Chapter Nineteen: Set Ablaze

Katherine slept with a rare sense of peace—it was, without a doubt, the most restful night she’d had since venturing into the wild. She was full, warm, untroubled by any dangers, with her master of unfathomable power standing guard nearby. With a carefree heart, she drifted into slumber at an incredible speed and soon began to snore softly.

Ling Mo touched his stomach. He hadn’t hunted for himself in an entire day. His martial prowess far surpassed Katherine’s, which meant his energy consumption was exponentially greater. In ordinary times, he would have needed to consume several formidable magical beasts just to maintain his strength. Yet now, for the sake of obtaining the Resurrection Spell, Ling Mo ate the “Ultra-Compressed Energy Biscuit” he had acquired from the previous quest.

He focused intently, sensing the flow of energy throughout his body, making sure the biscuit’s energy would sustain him for several more days. Ling Mo sighed at his own extravagance. Such a biscuit was meant for a life-or-death battle against a terrifying enemy, to grant him the stamina to outlast his foe. Yet he had consumed it here and now—he could only hope Katherine wouldn’t let him down.

He was about to slip into a light doze when, out of the corner of his eye, he noticed a faint white glow radiating from Katherine’s body. Startled, he sprang to her side and checked her condition anxiously, fearing something had gone wrong. To his bewilderment, Katherine was perfectly fine—no abnormalities at all. She was simply… advancing.

Yes, she had advanced. After consuming a single Foundation-Building Elixir, she had immediately ascended to the rank of Junior Martial Artist, skipping over the entire martial apprentice stage. And now, after merely a day of martial training and just a handful of bloody encounters, she was advancing again!

As the white glow faded, Katherine’s sleeping face grew ever more serene. Ling Mo placed his hand on her forehead to probe her strength, and finally confirmed: Katherine was now at the very peak of the Junior Martial Artist stage. With just a bit of good fortune and the insight to develop her own breathing technique, she would smoothly step into the rank of Intermediate Martial Artist.

What was this? What did all his past efforts count for?

Ling Mo now found himself questioning life. He had spent over three months struggling through the Junior Martial Artist stage, surviving countless deadly encounters, finally breaking through only after being relentlessly hunted by a Thunder Lizard and squeezed of every last ounce of potential. And Katherine? She had simply slept.

“System, what is going on? Isn’t my natural endowment 90.01 and hers 99? Why does it feel like the gap between us is so vast?!”

Perhaps Katherine’s rapid advancement had greatly excited the system, for it actually responded to Ling Mo’s complaint: “Your endowment is displayed as 90.01 because it is 90.01. Katherine’s is displayed as 99 because my Martial God System’s display cap is 99. Were I not bound to you permanently, I would have switched to Katherine by now without a second thought.”

Ling Mo sighed again. The system’s explanation left him speechless and brought to mind some unpleasant school-day memories. Thankfully, thanks to the recent live broadcast, the main quest now showed over four thousand people “harboring a sincere yearning for the way of martial arts,” which offered him some final comfort.

—A Powerful Dividing Line—

Waking naturally is a rare happiness.

Katherine was the embodiment of that happiness as she lay on her back, gazing up at the makeshift shelter’s roof. Broad leaves, woven together in neat, crisscrossing layers, formed a special kind of beauty overhead. Her mind was blissfully empty—there was nothing she needed to think about. From the neck down, she was nestled in her sleeping bag, warm and cozy. Last night’s blazing campfire still left a few glowing embers, and the lingering warmth made her limbs tingle with comfort.

Ah, is it almost noon? Wait—has the sun drifted westward? Could it already be afternoon? My bladder is about to burst, but I don’t want to get up. Am I supposed to stream today? Where did I put my Magic Eye Sprite?

Her thoughts meandered aimlessly, savoring every last bit of warmth in the sleeping bag, until her stomach protested with such intensity that she snapped fully awake.

With a swift motion, she wriggled out of her sleeping bag. Glancing around, she spotted Ling Mo not far off. She darted into the dense forest to attend to nature’s call, then hurried back to squat before Ling Mo, proclaiming loudly, “Master, I’m hungry!”

Ling Mo was speechless. The girl had grown ever more unrestrained. He pointed to the slab where seven or eight pieces of chimera roast wings still remained. Katherine pounced, grabbing them all. Though the wings were cold and hardly appetizing, she devoured them voraciously, juices streaming down her chin. In between mouthfuls, she gestured and asked, “Master, why do I feel like I’m starving the moment I wake up? Yesterday, I was sure I’d eaten enough to last for days!”

Ling Mo chose not to tell her the truth, lest she grow arrogant. Instead, he replied, “Yesterday, you weren’t yet fully attuned to your body. When you exerted force, you damaged your internal organs considerably. You might not feel it, but your body is still repairing itself.”

“Oh, I see!” Katherine accepted his explanation without question. Having cleaned the last bit of grease from her fingers, she lamented, “It’s still not enough. It’s nothing like that satisfying fullness from yesterday. Master, where are we headed today?”

“We’re going deeper into the Magical Beast Rainforest. For now, you’ll follow me. Once you become more familiar with the terrain, you’ll need to find your own hunting grounds.”

Katherine nodded. She tidied up their small camp, pulled out the Magic Eye Sprite from her pocket, and after some thought, renamed her live room “The Farthest Reaches of the Magical Beast Rainforest.” She was about to start the broadcast when Ling Mo asked, “How does that device of yours work? You don’t have any magic power right now, do you?”

Ling Mo had been curious about this for some time. Katherine glanced at the device in her hand, a bit puzzled. She pointed at the sky, saying, “Master, have you truly only lived in the Magical Beast Rainforest for seventeen years? Why do you seem at least seventy? All these devices are connected to the omnipresent Magic Web, aren’t they?”

“Magic Web?”

“Master, you don’t even know about the Magic Web?” Katherine was genuinely astonished now. She pointed skyward again with conviction. “It’s the Magic Sky Net! Sixty years ago, the Supreme Archmage Indra, together with four Archsages, twelve Grand Mages, over a hundred Mages, and tens of thousands of magical professionals, cast the ultimate forbidden spell ‘Sky Net,’ covering every corner of the Noah Magic Continent. No matter where you are, you can connect directly with the Sky Net above, communicate, and exchange information. Since then, all sorts of devices and national infrastructures have developed in tandem, ushering in the Third Magic Revolution. I think this was covered in the second semester of compulsory nine-year magic education…”

“That, I truly don’t know,” Ling Mo replied, face unreadable, improvising smoothly. “I’ve always lived in the Magical Beast Rainforest. My master disappeared after teaching me the basics of language and common sense. For years, I was so busy hunting just to survive that I was often hungry. Only in recent years, when my strength grew, did life finally improve.”

Hearing that Ling Mo was also an orphan, Katherine suddenly felt much closer to her young master. She wanted to ask why he had never left the rainforest, but sensed their relationship wasn’t quite there yet, so she held her tongue and quietly turned on the Magic Eye Sprite to begin a new day’s broadcast.

To her surprise, the moment she started, the device emitted a shrill series of beeps. The image in her left eye froze and then went completely still. Alarmed, Katherine glanced at the lower left of her display and saw the viewership: three hundred thousand! And the number was still rising!

No wonder the image had frozen—the very instant she started streaming, so many people flooded in that her not-so-high-end Magic Eye Sprite couldn’t keep up. After two or three minutes of processing, the device finally caught up, and the barrage of comments began to appear:

“Streamer, you’re really the queen of procrastination! We have to crown you Pigeon Queen!”

“You promised not to be late at noon! It’s already past three!”

“A three-hour delay! What do you have to say for yourself?”

“I’ve been refreshing your stream since noon—finally got in!”

“….”

Seeing her viewers complaining about her tardiness, Katherine quickly apologized, explaining that she’d survived several life-and-death fights yesterday and her body desperately needed rest, so she’d overslept. The viewers who’d watched her previous stream expressed their understanding. Then Katherine asked in confusion, “But wait, I remember I usually have only ten or twenty thousand viewers when I first start. What’s going on today? Thirty thousand in a flash—my Magic Eye Sprite nearly caught fire!”

At this, her chat erupted with excitement:

“Streamer, you’re famous now!”

“That’s right! You’re no longer a small-time streamer in the obscure channels—you’re a sensation!”

“You’re trending! Isn’t it time to throw a giveaway?”

“Some big shot made a video about you! Super impressive!”

“Go check PushNet—you’re already in the top ten on the on-demand charts!”