CHAPTER 287: A MESSAGE WHISPERED, NOT SPOKEN

Song Song stared at Wu Yan, eyes wide. Then, almost too smoothly, her gaze returned to its usual calm. But I could tell. Beneath that stillness, she was more impressed than she let on.

Wu Yan also stared at us, then rose from her meditative position and bowed her head politely.

“Elder Feng. Lady Song. What can I help you with?”

Oh?

So she had already deduced this was Song Song? That was… surprising. I’d never gotten the impression that Wu Yan had much in the way of deductive ability.

Then again, her response wasn’t just respectful, it was strategic. I always addressed Song Song formally when others were around. Wu Yan had simply followed my lead. She had learned certain lessons even though I hadn't verbally taught them.

While I might’ve mentioned Song Song once or twice in passing, I didn’t recall ever explaining the nature of our relationship or that Wu Yan didn’t have to treat her so formally.

Song Song didn’t answer. She simply kept staring at Wu Yan, who glanced around, visibly uneasy under her gaze. By now, Song Song’s Core Formation senses had no doubt picked up what was happening inside Wu Yan’s body.

“How… impressive,” Song Song finally said.

There was a serious tone in her voice, no jokes. No playfulness.

I’d spent a lot of time reading in the inner library, especially on Extreme Physiques. And I’d never encountered a report of one like Wu Yan’s.

There were three possible explanations:

The first: this was a newly emergent Extreme Physique. Not unheard of in a world like this. At a point in the past, all Extreme Physiques were new.

The second: others might have been born with the same Extreme Physique before but never amounted to anything, and so it went unrecorded. Maybe they’d just been some unknown farmhand who never got the chance to reach their potential. That’s probably how most people with the potential to reach Nascent Soul ended up.

And the third possibility… That this wasn’t an Extreme Physique at all.

If it was the first or second scenario, I knew what to do. Keep nurturing Wu Yan. Help her reach immortality before whatever lifespan limit her condition came with.

But if it was the third? I had no idea.

Still, as long as her life wasn’t in danger, I could live with not knowing some things… for now.

“This is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. A body like this…” Song Song muttered.

Wu Yan blushed, at least acted like she blushed, and looked aside.

Of course, the reaction was deliberate. As was everything else involving her body.

She didn’t function like a normal person. Even if she felt something, her body wouldn’t respond instinctively. Emotion wasn’t expressed naturally; it had to be chosen, imitated, and constructed.

Years of abuse on the farm she grew up in had created a deep longing in her… the desire to be normal. Though I was perfectly okay with her being abnormal.

“What is she?” Song Song asked, finally snapping out of her daze.

“She’s Wu Yan. Think of her as my little sister,” I said.

“There are times when our two-year gap really shows. I mean, I can’t read this situation at all,” Song Song admitted.

“Well, not every situation needs to be understood,” I said. “Mystery’s part of the fun.”

Then I raised my hand and created a silencing array that covered the entire room, followed by another, layered more precisely to cover only us.

Song Song watched me work with an indifferent expression. She didn’t even raise her guard.

She trusted me that much. And that was a problem. Because instincts don’t trigger against things you’ve already accepted as safe.

One of her weaknesses, really. Song Song relied far too much on her sixth-sense-level instincts. When those instincts didn’t flare up, she simply… let her guard down.

“Song Song, this is a secret I want no one to know. Understand?” I asked.

I approached Wu Yan, extended a hand, and helped her stand.

But as soon as she rose, I activated Eight Mind Phantoms, transferring a short message directly into her mind.

Because of her previous training, especially all those physical and spiritual checkups we used to run with my Qi, her body didn’t reject the input. The data transferred seamlessly.

Wu Yan looked at me.

And here was the part that made her strange body useful: she couldn’t express emotion unless she chose to. Her face gave nothing away. Her silence and stillness weren’t forced; they were simply natural for her.

Even Song Song, who stood right beside us, didn’t notice a thing.

Hopefully, that meant even body-snatching immortals wouldn’t catch on either.

A moment later, Wu Yan must have relayed the message to Song Song through her own form of telepathy.

Because Song Song’s eyes went wide, very wide, for just a split second.

She’d just learned that her father was a body-snatching freak.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

I was ready to cover for any shock or strange outburst on her part.

But aside from that initial widening, her expression leveled out. Calm. Controlled.

I could also use Eight Mind Phantoms to communicate telepathically. In fact, my range was even slightly larger than Wu Yan’s. But my method created faint mental ripples. Hers didn’t. That made her far safer for covert communication.

There might not be anyone so meticulous as to spy on this specific moment…

But if we were up against immortals, creatures with patience measured in millennia? I wasn’t about to take that risk.

“Anyway,” I added, casually revealing the next big secret, “I just wanted to tell you that I’m an otherworlder.”

This was a red herring, in case any spy I couldn’t sense was curious about why I had put up so many countermeasures. I was revealing my biggest secret to hide the one that Song Song had.

As for the hope that nobody was listening in on us? That was absolute bull. Nobody lived over twenty thousand years by being careless and not taking everything into account.

However, even with this secret out there, the Bloodstep Immortal wasn’t likely to come after me. After all, the Blazing Sun Immortal had said he would deal with all threats above a certain level if they interfered or got in the way of things in the Blazing Sun Sect.

Yeah, I had schemed against the Blazing Sun Immortal, and judging by how creepily smart all the immortals I’d interacted with so far were, there was a good chance he had a rough idea of what I had planned.

“Really?” Song Song asked, her gaze still on Wu Yan. “What was your world like?”

“Well, where to start,” I rubbed my chin, keeping my eyes on Wu Yan as she also looked my way. “We didn’t have Qi or anything like that.”

“Truly?” Song Song looked surprised. “Then how did you defend against beasts? You probably had beasts there, right? I mean, humans eat meat. Unless you were some other creature and not a human. That would explain a lot…”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I frowned.

“Well, you’re just a weird guy,” Song Song said.

Wait, she was calling me weird? The murder hobo with the emotional IQ of a five-year-old was calling me weird?

“I get the weird feeling that you’re thinking something really rude about me,” Song Song frowned too.

“I would never do anything like that,” I said. “But let me explain some things about my world first.”

Then I went on a long tangent that, only halfway through, I realized Song Song didn’t really care about. She was already looking off to the side, staring out the window. At least Wu Yan had the decency to act like she was listening, and there was even a sparkle in her eyes.

This reveal wasn’t something I necessarily liked to do, but it had to be done to keep up the illusion. Also, I felt like it wasn’t much of a secret when it came to immortals. They seemed to know with just one glance that I was an otherworlder.

So I revealed a secret, but not really.

The most annoying part of this was that Song Song had only been curious for about three minutes after I told her, and then she stopped caring. I got the feeling she was disappointed by how average it all was. Well, what did she expect? A world where magicians walked around? The only part she seemed even remotely interested in was when I explained guns and other types of modern weaponry. But even that was too inefficient of a killing method in her eyes.

I finished my speech, and Song Song still had the politeness to sit through it.

“Okay, I’m going to be staying with you guys for a bit. Do you have a free room?” she asked. Yawning, not even bothering to hide that my speech had made her a bit sleepy.

“Of course I do,” I said.

Now it was time to try and theorize what conditions the Blood Step Immortal needed to fulfill to take over a body. There was also the chance that he was just a freak who liked to make things difficult for himself, and that was why he hadn't taken over her body yet. But that was unlikely, as he wouldn't have survived this long if he had that kind of personality.

…

With Song Song back, my confidence in my plans shot through the roof. So, the day after she settled into our new home, I got to work.

All the strategies I’d been too cautious to try before now felt… executable.

I sat in the library, reading through books, not too worried about the new presence sealed in the basement.

Now that Song Song and I were together again, we had to figure out a way to combat her father. We had until she reached Nascent Soul to uncover how his reincarnation technique worked.

At the moment, I was researching otherworlders. And with every passing day, I was coming to appreciate my first Foundation Technique even more. Though I had tried to calculate everything so that wasn’t the case, even if my element was wrong and I might never advance again, it would only be slightly regrettable.

With this technique, I could potentially read every book in this massive library within a century or two. Searching for information was simple. Digesting it? Even easier.

I was currently investigating whether otherworlders from supernatural worlds could bring over or convert their power systems to this world.

The results were… shocking.

An otherworlder had created the profession of an Array Conjurer.

He was a Core Formation cultivator from a now-dead Sect roughly thirty thousand years ago, and by today’s standards, he only reached Level 3 as an Array Conjurer. This meant that Array Conjuration was useless during his time since, as a Core Formation Cultivator, Level 3 Arrays worked at best as a convenience when traveling. They wouldn't help him in a fight he might have had difficulty against.

But… wow.

To create something completely new, from a different world? That couldn’t have been easy.

Over the centuries, the profession had been refined and elevated into what it was today. A system that could accompany a cultivator through all realms of cultivation.

There were records of formations even before that time, but they were primitive and basic. It wasn’t until they were integrated with this new profession and expertise that they became something remarkable.

This was so fucking interesting…

But it was a shame that even the Blazing Sun Sect lacked many records from thirty thousand years ago.

By comparison to Earth’s timeline, thirty thousand years ago was when humans hadn’t even developed agriculture or permanent settlements.

And this cultivation world, twenty or thirty thousand years ago? Surprisingly, not much had changed. This world was stagnant. Only millennia could show noticeable shifts.

I shook my head, brushing away those thoughts, and lay back on the cold floor of the library, letting my mind settle.

The reason I was studying this concept of otherworldly power systems being converted to Qi was because of the Bloodstep Immortal. He might have some hidden cards.

If he could use his old world’s system, he would have had to modify it and adapt it to Qi. That would require a genius mind and an absurd amount of time.

He definitely had the latter. And probably the former too.

The man who created Array Conjuring was theorized to have done so by using an obscure element that allowed him to mold a version of his old-world magic into a viable Foundation Technique. Then, based on that, he created formations others could use in this world.

Foundation Techniques could make the improbable… possible. And then he built it again from scratch.

It was humbling to learn people like that had existed.

But it was also sad. The guy likely burned out his potential trying to achieve all this. He probably never made the right configuration of Foundation Techniques to go further in cultivation.

Still, he created something that lasted.

Every time I read about outstanding otherworlders like this, it made my own existence feel a bit less unique. If I’d learned about these people when I first transmigrated, it might’ve crushed my spirit.

But now?

I was excited to learn more. There was so much interesting shit.