Master of the System

Rachel frowned as she stared up at the sky. Recently, it felt like someone had been watching her, which to her, made no sense. As far as she knew, she was the strongest person in the world with strength at the peak of the soul-seed stage. If someone was spying on her, then it’d definitely have to be related to the floating text she had seen, the lines that had told her to be more in tune with justice. Or, it could be that moving star in the sky. It didn’t move like all the other stars, and it didn’t burn up like a comet did either. What was it?

Wings made of ice grew out of Rachel’s back, and a bulge appeared on her forehead, in between her eyebrows. It was a manifestation of her soul seed. With it, she would practically have unlimited spiritual energy. She flew into the air, flew past a cloud, heading straight for the unnatural, tiny star in the night sky. The air around her grew thin, but it didn’t matter. She didn’t need to breathe anymore, not with her soul seed manifested. The temperature dropped, but as a practitioner of the perfected Moon Lotus Cultivation Technique, how could she be afraid of the cold?

After she reached a certain point, there was a problem. Her wings weren’t working. They flapped, but they pushed against nothing, causing Rachel to frown. With a bit of testing, she found she could move herself by ejecting spiritual energy in the direction opposite of where she wanted to go. It was an interesting experience. No one had ever told her about this region of the world before; when she was younger, she had trained underwater, meditated in blocks of ice, combatted the heat of volcanoes with her icy spells, but never had she entered an environment devoid of air. It felt like the insides of her body were trying to leave through her skin, but with the help of her spiritual energy, nothing untoward happened.

It didn’t take long for Rachel to adapt to her new environment. She zipped through the void, heading towards the tiny star, which was actually much closer than she thought. It wasn’t a star at all. In fact, it looked very much like Grandpa Vremya’s flying whale golem. A grim expression appeared on Rachel’s face. Which faction was capable of creating something like this? Was it due to the technology and teachings Grandpa Vremya gave out to everyone willing to pay? Either way, it didn’t matter. Rachel drew her sword and zipped towards the flying golem, beams of spiritual energy shooting out of the soles of her feet, propelling her through space like a rocket.

Upon seeing her approach, the whale golem flashed, and a barrier materialized around it. Rachel snorted and swung her sword. To her surprise, the barrier remained intact. Only a barrier meant for guarding sects could block one of her strikes. As far as she could tell, there was no way a sect-defending formation could fit inside the tiny golem. A gleam appeared in Rachel’s eyes, and her heart thumped loudly in her chest. What if there was a soul-seed expert inside the golem? That was the most likely scenario. Rachel swung her sword again, concentrating her spiritual energy along its edge. She also ejected a huge amount of spiritual energy from the back of her hand and elbow, forcing her swinging sword to accelerate even further. There wasn’t any sound when Rachel’s sword collided against the barrier, but the aftereffect was still noticeable. Rachel and the whale golem were pushed away from each other due to the force with the whale traveling even further than Rachel.

A smile appeared on Rachel’s lips. With that strike, she practically confirmed the existence of a soul-seed cultivator inside. How else could her attack be blocked so easily? However, she even though she severed her emotions, she still felt a great disdain for barriers ever since watching Grandpa Vremya whip out a turtle shell to bully new disciples. Hiding behind defenses, waiting passively, that’s not how a cultivator should behave. A cultivator had to be brave enough to fight the heavens! As such, Rachel took out her secret weapon and flew towards the whale golem.

The golem flashed, and the barrier shone with an even brighter light. If Rachel struck it now, she’d be the one who’d have a disadvantage in the encounter. Too bad for the golem, Rachel had no intentions of swinging her sword at it. With her secret weapon held in her hand, she thrust her arm forward. Like a bubble touching a twig, the barrier popped without a sound. Rachel put away her sharpened piece of chalk that she had received oh so long ago from the illusionary text in her vision. With the way ahead unobstructed, Rachel entered the whale golem. To her surprise, the entrance was located at the golem’s head, where a blowhole would’ve been if it were a real whale. It was the same location of the entrance to Grandpa Vremya’s whale golem. Could Grandpa Vremya be related to this golem? If he wanted to spy on her, there was no need to do it from beyond the clouds. Since he became an elder, his residence wasn’t even that far away from hers.

***

Roger was terrified. Behind him, there were six other pilots who were equally as terrified. The mission was easy, and the technological level of the natives was extremely pitiful. They hadn’t even mastered the usage of horseless carriages. Since that was the case, there should’ve been absolutely no danger for the crew since they were in space, far, far out of reach, but who could’ve predicted there was a monstrous woman capable of flying through space like a humanoid rocket while wearing normal, everyday robes!? Even the soul-seed cultivators from Roger’s homeland would be wary of wandering into outer space without a suit! Could this woman be even stronger than a soul-seed cultivator? Maybe she was a false immortal. It was certainly impossible for anything less to pop the ship’s barrier.

“I don’t think we’ll be surviving this,” one of Roger’s copilots said. “I’m sending a report back to the homeland. Perhaps they’ll be able to retrieve our corpses within the next thousand years.”

“Don’t be so negative,” another pilot said. “There’s enough escape pods for all of us. If we scatter, at least half of us will get away.”

“Get away and go where?”

“We’ll have to fly the pods down and infiltrate their world,” Roger said with a grim expression. Escaping into space would be pointless. The pods didn’t have space stabilizers. It would be impossible to return from the way they came; not to mention, there wasn’t a lot of fuel in the escape pods. The only path of survival was to land on the foreign planet and set up a signal beacon. Once it was established, their homeland would theoretically be able to locate them. Reinforcements wouldn’t be that far behind. It was too expensive to equip all scouting ships with warping technology, but to bring a fleet towards an established beacon? The government would be more than willing to fund the costs.

“Let’s hurry it up,” a pilot said. “I already deleted all the essential information and initiated the self-destruction program. With luck, that false immortal will be blasted to smithereens.”