Superior Species and Transcendent Species

In one of Cheon Nan-cho's roughly once-every-few-years lectures on understanding the xianxia world, I was hit out of nowhere with the news that my race was gradually shifting away from human.

"I'm talking about that Soft Body Technique you've been practicing."

"You were the one who handed that to me, Cheon Nan-cho!"

"Mm... well, to start with the basics so you can follow along, Hee-ah — when it comes to races, there are Superior Species and Transcendent Species."

I nodded and settled in to listen to Teacher Cheon Nan-cho's lesson.

"A Superior Species takes the traits of a lower species and develops them further. The weaknesses stay the same, but the strengths get bigger, or new strengths get added on."

So since the human race effect window only had an experience buff, becoming a Superior Species would mean either boosting that experience buff or tacking on some new effect. Got it.

"A Transcendent Species ends up with powers so unusual you might as well call it an entirely new race. It literally transcends."

"Obviously the Transcendent Species is stronger, right?"

"It is — but it's that much harder, too."

I took that as code for a filthy class-change difficulty, nodded, and waved her on to the next part.

"Which brings us to that Soft Body Technique of yours, Hee-ah. Your body grows, right? So the Soft Body Technique is a method that transforms you into a Transcendent Species with the power of growth."

"...A giant?"

"Pretty much. Once you master it, you could probably call yourself Giantkin."

"The 'Colossal' prefix on giant-type monsters is absolute garbage, though... oh, right. It already came bundled with the Six Great Calamities anyway."

My mood took a sudden nosedive.

"But wouldn't being Giantkin be insanely inconvenient?"

"Why?"

"For starters, wouldn't I have to rebuild every base facility so a giant could actually use them?"

"Hee-ah. Giantkin are a Transcendent Species, remember? It's not just your body getting huge. It's embedding the law of 'vastness' into your bloodline. You become able to turn into a giant."

"Ahh, so it's like a class effect. Perfectly understood."

I weathered Cheon Nan-cho's skeptical stare without flinching and shot her a look that said hurry up and move on already, until she finally gave up first, sighed, and continued the lesson.

"Also, Transcendent Species like True Immortals and True Dragons basically can't exist in the Lower Realm. This place simply can't withstand the power a Transcendent Species throws around..."

Anyway, I kept studying the xianxia world, training, periodically heading out to wipe maps clean, and pushing through the occasional eok-kka event — growing steadily through the whole cycle.

"My level is climbing so damn slowly!"

"Hee-ah, you are growing at a speed so absurd I've ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠never even heard of a precedent. Even for a talent the stars of the Upper Realm are watching, this is excessive."

"That bad? But I'm only just Golden Core."

"How many years have you been training, Hee-ah?"

"Uh... I haven't counted, so I don't know?"

"When I first met you, you were a measly Foundation Establishment, and now you're already Golden Core! It's only been about a hundred years! It took me over three hundred years just to go from being born out of a Golden Core fragment to Core Formation!"

I swallowed the damn, that took forever that nearly slipped out, and reached both hands toward Cheon Nan-cho, who was flailing her little arms and swatting at me.

Her spite amounted to nothing more than a few swats with no attack judgment — but my own attacks hit so hard that any counter would just bounce her clean off in a single stroke.

"Ei! Ei!"

Ultimate technique: Tickle Assault!

"Kyaaang?!"

Why am I the only one who bounces off?!

I rolled across the floor in pure indignation, then sprang up, both arms thrust high toward the sky — and my hair spiked up with them, twitching and bobbing like it was alive.

"Kyaak!"

Oh, for fuck's sake!

I got a strong feeling today's luck was absolute trash, so I bolted into the training grounds and activated the Rest emote to go on break. Haha! With this, most misfortune events wouldn't be able to touch me!

"Gyaaaaak?!"

What the hell? Consecutive misfortunes? One at the base, and another the moment I used the Rest emote?

"This doesn't feel like the lead-up to an eok-kka event..."

Back-to-back Small Misfortunes didn't match the eok-kka event precursor I remembered, so I concluded it was just plain bad luck stacking Small Misfortunes on me — and that conclusion alone soured my mood.

Fine. No side quests today. I was planting myself in the training grounds and doing nothing but train!

I'd been grinding away with the thought that maxing out the Transformation skill and mastering it would convert my race — and anything had to be better than human, which only came with a single all-experience-gain bonus.

"Mmm."

Sitting still and circulating, I could feel the purified slaughter energy flowing endlessly along the paths of slaughter energy inside my body. The more it accumulated, the harder it became to pile on more.

That was just the sensation while circulating slaughter energy. Actually diving into my mental image to train felt quite different.

The stacking itself was the same, sure.

But it was more like building an uncollapsible tower out of wooden chopsticks made of slaughter energy — right in the middle of the ocean.

Why wooden chopsticks specifically? Probably because the fastest, easiest thing to refine slaughter energy into was the Chopsticks skill, which I'd already mastered.

The problem was that the sea of slaughter energy — which wasn't even a real ocean — still churned with fierce currents.

Waves rose on their own, for crying out loud!

There was no stopping the natural flow of the slaughter-energy sea. Of course not — slaughter energy's defining trait was that it grew the more you used it, which meant the flip side was that it withered away the instant it stopped.

That was exactly why slaughter energy had zero talent for defense.

When you needed something fixed and solid to block with, it instead thrashed around however it damn well pleased, hell-bent on killing living things — so the act of defending itself was impossible.

Which was probably why the great sea of slaughter energy firmly rooted in my mental image kept circulating and flowing, over and over, just to keep from fading.

And the slaughter energy that grew with every cycle of that flowing sea — that was the true form of the Regenerating Slaughter Energy I'd been using since Core Formation.

Anyway, I failed at building the wooden-chopstick tower again. Maybe I'd need to evolve them into steel chopsticks, or master Spoon and use that ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠too, before I could actually stack a tower high enough.

Thinking that, I picked up the Golden Core sitting at the center of the slaughter-energy sea in my mental image — the very spot where I'd been trying to build the tower — and set it floating back atop the waves.

The light of spiritual power illuminating this mental image of a surging slaughter-energy ocean was the image of the Golden Core I had forged.

I'd tried linking the Soft Body Technique to that Golden Core as a shortcut to grind Transformation skill proficiency up to mastery — and after that spectacular failure, I had no choice but ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠to put it off again.

"I keep trying new things, but either my realm isn't high enough or the results just don't pan out."

"Which is why I keep telling you — that kind of thing is a waste of talent."

"I know that now, okay? I remember what you said in class."

Invent a new technique. Found a cultivation method. Carve out the path.

That was the road of the so-called founding patriarchs — the ones who started sects.

According to Cheon Nan-cho, they burned so much time inventing new things that their actual cultivation fell behind, and with a Heavenly Tribulation coming that would probably kill them, they used their shiny new techniques and methods as bait to gather disciples and pass on their legacy. That was how sects began.

"So learning a technique or method someone else already made is way faster than inventing one yourself!"

"Well, sure it's faster — if you can actually learn it."

Even basic methods built on killing intent were filthy rare and niche. The only one I'd managed to learn so far was the Man-Slaughter Formula, which had since evolved into the Heavenly Slaughter Formula.

And slaughter-energy-based methods? Those didn't exist at all!

"The way I see it, the world's just too peaceful, so there are no slaughter-energy-based skills."

"...?"

"It'd be nice if there was something like a battlefield where cultivators constantly fought each other."

"What kind of nightmarish hellscape is that."

"Maybe I should just make one myself?"

A few PVP-related mods and I could probably pull it off for real! Build a colosseum, slap the mods on, and done!

I'd have to check whether multiplayer mode even worked first, of course — but while I was briefly daydreaming about it, Cheon Nan-cho went deathly pale and started whining at me not to, so I dropped it.

"You don't have to freak out that hard. Other cultivators squeeze tens of thousands of mortals dry and worse. Mine wouldn't be any different."

"It is different! Completely different!"

"Fine, fine. We'll go with that."

Killing background NPCs just burned slaughter energy with zero experience gain. Better to hunt fellow cultivators — slaughter energy, experience, and drop loot all came fat and juicy.

There was a reason I even opened fire on neutral NPCs first.