Chapter 578: Cultivation is Creation - Chapter 573: How Many Seconds?
Sun Tao’s consciousness came back to him slowly, it was like he was being pulled upward from somewhere very deep and dark, everything in his body hurt in a way that he had never experienced before in all his five hundred years of cultivation.
His head was pounding with pain that would not stop, his ribs screamed at him every time he tried to breathe even a little bit, and his spiritual channels felt like someone had smashed them apart and then put them back together in a hurry without knowing what they were doing.
When he finally opened his eyes, he wished that he hadn’t done that because the sun hit him right in the face and made everything worse. He was lying on packed dirt somewhere near the city walls, an abandoned lot by the look of it, with trash scattered everywhere around him and the smell of rotting food and waste making the air almost impossible to breathe.
He tried to push himself up and his arms just gave out under him, and he fell back down immediately. His body wouldn’t listen to him, it felt like it belonged to somebody else. He tried again, and again after that, and on the fourth attempt he managed to get himself propped up against a broken wooden crate, and even that much effort left him breathing hard and dizzy.
His spiritual sense was barely working at all. When he reached out with it to check what was around him, it only extended maybe five feet before it fell apart. That was worse than most regular mortals could manage with their natural awareness.
Sun Tao had spent five full centuries building his cultivation from nothing, climbing higher and higher through sheer effort and ruthlessness, and now his spiritual sense was weaker than some teenager who had just started their training for the first time.
He tried moving dream qi through his meridians so he could understand how bad the damage actually was. The energy moved through his channels like it was thick and heavy, and when he tried to summon even basic fire techniques, nothing happened.
The full assessment took several minutes, and he had to stop twice because dizziness washed over him so badly, he thought he might pass out again. When he finally understood the complete picture of what had been done to him, Sun Tao wanted to scream and break something.
His cultivation hadn’t been completely destroyed, that much was true, Song Wei’s healing had at least prevented that from happening, but it had been drained so thoroughly that rebuilding would take years, possibly even decades.
Right now, he was operating at roughly Dream Disciple level and even accessing that small amount of power required him to concentrate hard. His Late-Stage Oneiric Sovereign cultivation was still technically present somewhere in his foundation, but the actual energy reserves were gone, there was nothing there to work with.
Sun Tao shut his eyes and made himself take several careful slow breaths until he could think past the anger and humiliation that was boiling up inside him. Getting emotional would accomplish nothing. He had survived five hundred years by being practical above everything else, by knowing when to press forward and when to stop and look at his situation clearly.
Song Wei had healed him, that was obvious from the fact that his bones had been set and his internal injuries stabilized rather than left to kill him. Without that happening, Sun Tao would have died in that crater without question. The Lucid Lawbearer could have simply walked away and let him bleed out on the ground, but instead Song Wei had chosen to spend time and energy keeping him alive.
That showed something about the man’s character even if everything about the interaction had been cold and without mercy. Song Wei had standards and he lived by them. He had said he would heal Sun Tao, and he had kept that promise.
Sun Tao reached for his storage ring like he always did when he needed supplies and his hand found nothing but empty air. He looked at his left hand. Then his right. Then he looked at both of them again like maybe he had miscounted his own fingers, and the ring was actually there somewhere.
But no, the storage ring was gone.
“That bastard,” Sun Tao said out loud to the empty lot. “That absolute bastard.”
Song Wei had taken the ring. Taken it right off his hand while he was unconscious and then left him here in the trash like he was worthless. Hundreds of years of accumulated resources were stored in that ring: dream stones, pills, formation arrays, weapons, talismans, cultivation manuals, and everything else he owned in the world except for the robes on his back.
He wanted to march right to wherever Song Wei was and demand everything back. But even the thought of confronting a Lucid Lawbearer when he was in this condition made his stomach turn because Song Wei could end him without expending any noticeable effort whatsoever.
“Payment for the healing,” Sun Tao muttered. “That’s what he would say. Medical services rendered. Fair exchange.”
It wasn’t fair at all, and Sun Tao knew it, but he couldn’t do anything about it.
His thoughts moved to Hou Hongyun. The boy who had put him in this state. That arm that had transformed into those red vines covered in thorns, and that technique that had eaten through Sun Tao’s cultivation base like it was nothing.
Sun Tao shivered even though the afternoon was warm.
Normally when someone beat him, he would plan revenge. He would study everything about how they fought, figure out their weaknesses, train specifically to counter whatever they had done, and then five years or fifty years later he would find them and settle the debt. That was how Sun Tao had spent years building his reputation until people knew not to cross him because he would never forget and he would always come back eventually.
But Hou Hongyun was a completely different situation.
That had not been a cultivator using unusual techniques, what Sun Tao had faced was a demonic cultivator who was channeling nightmare realm entities directly through his own body.
Sun Tao had seen the way those vines had reached for his injuries like they were hungry, like they wanted to feed on him, and the red energy that had drained his dream qi and converted it into fuel for whatever was living inside Hou Hongyun.
Demonic dream cultivation was extremely rare because most people who practiced it died or went insane within a few years of starting. The entities from the nightmare realms didn’t make agreements and they didn’t serve cultivators, they simply waited until the person’s control slipped for even a moment and then they consumed them from the inside out. Sun Tao had heard stories about entire sects being destroyed by a single demonic cultivator who had lost control.
But Hou was young, maybe eighteen or nineteen at most. Starting that young meant he had been practicing these forbidden techniques since childhood, which meant he’d had many years to build his control over whatever he had summoned. That kind of mastery at that age meant either extraordinary natural talent, powerful backing or possibly both, and it meant Hou Hongyun was only going to become more powerful and more dangerous as time went on.
Revenge against someone like that would be suicidal.
Sun Tao had never been the type to throw his life away. He had been ruthless and calculating and willing to permanently damage opponents to remove future threats, but he wasn’t stupid.
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Demonic cultivators existed outside of all normal power structures, they couldn’t be dealt with through sect politics or family connections, they couldn’t be scared off through reputation because they had already chosen to embrace something that most cultivators spent their entire lives afraid of.
“It wasn’t a fair fight,” Sun Tao said out loud to no one. “I wasn’t fighting a regular cultivator, I was fighting whatever entity was backing him, and that means it doesn’t count.”
The words felt hollow as he said them, he knew they were hollow, but he needed them to be true, so he said them again until they felt more real.
He had fought thirty-seven formal duels over three centuries. Thirty-five victories, all of them clean wins against proper cultivators in proper fair matches where skill and determination were what decided the outcome. The two losses had both come very early in his career before he had learned the lessons he needed to learn, and he had never repeated those mistakes. Since reaching Late-Stage Oneiric Sovereign, he had won sixteen consecutive formal fights without a single defeat.
This didn’t break that record. He had been brought into a fight against a demonic cultivator, someone using forbidden techniques that regular combat simply had no counter for. The whole expedition had been set up improperly from the beginning with Song Wei deliberately recruiting people like Hou Hongyun. Sun Tao had challenged a cultivator and been forced to fight a demon instead.
“Seventeen wins,” Sun Tao said firmly. “The streak is unbroken.”
The words still tasted wrong in his mouth, but he forced himself to hold onto them anyway because they were one of the few things he had left.
A shadow fell over him and blocked out the sun.
Sun Tao looked up to see three people standing above him. His spiritual sense was too weak to identify them properly but something about the person in the middle made his stomach drop before his eyes even focused correctly.
“Look at this,” the man in the middle said. “Sun Tao himself, lying in garbage where he belongs.”
Sun Tao’s vision cleared and his chest went tight. He recognized that face. Lin Zhaohui. The younger brother of Lin Feng, a Thoughtshaper cultivator that Sun Tao had defeated in a duel seven years ago over some territorial matter that Sun Tao couldn’t even fully remember anymore, something about mining rights probably, the details had never mattered much to him.
What had mattered was winning that duel and making sure the victory meant something permanent. Sun Tao had burned through Lin Feng’s spiritual channels until the damage was irreversible, ensuring that Lin Feng would be stuck at Thoughtshaper for the rest of his life and would never threaten or challenge anyone again. That was how Sun Tao operated. Half solutions only created bigger problems later, permanent solutions were more efficient.
Lin Zhaohui had been watching from the crowd that day and Sun Tao remembered him screaming from behind the guards while his brother fell, and now here was Lin Zhaohui standing over him with two companions while Sun Tao sat in garbage unable to properly stand up.
“Lin Zhaohui,” Sun Tao said, keeping his voice as level as he could. “It has been some years. I hope your brother is in good health.”
Lin Zhaohui’s face went through several emotions very quickly and settled on something that was much harder and colder than rage. “You hope my brother is in good health. You destroyed his spiritual channels. He sits in a chair every day unable to cultivate, unable to protect himself, living off what the clan gives him out of pity.”
“It was a formal duel,” Sun Tao said. He tried to make his voice sound like this conversation was beneath his attention. “Your brother challenged me knowing what the risks were. He lost. That is just how things work.”
One of the companions let out a short laugh. “Listen to him acting superior from the ground, he can’t even stand up.”
The other one said, “Is this really Sun Tao? The one who supposedly terrified half the western territories? He looks like someone left him here after a very bad night.”
Sun Tao kept his breathing controlled and regular. He had spent five hundred years projecting authority and confidence, and he was going to keep doing it even now. “I’m sure the three of you have more important things to do than stand around talking to someone you clearly have no respect for. I’ll be leaving.”
He tried to stand. His legs wouldn’t do it. He got himself partway upright and then his strength simply ran out, and he dropped back against the crate.
Lin Zhaohui watched this and smiled without any warmth in it at all. “Leaving where exactly? You can’t walk, your cultivation is gone, and everyone in Stillwater City already knows what happened. The great Sun Tao, destroyed in less than two seconds by a cultivator who hasn’t even reached his first century of life.”
“That situation was different,” Sun Tao said. “I was fighting a demonic cultivator, the normal rules of combat don’t apply to a situation like that.”
The three of them looked at each other and all of them laughed at the same time.
“It was also not less than two seconds, it was five seconds,” Sun Tao added, and he was aware as he said it that this made things sound worse rather than better.
“Excuses from someone who finally met his match and got what was coming to him,” the second companion said.
“Seven years,” Lin Zhaohui said, and he said it quietly which was somehow more threatening than shouting would have been. “Seven years my brother has been in pain. Watching every person he used to know advance their cultivation while he stayed still. Seven years of people looking at him with pity. And you think you can just walk away.”
Sun Tao’s mind was working very fast while his face stayed still. He couldn’t fight these three people. He could barely channel dream qi at all. Running wasn’t possible given that he couldn’t stand up properly. That left talking as his only remaining option.
“Your brother made his own choices when he challenged me,” Sun Tao said. “He came looking for something and he found it. The outcome isn’t something I can be blamed for.”
“Not your fault,” Lin Zhaohui said slowly, letting each word sit in the air. “You destroyed a weaker cultivator’s spiritual channels in a duel, made certain he could never advance again, and it still isn’t your fault?”
“The duel terms allowed permanent damage as they always do,” Sun Tao said. “Your brother understood what he was agreeing to. If he wasn’t willing to accept the consequences of losing then he shouldn’t have stepped forward to fight.”
The third companion spoke up again. “I think we should bring him back with us. Let Lin Feng see what Sun Tao looks like now. Maybe let your brother have some of his own time with him.”
Lin Zhaohui’s expression changed into something that Sun Tao didn’t like at all. “The clan would appreciate that, yes. We have wanted to make an example ever since this man crippled one of us and walked away without facing any consequences.”
Sun Tao’s heart was beating very hard now. If they brought him to the Lin clan compound, he would have no ability to resist anything they chose to do to him and they both knew it. A helpless cultivator being given to the family of someone they had permanently injured was considered basic justice in most of the cultivation world and nobody would come to help him.
“You don’t want to do that,” Sun Tao said, putting as much authority into his voice as he could manage. “I still have connections. The Crimson Fist Clan won’t ignore one of their members being kidnapped.”
Lin Zhaohui looked at both of his companions and they all laughed again. “The Crimson Fist Clan whose territory is a hundred thousand li away from here? The clan that probably doesn’t even know yet that you’re lying in garbage right now? And even if they did, they wouldn’t start a war over a cripple like you.”
Sun Tao said nothing because Lin Zhaohui was right. The Crimson Fist Clan valued strength and results above all other things, a member who had been drained of cultivation and humiliated in public wasn’t someone they would risk a war over, they might say the right things about clan honor, but they wouldn’t actually do anything when it came down to it.
“I thought so,” Lin Zhaohui said. “Now, you have two choices. You can come with us quietly, or we can drag you. Either way, you’re going to face my brother and answer for what you did.”
Sun Tao tried to push himself backwards and away from them. His body managed maybe two feet of movement before Lin Zhaohui’s companion grabbed his arm with a grip that Sun Tao couldn’t break in his current state.
“Let go of me,” Sun Tao said. He heard how weak his voice sounded and hated it.
“Stop fighting,” the man said. “This is going to happen.”
The second companion grabbed his other arm, and they lifted him up and carried him like he was a child.
“You can’t do this,” Sun Tao said. “It’s not right.”
“Not right,” Lin Zhaohui said, his voice going flat and hard. “You ruined my brother’s life and walked away calling it a fair duel and now you want to talk about what is and isn’t right. My brother is going to see what you look like now. He deserves that much.”
Sun Tao kept struggling as they pulled him past the broken crates, through the garbage-strewn lot, toward whatever the Lin clan had planned for him. In his mind, he was already plotting revenge against all of them. He’d recover eventually. It might take years, but he’d recover. And when he did, he’d remember every person who humiliated him when he was weak.
That thought kept him from complete despair as they dragged him away from the abandoned lot and toward the Lin clan compound. Sun Tao had survived all these years by being stubborn, by refusing to stay down, by always finding a way to turn humiliation into fuel for his determination.
This was just another setback, a bad one, sure, but not the end.
He kept telling himself that as they dragged him through the streets of Stillwater City, past witnesses who looked away rather than get involved in clan business. Sun Tao memorized every face, every location, every detail. When he recovered his power, he’d make them all regret this day.
That was what he promised himself hours later as the Lin clan compound came into view, its walls looming like a prison waiting to receive him.