When Immortal Ascension Fails Time Travel to Try Again

Story 9 - Nothing Bad Ever Happens at the Alchemy Convention (14/16)

::Just say it.:: Someone must have taken the fish out of the storehouse to make room for whatever these two found.

::Barrels of Demonic Soul Devouring Vines that were about to come out of hibernation.::

Motherfuckers!

Those were vines that had gone extinct centuries before I attempted to ascend. For a good damn reason. They had a unique ability to jump on a target — usually an animal, cultivator, or spiritual beast — then they would coil themselves around it like a rope before slowly removing its soul. Of course, while this was going on, the Soul Devouring Vine excreted an addictive and hallucinogenic substance that made the target happy, so it wouldn’t fight the plant, killing it until its soul was completely sucked out. But the reason why they were so noteworthy was because, unless you obliterated every single piece of them, they would grow back like mold. Fucking insidious.

The only reason the world hadn’t been taken over by them, was because they grew slowly and hibernated a majority of the time.

These evil fuckers were often used by those damned vine-obsessed demonic cultivators to remove the souls of high-level targets. The toxin that the older plants excrete even affected Peak Immortal Bone Creation experts and were perfect for their disgusting purposes.

Regardless, as a Foundation Establishment cultivator, this was far above my fucking pay grade.

I started walking toward the emergency exits.

One did not fuck with Demonic Soul Devouring Vines unless one had the demonic techniques to control them or the pills that killed them. Frankly, those pills took a goddamn Immortal Bone Creation alchemist to concoct using advanced hand seals. Something this time period lacked.

Ghosty continued, ::There were enough vines to affect every cultivator at the convention and then some.::

I sped up, Little Spring followed me.

::But we took care of those by sending them into the space before they could hurt anyone. They’re currently in the time-freeze area.::

I stopped, and the kid skidded to a halt just before he rammed into me.

::You seem jumpy. Are you alright?:: Ghosty asked.

I glared down at the necklace. ::Tell me faster::

::What faster?::

::That you took care of it.::

He harrumphed. ::Well, Little Spring said that there wasn’t anything to worry about.::

And yet, the instincts that had allowed me to survive for a thousand years in this fucked up Xianxia universe were screaming at me and telling me that something was very wrong.

I put the necklace over my head and turned to Little Spring. “You told Peak Master Enduring Flame about the vines, and that you took care of them?”

He nodded.

That would explain why he hadn’t had the whole place evacuated.

“Are you sure those were the only vines?”

“Both Enduring Flame and Pill Saint Five Leaves Medicine checked with divine sense. They couldn’t find any other caches.”

I continued walking toward the exit but chose to detour to our sect’s booth. While I was there, I could tell my little junior to pack it in early, just in case.

As we neared our booth, the density of foot traffic grew. A large crowd surrounded our building, making it impossible to get close. Well, this wasn’t unexpected. We were the Indomitable Will Sect, so it was only right that we were popular.

“Let me guess, Enduring Flame left to see if he could find the demonic cultivator responsible for these vines. But he didn’t want the staff to know about it.”

“That’s right.” Little Spring sidestepped a tall man to reach my side and grabbed my sleeve. “But why would he not tell the attendants and security?”

That wasn’t hard to figure out. “He probably considered that a member of the staff could have brought the vines in. If he told them, then whoever smuggled that vicious plant inside could easily escape through a teleportation array. Since every large group here has an emergency exit ready, it wouldn’t be difficult.”

Suddenly, a rumble echoed through the island. The ground shook. Several nearby cultivators flew into the air. Their eyes grew wide with horror as they gasped in shock.

Oh, I had to see this.

I pulled out my flying sword tool and flew high into the sky before examining the landscape for what horrified everyone.

At first, I only noticed the island in the mid-afternoon light. There were buildings with orange roofs on one side and the dense jungle on the other. Rocks jutted from the water in various places and a strangely shaped, dark mountain rose up from the sea behind a tall hill.

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The mountain opened its amber eye.

That was no fucking mountain. That was a goddamn turtle head! This whole island was on the back of an enormous ascendant beast.

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What the actual fuck?! I had gone a thousand years without seeing a hint of one, yet this was the second I’d seen in just over a year.

On instinct, I glared at Little Spring, who had followed me on his flying fan and was staring in awe at the massive turtle head.

“What did you do?”

He turned to me, brows scrunching in confusion. “I didn’t do anything.”

“Right, sorry. Not your fault.” I had witnessed Bloodsword cause this kind of chaos so often that I accidentally assumed the reveal of any strange phenomenon like this was his doing. While Little Spring wasn’t Bloodsword, habits I’d had for a millennium couldn’t be broken in a day… or a couple years. Whatever.

“The damned Alchemy Association set up their convention on the back of a giant black turtle — like that wouldn’t come to bite them in the ass in one way or another. I hoped whoever decided on this location gets fired.”

I didn’t use my divine sense to examine the turtle head. It would sense me and, frankly, the beast was powerful enough that I’d have to use too much of my soul’s strength to defend myself against its attacks. That would break my seal and might even aggravate the dichotomy between my soul and body again. The last thing I wanted was a damn time limit on how fast I needed to reach Golden Core.

With a gesture, I conjured up two convex water mirrors. Combined, they acted as a crude telescope. I peered through them, to see if there were any clues as to why this ascendant beast decided to come out of hiding.

Blinding flames shot out from behind its head.

Fuck! What shit timing! That had been brighter than the sun and would have burned my eyes out if I hadn’t consumed those body cultivation meals.

At least I now knew where Enduring Flame was and that he was fighting someone. This also explained his absence toward the end of my lecture battle.

When I finished rubbing the moisture from my eyes, Little Spring tapped his chin in thought. “Could it be that the turtle belongs to the Alchemy Association?”

“Either that or the Association belongs to the turtle. As an ascendant beast, it’s more intelligent than humans. Even brilliant ones like us.”

Of course, intelligence didn’t mean it had the wisdom to use what it learned. If this dumbass turtle had decided to host the con on its back, then it needed to be fired.

That was when I saw a gray vine dart up from the ocean like the tentacle of a mountain-sized squid.

Shit. “Whoever set up the Demonic Soul Devouring Vines wasn’t just after the cultivators at the convention. They were after this ascendant beast!”

The demonic sect could have been responsible for the lack of ascendant beasts in my previous life. They could have reached them first and killed them for their own benefit.

Aside from their souls — which evil cultivators could consume to ascend to higher realms — ascendant beast blood created the perfect talisman ink, and parts of their bones were often the base for masterwork weapons. Hell, even I’d used a sliver of ascendant beast bone as the core when I forged my favorite sword. Their bodies were basically treasures, so it was no wonder the demonic sect was after all of them.

In the distance, the battle became heated, with flames and pseudo-laws getting flung between three small figures, the beast’s head, and the vine. Parts of the vine were sliced off and dropped into the ocean, but it must have been a ten thousand-year vine because it kept trying to touch the turtle.

Despite everyone’s best efforts the vine wrapped around the creature’s neck. At that point, it was too late. The poor turtle was doomed.

Yells erupted from the crowd. I turned toward them and focused my water telescope on the scene below.

A Nascent Soul security guard had grabbed a man. He struggled, wrenching this way and that in his arms until the guard shoved a pill into his mouth. He fell asleep, and the guard set him on the ground unharmed.

The convention guard moved forward with his limbs jerking unnaturally. Then he jumped on another cultivator and fed her a pill. Her eyes rolled back into her head and she collapsed into the arms of her sect member.

There were more screams, this time coming from all over the island. I expanded my divine sense to find more people forcefully put to sleep.

Dozens of the Nascent Soul level guards were attacking those around them to feed them sleeping pills. Those that tried to fight back were restrained with the same type of spiritual ropes used against the man who stabbed a guy near his eye with an ink brush.

Actually, after this situation, everyone would definitely forget about the brush incident.

A Sword Grandmaster — the sword cultivator equivalent for Nascent Soul — attacked a guard before they could harm the alchemist hiding behind her. After a few quick exchanges, she ruthlessly sliced off the man’s head. No blood spurted from the wound. When the head hit the street a hollow sound echoed from it. The still-standing headless body used a hand seal that gestured from the head to itself and it flew back onto its neck.

Little Spring, with his eyes wide open, pointed at the guard. “He’s a puppet!”

I nodded grimly and watched as the Sword Grandmaster proceeded to chop the puppet into fine cubes. “All the convention guards might be… Possibly Lina and the other attendants, too.”

“Does this mean all the staff are puppets?”

“If they are, then they are probably controlled by that turtle since they only went crazy after it was successfully ensnared by the hallucinogenic secreted by the vine.”

I touched my chin in thought. “If they are spiritual tools with a new item spirit, they may even be semi-autonomous. This turtle obviously doesn’t have enough concentration to control all these puppets and attempt to defend itself from the Ten Thousand Year Soul Devouring Vine. It likely gave these young item spirits the simple command to protect itself without killing anyone in the convention. It just forgot to remind them that most of the people here are friendly.”

“Then does that mean Lina will attack us on sight?”

“Possibly.”

I was more shocked that these puppets had been so realistic that even I hadn’t noticed, and I was a genius item smith. It made me wonder if they hid their puppet nature, by purposefully having issues getting everyone in the convention.

But it was more likely that they had an ingenious and complex illusion enchantment keeping their true forms hidden.

Of course, that was when my conjecture was proven wrong because a guard stopped two puppets by cutting them to pieces. Right, not all the guards and assistants were puppets. Most conventions couldn’t function without volunteers.

Even though I’d only been watching the chaos for no more than a couple of minutes, I noticed that the puppet guards were only attacking people who were moving or could be a threat. So, as long as we stayed up here, in the air, we’d go unnoticed. At least for now.

I hid a bunch of Foundation Establishment-level defensive talismans up my sleeve and slapped a couple onto Little Spring’s back. Assured that we’d be relatively safe, I sent a secret sound transmission to Enduring Flame. “What’s going on?”

“Senior Lin, this isn’t the best time!”

“No kidding! The convention security puppets are trying to put everyone to sleep.”

“What puppets?!”

Good to know I wasn’t the only one fooled.

“No, never mind,” he said. “Give me a second.”

The figures in the distance switched places. A storm of illusory leaves attacked a man wearing black. I assumed he got Five Leaves Medicine to take over so he could talk.

“Announce to everyone that the convention is over and that they should get to the emergency exit. Everyone from our sect needs to head back immediately. So far, we’re keeping our energy contained in this area, but I don’t know how long we’ll be able to do that. Even though he’s only a half step above us, this demonic cultivator’s ability is too overwhelming.”

If he survived this and we left without him, it would take him two years traveling at his maximum speed to return to the sect since we were a quarter of the way across the world. But there wasn’t another option. Immortal Bone Creation fights that weren’t carefully controlled could turn whole mountain ranges into flat deserts.

Since he was my junior, I had to ask, “With us gone, what will you do?”

“As a member of a righteous sect with the highest realm in our group, I won’t allow this demonic cultivator to use Senior Alchemy Island’s soul to reach the immortal Ascension stage.”

“Good. Don’t let the demonic cult have him. At all costs.”

“Yes, Senior Lin!” His voice sounded amused. I saw another flash of flames. He likely had to return to the fight.

The turtle let out a deep anguished groan that I felt in my bones. It was losing to the vine and it knew it.

Little Spring tugged on my sleeve. “Sister Lin, isn’t there anything we can do to help without putting ourselves in danger? Either for the turtle or everyone here?”

I frowned. “Who am I?”

“Fairy Lin!”

“That’s right! Of course, there is something we can do! It just won’t be much.”

He nodded. “As long as we can help in some way. I almost feel a bit responsible since none of this would be happening if I hadn’t told Peak Master Enduring Flame about the vines.”

I smoothed his hair. “If you hadn’t found them, we’d be in a worse situation later in the convention. You did well.”

Now I just had to figure out what we could do. And that needed to happen before I made the evacuation announcement since the cultivators here might be useful.

Obviously not something physical since I was still a weak-ass Foundation Establishment stage cultivator.

I knew of techniques that could easily take care of this. But I couldn’t use them. I also couldn’t teach them because they were Immortal Ascension stage techniques reliant on the Heavenly Laws.

What about tools? We had the space. But it wasn’t like we could fit the whole damn turtle island inside, nor the mountain-sized vine. Which was assuming I was willing to get anywhere near it, which I was not.

We could use the space to save the people who were put to sleep. But exposing it would shout to every greedy asshole in the area — which was everyone that wasn’t a puppet — that they should kill us and take it for themselves.

What about pill recipes? There was a recipe I knew that could wipe out the Soul Devouring Vine while leaving the patient uninjured. But I couldn’t create it. I was not in the Immortal Bone Creation realm… And others couldn’t because they didn’t have advanced enough hand seals… except for one fucking person on this whole island...The asshole who selfishly asked for my time slot.

I looked to Little Spring, “Inform Peak Elder Grass Sprout and our three juniors that they should evacuate to the emergency exit.”

“I’ll warn them about the guards and Lina.”

“Also, confirm with Four Directions Eagle that he’s finished setting up our teleportation array.”

If he hadn’t, we’d all be fucked.

“Want me to say goodbye to Alchemist Ruthless Divine Medicine and White Lily?”

I grinned. “Promise that we’ll meet them at the next convention.” If there was one after this fiasco. Frankly, this was as bad as the crab mission!

He nodded, his eyes filled with determination.

“And once you’re done with that, announce to everyone on Alchemy Island that the convention has ended early and that they should leave for the emergency exits. And that any righteous sect member in the Immortal Bone Creation should help Enduring Flame with the fight against the demonic cult.”

The kid paled. “Yes, Sister Lin!”

Of course, since we were ‌ending the convention now, Violet wouldn’t get any compensation for our lecture battle. Muahahahaha! I wish I could see the look on her face once she realized that I was the only one who benefitted.

Wasting no more time, I split my mind in two.

It was time to save a fucking turtle.