Chapter 755: Parting the Clouds (1/2)

”The last thing you said?” Zac muttered as he scratched his chin. “Uh… Don’t cause trouble?”

“And what did you do?” Catheya said with a dangerous smile.

“Well, that wasn’t my fault. Uona-“ Zac tried to explain, but he didn’t get any further before he got cut off.

“So you did attack her!” Catheya exploded. “No wonder that crazy harlot put a bounty on my head! We haven’t been able to sleep a wink for months because of you! Looking over our shoulders every waking moment, afraid that the bloodthirsty she-devil or the Havarok prince would entrap us in their hunt for you. Battle after battle the moment our disguises were exposed!”

“To be fair, she was the one that attacked me first. What was I supposed to do? Let her attack me?” Zac muttered before he froze. “Wait, the Havarok Empire is looking for me as well?”

“What do you think? You surpassed them both on the ladder, and it didn’t take much investigation to find out that you had been part of the missions to mess with the Living Pulse. With your contribution points, I think they are seeing you as their number one obstacle to achieving whatever goal they have in here,” Catheya sighed as she slumped down in the chair. “I swear… I have never heard of anyone with such a penchant for creating chaos such as you. At least it looks like the Havarok stopped looking for you two months ago, which gave us some the opportunity to find this place.”

“It can’t have been all bad,” Zac said as he took out a chair of his own, shrugging off a layer of frost that had formed on his robes. “I can’t believe you’ve managed to form a Dao Branch this quickly.”

“What Dao Branch? This layered domain?” Catheya snorted as she glared at Zac. “It’s just a third Dao Fragment I was forced to form just to stay alive. My whole cultivation path has been thrown off-kilter because of your unrivaled ability to create enmities. Now I have to figure out what to do with a second Ice Dao.”

“Well…” Zac coughed, feeling a bit bad for Catheya.

Initially, he had even been a bit jealous. He had been forced to go to insane lengths and swallow that mysterious Dao light to form a branch, and she had accomplished the same in the middle reaches of the ocean? But it turned out it wasn’t actually an Ice Dao Branch as he thought, but rather two Peak Dao Fragments both of the ice variety.

Still, forming a Peak Dao Fragment from nothing in just over a year was almost as shocking as forming a Dao Branch. Besides, the aura she had exuded for a moment was simply too great, making Zac believe there was more to it. Did Catheya perhaps have a Hidden Node that worked similarly to his [Spiritual Void]?

Forming another Dao Fragment was a good thing on the surface, but it could also spell trouble. He knew that Catheya's original plan was to form a Dao Branch by fusing her two Daos. Now, she was suddenly saddled with a third Fragment, this one in the same vein as one of her other two Daos.

It wasn’t too uncommon to cultivate two Daos of the same type, but the goal was usually to fuse the two similar Fragments into one Branch. However, she couldn’t do that now, since that would leave a sole Death-attuned Dao Fragment. Upgrading that Dao as is would mean flirting with the boundless path, which was highly frowned upon in the Undead Empire.

She would ultimately have to still fuse Death and Ice and then complement it with another Ice-based Dao Branch. Problem was, that such a path would put tremendous requirements on her affinity to ice. Even elites had a hard time forming and progressing a single mixed-meaning Dao Branch, but Catheya suddenly had to gain the equivalent insight of one and a half pure Ice Branch.

It was not just a matter of doubling the time it took her to cultivate. She would require both a lot of additional lucky encounters, life-and-death battles, and time to meditate on a way to piece it all together.

Simply giving up on one of the Dao Fragments wasn’t an option either. The System neatly arranged one’s insights into packages and named them Seeds, Fragments, Branches, and so on, but it was ultimately just understanding of the universe. It was all one, all connected.

That’s why you couldn’t just collect 100 Dao Fragments to boost your Luck and other attributes. It would end up with your path being all messed up. You’d have problems even progressing in the D-grade with Dao Fragments weighing you down, and becoming a Monarch was simply impossible. How would you form an inner world on such a shaky foundation like a Dao Fragment?

Of course, if Catheya succeeded on her new path, she would be stronger for it. Two Dao Branches was not just twice as strong as one. There was also the added benefit of Dao Braiding apart from the attribute boost. But the risk of getting stuck in a bottleneck was much greater than going with a more conservative Single-Branch Path.

That’s why most people except the real elites only aimed for one Dao Branch. People who dared to aim for three branches like Zac himself was exceedingly rare, even in the top factions.

“Your talents were wasted on only going for one Dao Branch anyway,” Zac said. “A budding Heaven’s Chosen like yourself should have at least two, right? Just look, your new Fragment has progressed by a terrifying amount in one short year.”

Catheya only snorted in response, but she did seem a bit mollified. “Well, I was considering adding another facet to my cultivation after meeting you. I just wish I would’ve had more time to plan and meditate on the decision further, rather than being forced into it.”

“If it’s any consolation, pretty much all my insights come from almost getting myself killed, and it has worked out pretty well so far,” Zac said before his brows furrowed in confusion. “Wait, what does your Dao have to do with me?”

Catheya just smiled as she conjured two ice shards. The first one slowly turned into a beautiful flower which gave Zac a sense of immense cold, reminiscent of the terrifying bolt Va Tapek had unleashed in the Twilight Harbor.

The other shard turned into an icicle, and Zac almost felt his soul getting pierced by looking at its sharp edge. Zac wasn’t sure exactly what insights had gone into that Dao, but he felt it much more aligned with his own Dao of Conflict compared to the other shard. It looked like Catheya had opted to go all-in on an offensive Dao while her other one was more all-purpose from what he’d seen so far.

“Sometimes, brute force is simply the best solution, which you are walking testament to,” Catheya said as she gave him a long look that made Zac’s hair stand on end. “Besides…”

“What?” Zac hesitated, his heartbeat speeding up from the intense stare.

“Nothing, never mind,” Catheya muttered.

“Well, offense is the best defense,” Zac said with a weak smile. “And don’t worry, I’ll be more careful going forward.”

“Please, don’t jinx us any further,” Catheya groaned while Qirai almost looked like she had been physically wounded by Zac’s assurance.

“On another subject…” Zac said hesitantly.

“Yes?” Catheya slowly said as her eyes slowly thinned.

“Here, I have prepared a small token of apology,” Zac said, quickly changing course from asking about the remnants.

From the sounds and looks of it, the trio had barely managed to stay alive thanks to his exploits, and it was just too heartless to immediately ask about his own matters. Instead, he took out three boxes and threw them over to Catheya and her two followers. Inside Catheya’s box was the second dumpling, while the other two contained what he suspected to be top-quality Dao Treasures.

“What’s this?” Catheya asked, her scowl suddenly replaced by an impish smile.

Zac immediately realized he might have been duped, but he didn’t really care. It was ultimately true that he had caused Catheya a lot of trouble, and this was a was simply making amends.

“I don’t know what it’s called. I found it in the heart of the Twilight Chasm. It’ll provide you with a powerful epiphany, allowing you to improve death-attuned skills in all kinds of ways. I used one to upgrade a skill, it worked extremely well,” Zac said. “I think you could use it when crafting as well. It might allow you to create a uniquely powerful follower, or perhaps form a supreme-grade skill to go with your new Dao.”

“Supreme-grade? That great?” Catheya exclaimed as she looked down at the box with shock. “Thank you, it looks like you do have some conscience after all.”

The other two nodded in thanks before they stowed away their boxes, and Zac could sense that the tense atmosphere had relaxed by quite a bit.

“So you really went all the way to the chasm,” Catheya sighed. “I guessed as much, but I wasn’t sure. I wanted to check it out as well, but some other time perhaps. By the way, were you involved in that enormous snake making the rounds in the chasm?”

Zac smiled a bit helplessly with a shrug. He wasn’t sure why the big snake had targeted groups of cultivators at the surface, but he guessed it had taken out any threats to its master’s plan. However, Zac wondered if it would still have done the same even if he hadn’t ruined its plans at the bottom.

“Should’ve known,” Catheya snorted, whereas Qirai gave him a thumbs up.

“Don’t listen to the young miss. Cultivators are meant to live large! Otherwise, what’s the point?” the Titan Revenant laughed. “And we were only in true mortal danger a few times while looking for those places.”

“You still looked after getting a bounty on your heads?” Zac said, his heart beating an extra time with his excitement. ”Did you find them?”