Devouring the Heavens (ATG)

Chapter 10: A story of Ice and Poison

A/N: So if you guys aren't aware, Webnovel has been 'shadowbanning' comments recently. This means that any comment that contains profanities in any form, will be automatically deleted.

So words like: Fuck, Shit, Bitch, Bastard, Cock, Bollocks are all nonos. Even words such as: Sex, Hell, and Damn are out too. Basically, if you want to comment using forms of those words, you will need to get creative.

Well, Enjoy the chapter...

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Two pairs of eyes searched for answers.

One pair, a wild and deep crimson, almost the color of blood, filled with longing and hope. The other, a beautiful icy blue, shock and confusion danced within, although cold indifference still reigned above all.

Time almost came to a standstill, the air thick with tension.

Shane could hear his heartbeat in his ears and as the seconds ticked on, he started to gain a terrible sinking feeling.

Fear, fear of rejection, fear that she wouldn't allow him a chance to explain and fear that he would be all alone in this unforgiving world should she wish to send him away.

An almost imperceptible nod...

Shane let out a shaky breath in relief and the sound in his ears lessened. 'Thank God she is willing! This feels far more draining than when I fought that entire pack of wolves yesterday.' He thought wryly to himself as he tried and almost failed to contain his excitement at her simple gesture.

"Ok, please sit, this may take a while." 'She actually sat! Ok progress, progress.'

"What I have to say will probably include a lot of very strange things. Some you will want to question, some you will want to refute and some you may outright reject but if you could let me talk until the end, I would be very grateful."

"Speak, I will listen" Even her icy cold voice made his whole body feel soft and warm. 'Goddess dammit! What is wrong with me?'

"Ok where to start hmm Right so let's begin with something about you before we talk about me."

"Why about m" Shane raised his hand to stop her.

"Now now, you always were impatient ever since we were kids" He flashed a teasing smile at her after saying that and she averted her eyes not knowing how to respond. 'Sooo Cute!'

Crossing his fingers for luck and adopting a serious tone, Shane began to state his case. "When I say 'something about you', it will naturally be relevant to what I have to say after." He paused to take a deep breath, building a little suspense, before diving right into the metaphorical can of worms.

"You are special Qingyue.

...You always have been. You pick things up incredibly quickly and even for the most difficult things, your comprehension is off the charts. You also find it incredibly hard to lie and you can always tell if someone is lying to you." It wasn't a question, after all, he knew it to be true.

Her eyebrows shot up high onto her forehead in surprise.

This was probably the biggest emotional reaction he had personally seen from her in years! He was also sure her little mouth was wide open but the pesky veil was blocking his view of it. If only he could remove it... 'Wow seeing her again really does mess with my mental state... like a lot.'

After a moment, her eyebrows slowly came back down, and instead, she knitted them together into a frown, because... he was right.

Qingyue was frustrated, to say the least. She couldn't even lie and tell him he was wrong and silence was the same as admitting so she just sighed and nodded slowly with resignation.

Shane smiled wryly. "The reason I mentioned that is simple. Once you have listened to what I have to say and then personally confirmed it, you will remember that you had not felt me lie even once during this conversation."

He let that sink in for a few moments before launching into his story, gesturing with his hands from time to time, for added dramatic effect.

"As I said before, I originally believed that this place was a hallucination, a mere figment of my imagination that was created to allow me to escape from the real world.

If you remember, I once told you that I was diagnosed with a terminal illness at a very young age and it was the illness that led me to this dreamscape." Shane opened his arms wide as if to hold the entire mystical world in his hands.

"Whenever I relapsed, I would find myself here, and although I would recover, the illness was doomed to harry me throughout my life, until either I died from it finally or my body gave up.

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When I was first diagnosed, I collapsed at school and woke up here. I wandered alone in the dense fog for days, until I found you, a little girl, all alone in this garden." A gentle smile tugged at his lips.

"...Well, the rest you know, we became friends along the way and inadvertently comforted each other in our time of need.

After weeks of being bedridden, I started to recover. At the same time, the connection I felt to this place became weaker and weaker until one day I was no longer able to come here at all.

Naturally, being so young, I was scared and upset and so I tried to talk to both my family and the doctors. The problem was that when I tried to tell them about this place, all of my memories seemed to fade away...

Well not entirely, as I would find out later, that they were still there, just slightly out of reach, but I digress.

That was until a whole eight years passed and I once again fell ill and somehow found myself here in this dream.

Technically, it was eight years for me but for you, I think it should have been more like five I don't really know how it works if I'm honest." He shrugged, some things would make you old if you tried to make sense of them.

"Why, why are you telling me all of this? How is this supposed to make me believe in you?" She asked, seemingly confused

"You really*Sigh* I died Qingyue" She flinched a little at that but quickly regained her indifference.

Shane's eyes turned a little misty for a few seconds and a melancholic air surrounded him as the old memories poured in. "The illness left my body in bad shape and I could barely even move around towards the end. By that point, I had achieved what I wanted and so my will to fight it was practically nonexistent ...and also, I was tired Qingyue, so very very tired"

Suddenly, his eyes brightened, and when he spoke again, the melancholy had faded entirely from his voice. "So, I decided to go out on my own terms! A final Fuck You to the powers that be for dealing me a shitty hand! I did the only thing I could do.

I refused the treatment and probably passed away over there, soon after I lost consciousness At least I think so...." Shane's momentum came to a stop and he scratched his nose awkwardly before continuing.

"The rest you know, I came here, said my goodbyes to you, and died.

Well, that should have been the end but it wasn't. I woke up somewhere else, somewhere completely different, and now, someway or somehow, I'm here. Here as in the profound Sky Continent. Here as in The Blue Wind Empire."

Qingyue's whole body shook and her eyes turned glassy as she completely zoned out at his words. 'Shit! I forgot about that. She is completely obsessed with growing strong enough to find her mother who left them to return to the Realm of the Gods.'

He facepalmed hard. 'Damn I probably just triggered her memories.''

"Qingyue... Qingyue, Qingyue!"

"Hmmm yes?" Qingyue seemed slightly dazed at first but she swiftly recovered.

For just a split second, the sadness and vulnerability that she kept so well hidden were on full display... until the indifferent mask came back up. But how could Shane, who was staring into her eyes the whole time, miss it?

Gripping his fist tightly, he promised himself to give this girl all the care she needed in the future. For now, he had to shrug it off and continue. This was too important.

"You zoned out there for a bit. Now, moving on to my main point. I am willing to bet that like I did before, you also believe that I am something fictional, a creation of your own mind, correct?"

"You are" Shane got to experience firsthand, just how terrible she was at lying. 'She must not be feeling so sure about that anymore.'

"Well, if I am a creation of your own making, then I should not know things that you do not know, correct?"

A contemplative look followed by a slow, reluctant nod.

"Good good good. We are in agreement then!" Without hesitation, Shane brought up his map, although, to Qingyue, he looked as if he was waving his hand and performing strange motions in the air.

"Around 200km west of your Floating Cloud, there is a settlement known as Cyan Forest Town, have you heard of it?" She nodded again.

"There is an extremely large mountain range near Cyan Forest Town called the Scarlet Dragon Mountain Range, are you still with me so far?" She seemed unsure where he was going with this and only nodded slightly this time.

"Humour me for a moment, would you. Currently, I am deep inside that mountain range, around 300km from the town, give or take a few. Do you have any idea what kind of profound beasts live inside the mountain range or what kind of herbs grow there?"

"...No" A long pause and then barely a whisper but Shane almost didn't manage to stop the grin from spreading on his face in time when he finally heard her speak.

"Could you find out easily enough?" Her eyes widened again at that. 'Good, it seems she caught on quickly.'

"Well then, listen carefully to this next part, I will name one of the profound beasts I am currently targeting and some of the herbs I have identified while being here.

True Profound Beast: Forest Sand Wyrm.

True Profound Herb: Tri-Color Forest Orchid

Profound Herb: Demon Skull Vine

Profound Herb: Iron Sand Vine"

A small wrinkle appeared between Qingyue's brows in concentration as she seemed to commit the names to memory. 'Good, this is the most I can do for now. If nothing comes of it, I will go to Floating Cloud myself.'

"Hmmm, you can probably find the wolves anywhere considering how common they are over here so no point in naming them." He mumbled to himself.

"That should be enough. Qingyue, I can already feel that I won't be able to stay here much longer and so I will leave this with you for now. I only ask for you to give me a chance."

Shane reached his hand out and placed his palm on the crystalline structure, not minding repulsive force or the burning icy feeling that was doing its best to invade his hand.

Seeing him go so far, once again caused Qingyue to enter into a slight daze. Neither of them had realized but all of his words and actions seemed able to bypass the Frozen Heart Arts to some degree.

"Take care of yourself Qingyue" He uttered those words and disappeared. Some may say it was a low blow but all is fair in love and war.

She snapped out of her thoughts at the familiar line and raised her hand as if to grab onto something "Wait!..." But he was already gone.

Shane awoke in his bed, a wry smile on his face. "*Sigh*" He had been sighing a lot lately and for some reason, he really didn't like it, it irked him more than he wanted to admit.

Maybe it was the influence of the wind on him, he decided he was going to be a little more unrestrained and unfettered with his thoughts from now on which seemed to placate the feeling somewhat.

'That went about as well as I could have expected Damn Shane, you nearly blew it at one point there though! If she gets it in her head that You're From the Realm of the Gods, then things really will get complicated.'

He didn't purposefully want to hide things from her but he liked her and he wanted her to like him too. Shane knew her mentality and the mentality of cultivators in general, if he could help them climb higher and get stronger, they would flock to him and offer him everything.

Well, either that or try to destroy him, dissect him, and take the method for themselves. 'Ooof that was a depressing thought.'

Basically, he wanted to woo Qingyue with his own charms and not have any sort of relationship based on benefits with her. Obviously, he would help her with everything he could, even if she or the quests didn't ask him to.

He cared for her, much more than anything else in this world at present, she was there when he was at his most fragile even if she wasn't always welcoming.

In spite of everything, Shane was very intelligent and he knew that given enough time, he could reach the top. He also knew he had incredible abilities, incredible enough to make any cultivator worth their salt, salivate, and he wasn't naive enough to think that he would form no benefit-driven relationships in this world.

But Qingyue, she was different.

Shane got up and grabbed a chunk of his recently made and recently smoked [Peak Elementary Profound], snake jerky before walking out towards the pool. He swallowed, shed his shorts, and dived straight into the chilly water.

After a few minutes of sitting on the smooth bottom of the pool and still marveling at how long he could hold his breath for now, he got to his feet.

Gathering profound energy in his legs Shane crouched and then propelled himself upwards, bursting out of the water and into the air. He righted himself mid-air and landed on the bank.

As he stepped towards his shorts, a gentle twister of green profound energy, effortlessly surrounded him and pulled all the remaining water droplets off of his body. A testament to his recent practice with the wind element

'Whatever happens with Qingyue happens. If she doesn't believe me this time, I will just go and see her myself.' Feeling a bit like a new man, with a weight he wasn't aware of carrying lifted off his shoulders, Shane decided to start setting the final pieces of his plan for robbing the flower in motion. And so, he geared up and headed out into the forest, a small smile tugging at the corners of his lips.

Over the following days, Shane had managed to hunt down another two packs of Wind wolves. Neither were as big as the first pack he came across but after devouring over forty of them, including two Nascent Profound and two peak Elementary Profound wind wolves he had smoothly broken through to the [2nd of Nascent Profound].

The conversion rate for the energy of profound beasts below his cultivation was heavily stacked against him and if his control over the Wind and profound energy overall hadn't increased by a large margin, Shane would have called foul play.

This meant that he would have to continue to kill and devour beasts close to his own realm in strength if he wanted to advance steadily, or at all... As he suspected that lower realm energy would become more and more useless, the higher his cultivation rose.

Shane knew that the payoff was still better than the drawback as he had estimated that with the strength and toughness of his body, he could fight beasts that were 3 small realms above him. That was without counting his hammer or the fact that he still had no profound arts or any skills.

Another problem was that a large amount of the energy he absorbed was instead distributed to his body rather than his profound veins and when he finally decided to ask the system for answers he only got [System: Host should check cultivation status].

'System, open the Cultivation tab.'

[Cultivation]

{Profound Cultivation: Nascent Profound Realm 2}

{Body Cultivation: Elementary Profound Realm 10(peak)} - Host cannot be harmed by any ordinary attacks, equal to or below body cultivation realm (NEW!).

'I guess that is the part of devour I had been misunderstanding until now. Well, at least I finally know where all that energy is disappearing to. Not that it's a bad thing.'

Shane had also wanted to try out the new Organic constructs part of his ability but all of the Profound Beasts he could find during the last few days were either built for speed like the wolves or had weak and brittle bodies.

This frustrated him to no end as the prime target for good weapon material would be the Wyrm but he needed the goddam weapon to kill the thing! 'With my current strength, my hammer just won't do enough damage to a True Profound Beast What am I missing here? hammer, hammer Eh!? Hahahahaha!'

Realization gave way to elation, as an almost feral grin spread upon his face. Shane checked his map for a second before dashing off into the forest in search of the SteelOak trees.

When he came upon the grove of four, he was ecstatic but when he placed his palm on the first tree and tried to use devour for Organic constructs, he started sweating.

He could feel the resistance of the tree and he wasn't expecting it so it caught him off guard and he almost suffered a backlash. Growling and gnashing his teeth like a wild animal, Shane then shouted aloud. "Obediently become my weapon!"

With the full brunt of his willpower now behind the ability, it wasn't long before the tree erupted into a shimmering silver cloud that started to gather towards his right hand. The cloud converged and condensed into a small amount of iridescent grey liquid before flowing over his fingers and into the skin, just below the wrist.

It was cool to the touch and extremely heavy, but once it had all disappeared into his body, he could no longer feel the weight. It was a strange sensation for sure because he was aware of its presence inside him and he instinctively knew that he could call it forth with a single thought. He also knew that he had nowhere near enough of it to create the weapon he envisioned.

It seemed that the amount of refined essence he would gain from a single tree was very small, only around 15kg, and so he added a silent apology as he made his way over to the other three, before devouring them and adding the resulting essence to his organic constructs.

Over the next two days, Shane practiced applying fine control to his wind until he could erect and maintain an isolation barrier around himself with ease and lift and encase small objects within a ball of wind and hold it almost subconsciously. It wasn't very exciting, but he couldn't allow for any mistakes, as the last part of his plan held incredible danger towards himself.

It wasn't until late afternoon, on the seventh day after he had met with Qingyue when Shane finally felt confident enough to commence with the most dangerous part of the preparations.

He was currently standing near the group of Paracaps and you guessed it right, his master plan was to poison the big lizard and then finish it off while it was down. Pretty shameless but surely effective.

Shane coated himself in his wind energy and formed the isolation barrier before crouching down next to some of the Paracaps. He then gingerly reached forward, cold sweat dripping down his back, and used a small wind blade, formed on the tip of his finger, to remove one of the protrusions.

He then created a small ball of wind around the pod and sent a sharp little tendril of profound energy into it.

*Puff* The pod erupted and a cloud of spores completely filled the space within the sphere. Seeing this, Shane shivered and swore to himself to be even more careful with the rest of them. He repeated this action a few more times until he had 5 spheres, each around the size of a marble.

He then merged these 5 spheres together, making sure to keep them completely sealed from the outside air. When they had seamlessly merged, Shane hardened the outside with his own profound energy.

Taking a small piece of leather hide which he proceeded to wrap around the sphere before sewing it together. After that, he used some clay from the bottom of the pool to coat the entire thing.

Next, he moved over to a small fire he had prepared in the clearing earlier, and using the wind energy, he floated the now ping-pong-sized clay ball above the fire. When the ball was securely in position, Shane agitated the surrounding winds to spin around the small ball and effectively bake the clay into a hard but brittle shell.

The finished ball was then carefully placed onto some leaves to cool down before he allowed himself a moment of reprieve.

A small chuckle started to spread across the clearing and escalated before turning into full-blown maniacal laughter. "Hahahahahaha, I did it! I actually made a poison bomb that can take down a True Profound expert with my own two hands! I am the greatest hahaha! Tomorrow will be the lizard's last day!"

After basking in his own magnificence for a while, Shane quickly regained his serious demeanor and made his way back over to the Paracaps, while wondering if he was actually going crazy and developing multiple personalities by being out here alone.

Shane managed to successfully perform the process without a hitch another 4 times, he had 5 poison bombs altogether and was well on the way to merging his sixth until a notification flashed across his vision

[System: Quest Complete! Main Quest Chain XQ - 1) Dreaming of you]

Enter the Dreamscape and convince Xia Qingyue that you are in fact real and not a figment of her imagination. (Complete)

~ Reward Access to and control of Dreamwalker ability (Unlocked)

"Oh, Shit!"

Shane lost his concentration for just a moment but it was all that was needed for the wind spheres full of spores to break down and explode, sending the poisonous spores directly towards his face.

He panicked, forgetting the barrier he had erected around himself and within a split second, he had punched out with both fists. On instinct, he had used a Kata infused with wind energy and two booming air cannons pushed him off the ground.

This caused him to fly away at an incredible speed, tracing a parabolic arc through the air and landed his back around 15m away.

Totally unharmed, if only a little winded, Shane got up from the ground and dusted himself off. He then glanced over to his previous location and fell directly to his knees...

"My Babies, Noooooooooooooo!" A mournful wail echoed throughout the clearing, disturbing the tranquility of the surrounding forest.

Yep, the Paracaps were completely obliterated by the air canons he released in a moment of panic.

Weeks of work were dashed away, just like that. The only reason he didn't completely lose it was because he still had 5 poison bombs on hand and that should easily be enough to get the job done.