Cultivation Nerd (xianxia)

Chapter 362 - Going Down Memory Lane

My mind dove through countless memories, most of them little more than fractured glimpses of strange battles, robed figures, and nameless mishaps the Blood Step Immortal had lived through across his long existence.But I wasn’t drifting aimlessly. I was searching for memories that mattered to him. Ones that carried weight. And more specifically, I was hunting for the memory of his breakthrough to immortality.

Then I found something.

I plunged into a fragment far clearer than the rest, sharp and vivid, the kind of memory that lingered without effort. One etched so deeply into him that no technique was needed to recall it.

The world shifted.

We stood in a vast snowy field. Low hills rose in the distance, connected by a massive wall stretching across the land. Strange, colossal runes were carved into its surface, their meaning alien.

Above us, the sky was locked in an eclipse. The moon swallowed the sun’s light, casting a suffocating shadow over the land. The air felt wrong, thick, cold, and carrying a faint, unpleasant stench that crawled into the back of the throat.

A horn sounded.

The note sent a chill down my spine for reasons I couldn’t fully explain.

Far away, a black mass approached across the sky. At first, it looked like a storm cloud, but as it drew closer, its true shape became horrifyingly clear.

It was a swarm.

Rows upon rows of human-sized, imp-like creatures flew toward us, their leathery, bat-like wings beating frantically. Each clutched a crystal the size of a large dog in its arms. They screeched in a harsh, grating language, spit and drool flying from their mouths. Their bodies were bone-thin, ribs jutting grotesquely from their chests, as if they hadn’t eaten in weeks.

Even knowing this was only a memory, the sight of what must have been hundreds of thousands of demons descending from the sky was overwhelming.

“Archers! Shoot!” someone yelled from behind us.

I didn’t know who had shouted, but the response was immediate. Soldiers raised their bows, drew back, and loosed volleys of arrows into the sky. At the same time, the demons released the crystals they had carried across the battlefield.

Arrows struck several of the falling crystals, cracks spiderwebbing across their surfaces.

One crystal failed entirely.

A blinding flash erupted, followed by a deafening explosion. The detonation triggered nearby crystals in a violent chain reaction, tearing through the sky and obliterating hundreds of demons mid-flight.

The crystals that survived the barrage smashed into the ground below and shattered–

–followed by smaller, but still devastating, explosions.

What came next could only be described as a fantasy version of carpet bombing.

“Call the paladins!” someone shouted.

Because this was the Blood Step Immortal’s memory, I instinctively understood what that meant.

Paladins were warriors bred and trained specifically to fight demons. To the public, they were said to be blessed by the goddess herself, granted immense strength and resilience.

The truth was far uglier.

They were the result of an experiment on children fed a mixture of demon blood and carefully prepared herbs. Only thirty to fifty percent survived the process. Those who lived were trained from a young age to hunt monsters.

Artificial hybrids.

The only reason the Blood Step Immortal hadn’t become one himself was simple: by the time the formula was "perfected", he had already been too old.

As for the risks?

They were considered negligible.

This world was doomed anyway. At least this way, in their minds, the children who survived could die with some measure of dignity and be strong enough to drag more demons with them into the grave.

With the archers loosing arrows and the demons dropping their bombs, the flying creatures finally descended to engage the humans directly. Up close, the demons were a head or two taller than an average man, their bodies lanky, arms elongated to grant them greater reach.

The humans answered with swords and spears, compensating for their lack of raw strength through steel. But the most striking among them were the so-called paladins. They fought like berserkers, leaping a dozen feet into the air, seizing demons mid-flight and tearing them apart with brute force.

Each paladin was roughly as strong as a peak Body Tempering cultivator, which was a terrifying level of physical power, whether in my world or this one.

“You know,” the Blood Step Immortal said, his voice echoing from all directions before he appeared beside me in a brief shimmer, “before all this, you could have classified my world as low fantasy.”

It was unsettling how much control he still exerted over his mental energy.

“We knew wood witches existed,” he continued, sighing. “They were little more than bedtime stories, warnings to keep children from wandering too deep into forests. Nobody cared about the wretches of society. They were ignored.” His gaze hardened. “Then one day, they summoned something they never should have been able to. Something far beyond their understanding. Honestly, my world could’ve used a few witch burnings, like yours.”

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“The Salem witch trials happened because some girls complained,” I said, dredging up half-remembered facts. “One was eight, the other ten, I think.”

“Exactly,” he replied. “And maybe that saved your world from ending up like mine. We thought the same as you, that the useless dregs didn’t matter. But sometimes even filth can catch the attention of something it shouldn’t.”

It was ironic hearing him condemn rituals, given his reputation for the most grotesque ones imaginable. He could probably still read my thoughts, but he didn’t bother responding.

I turned my attention back to the battlefield. Opportunities like this, to witness how another world functioned, were rare.

“The Blood Mages have appeared! Grk–!” the human commander shouted from the rear.

His cry cut short as a demon’s barbed tail pierced through his chest from behind.

The army’s gaze snapped toward the distance, where a few dozen robed figures stood. The soldiers abandoned formation and charged, hatred blazing in their eyes.

Cultists.

People who stood at the very peak of the occult in this dying world.

Before the army could reach them, the cultists drew jagged, ancient-looking daggers, looking dull, more like ornamental tools belonging in a museum than weapons, and slashed their own wrists. Some struggled, sawing clumsily until veins were torn open.

“Humanity was on its last legs when I left,” the Blood Step Immortal said, his voice utterly devoid of emotion.

Blood poured from the cultists’ wrists in impossible quantities, flowing as though driven by intent. Their faces grew pale and sunken as the blood snaked across the ground, forming a massive pentagram.

The charging army faltered.

Some groaned. Some wept. But most roared in fury, charging forward without fear.

One had to wonder what a person must lose to become unafraid of death.

The pentagram slowly filled, the blood pooling thick. One by one, the cultists collapsed from blood loss, their bodies sinking into the crimson shape they had created.

Before anyone could even draw a breath, a beastly, horned head burst from the blood pool. Two massive hands, slick and dripping crimson, clawed at the edge of the circle and hauled the creature upward, revealing its full form.

The monster’s lower body was humanoid and thickly furred, completely drenched in blood. Above it rose the head of a bull, complete with curling horns and a whipping tail behind it. It resembled a minotaur, but grotesquely enlarged and soaked in gore. This was a giant monster, towering like a ten-story building.

The beast roared, spraying blood-flecked spittle in all directions, then charged straight at the human army.

“Defend!” one of the commanders shouted, the terror in his voice barely masked by the army’s rising panic.

The giant sprinted forward, each step shaking the earth. It kicked through the ranks like a child scattering ants, and with every careless sweep of its limbs, dozens of people were sent flying.

Among them was an unremarkable, dark-haired, middle-aged man, his face frozen in raw terror as his body was hurled through the air like a ragdoll.

I floated midair, watching him tumble helplessly.

“You complained about my life being worthless, and you just died in some war as fodder,” I said to him.

Even this monstrosity, carving through the battlefield so brutally, was only about as strong as a half-step Core Formation cultivator. If something like this had appeared in my original world, we wouldn’t have needed nuclear weapons; only fighter jets and missiles would have sufficed.

“Do not compare your useless office life to my war sacrifice. A man who never saw battle deserves no respect, you were just waiting to die in your useless pathetic life,” he said. “The blood mages brought an apocalypse to our world, and everyone here was a hero in their own right. Retreat was not in our vocabulary. Our children and homes were behind us.”

“And then you came to another world, and enacted terror with the same rituals. Are you sure you were not the bad guy here?” I asked.

He spoke as if his reputation and the horrors he had committed over twenty thousand years meant nothing.

“We studied their blood rituals and tried to learn how to counter them. Some even experimented with creating demon-human hybrids, with horrific failures,” he explained.

As if that justified anything.

That logic was no different from a lawman claiming murder was acceptable because he studied murderers.

“Every soldier needed to know what they were dealing with,” he said.

“Huh,” I nodded, offering no further argument. There was no point.

Rather than unravel his twisted morality, I had more interesting things to observe.

I rubbed my imaginary chin and drifted across the battlefield, watching chaos unfold, while the Blood Step Immortal lay broken on the ground below with his body shattered, dying slowly. He had been just strong and unlucky enough to survive the initial impact.

“I doubt you will find this world as interesting as you would like. Our magic system was very… inordinary, and required sacrifice,” he told me.

“Ah, that’s a shame. But that means you’ve met someone from a world with a better magic system. That’s why you’re comparing it like this,” I replied.

“Better? That’s a strange way of putting it. Yes, I met them, and the magic from his world didn’t translate here at all. He gained as little from reincarnating as you did,” he said. Even though his voice remained calm, the backhanded insult was clear.

“Though coming from a very ordinary world, the things people have achieved there without magic are quite amazing,” he added.

I nodded, taking it as a compliment toward my people.

“Especially the level of destruction. Some of your atomic weapons are comparable to an attack from a Nascent Soul cultivator,” he said.

I shrugged and continued scanning the battlefield, watching demons swarm and the giant rampage in the distance as the world around us slowly dimmed.

He was close to dying.

“I know you don’t care about things like this,” he said.

“Quite the opposite, actually,” I refuted. “This place is fascinating, especially how the sun remained eclipsed for years by the time you died.”

“Perhaps. But I know something you would find far more interesting,” he said. He didn’t smile like a cliché villain, but the devilish temptation in his voice was unmistakable. “How about I show you the exact moment I broke through and became an Immortal? Many things became much easier to see then. Even the mystery of why souls arrive in this world randomly became a rather simple puzzle.”

That was tempting. Even knowing I was only a mental projection, my heart skipped a beat as excitement washed over me like icy water on a scorching summer day.

“If you let me go, I will give you those memories,” he offered.

I frowned. The deal soured instantly.

“While you have some ability to explore my memories now, I can still protect certain ones,” he continued. “It was a clever plan and well executed. Keeping me here while Song San poisons me from the outside, diluting my mind. At the same time, Cai Hu works on sealing me both physically and mentally. On top of that, that ice girl is freezing me as well, body and mind. But even so, do you really think you’re going to get out of this unharmed?”

Ensured safety. A priceless reward. In exchange, I let him take Song Song’s body.

We both knew that part was meaningless. Even if he promised to let her go, I would never trust him. And after twenty millennia, he wasn’t about to abandon the perfect vessel he had finally obtained.

“Come out unharmed?” I smiled. There was no need to even consider such a terrible deal. “Like I give a shit, my guy. You think I didn’t consider the risks when I came up with this plan?”