Chapter 20: Sealed Mirage!
The first destination Ken went to once he got out of the library was the spirit tower.
This was a new month, and today was the day they were supposed to change the technique, and he was definitely not going to waste any time.
Once there, he got focused on the new technique.
"Restraining Order"—this 'was the name of the technique, a technique that required basic understanding of worldly laws and also some control over spiritual energy.
Though it was more effective on people and living beings with negative karma, given enough time, preparation, and mastery over the technique, it could even work on a saint.
Ken managed to get it to the required mastery in no time and left the rest to his idle training, then got out.
From this technique he once again got a more solid understanding of just what the spirit path was all about.
Even its techniques were very different.
Back in the mountain pagoda, where the sect techniques were located, he had seen all kinds of different names.
Concentrating spiritual energy in the fingers, launching palms, movement and concealment techniques, and even forbidden or seemingly evil techniques were there.
The spirit sect could care less about orthodox, unorthodox, or demon techniques; anything that could be used was there.
After all, they were very confident in their spirit cultivation technique.
Which Ken just found out was more than just a technique to absorb and control spiritual energy.
It cultivated the mind, one's own spirit, little by little breaking its shackles and allowing one to see more than the eye perceives.
In the last month, many things had changed.
The way he saw and understood the world alone had shifted several times; the more secrets he knew, the more his plans changed.
Including several treasure or loot drops, as he likes to call them, from the information provided every day, he was even given information about some of the 100 sect leaders that had come and gone in the sect history.
The most prominent of them, of course, as even this set had some not-so-favorable times in its history, and multiple corrupt or just not-up-to-standard sect leaders had gone up.
But the sect by then was far too solid to be shaken by a few non-worthies, even if they came in rows and successions.
Including the current sect leader, the total number of bad fruits that Providence thought were not worth talking about was around 30.
The other 60 to 70 were all legends who had taken the world by storm and are the reason for the century-old peace going on in the world.
This large percentage difference between good and bad surprised Ken, but what he came to learn was that even those supposedly 'bad fruits' were worthy of the sect leader position, just not good enough compared to the others.
Ken by now understood that the difference between realms and time spent chasing mysticism made a huge and more than visible distinction between cultivators.
Reading about the history of the sect and the more notable events that had happened, he figured that he should always be around 20 steps ahead if he wanted to be comfortable.
That's against the later qi-refining realms individual, for higher realms, that needed to be multiplied by 10 and by 2 for each major and minor realm, respectively.
These lands, known as the eastern lands, were, in two words, a 'chess table.'
The masters in here were like celestial beings controlling the world with their wise minds and massive hands, using entire kingdoms and races as their chess pieces.
These were definitely not the typical cultivators Ken knew about; he had found himself continuously throwing out all knowledge he had about cultivators, to the point where he believed that the only resemblance there was between them was holing up in mountains for seclusion and being called cultivators.
The former were dumb powerhouses who thought with their behinds and could flip a mountain on their heads; the others were likewise natural-born strategists, the monsters behind the scene.
Ken finally understood why the mortal world knew shit about them.
They were like ghosts; if not for their regular recruitments, they might just never be known.
Closing the door behind him, Ken sighed and then looked up intently.
Suddenly, the familiar scene of the room in front of him changed, once again becoming like that of the golden treasure realm of gacha.
It was time for him to roll the dice again.
From Techniques to Special, Ken watched intently as the category changed, and when it stopped on [Starless Weapon], he stopped for a second.
A weapon? At this point in time?
This batch of freshmen barely had any real combat power, and the percentage having chosen to learn a combat technique was low.
Some did reach out for offensive techniques, but combat and offensive were different words.
Knowing how to use a sword and knowing how to throw it were two different things.
Though the efficiency records, especially the one in Ken's hands, allowed for combat and could be said to make the user know the basics of most weapons, that definitely wasn't the case for such a unique one.
The gacha machine once again changed to a wheel, and it spun majestically as Ken's mind was thinking about how he was going to get his hands on a weapon proficiency technique.
*Ding*
Looking at the wheel again, a large name in gold was written in the middle.
Seeing it... He didn't know if he should laugh or not.
[Starless Weapon: Sealed Mirage]
This was the name of the weapon; as for what it was...
We'll have to figure that out together.
As Ken held it in his hands and sized it up, he came to a conclusion:
It was definitely an unorthodox weapon.
How the hell was he supposed to find a technique for this?
-----End-----