Chapter 276

  Moon Lake (II)

  Notifications broke out rather frequently in the past few days.

  It all started with Long Tao and now ended with Xing Feng--all the kids (including Lao Shun? Hello? Why are you learning an art like you're a disciple of mine?! And, far more importantly, system, why did you give me a reward for it?!) had gained the initial mastery of Enduring Eternity.

  Not all of them would practice it, at least not daily, so my 20% stacking bonus wouldn't be min-maxed, as it were, but any bonus was a welcome one in my book.

  But, to be honest, I've been kind of underestimating what 20% extra speed would mean. And even further, what a few stacks of it would do.

  For instance, on the first day, everyone save for Rayce and Light cultivated using Enduring Eternity--excluding Lao Shun, which entailed me to an extra 100% bonus cultivation speed. While, yes, it only lasted a day, it was closer to what I'd actually get by cultivating for a week.

  The rewards from them gaining the initial understanding of the method, though, weren't particularly tantalizing: an extra 450 Creation Points, essentially salvaging the cost of what I used to make it, and 1 extra use of Demonic Crystal of all things.

  That wasn't even the best news, as far as I was concerned--it was that we finally left the damned forest!

  The sunlight!

  The colors!

  Oh my God, it's all so beautiful I could weep! I mean, I'm not gonna... but I sure as hell could. Going from effectively complete darkness, where we struggled to see more than a foot ahead of us, to just a normal world... I don't want to be insensitive, but hey, so long as I keep it in my head, it's like going from being blind to finally being able to see!

  We emerged onto a slightly hilly plain, with some scatterings of the trees and knee-high grass, and quite a few critters running amok. There were no human settlements as far as I could see, though we did run across a river relatively quickly. Eternal River, Lao Shun said it was called.

  Seeing as it sourced somewhere in the massive Eternal Range, it seemed appropriate. The water was quite cool, and we could finally replenish our dwindling supplies, deciding to even camp for a few days at the riverbank since we could all use a wash and a brief respite.

  We wouldn't actually travel along its side any further than this, as the river itself stretched north while we needed to head straight east. According to Lao Shun, the gathering was happening on the southeastern shoreline of the lake, so we'd first have to reach the eastern bit before just traveling down south along the side of the lake.

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  The lake itself was quite massive--honestly, even when I read about it in the books, it sounded more like a sea rather than a lake. There were like nine port towns and cities on its shores; it had its own mini ecosystem and shipping lanes and had buried so many people in its span that the floor was likely decorated with decomposed bodies.

  On top of that, it had regular storms and even waves (huh?), and the rough estimates set it to be the size of a 'small empire'.

  Huh.

  Though I've always been bad with measurements (more so in this world that uses slightly altered numbers), from what I could gather, it sounded like it was about half a million square miles.

  Yeah.

  No.

  I refuse to believe it.

  I mean, I don't know what the biggest lake back on Earth was--no, wait. I don't know what the biggest lake back on Earth was. I was stumped with Eternal Range, too, and its size, but that's really only because the 'number sounded big', and not because I had some factual knowledge to act as a frame of reference.

  Why can't a lake be half a million square miles? Just because my apartment was about half a thousand... square feet... doesn't mean that a lake can't be visible from space. We had a wall that was visible from space! Oh, how I miss the days when I really thought that.

  I noticed that the kids picked up some sparring once again--this time including Rayce.

  He said he wanted to test how self-sufficient he was, so he decided to throw himself in there. The only one not participating was Xing Feng, who was silently sitting by my side, nibbling away at some dry beef jerky.

  For the first time, perhaps, the system's description of one's personality trait was dead on. This kid... barely spoke. Honestly, if we hadn't chatted that first day, I'd have totally thought the kid couldn't speak.

  "How are you finding it with us so far, Xing'er?" I asked, seeming to startle him for a moment.

  "A-ah! It's, it's amazing, Master," he said. "I haven't seen the sun in so long, I'd forgotten just how yellow it is."

  "Yellow? Xing'er... the sun is actually green."

  "...!"

  "Ha ha, I'm just joking. I'm sorry," the look of horror broke me, as I'd intended to tease him a bit more, but... I just broke, honestly.

  "M-Master..." His eyes turned watery rather quickly, and my joy became guilt just as fast.

  "I'm sorry!" I quickly apologized as he just outright started to cry.

  It alerted others who shoveled over relatively quickly and, upon learning that I've been a 'mean Master', gave me... strange looks.

  Though, that all changed when Xing Feng regaled my 'mean joke', and I could just see their shoulders suddenly dance as they all looked away and just so happened to cough all at the same time.

  ... bastards!

  You think it's funny, too!

  "He he, Master is so funny!"

  I spun and saw Light smiling faintly. Light, giving light to my life... it finally all makes sense.

  Seeing that Light thought it was funny, Xing Feng stopped crying rather abruptly and started laughing.

  "He he, Master is funny!"

  "... pfft."

  "Ha ha ha."

  Aaaaaand, now they're laughing.

  Screw you guys.

  Though, to be fair, there's nothing quite like the resonant laughter of so many kids (& two old gremlins); if this can somehow become an average day in my life? Heh. I wouldn't mind living for a few million years.

  Just as I thought it, I also regretted it. I want to state--I do not believe in jinxes. I think it's a funny little thing where we ascribe coincidences and draw parallels because, well, that's what we do. We seek patterns even when they are not there.

  That being said...

  I also don't believe in tempting those coincidences. And, call me paranoid, but I feel at least twice or thrice now in this world, my thoughts seemed to have summoned something from thin air as soon as I thought the opposite of it.

  ... like those three people flying atop the swords, changing their course abruptly when they spotted us and descending.

  Maybe I do believe in jinxes, after all...