Nexus Grandmaster

Divine Master Gao

"Has no one ever told you that trying to stay clear of suspicion makes you the most suspicious person?" the old man asked while examining Fang Yu with great interest.

Fang Yu's eyes narrowed calculatively. The thin layer of luminous light around the man's body was all he needed to know that he was a divine practitioner and therefore invulnerable to any trump card he presently possessed. Although fatally lethal to mortals like himself, his water gun posed next to zilch danger to cultivators as the disparity in strength was too great.

Fang Yu's 'weapon' was actually a foreign invention from another word; he was a transmigator from planet Earth who had been a factory line manager until he died in a tragic accident at the age of thirty. By some sorcery unknown to him, he woke up to a new body in the Eternal Purgatory World afterwards. But it wasn't an unwelcome development at all; he was now a youngster without a receding hairline. There was the opportunity to pursue cultivation– the practice of harnessing the power of rules, laws, and the essence of the universe to sublimate one's body, soul and spirit.

Unlike Earth, the rules of the Eternal Purgatory World supported cultivation. One could advance as a divine practitioner through the realms of cultivation by consuming spiritual materials and refining them with divine arts. Fang Yu was only a mortal with access to neither of the two, so he had to utilize technological knowledge from his previous life to make this water gun as a protection safeguard for the past four years he had been on the planet.

"Divine Master, please spare me. I was only passing by and saw nothing," Fang Yu's expression turned fearful. Overall, he looked very pitiful.

"Divine Master? Who, me?" The old man repeated, clearly amused. "First of, drop the scared act. I can tell from your heartbeat that you're faking it."

Fang Yu's facial expression remained frozen in place. On cue, his heart rate suddenly accelerated.

'Hhm, a natural born schemer. He reminds me of myself,' the old man sighed and said aloud, "Tell you what, run me through how you got rid of these men on the ground and I'll let you leave."

Fang Yu hesitated, secretly regretting not running away faster earlier. He had anticipated this situation happening; he knew it was simply impossible for the meteor landing to go unnoticed or escape the attention of divine practitioners all over the planet. Thus, Fang Yu dared not hold any greedy thoughts of claiming the crystal for himself and had initially planned to leave before any divine practitioner got to the scene and developed thoughts of silencing the witness in plain sight, in this case, himself.

"I used a weapon of my own creation," Fang Yu shook off his stray thoughts and hurriedly burst into speech to 'market' himself. The old man loosened his telekinetic grip and allowed Fang Yu reach into his Taotie Sack to retrieve the weapon.

"How does it work?" "There are three separate chambers inside it, two full and one empty. Pressing down this part mixes the materials inside the third chamber and ejects it out....." Fang Yu broke down the process.

The old cultivator seemed impressed, "Hhm, sour wine and liquid wood ash?"

'More accurately, super concentrated vinegar and lye. When combined, they produce a caustic liquid with a heat-releasing effect, dangerous enough when used in conjunction with the gun's propulsion ejection mechanism,' Fang Yu burst into a tirade of the technical details in his mind. Aloud, he simply said, 'Yes. It's particularly lethal when targeted at vital points. At the very least, it is enough to render opponents immobile for a while."

"How did you come up with the concoction recipe for the mixture?" Gao Weiguang asked. In his opinion, the gun itself was not particularly impressive as this world had a lot of weapons which operated by the same principle of rapid release, such as the crossbow. Instead, the black fluid that possessed such a high damage potential despite containing almost zero spiritual energy was the most brilliant aspect of the invention.

"I researched extensively, Senior," Fang Yu said humbly. "I analyzed the properties of many materials before coming up with this final result."

Fang Yu was telling the truth. While he found the gun easy to make thanks to his technical dexterity, he actually had to carefully research and experiment with many mortal plants and herbs before coming up with the perfect formula to use in this biochemical warfare combination. This was after he tried in vain to get his hands on divine arts to get him started on the path of cultivation.

"My name is Gao Weiguang, the First Elder of the Immortal Xuan Sect," the old man finally introduced himself. "I'm ranked ninth on the Thousand Heroes List and fourth on the Legacy Pathfinder Record."

Fang Yu blinked in obvious confusion at these words. Gao Weiguang was slightly surprised by his reaction at first before he realized something.

"I forgot this is a mortal territory with very little access to information about the cultivation world. Nevermind that, you'll understand the significance of my titles in the future," Gao Weiguang said grandly with a wave of hand. "So, what are you waiting for?"

"Uhn?" Fang Yu's face became increasingly puzzled.

"You strike me as a pretty smart kid, are you intentionally playing dumb now?" Gao Weiguang's face darkened. "Won't you ask me to take you in as your master?"

Fang Yu was frozen for all of one second, after which he immediately fell to his knees and kowtowed three times.

"Disciple Fang Yu pays his respect to Master."

To Fang Yu, this was a completely unexpected windfall. After rotting in the mortal district for four years, he now had a cultivator as a master!

"Err....." Gao Weiguang was at a loss. He had actually expected Fang Yu to beg to be taken in as a disciple first, but the former just directly performed the discipleship rites outside expectation.

"You may stand," Gao Weiguang did not pursue it and straightened his face. His skill in face changing was even better than Fang Yu's; he was clearly a man of many thoughts.

"You'll be my fourth and probably my last disciple," he said. "I don't think I'll be able to take in another after this."

Fang Yu sensed a peculiar tone in his voice and almost asked what he meant, but he kept quiet as the man walked over to the godshard and picked it up. In his hand, it flickered less stably.

"The others will find here soon," Gao Weiguang glanced at Fang Yu and asked him, 'Do you have any mortal commitments to settle before we leave?'

Fang Yu was extremely excited and cared less about the first half of the last sentence. The news that he was finally going to leave this mortal territory was akin to heavenly music in his ears.

"I'm an orphan," he expressed in these simple words that he had no such inhibitions. Gao Weiguang nodded, thinking to himself that it made sense now why he was out hunting at such a young age.

"Swallow this," Gao Weiguang shoved a pill down Fang Yu's throat before waving his sleeves.

In front of him, a row of shimmering runes suddenly appeared, looking like a scene straight out of a fiction movie. Gao Weiguang made rapid hand seals and soon constructed a complicated-looking teleportation portal in front of them.

"Let's go!" With these words, Gao Weiguang grabbed Fang Yu's hands firmly and vanished into the passage with him.

Behind them, the portal closed almost immediately and the runes dissipated into thin air.