms up and tensed, calling out the challenge. On the other side, Yggy had lowered its tip and had gone completely still.

For about four full seconds, the cottage was silent.

The silence was broken by a spinning barrage of needles that the cactus fired from across the room, the vine dodged it and shot forward towards the pot, and the two of them crashed into the corner behind the hearth.

“Shouldn’t we do something?” Thara asked, her eyes moving between me and the elder.

“No,” we said together, which seemed to startle her, if her eyes widening were any indication.

Feeling bad for the girl, I explained briefly how this was normal behaviour for the two, and that getting involved would only make things worse. What I didn’t say was that since this was the last time they would probably ever see each other, I wanted them to have the goodbye that they wanted, even if it was one last battle.

“It's time, woman,” Elder Molric suddenly called out, making the professor jump. “Get into position.”

With a confused expression on my face, I watched as Thara nodded and sat cross-legged on the cleared patch of floor with her spine straight and her palms up.

“Erm. What's going on?”

“What’s going on is that your master is a useless cripple,” Elder Molric replied, slapping his own chest, then slapped the blanket where his legs stopped, three times, for emphasis. “I can’t hold a spark of gold if you nailed it to me. I thought it was all over for me, but she came knocking on my door one day and volunteered. Can you believe that?”

Yes. I could definitely believe that. Before she’d become a professor at the Blue Sun Academy, a red-robed lunatic had snatched her and imprisoned her in an underground lab, all because he needed a Lightweaver assistant. Most people who had been kidnapped would have hated the man who had done it, but somehow, after watching the elder spend months chasing impossible theories, the girl had fallen for him instead, and she had fallen hard. Then, when my master no longer needed her, he had abandoned her, leaving behind a woman who would do anything to succeed in the experiments the elder could not, just so she could find an excuse to make him acknowledge her.

However, to be on the safe side, I reached out with my spiritual sense to make sure that Master Molric hadn’t found some way to supernaturally make her into a willing test subject. When my scan found nothing, I shrugged. If she wanted to risk her life for love, who was I to stop her?

“What's the experiment?” I asked, genuinely curious what ideas the elder had in mind to recover his power.

For the first time since the vale, the restless glitter that the elder was known for lit up in his eyes.

“I took the idea from you,” he said, pointing the chalk at my nose. “Your Dharma Vessel has no shape of its own, so what it does instead is it borrows. I saw how it wore that monstrous sect master of yours, and then it wore my vine. What it does is it takes the form of a bond.” He gripped the arms of the chair as his breathing grew heavy. “So, the plan is for her to build her avatar, but to build it into my shape. My runes, my pathways, everything that I have. And then just like Yggy did, I will step into it!”

Honestly, I had to admit, that was a brilliant idea. It was a little unnerving that while the elder had been crippled on the floor, he had been watching a vine eat two suns, and he was taking notes. But I guess the unhinged mind was the one that brought out ideas that turned out to be genius. And unlike my Dharma Vessel, which he was correct that it had no proper form, if professor Thara’s form was the elder, then it would allow Master Molric to merge with it for long periods of time, if not permanently, which wasn’t something Yggy could do with my avatar.

“Master,” I frowned as a problem came to mind. “If you merge into a Dharma Vessel, you won't have a real body.”

“Boy.” The old man threw his head back and laughed until it turned into coughing. “Look at me. Do I have a real body now? I'm a cripple in a barrow.”

Well, I couldn’t argue with that. The elder didn’t have much when it came to quality of life at the moment, and if the professor succeeded in having a grumpy old spirit merging with her cultivation, then she would get what she always wanted. She and Elder Molric would be together forever. It was a strange thing for sure, but this was the cultivation world…

The experiment was in the earlier stages at the moment, so unfortunately I wouldn’t get the chance to see how it turned out because it was now the time to say my goodbyes and leave.

“Thank you, Professor," I said, making her eyebrows scrunch in confusion. “For something you don't remember doing. I'm not going to explain it, but you taught me something once that helped me get to where I am today, and I've never had the chance to say so.”

Her mouth opened, yet nothing came out. And I sympathized with her. How does one reply to something like that? Leaving her in that state, I went to the corner to find that Constantine had Yggy in a hold and Yggy had three loops around the pot. Neither of them was winning, but I could tell that they weren’t going all out. This was their way of showing their love for each other. This was their way of saying goodbye.

“Constantine.”

The cactus rotated to face me and flexed all six arms in a slow ripple, still holding on.

"Yggy might be struggling to say this,” I said, carefully patting what constituted as a head for it. “But the vine will miss you.”

It slowly let go and turned its attention to the vine, which was staring at it awkwardly, then they embraced in what looked like a plant version of a hug. This brought a genuine smile to my face. Honestly, I would have loved to bring Constantine into my inner world, but I couldn’t do that to Master Molric, not again. The elder needed someone to argue with, and usually the only ones able to deal with him were plants.

Turning around, there was one person left to say goodbye to, and that was an old man in a chair. I crouched down in front of him so we were level, and for once he didn't say anything to fill the silence. I tried to say something, but my throat had closed up, and I had to wait a minute for it to open.

“You…” I began, my voice coming out in pieces. “You were the first master that I had taken in my cultivation journey. It was a decision that I constantly wondered if it was the right thing, or if it would get me killed one day, especially with how you wanted me to experiment on me…”

A soft smile appeared on the elder’s face as memories that I had shared with him of the previous loops crossed his mind.

“But I’m really glad that I picked you over all the other elders in the academy,” I continued, blinking rapidly in a futile effort to control my emotions from spilling over. “You taught me without holding anything back. You didn’t try to steal my success from me. I wish I could stay here and help you with all those experiments you had in mind for us to work together…”

I paused to take a deep breath and looked him up and down, taking in the shell of a man that sat before me.

“I want you to know,” I said. “If you’re not able to find a way to recover, I will come back here if I find anything that can return everything that you have lost. That’s my promise to you.”

“You underestimate me, boy,” the elder laughed. “I'll have solved it by winter, and you'll arrive with your little cure, and I will be extremely rude about it."

“I hope so,” I whispered, a weak smile on my face.

Seeing my expression, the laughter went out of him, and he reached up with one shaking hand and got hold of my shoulder. There was no strength in the grip at all, but he held on anyway and looked into my eyes.

“Ke Yin,” he said quietly. This was the first time he had said my name because in all of the other loops, he had only known me as Tomas, the village boy. “I don’t understand. Back at the vale, you had every reason to let me go. They all told you to, and they were right to do so." His eyes glistened, so he blinked a few times before he continued. “Nobody had ever chosen me before, not my academy, not one of my disciples, and I don’t blame them. I never gave any of them cause to. But you did, even when it could have cost you everything."

“Master, of course I did, I—”

“Thank you,” he cut in, his grip on me tightening. “Thank you for my life. Thank you for the memories that I had forgotten. Thank you for everything.”

For a few moments, we just stayed like that in silence. Despite not saying anything, a lot was conveyed. Then finally his eyes left mine, and they dropped to the floor where a vine had come out of the corner and was sitting in front of the wheelchair.

“Don’t worry,” the old man forced a smile on his face. “I didn’t forget you. Even though you did leave me!”

The surge of emotion bursting through the soul bond made me turn away. It only felt right to give them a private moment. This wasn’t easy for anyone. Elder Molric had created Yggy, that wasn’t a bond that anyone could compete with.

The elder held out his arm.

Without hesitation, the vine wound one careful loop around the old man’s wrist, and let out a rustling sound that created a melancholy melody that brought tears to the elder’s eyes.

“Don’t ask me that,” Molric said, his voice sounding rough. “You know I will miss you. But you were created to be useful, not sentimental. There’s nothing left for you to do here. No opportunities for you to grow. You already saved the world. What else is here for you? This old man isn’t enough of a reason for you to stay. See other worlds and grow. Make me more proud than I already am.”

Yggy held on tighter.

“I know,” he said. “I know. Go on."

He worked his wrist free himself, because the vine wasn’t going to do it, and he set his hand on the tip one last time and pushed it gently toward me. “Look after the boy for me,” he said. “He’s an idiot. He runs at things. And he saves people that don't deserve saving.”

Yggy came back across the floor and went up my sleeve until it disappeared into my inner world.

With one final look at the elder, I grabbed the latch on the door and pulled it open, only to come face to face with a barrage of purple that shot into the room with a speed that was seriously impressive for a farm animal.

“That’s it!” Thara shrieked from somewhere behind me. “That’s the chicken that was following me!”

“Boy, shut the door,” the elder shouted, even though the chicken had already forced its way through. “My house! It’s destroying my house!”

That was true. The mess, which the elder would have claimed was an organised mess, was now pure chaos. Jars were broken. Stacks of papers flew into the air. And in the middle stood a chicken that had decided this was now its house. But that wasn’t something the cactus would accept without a fight.

Constantine flexed all six arms, calling out a challenge to the intruder.

The chicken turned its head, and one purple eye locked onto the cactus. It let out a screech and shot forward, appearing in front of the cactus before Thara could catch it. Constantine got its guard up, but the chicken ignored it, instead it picked up the pot itself.

“CONSTANTINE!” Elder Molric roared as the farm animal went out of the door with the cactus swinging underneath it.

Constantine was punching the bird in the throat with everything it had, but that didn’t make any difference. Whatever enhancements Master Molric had given it, it allowed the chicken to absorb all the strikes without any difficulty.

“I'll get it back!” Thara chased after them, glasses in one hand, robe hitched up in the other. “Don’t go anywhere!”

“Where am I going to go, woman?” my master yelled. “I have no legs!”

With a sigh, he sat back against the chair with paper still settling around the wheels of his chair, and he started cursing the chicken, the chicken's mother, and then himself for giving the animal these supernatural abilities.

“I’m sorry, Master,” I said, when there was a gap. “That was my fault. I opened the door.”

“Don’t apologise, boy.” The elder waved his hand in a dismissive motion. “We both know you could have stopped this whenever you wanted. But I know what you are trying to tell me. That I shouldn’t experiment on the animals. Fine. Fine. I got your message. I hope you are happy.”

Holding back a smile, I closed the door behind us, glad that the elder understood. There was no problem with the former Skybound retiring in a mortal village as long as he didn’t negatively affect the lives of those around him. That included experimenting on a farm animal. As for Constantine, I wasn’t worried about the potted plant. The main reason I didn’t act is because I didn’t sense any malicious intent from the chicken, it was simply here to cause some harmless trouble, there was no need for me to ruin its fun.

As I walked through the village, my thoughts turned to Elder Molric.

During the journey here, I thought I had come to grieve a cultivator, but my master had never actually cared about cultivation. The most important thing in his life had always been his experiments, and right now he had a goal greater than anything he had before. So, in some ways, he was more excited to be alive right now than when he was a Rank 7 elder in an academy.

Honestly, I didn’t know how his story would end.

Maybe he would succeed, and years later there would be a golden avatar wearing an old man’s face, and the continent would have something new to be terrified of. Or maybe he’d spend whatever he had left as a crippled mortal in a mud village, shouting at people who thought he was a ghost, while a lovestruck woman wrote every word of it down.

Regardless of the ending, it would be his own, and that was all that I'd wanted for him.

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