The Sea Does Not Get Wet
Spiritual energy dissolved into the Sea of Slaughter.
More precisely, the [Disappointment] that an eok-kka event had forcibly jammed into me committed suicide, and the spiritual energy of an early Golden Core cultivator melted straight into the Sea of Slaughter as a result.
It wasn't as if I had swallowed some ordinary cultivator's Golden Core. This was another Yu Hee, cleanly split off as a heart demon — myself — so what accumulated wasn't slaughter energy. Pure spiritual energy mixed into the Sea of Slaughter instead.
Of course, measured against the vast triple-layered slaughter that filled this enormous Mental World, that spiritual energy was maybe 0.0009 percent at best. You could argue it wouldn't make any difference at all.
But even that tiny amount of spiritual energy, once it melted and blended with the slaughter, seemed to leave a kind of fragrance behind.
And the reason I was suddenly going on about all this was simple.
From the moment spiritual energy dissolved into the Sea of Slaughter, controlling the sea became far easier, and I could handle much larger quantities of it at once.
More importantly, the burden and cost of using skills dropped sharply while their efficiency rose.
The effect was especially stark with skills that required spiritual energy or killing intent — transformation skills and the Heavenly Slaughter Art in particular. Transformation skills most of all.
Where using Laws used to send my mental power plummeting in a near-vertical freefall, it now descended in a gentle curve. And if I poured in a little spiritual energy, I could keep a Law applied to an inanimate object half-permanently.
"…Dunking the rest of the Emotion Expressions into the sea might work even better. Tch. Probably too greedy, though."
If I converted all five Emotion Expressions into Golden Cores and melted them into the Sea of Slaughter, I might not manage all three layers — but half of the topmost sea, at least, would move at my will.
But unless another eok-kka-class event or some equally catastrophic misfortune inflicted permanent mental fracture on me again, that kind of luck wasn't coming back. And the only reason the fracture had spit out something that helpfully suicided was because it had been [Disappointment] specifically.
If it had been [Anger], I would have had to fight. [Greeting] or [Gratitude] I wasn't sure about, but [Rest] would have just run for it. No — watching how [Disappointment] behaved, [Greeting] and [Gratitude] would have talked my ear off just as badly.
At least [Disappointment], with its viciously self-destructive streak born of disappointment in itself, had suicided with almost insulting ease.
I swallowed the regret and wrapped myself in killing intent, spiritual energy, and slaughter tribulation. Instead of charging straight back out onto the map, I was training the Heavenly Slaughter Art in the training grounds — the foundational technique I had already evolved twice.
Originally the technique had run on killing intent alone. One stage up, and I could mix in spiritual energy. One stage further, and it became the Heavenly Slaughter Art, letting me coat myself in even a thin film of slaughter tribulation.
The Heavenly Slaughter Art was, at base, a foundational technique that wrapped killing intent around the body to trigger the system's combat-state judgment, letting every stat function as if I were already in a fight.
If I raised it one more stage, I would be able to enter combat state with mental power as well — but something more important than that waited beyond.
What do you reach at the end of tempering killing intent meant for ending life, refining it with will and purifying it with spiritual energy, over and over?
"Slaughter tribulation."
Surprisingly, the order had been completely reversed.
What I learned from mastering the technique was this: the original foundational art was meant to start from killing intent, perfect it, pile up enough power mixed with spiritual energy, then use that as a base to refine and purify killing intent into spiritual energy — and at the very end, obtain and accumulate slaughter tribulation.
No wonder the foundational technique's proficiency had skyrocketed like mad. I had already formed a spiritual root not from spiritual energy or killing intent, but from slaughter tribulation itself — the technique's ultimate goal — and then stacked three whole seas of it in my Mental World and been using them freely.
So what I was training now was matching the concentration of the Heavenly Slaughter Art I currently used.
Wrapping slaughter tribulation around my body according to the foundational technique was trivially easy, but that was just using slaughter tribulation raw. I had to melt killing intent and spiritual energy into it and get the ratios right. Only then would it count as proper training and the proficiency shoot up.
And of course, with no help and no method, I had to match those wrong ratios by pure raw sensation alone — like hunting for hidden pictures, pure grinding grunt work!
I tried calculating the ratios experimentally past single digits into double digits, blew my own body up with slaughter tribulation a dozen-odd times in the process, and belatedly gave up on the math.
Using my head really did not suit me!
The silver lining was that this still counted as mixing slaughter tribulation with spiritual energy, so even when I failed or self-harmed, the training-failure experience ticked in as a percentage, nice and steady.
"Alright, alright, next up for this round of sect contribution — line up in order!"
"Kyuu!"
Following Yeona's guidance as she carried the max-level rabbit on her head, the decorations filed in with little grunts of effort and started mining at the newly created Spirit Vein Mine.
"Senior Myo! How is it?"
"Kyuu!"
"This vein is pretty big, you say? Then would it be alright to send the candidates in too? What? Why would I shove myself into work other people are doing just to be greedy?"
"Kyuu-kyuu!"
"Ah! Ow! Ow! Senior Myo! Kyaaah!"
From atop the head of a screaming Yeona — who was yelping apologies — the Epic-grade decoration known as the Myriad Gold Myo paddled its short front paws down in a steady rain of punishment. One eye cracked open, and its gaze met mine as I watched the whole scene.
"What? No, I'm really fine, Senior Myo! Or how about you mine the remaining vein and take it yourself? A Core Formation cultivator like Senior Myo would put it to better use than a mere Qi Condensation cultivator like me!"
"Kyuu!? Kyuu-kyuu!!!"
"Eek! Senior Myo?! Senior! Kyap! Why are you so angry!"
I watched that noisy little farce for a long time — a really long time — until San Gi-yeon, her head covered in lumps, finally left the training grounds teary-eyed with the Myriad Gold Myo, arms full of slaughter stone. Only then did I close my eyes again and return to training.
While practicing the Heavenly Slaughter Art, a thought had struck me one day.
I went into the Mental World and built a body out of slaughter tribulation. Of course it could only be my own body, not a generic one — and I obviously couldn't install an [Emotion Expression] into it.
That had been a limited collab piece exclusive to the heart-demon eok-kka event. Unless it got a low-probability rerun, that kind of luck wasn't happening again.
So why make a body that could only move inside my inner world? Simple. Inside me, the humanities of my past life — not the cultivator me — were still diligently sharpening the weapon called conscience day after day, training so they could stab me the moment they got the chance.
This was my Mental World, so I could grab one of those humanities hard at work in there and pull it out.
"…I get why you dragged me out, but hold on a second first."
The moment the inner humanity settled into the temporary body in the Mental World, the body grew as if time itself had been fast-forwarded, looked down at me, and spoke. I shouted back, full of pure injustice.
"Why the hell are you getting taller?! I don't change at all!"
"That's because you decided you couldn't waste time, started playing prodigy before you even turned ten, and ground cultivation nonstop so you could be a cultivator!"
"Yeah, but still! Why am I—!"
"And stop trying to dunk me in the Sea of Slaughter as lubricant for a second."
"…Tch. What's the problem? Efficiency-wise it's the fastest option, and it's great for testing the hypothesis."
Just as the other me, [Disappointment], had suicided and let spiritual energy melt into the Sea of Slaughter, I had figured tossing a past-life humanity into the sea might raise my control even further. The bastard knew my scheme perfectly well — same age, after all — so why the holdup?
"I'll dive in myself, so quit fretting and just give me a little time."
"To do what?"
"To cry."
"…"
"Unlike you, we can cry. Calling it a substitute feels a little off, but now that we can move around in the Mental World, crying it out first should make things a bit easier."
"Easier for whose heart? Yours?"
Were these fragile mortal humanities, handed a chance, trying to shake me — a Golden Core cultivator — on the spot?
"For my heart. Because I am you."
The humanities tore through a Golden Core cultivator's heart with the sword called conscience. At the words that one humanity, given a body and able to cry now, could shed tears in our place, I finally surrendered to the suffering conscience and nodded.
Unlike the humanity that wept without end, a suppressed little sob in its throat, I still could not change a single expression even inside the Mental World. All I could do was stare up at the Golden Core that lit the inner world and listen blankly to that crying.
Even at a sob so mournful it seemed steeped in old grudge, no rain fell on the Mental World. No wind blew. Not a single cloud appeared.
Just like me, who could neither shed tears nor show emotion.
Still, it would have been so much better if it had rained.
Though the sea would not get wet from rain, of course.