Fighting to be Kind in a Cultivation World

As I walk through the area, I go through a particularly dark alleyway. My scan passes through the area and notices an abnormality along the far edge of this alleyway.

In one of the dilapidated buildings, within what appears to be an old toy shop, is a big spider trap.

Automatically, I stop and take a look at my surroundings. The area seemingly goes quiet with tension.

Gong did promise to help me with my training. Could this be one of the things she wanted to do?

Taking a closer look, it appears to be a spring-loaded trap, using a combination of hard and soft sticky webs. If triggered, it would capture the person in a very sticky, but thick web. Wrapping them tight.

As I extend my scan out, I can sense Going fast approaching. She approaches quickly but stops at a portion of the wall on her approach.

She triggers some type of trip-line, reaching all the way here.

It feels almost comical, how my scan follows the vibrations and pulling motion all the way to the eventual trap set in this alleyway. Directly behind me.

Apparently, the movies had it right with the rolling-ball trap, as a segment of the wall behind me breaks off and is covered in web, rolling into a ball shape.

When it starts rolling towards me, only one thought dominates my mindscape.

Is she actually trying to kill me?!

My abilities move into Overdrive, as I feel my body turning into a blur. I hear my tendons pop and burst as I fly down the alleyway. Quickly re-healing as I move. The pain of such an action doesn’t even register in the moment.

Surprisingly, I’m easily able to keep ahead of the ball, though I keep a lookout for any openings I can use to escape from it. The ball tears apart the buildings it’s squeezed between, as is it bumps back and forth between them.

I can see the wall coming up to meet me, right ahead of us, and I realize that this is the only chance I have to escape.

My scan also reveals Gong is waiting near the alleyway turn, which I could easily reach.

That’s most definitely a trap.

So instead, I used the intuition to determine the best angle to dive beneath the ball as it rolls down this alleyway. Aiming for the lower right corner, I dive for it, following the holographic pattern that shows up for me.

With plenty of space to spare, I make it under the ball before the turn comes up.

I can see Gong ready herself with a web trap in her hands, as the ball comes closer and closer to the wall. As it continues to barrel down the alleyway, I avoid all the webs that would trigger her knowing where I am and climb up the side of a solid building. I reached the top, just before it slams into the wall near her.

She freezes. I can sense her gulp, her head slowly turning towards the alleyway.

Warily, she peeks down the alleyway looking for any signs of, likely, my broken body.

Seeing nothing, she scrambles out into the devastated alley and looks desperately for any signs of crushed people. Seeing none, she heaves a sigh of relief before she freezes yet again. She gives a slow, measured pause and begins looking around suspiciously.

I give a slight movement away from her direction. Her head practically snaps over to me and I see her leap into the air. The ground crumples beneath her spider feet as she lifts off, all limbs splayed out, aimed into the side of the building. Within the span of a few seconds, she’s already in front of me.

Since I knew she was coming, I stood there in a battle stance, arming myself with the only thing I could find, a metal pipe.

She gives a look down at the metal pipe, raising an eyebrow.

“Come on. James, what would you do with that?”

I give a smirk to her, since it looks like there is something I could do against her.

Walking up to her casually, I tapped the segments between her legs and her body with my pipe. As I do so, she flinches.

“Ah, right. Pretty good point. Moving on though, how did you like the trap I set? Clever, right?”

She seems remarkably proud of herself, for someone almost got me killed.

I sigh.

I almost forgot how Gong gets when she’s excited about something. I have to say, though, this was pretty effective at getting me to be more responsive to threats.

And if I had gotten run over from something like that, I would have been able to heal, albeit painfully.

“Yeah, but don’t you think that was a little dangerous?”

She seems to look a little puzzled before answering me.

“I could be wrong, but I could have sworn you could heal pretty easily from something of this level…”

“Uhhh, somewhat. But it would be exceptionally painful to do so.”

She chuckles a bit, before shaking her head as part of her response.

“You want me to train you, but you weren’t ready for pain?

“I can assure you, James, you’ll wish you were more used to pain when your enemies hit you. At least when I hit or hurt you, I’ll still try to save you afterwards. Particularly with your ability, you should get used to pain and healing it on yourself.

“And don’t act dumb either. I know you know this is the best way to train your abilities. The only reason we’re not going through true pain tolerance training is because I’m worried about how, delicate… your mind is. So, we will take that side of things slowly.

“When you get into the cultivation world, you’ll learn very quickly how to manage it. This will just be an introductory course.”

I can feel myself gulp at the reminder.

That was silly of me to ask. Especially, as I’m the one that asked her to do this for me. Not only that, I already know that I can handle something at this level, as did she.

“Yeah, thanks Gong. Sorry about the silly question. I really appreciate you setting this up for me. Though, I have a question.”

I gesture to the destroyed and broken buildings around us.

“How did you know this area would be safe to do this around? And how did you know that this area would be the one that I will go through?”

“Oh, that’s easy to answer. Since you told us that your ability works off the fastest and safest routes, I just made every other route not as fast or safe as this one. The other ones are blocked off by my web, which will be cleaned up by the spiders.

“I used to do this sort of thing all the time, so most people are already used to it and just clear out of the area when I’m doing something. Though, I normally didn’t have anyone to test it on. For obvious reasons.”

Ah, right.

Gong’s scary.