The Petals of Heaven Fall

"Why is there a mortal here—?!"

Ordinary cultivators protected themselves from surprise attacks with dharma tools or talismans. Some used proper defensive techniques, and in a pinch they even threw up walls of spiritual energy.

Either way, the chopsticks forged from slaughter energy—built for the sole purpose of killing living things—had more than enough penetration to punch through those defenses, and more than enough lethality to snatch a cultivator's life.

Against non-living matter, though, both penetration and killing power fell short.

"So you're the slaughter demon, you bitch!"

I never expected the chopsticks to be stopped by a rock wall that simply surged up from the ground with nothing more than a stomp of the foot—not a dharma treasure, not a defensive technique, just raw footwork. Given how many Qi Condensation and early Foundation Establishment cultivators I'd swallowed without ever being found out, I immediately clocked that this opponent was at least mid-stage Foundation Establishment.

"Auto-Battle!"

I didn't lose consciousness, but my body slipped free of my control and went berserk on its own, generating slaughter energy. In an instant it split the rock wall with a weapon yanked from my inventory, intending to cleave the cultivator behind it in the same stroke—

"Khuh!"

Somehow he'd already layered on a defensive technique. His arms turned gold and managed to stop the greatsword cold. At the same moment our eyes met, the cultivator flared with golden light and charged—and my body, wreathed in crimson slaughter energy, charged right back to meet him.

Gold and blood-red collided. In the end, the blood-red barely managed to swallow the gold.

"Fuck, this bastard's ridiculously strong."

Neutral NPCs had wildly inconsistent combat power. Of course they did—even among Foundation Establishment cultivators, some had never fought a day in their lives, while others had clawed their way to that realm through battle after battle.

This one was clearly the latter.

He'd been a tough opponent, and the mere fact that a fight had happened meant slaughter had been committed—so the slaughter energy and experience I reaped from killing him were substantial.

"Terrain scouting's only halfway done, though. Tch."

True to the name Samjong Sect—Three Peaks Sect—it was starting to get hard to handle alone. What I was doing only worked because it was guerrilla warfare: pick them off one by one with ambushes and run. The moment the cultivators started moving in packs, a frontal fight would be hopeless.

"Ah, shit. Trap here too."

I scowled at the red terrain markers lighting up on the minimap. They'd blanketed the whole area with every trap imaginable just to catch me—if the minimap hadn't shown them all, I'd have been captured ages ago and turned into a prisoner.

"Oh. Potions."

Near the traps, no fewer than four neutral NPCs who looked to be at the Qi Condensation stage were milling around. I took one look at the high-quality potions that would patch up the injuries and lost slaughter energy from the last Auto-Battle, smashed them to pieces for the slaughter energy, and immediately fled again.

I'd mostly finished scouting the terrain at the foot of the mountains, but the progress bar was still only half full. That meant I'd eventually have to push up into the peaks where the Samjong Sect actually sat if I ever wanted to leave this map.

A field boss? Well, for a sect called the Samjong Sect, the field boss was probably the sect leader, right? Why he wasn't coming to kill me yet, I had no idea.

"Vile slaughter demon! I will kill you without fail! I will kill you and be done with it—aaaaah!!"

"Shut up. Settings window won't even open, so I can't mute NPC dialogue either."

"Even if I abandon my cultivation, I will avenge my disciples here!!!"

No name popped up, so he wasn't a named elite—but he'd transformed into an elite monster ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠sporting one of the most broken prefixes in the entire game, and he was pouring out terrifying spiritual energy.

The Enraged prefix was pure cheese: no downside, a flat fifty percent boost to critical hit chance and critical damage. One crit and he could dump catastrophic damage. Still, he was only an elite, not a boss monster.

"Auto-Battle."

"This—can't be...?"

Of course I get a ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠meaningless victory. Fucking hell.

"Forgive me... for failing to avenge you..."

"Pretty long death line for an elite that isn't even named."

And it wasn't even skippable. That was exactly why running Auto-Battle against neutral NPCs was a gamble. You could lose fights you should win, or barely scrape through fights you should dominate.

His spiritual root and guts had been ripped out. Both of my arms had been blown off.

I patched them with slaughter energy, but it would take a little time before the arms moved properly again. And until then, I'd have to hide—again. If it weren't for this godforsaken terrain-scouting requirement locking map travel, I would've just jumped to another map already.

Seogang Fortress, the Ant Forest, and the Wasteland—places I'd already passed through and could still see on the minimap—were all two tiles or more away. Going back wasn't an option either.

"Tch. No good answers like this."

I'd gathered plenty of slaughter energy. I'd been assassinating an entire sect's cultivators, after all—even a weak Qi Condensation cultivator had more years and karma piled up than an ordinary mortal, and the slaughter energy I could harvest from them was enormous.

The problem was that I had neither the time nor the space to condense that slaughter energy and forge it into a completed foundation.

"My lifespan right now..."

My body had been locked to the day I first stepped into Qi Condensation and was reborn as a cultivator, but time still flowed, and so did my lifespan. Reaching Qi Condensation had doubled a mortal's span to a hundred years, and Foundation Establishment had added three hundred more—and even so, I had less left than I expected.

Mortals, of course, were another story.

"It's the Double Speed Mod."

I could now crank it as high as sixteen times normal speed, and the price was lifespan itself. That was the cost of spamming the Double Speed Mod every time I cultivated or trained.

"Even if I reach Core Formation, I'll only get another five hundred years."

Or I could scavenge some lifespan-extending spiritual medicine. Probably epic-grade consumables at minimum.

"Nothing beats the Training Ground, honestly."

The only place I could train in peace without burning lifespan—where levels and stats didn't climb, but pure practice still counted—was the Training Ground. Unlike the tutorial version, a Training Ground at this level range might actually deliver meaningful combat gains now that reality had been patched in.

Heaven-and-earth spiritual energy began gathering rapidly overhead.

A bad feeling hit me at the same instant I read the system message. On the minimap, red dots all turned and came flying straight at me—but I didn't have the brainpower left to care about them.

Every gamer instinct I'd built across a previous life, every cultivator's survival ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠instinct I'd forged in this one, screamed at once. I poured out every scrap of slaughter energy I'd stockpiled. I was going to die. If I screwed this up, I was actually going to die.

...An event eok-kka was coming!

"This fucking trash-ass garbage game."

It was an event that handed out specific event items. Items hard to get at your level, or high-grade event gear—so you could call it lucky, sure.

Except for the part where a Guardian, the event boss, came along for the ride. If you'd already maxed a character and pushed it to the absolute limit, it was a free-honey event. But this one also stopped spawning past a certain level, and without console cheats the drop rate was so low most people never saw it.

And of course it had to trigger right now, in this exact situation!

And Guardians were, by default, full raid boss monsters.

"How dare you—summon something like this in the territory of the Samjong Sect!"

And of course the flashy entrance effects were enough to drag out this map's owner—the field boss monster. Under normal circumstances, when a field boss fought a raid boss, the raid boss won.

The problem was that the Field Boss Enhancement Mod was active, juicing trash-reward field bosses up to raid-boss levels.

Just the collision between an event-spawned raid boss and a field boss was enough to send heaven-and-earth spiritual energy into a frenzy, barring ordinary cultivators from even approaching.

The raid boss started at level 350 minimum—mid-stage Golden Core—and the field boss, while clearly lower-level, was still over level 300 and further boosted by the mod. They went at each other evenly.

Even so, the raid boss was being pushed back, little by little. Being an event spawn, it was fighting on the field boss's home turf, which already stacked the odds.

"Return to your heavens!"

And the field boss was fighting dirtier and better than expected.

If the raid boss died like this, I was next—guaranteed. I needed at least a mutual kill, or to leave whichever one survived so crippled it could barely stand.

I shaped slaughter energy into chopsticks and prepared an ambush.

Tempered by countless chopstick barrages in the dungeon, these were pure condensed slaughter energy—poison itself to any cultivator who carried spiritual power.

But at my level—barely mid-stage Foundation Establishment—no matter how high the attack power, there was no way I could punch through the defenses of a cultivator nearly two hundred levels above me.

I could still create an opening, though.

Crimson chopsticks of slaughter energy shot toward a gap in the field boss's guard as he tanked the Guardian's assault. Of course he noticed. He flicked his hand, trying to crush the red chopsticks under raw spiritual energy—

"How dare—!"

Chopsticks that could pierce even a Foundation Establishment cultivator's defenses ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠weren't something a mere hand gesture could stop. He had to channel spiritual energy through a defensive dharma treasure to block them—and the moment that pulled his aggro and his gaze swung toward me—

The raid boss that had been getting crushed under the field boss erupted with terrifying spiritual energy as it entered Phase Two.