Master of the Stars

The electric cart sped around campus.

During this time of day in Acumen College, most students were still racking their heads or pushing their bodies over school society activities. They fought fearfully for those eight school credits a year, so the few students on the electric cart attracted the hate of the others.

What a pity. None of the people sitting in the cart were aware of the other students’ feelings. In a sense, they were a group truly isolated from the school.

Xue Lei sat up front next to Xie Junping. They talked about the party they were going to, and this completely unfamiliar social circle made Xue Lei a bit curious and nervous. Xie Junping joked around as he said half-true half-false words and teased Xue Lei.

Luo Nan sat in the back. At first he listened in to Xie Junping and Xue Lei’s conversation, but later his thoughts sunk into the heart lantern of his eyes orifice. He observed the flickering flame and the surrounding changes down to the finest detail.

The heart lantern of the eyes orifice illuminated an area in the brain. The results of this cultivation practice was profound and mysterious, but it wasn’t the first ’guest’ that Luo Nan housed in his skull. There was another object that orbited around the heart lantern.

The external neuron.

This dynamo core was like a dragon serpent wandering in his brain. It spiraled around the lantern, appearing within and disappearing out of sight. It flared with lightning as it drew near like it was baring its fangs and brandishing its claws. It crossed the flame-light of the heart lantern, shifting suddenly between eating its light in and spitting it back out. It seemed that it could swallow the whole thing in a single bite, and it was quite frightening to witness.

It was hard for his heart lantern to remain lit for long in this situation, let alone exist. The sight of it wasn’t the only thing that was terrifying. The first time the external neuron got near the heart lantern, the energies of the two reacted to each other. The luminescence of lightning radiating from the external neuron simply put out the flame of the heart lantern, destroying several days of bitter effort in an instant.

Luo Nan had similar cases occur over seven times in a row. He was tormented so much that he began to question life.

But then the lightning cut into the heart lantern during Luo Nan’s eighth moment of near-despair. It aided the burning of the lantern with its powerful force, and the radiance illuminated all. This instance caused the quantity to grow by ten times of what he had accumulated with great difficulty.

After this event, the external neuron would always arrive to bombard the heart lantern with its lightning at the end of each of Luo Nan’s sessions of cultivating the eyes orifice. Luo Nan would train to observe a thousand people as targets for a day in batches of one hundred people. He cultivated ten times a day, so the lightning dragon appeared ten times as well.

The external neuron was not able to extinguish the heart lantern since then, but sometimes, the tyrannical lightning would disturb and harm the luminescence and stability of the heart lantern. If Luo Nan hadn’t strengthened his heart lantern several times, his progress would have likely become unsightly.

Luo Nan’s emotions felt rather complicated toward Xue Lei’s admirations because of this. Don’t be happy looking at my progress. The results can only be looked at after each and every cultivation session. Each time there was a chance for my progress to collapse completely!

The few days at the daoguan allowed Luo Nan to understand what it meant to walk into flames of madness. The times when his heart lantern was extinguished happened early on. The flame’s intensity wasn’t strong, so the whiplash was weak and only two extra days of effort were wasted. But if his heart lantern were to be extinguished now, his eye structure and his mental willpower would get damaged. Dreadfully, it might take half a year of special attending to for recovery.

His situation was tantamount to having an unstable ticking time bomb hidden in his brain. And he was the person who had placed this bomb inside....

Luo Nan opened his notebook after a moment of pondering. He wrote with hooded eyes. "The acrobatics of the dragon spitting pearls is getting more and more fluent. I feel like I’m playing with fire."

He thought for a bit and added a ’lightning’ behind the ’fire’. Then, he added the word ’ice’, and he was done.

He subconsciously sighed after writing these words. The analogy of a bomb wasn’t a good analogy. An iceberg is more apt.... It just blocked the space, hiding beneath the surface of the water, waiting for someone to crash into it.

From these few days of cultivating in the eyes orifice, Luo Nan felt that the greatest gain he made was, one, in understanding truly what sort of ’precision’ was required for cultivating, and two, using this precision to re-examine his process of implementing Formatting Theory and see whether he had made some mistakes or went on the wrong path.

The answer was naturally a resounding yes.

Disregarding whether or not there were flaws in Formatting Theory, Luo Nan had too many instances of knowing-but-not-really-knowing-why when he cultivated in Formatting Theory. He possessed zealous faith in his grandfather’s theory and walked down this path with his heart set on it. Many small links in his path were determined on their own and by their own power, so Xiu Shenyu considered Formatting Theory to be an external power; a power that Luo Nan was trapped and caged by.

And now, Luo Nan was facing a situation with the heart lantern of the eyes orifice. He had spelled a big death upon himself.

The Hollow Depository function of the external neuron was first possible thanks to Elder Mo Lun of the Bloodflame Order. That was when Luo Nan’s soul strength just exploded in growth, exacerbating the imbalance of his body and soul. Luo Nan didn’t know how to handle it. Luckily, the Wraith Sign had taken the place of the Bloodflame Order’s Human-Faced Arachnid and was lying undercover by Mo Lun’s side. The Wraith Sign acted as Luo Nan’s eyes and ears, and through it Luo Nan observed Mo Lun’s techniques on soul attaching and soul sending. Luo Nan took what he learned and created distance between his body and soul. This made it so that his soul and flesh were seemingly merged but not, and it lessened the pressure toward his fleshly body. This method was truly effective, but it had many side effects. Luo Nan was more susceptible to dreaming, being dazed, and being absent-minded.

Luo Nan later discovered that the external neuron possessed the Hollow Depository function. He sent his soul atop of it, and it was like entering an empty world; there was no background psychic noise interference there. Then the Wraith Sign went hunting, and that created a mess of things. Luo Nan relied completely on the external neuron to act as a buffer against the pressure from the rise of his soul strength and to ensure his life.

Since then, Luo Nan continued sending his soul to the external neuron to relieve the pressure to his fleshly body. He gradually became used to the action.

So, to be exact, a long time had passed with Luo Nan’s fleshly body and spiritual soul not completely fused. Most of his soul was entrusted upon the external neuron, and though this mysterious object was hidden in his brain, it was not his flesh, blood, or organ. They were a layer apart from one another.

Xiu Shenyu said that his fleshly body was being rejected by the external technique Formatting Theory. The reality of the situation was that there existed a separation and clash between his soul side, which was using the external neuron as a medium, and his fleshly body, which was a natural existence.

This was where the crux of the problem lay... at least in an understandable way.

And this was where Luo Nan found himself in a tight bind.

Luo Nan could control the external neuron and cause it to move to various parts of his brain; he could even chase it out if he wanted. But his weak fleshly body was far from being able to sustain his soul body with its heavy pressure, and his soul was inseparable from the Hollow Depository function.

Plus, eventually he needed to transfer his soul strength out of the ’My heart’s a prison’ format for further refinement. This naturally caused a connection to form with the eyes orifice. The eyes orifice became lively and smooth every time he finished a session of tempering this meridian. His body and soul were linked during this time, and what occurred mimicked the mutual attraction between positive and negative charges within rainclouds. The lightning of the external neuron bombarded the heart lantern. This circumstance was inevitable.

So every time Luo Nan finished cultivating, he faced a dangerous trial of walking into the flames of madness. He had failed the first seven times, but he endured the following dozen. He even reaped some gains; it seemed that his cultivation path was feasible.

However, what cultivation required was meticulousness, concentration, and consistency. The worst he had to fear were fluctuations and turmoil. Even if Luo Nan were to reap gains ten more times over, he would still be completely devastated by a single failure.

"The problem is quite life-threatening. What’s more life-threatening is the fact that no one is capable of helping...."

Luo Nan didn’t open his eyes. He just used his fingertips to streak across the paper edges of the notebook. He flipped the pages of the notebook back and forth.... It acted as a core, but it was a secret that could be easily stripped from him. The existence of the external neuron was something he couldn’t tell a soul about. This made it so that Luo Nan could only rely on himself, and he pondered over plans bit by bit.

Six days had passed since the heart lantern was first lit. He had faced and retaliated against the lightning attacks sixty times.

Luo Nan couldn’t think of anything else at first. Beside making every effort to strengthen the structure of the eyes orifice, it might be better to slow down his progress to allow his heart lantern’s foundation to stabilize. He even referred to Fairchild’s Shield of Truth configuration. Based on his half-formed eyes orifice and the mechanism behind the fusion of body and soul, Luo Nan spent a great deal of mental effort in fine-tuning the microstructure of his eyes. This had no benefits besides increasing their sturdiness.

This was a stupid way of doing things, but the results were not that bad, especially the experiences he repeatedly had a dozen times near the end. It was like the steel manufacturing technique of ancient times where metal goes through repeated forgings and hammerings. It made the structure of Luo Nan’s eyes orifice stronger and tougher, and the lit heart lantern exuded a sense of smoothness, pureness, and thickness. It was only in this way that the heart lantern was able to withstand fifty-three attacks of lightning and come out undefeated.

But deep worries still remained in Luo Nan’s heart.

Luo Nan’s worries grew graver and graver the more he pondered deeper and deeper into the phenomenon of lightning striking his heart lantern.

"Nanster, a penny for your thoughts?"

Xie Junping had deliberately raised his voice, and Luo Nan finally heard him. Luo Nan looked forward with half-lidded eyes and a bit of surprise. "What’s up?"

Xue Lei reproached Xie Junping at the same time. "Don’t disturb him. He might be training."

Xie Junping laughed. "It’s quite shaky in the car. How can anyone train? Aren’t you scared of walking into the flames of madness?"

Luo Nan was speechless, having been stabbed in the face with the proverbial knife.

Xie Junping stopped looking at the road, turning his head over to laugh. "When other people train, they get more lively the more they train. Like Leister. But look at you! You’ve had your eyes and brows hanging down these past few days. It doesn’t seem like you’re awake! With this sort of training method, not a single pretty girl will put up with you, man!"

Luo Nan leaned back in his seat. He tried to relax his body, but his eyes still squinted. "Yesterday you said we’re just meeting up with some of your friends. To better handle the matter with Gear."

"Of course, of course, that’s what I said." Xie Junping donned a face of innocence. "But didn’t I tell you? In the Mystic Arts Research Society, Vice-President Tang Yi is most likely going to be top dog there now that Sissy Du resigned and ran away. Tang Yi is also known as the Blood Peony. She got her nickname from the power of her looks. If you’re not a handsome dude who’s at least an eight out of ten, you’re not allowed to come near her. Even then, most who come near get trampled to the ground.... Right now you’re relying on your young face; there’s barely enough delicateness and cuteness mixed inside, but it’s there. If you don’t liven up, the road ahead will be treacherous!"

Luo Nan let out a long sigh and simply closed his eyes completely. He didn’t want to talk. But then, the burning heart lantern in his brain lost the smoothness in its luminous flame. Clearly, the strengthening from the last lightning strike, which was the sixtieth, had stuffed the heart lantern too full.

Pressure was inevitably formed toward the incomplete structure of the eyes orifice.... Resolving this situation took priority.

Luo Nan was accustomed to this as well. He didn’t open his eyes, but his fingertips moved to flip the pages of the notebook. He flipped near the end and found a smooth piece of paper wedged between the pages. The paper was flimsy and a bit rough, but it had considerable value. This was a paper talisman that Mr. Gao personally made for Luo Nan, and it was quite an extravagance to be used for practicing.

Luo Nan rubbed the paper against his hand as he recalled the techniques taught to him by Papercut. Luo Nan’s fingertips moved as he made a simple fold on the paper talisman and grasped it in his palm.

His eyes saw nothing. There was only the concentration of his heart lantern.

The flame-light suddenly flared then darkened within the shrine that was his brain. In this instant, it was as if an incorporeal flame burned the hand that grasped the paper talisman. The sensation of a hot pain stabbed into Luo Nan, causing him to spread his fingers open by instinct, and seemingly some ashes came flowing out between his fingers.

After that came a feeling of impact that was very real. Luo Nan’s five fingers came together again, and only then did Luo Nan open his eyes to look.

There was no paper talisman this time. All Luo Nan saw was a complete four-limbed entity, a paper man with blurry features. It was the size of his palm, and it had bumped into his thumb to lie paralyzed within his hand. The open electric cart allowed a cool breeze to come in, causing the paper man to shake its hands and feet. It had no reactions other than this.