The Jester of Apocalypse

At every circle of Keyishin, there were dedicated areas for teleportation platforms. These were usually where the overwhelming majority of people arrived when they teleported to the capital.

However, for the peak sects, these portal zones were nothing but the commoner alternative.

Every major sect within the capital's center had its dedicated teleportation platforms. Many sects also had them outside the capital, but that was a different story.

Teleportation platforms weren’t allowed to be placed too close to one another. If too many were too close, the spacial constructs could be disrupted, and teleportation could fail.

Building private platforms that wouldn’t cause issues required costly materials. Even that was chump change to those who lived at the true peak of society within the Yixine empire.

On one such platform, in the courtyard of the Kurlore sect, a cloaked man appeared. He was welcomed by a heavily armored elder of the Kurlore sect.

The elder removed his helmet, revealing a relatively young face beneath, and nodded to the cloaked figure.

They set off toward the main building of the Kurlore sect. It was unbelievably overdecorated. Motifs of shields and armored statues littered every inch of the shiny white building.

Peak sects within the capital had a reputation to maintain, and this went doubly so for the great four sects.

The Kurlore sect prided themselves on their exceptional defensive arts. Although they did serve as defenders of the people, they weren’t a strictly righteous sect.

Publicly, the Kurlore sect was utilitarian.

The two men walked over to a secret underground chamber. The elder opened the door, revealing a portal—an entrance to a hidden mystical realm.

The two men entered, encountering the dark, dry, and desolate environment within.

Not too far from the entrance, demons sat and stared at the two men.

Kurlore was publicly a utilitarian sect. Privately, however, it was an entirely different story.

The cloaked man removed his hood, revealing his pristine golden hair and sharp green eyes.

“Greetings, servants of the silent one. I am Ilkivir, the third disciple, and I come bearing news from your master.”

The demons perked up.

“We have a mission of the highest priority.”

***

“Falken?” Harel asked Marven.

“I used whatever when I was put on the spot, but I quite like it. That was my family name from back when I was a mortal.

Harel was surprised to hear that.

“You mean Zearthorn wasn’t your actual family name?”

“You know, I even contemplated changing my first name as well. Marven’s are stereotyped as hicks and peasants. But I decided against it as I learned that the name wasn’t nearly as well known outside of where I grew up.”

Marven, Harel, and Gabrias were busy constructing their new sect premises. At first, Marven worked in awkward silence as Gabrias gave vague pointers, and Harel stood at the side, uncertain how to help.

But as time went on, the tension eased. Engaging in cooperative manual labor was a great way to build a team. Harel was delegated to simple errands, Gabrias actively designed and planned the building as they worked, and Marven did most of the heavy lifting.

Marven wasn’t surprised to discover just how competent Gabrias was. It wasn’t shocking, given that he worked in a high-end construction company. Still, in Marven’s opinion, Gabrias was easily skilled enough to do serious work even in the capital.

According to Gabrias, the reason why was that the Bentheta sect had invested a large amount of money and resources into building their company for the sake of having a high-value spy group.

This resulted in a lot of resources and tutelage being provided to Gabrias.

Marven knew this was far from enough to result in such tremendous competence. Gabrias had a real knack for this sort of work, and it was evident that he was highly talented.

At first, they had disassembled their old building. Then they prepared the foundation for their new one. It was going to be designed in a way that accounted for potential expansion in the future.

The foundation itself had been done in a way that allowed relatively easy expansion both underground, above, and to the sides. So far, it was looking like a fairly standard stone building. Decorations could always come afterward, so they would focus on the basic shape and design for now.

Throughout this work, Gabrias grew more and more relaxed until he eventually found himself chatting with Marven and Harel. It was likely a force of habit, given that he always spoke with his coworkers.

Regardless of how this had happened, the simple act of casual conversation had shattered the thick sheet of ice hanging between them.

They talked about how ridiculous this entire thing was, about Neave and the capital. Harel and Marven were surprised to learn that Gabrias didn’t think too negatively of Neave. This was quite shocking at first, but his explanation made sense.

Neave could have killed him. In fact, it would have made sense for Neave to take Gabrias’ life back when he had discovered him. But he was spared. He was spared and granted the position of a sect master, although a rather dubious one.

Gabrias was strangely hopeful that things would be alright. This may have been the force of habit speaking through him. But as he conversed with them, he became more interested in playing up this persona of a mysterious sect master.

By all means, Gabrias was a massive fan of practical jokes. And at least in concept, the idea of a bronze path cultivator pretending to be some lofty master was quite funny.

The mismatched trio had learned much about one another during their work together. Harel and Gabrias were shocked to learn that Marven had only become a cultivator at around the age of sixty. Given how late he had started, it was an unbelievable achievement that he could reach such heights.

They asked him about how he had managed to achieve this.

“I want to say it was through my genius or perseverance, but luck played a major role. It all started when I domed a stray abominid with a hoe. It had a nearly round core that held an endurance spirit power. I was offered a lot of money for it. The man who acted as the receptionist advised me not to sell the core but to use it for myself. He even taught me how to cultivate. Once I broke into the foundation realm, I became the greatest farmhand anyone in my small village had ever seen. Endurance wasn’t the greatest or most desirable spirit power. 

“Taking a spirit power that could quickly and reliably dispatch an opponent was much better. But for an old mortal man at the end of his natural life span, it was exactly what was required to even stand a chance of walking down the path. I would never have become a cultivator if not for the shape of the core, the specific power, or the incredibly kind man that helped me out. And this was just how lucky I got at the very beginning.”

He told them more about his journey, how he had stumbled upon a rich mystical realm, discovered another expensive core, stumbled upon many treasures, and barely got away with his life intact, time and time again. He told them how he found the corpse of what he assumed to be a long-dead diamond ranker, which was how he found the cursed book.

Numerous coincidences and strange occurrences took a frail old man from a farm hand to a legendary cultivator.

But his meeting with the emperor was the most incredible thing that happened to him.

According to Marven, by coincidence, he met the emperor while participating in a large-scale monster hunt. They had a conversation, and according to Marven, this was where he had stopped just barely getting by with luck and started genuinely growing as a cultivator.

However, he refused to disclose the contents of their conversation, much to the annoyance of Gabrias and Harel.

As the crew cheerfully went about building their new sect, Neave once again made his way to his underground laboratory.

***

Neave was somewhat satisfied with his first library visit. He had made a connection to someone in his young master form and devoured a ton of books.

He might have overdone it a bit with the books if he was being entirely honest. Although it was all in his head, the knowledge felt too dry and raw. It felt as if he had taken the books and shoved them in his head, but very little of the actual expertise had adequately integrated.

As he started doing alchemy, he was infinitely frustrated by how long it took him to remember essential things. There was so much information to sift through that not even with his enhanced cognitive abilities was he capable of doing it on demand.

Neave wasn’t yet doing anything too crazy because he wanted to familiarize himself with elemental alchemy first.

Among the most important things he learned were the qi techniques he had to use during alchemy. Alchemical qi techniques weren’t like the other types of qi techniques.

But they were utterly crucial to the process.

His first project was simply making a basic qi restoration potion.

Neave failed the first time he tried it. And the second. And the third as well.

It was only around the tenth attempt that he finally managed to succeed. He cried in joy and danced around, screaming like a lunatic.

His reaction was absurdly exaggerated, given that he hadn’t even spent twenty minutes on alchemy yet.

He rapidly grew in competence as he slowly picked apart the knowledge he had gained and properly integrated the rules, procedures, optimal methods, tricks, and tips into his alchemy.

He was frustrated at how ‘slowly’ he was learning alchemy. It wasn’t slow by any conceivable measure except his subjective opinion.

Neave was severely addicted to gaining more power. This much was evident. He personally thought that was entirely fine since it served his purposes.

As he sifted through his knowledge, he faced the frustrating world of contradictory information yet again.

Not even the most absurdly overpriced library in the entire realm was immune to scholarly disagreements. Neave quickly sifted through the useless knowledge and picked the more optimal choices.

Not even within two hours of starting, he had created a somewhat respectable qi restoration potion.

Out of all the spirit powers he had, it was his perception that played the most significant role in his rapid improvement. There were numerous different elements in interplay when putting the ingredients together.

The different types of qi and remnant spirit contained within the ingredients clashed aggressively and chaotically. As far as Neave could tell, the recipe for the basic potion was little more than just a relatively reliable sequence of steps that were likely to produce a consistent result.

That wasn’t good enough for him.

Now that he could create this potion the usual way, it was time to find a way to improve it.

Neave threw right about everything he could think of at the process and hoped something would stick. He tried putting liquid spirit into the mixture. All that seemed to do was dilute the remnant spirit within the ingredients.

Adding life force, qi, liquid spirit, and flooding it with ethereal spirit all had little success for various reasons.

The biggest one was quite simple. Any of these additions resulted in a fundamental shift to the process. This meant that the qi techniques he usually had to use at the different steps were no longer worth jack shit.

Neave could improve the quality of individual ingredients by imbuing them with life force or loading them with liquid spirit. However, when he had to use these ingredients, the same rules and standard procedures didn’t apply anymore. 

There was something of a makeshift ‘solution’ that Neave could employ here. Simply put, if he learned every alchemy qi technique, he could theoretically mix and match different techniques to compensate for the changes to the process.

Fuck that shit.

Even if that was theoretically possible, it was such a daunting task that Neave had no confidence he could achieve that within a year of work.

Neave thought of something.

Undoubtedly, it could take him as long as a year of work to do that.

Now, if only he had some convenient way to get as much time as needed.

Neave grinned.

***

Hunter was starting to get desperate. No, he was already hopeless. Now he was slowly entering the insane idea territory.

If I impregnated the daughter of someone important, would I be forced to take responsibility?

A genuinely idiotic idea indeed. Even he knew there was no way in hell that was a viable plan on any of the theoretical steps. But at this rate, he couldn’t think of anything besides leaving the capital and looking for a sect outside.

He would have to either cough up a lot of money for that or set off onto the bandit and monster-infested roads.

Hunter wasn’t hungry yet, given that he had some money on him. Unfortunately for him, the capital was brutally expensive, even in the outer circle. His petty pocket change won’t last him long.

He needed to find a solution fast, or he would be forced into taking desperate measures.

As he strolled around the outer edges of the capital, an unusual sight caught his eye. A bald construction worker was constructing a building single-handedly at jaw-dropping speed.

Hunter couldn’t help but wonder who this man was. As he looked around the premises of this building in construction, his mind froze.

Right next to this building was a young girl carrying construction materials from a large pile.

A young girl he immediately recognized.