Cultivation Nerd (xianxia)

Chapter 358 - Awakening

Healing someone, even with magical medicine, was difficult. It gave me an entirely new level of respect for the doctors in my previous life.I stood in my secret lab, staring at the towering glass cylinder that nearly reached the ceiling. Wu Yan floated inside it, suspended in the liquid with only her head above the surface, thin tubes threaded into her body.

The “water” was a carefully calibrated mixture of high-tier healing medicines. Even I felt the sting to my wealth after acquiring it. I had consulted countless alchemists to ensure no adverse reactions, then tested every combination myself before finally submerging Wu Yan.

It had cost a little over one million spirit stones.

I didn’t care. It was worth it.

Wu Yan’s skin had healed perfectly. Her heartbeat was steady, her mental waves calm and regular, signs that she was merely sleeping. Hopefully, she would wake soon.

I could force her awake by diving into her mind. The chances of harm were almost nonexistent. But I didn’t. I cared for Wu Yan, and right now she was… fragile.

I placed a hand against the glass, feeling the faint warmth of the liquid through it.

This was my fault.

I had pushed her toward independence too quickly, afraid I wouldn’t be there for her much longer. At the time, it had seemed like the best decision I could make. Looking back now, it felt foolish.

Wu Yan had only been part of the cultivation world for a few years. Leaving her to fend for herself had been a mistake. I had spent too long around prodigies like Song Song, and it had dulled my sense of how slowly normal people adapted. Not everyone could move at that pace.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered.

I pulled my hand away and made my way upstairs, my thoughts heavy with the missteps that had led me here. But the moment I stepped into the library, the familiar scent of ink and parchment settling around me, the weight began to ease.

Self-pity never helped anyone.

I walked outside, past the spring array that kept the grass lush and green. Beyond its boundary, the world was stark white.

Snow stretched endlessly in every direction.

Winter had come again.

At least there was some good news. The war front had stabilized for now, and the pressure eased as the other sects struggled with beast waves in their own territories.

I stepped through the spring barrier, my boots crunching into the snow, and walked toward my house, my thoughts already drifting to what needed to be done next.

Recently, I’d taken to walking more than flying. It helped me think.

I was doing my best to make the right decisions with the information I had, but it still felt like things were slipping out of control. Wu Yan was injured, and there was no telling when she would recover. The war dragged on. Song Song’s situation loomed like a shadow, and her father could make a move at any time. Even the smaller matters weighed on me, like Ye An’s condition among them.

I took a deep breath, drawing in the cold air, then levitated off the ground and shot forward at breakneck speed toward my house.

…Alright. Maybe thinking too much wasn’t good either. Flying might still be the better option.

Midway through, I felt it like a soft ripple of Qi spreading through the air. Familiar. Stable. Jiang Yeming had broken through to Foundation Establishment.

I changed direction immediately and headed toward her residence.

Because it was close to the library, I landed in her front yard barely a minute after the Qi pulse faded. Tingfeng was already there, swinging a wooden sword. He was shirtless, snow gathering on his bare shoulders, yet he didn’t seem bothered in the slightest.

He also didn’t look particularly moved by the fact that his roommate and friend had just crossed a major cultivation milestone.

When he noticed me and heard the crunch of snow under my boots, he turned and bowed his head. Then he went right back to training without a word.

Some elders might have taken that as disrespect. I found it admirable.

I had no interest in disciples who wasted time flattering my ego. Tingfeng was my best student overall, and I rarely needed to guide him much in the way he did things.

I approached the entrance, and before I could even touch the door, it swung open. Jiang Yeming stepped out, her expression calm, as if she hadn’t just accomplished something remarkable.

Her gaze swept over me once before she smiled.

“You must have sensed my breakthrough,” she said, clearly pleased.

She must have successfully changed her element and she was proud of it.

I smiled back, feeling a quiet sense of pride myself. Whatever our true ages might be, however many lifetimes she technically had over me, she was still my student.

“It looks like you’re nearly at the same stage as me now,” I said. “That means you’ve officially graduated from my tutelage. You could become an inner elder of the Blazing Sun Sect.”

“Oh,” she said, as if the thought had only just occurred to her.

“I’ll make sure you get a strong position, with real authority behind it, if you want,” I added.

She studied me for a few seconds, then sighed.

That alone was answer enough, but she spoke anyway.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

“It sounds troublesome,” she said. “I’d rather continue training under you. I still have a lot to learn, teacher.”

“To be honest,” I replied with a smile, “I haven’t really taught you much.”

If anything, she already possessed knowledge beyond what I could give. I’d learned more from her than the other way around. The only thing I’d truly tried to teach her was not to let herself be shackled by the future.

I had read my fair share of regression fantasy fiction in my previous life. But that wasn't much of a guide on how things would turn out. Unless there was some invisible hand of fate pushing things along, even the slightest change could send everything spiraling in a completely different direction.

Who knew how different this world truly was compared to how she remembered it from her own timeline?

“Then, as your teacher, can you tell me what your element is?” I asked. “So we can plan some training around that.”

At the very least, this was something I could help with. Jiang Yeming didn’t need hand-holding when it came to experience or insight, but structured refinement was another matter.

She nodded and raised her palm, channeling Qi into its center. A moment later, a shiny, translucent silver chain thick as a finger emerged from her hand. It writhed and shifted like a living thing, slithering through the air with creepy snake-like fluidity.

“My element is chain,” she said.

“Oh?”

I was genuinely surprised. At first glance, it sounded almost too simple for someone like her.

“Have you engraved your first technique already?” I asked.

She nodded again, a mischievous glint flashing in her eyes, as if she already knew what I was about to suggest.

“Would you like to test it on me?” I asked.

She nodded.

The translucent chain stirred, drifting toward my wrist before tightening around it. The links coiled slowly and deliberately, like a serpent settling in. A faint silver glow pulsed along its length, giving it the eerie impression of awareness.

“Try using your first Foundation Technique,” she said.

I did and immediately frowned.

It wouldn’t activate. My Qi circulation was normal, my senses unobstructed. Yet, when I focused inward, the first pillar in my dantian dulled slightly, as if something had been muffled.

“Even if I don’t know the exact technique,” she explained, “as long as I understand the general concept, like your first Foundation Technique being related to the mind, I can suppress it while my chain is wrapped around you.”

As she spoke, I formed a translucent jade dagger in my free hand. That technique worked just fine.

“Oh,” she said with a smile, “you already found one of its weaknesses.”

As soon as I began refining the dagger's details further, the suppression vanished, and my Foundation Technique responded again.

So she could seal one technique at a time. And anything already manifested couldn’t be sealed.

Without much ceremony, I slashed at the chain. There was some resistance, but it severed cleanly.

It could be broken easily, far more easily than one might expect.

But that wasn't much of a concern in her future development.

Foundation Techniques didn’t need raw strength. None of them did. Their purpose was precision and effects that could later interlock perfectly to form a devastating Core Technique.

She was following my principles.

What kind of Core Technique was she planning, if this was her starting point?

For the first time since I’d met her, since I’d begun suspecting she was a regressor, I found something about Jiang Yeming that genuinely intrigued me.

“So, what do you think?” she asked as the translucent silver chain dissipated. “Sure, they’re kind of brittle, but if I get more used to them the durability should increase. Also, unless it’s you, anyone else would be taken completely by surprise by something like this.”

“They’re one of the most amazing things I’ve seen to date,” I said.

That was enough to draw a smile from her. She clearly cared about my honest opinion, not praise for the sake of it.

It was moments like these that made me doubt my own assumptions. Was she really a Nascent Soul Cultivator in the future, or had I misjudged her actual level back then?

My standards might have been skewed. After all, the Blazing Sun Sect Leader had eventually ascended to immortality, and compared to that, even Nascent Soul Cultivators felt… lacking. Still, they were supposed to be more impressive than this discrepancy suggested.

…

Days passed after my disciple’s successful breakthrough.

I was once again in the secret laboratory beneath the library. After growing used to solitude here; it was comforting, a place where the worries of the world above seemed distant and muted.

But with Wu Yan suspended in her glass cylinder, that comfort was gone. Her presence was a constant reminder of my mistakes in this life. So I avoided looking at her and buried myself in work.

I focused on the table before me, crushing weak Yin and Yang pills and attempting to mix them. The reaction was volatile, like igniting fine gunpowder.

This was foundational research, necessary if I wanted to better understand Ye An’s condition. I needed to observe how Yin and Yang fractions interacted, how their ratios shifted, and what components emerged when they combined.

The problem was scale. Working with such small quantities produced results that might not hold true in larger volumes.

For Yang, the Sea of Fire came to mind. For Yin… the moon was an option, but it felt impractical. I needed something more grounded.

Unfortunately, the ongoing war made exploration dangerous.

Even in winter, when skirmishes had lessened, the other sects had launched what they called “Hunting Parties.” Some went as far as calling it a hunting festival, though the name hardly mattered.

The great sects were sending armies to exterminate beasts across their territories, likely hoping to recreate the peaceful winters we’d enjoyed. After all, most of the Blazing Sun Sect’s lands had seen no beast attacks last year.

In my opinion, that was dangerous, assuming this wasn’t just a diversion tactic. Humans liked to believe they ruled these lands, but in truth, wild territories still dominated the map. Beasts held far more land than people.

My gaze drifted back to Wu Yan, unconscious in the glass cylinder.

The world was growing more chaotic by the day. How was I supposed to protect her like this? What if something happened to me?

Lately, it felt as though the pressure never stopped building. One problem followed another, as if the world itself was testing me, probing to see how much weight I could bear.

For now, all I could do was wait.

Ye An had recovered from her broken cultivation when Song Song’s incident triggered her roots to regrow, thanks to her condition. But Wu Yan’s case was far more severe. Most people who failed to break through to Core Formation were crippled for life.

All I could do was hope she would be the exception.

As my mind wandered through a thousand different scenarios, Wu Yan’s eyes fluttered and then opened, locking onto mine.

For a heartbeat, I thought I was hallucinating.

Then relief crashed into me, sudden and overwhelming, a calm so deep it nearly stole my breath. I felt like jumping into the air and celebrating like a child, but instead, I simply smiled at her.

Without a second thought, I rushed to the glass at full speed and pressed my palm against its surface. Qi surged. Cracks spiderwebbed outward.

The cylinder shattered.

Before the shards could even reach her, before the potion finished spilling onto the floor, I had already caught her, pulling her into my arms. I lifted her effortlessly, holding her in a princess carry, her body light and warm against mine.

“I’m so glad you’re well,” I said quietly, unable to find words that truly captured what I felt.