Cultivation Nerd-Chapter 350: Change of Perspective

Jiang Yeming stared at Liu Feng as if he were some rare, unpredictable creature. A moment ago, he had stood motionless with a blank expression, eyes unfocused, like a statue caught between thoughts. Then he blinked once, and life returned. Warmth flickered in his gaze, the corners of his mouth softening into a faint, reassuring smile that felt almost human again.

His eyes drifted toward the last standing enemy, the cultivator who had controlled the roots. The man’s body was locked mid-motion, arm frozen halfway through a strike. Blood and torn flesh clung to him up to the elbow, the remnants of his allies splattered across his arm in a grotesque sheen.

His eyes were bloodshot with despair. Veins bulged along his neck, twitching like worms as he strained to move, only to fail again and again.

“Huh,” Liu Feng murmured, tilting his head slightly, voice light and almost curious. “I hadn’t expected that technique to still hold you. For a second there, I thought you were about to trick me.”

Jiang Yeming blinked, realization dawning. He had created that technique right there, mid-battle, with no preparation and no testing. Just pure intuition and mastery working in tandem. The thought sent a chill up her spine.

Still, she knew why it had worked so well.

It was the same phenomenon as sneaking up on someone absorbed in a book or game, when a person’s focus tunneled, their mind opened to intrusion. The moment the man concentrated on channeling his roots, Liu Feng’s mental strike slipped through, embedding deeper than it ever should have.

In the Wisdom Hall, every high-ranking member was required to have at least one mental defense technique. Jiang Yeming had studied several herself, and while she wouldn’t have called herself an expert in the future, in this era she was without question one of the best.

Better, perhaps, even than Liu Feng.

At least for now.

Because with what he had shown today… that gap wouldn’t last long.

“Oh well,” Liu Feng sighed, shrugging lightly as he formed a hand seal. A green array flared beneath the immobilized man, conjuring translucent chains that bound him in place.

“Now then,” he said casually, “care to tell me who gave you the route we were taking? I find it hard to believe five Foundation Establishment cultivators just happened to wander across our path.”

Jiang Yeming let out a small breath of relief that he was the one handling the interrogation. Tingfeng slid his sword back into its sheath, the tension melting from his shoulders.

She, too, relaxed but not completely.

She wanted to know who had sent these people. And when she found out, she had no plans to let them off lightly. They might not have harmed her or her companions, but intent mattered, and theirs had been lethal.

Forgiveness was not in her nature.

“You think I will betray my comrades like that? I will not bring shame to their deaths!” the bound cultivator spat, his voice raw with hatred. “I curse you, Liu Feng! You and everyone associated with you, may you all die terrible deaths!”

Liu Feng sighed softly, rubbing his temple as though the shouting gave him a headache.

“Hey, if any of you had the potential, I’d have let you live and continue developing. Especially string guy, whatever his name was.” He shrugged carelessly. “But then you had to go and act stupid. Why go for my disciple with lethal intent? You could have just restrained her. You’re Foundation Establishment cultivators, you had more than enough power.”

They didn’t—Jiang Yeming thought. Not against her. But there was no way they could have known that.

“No matter what you do, no matter how much you torture me,” the captive growled, “you’ll never get a word out of me! You’ll live your life knowing someone will come for you... one day–”

“Okay, that’s enough melodrama,” Liu Feng interrupted flatly. He stepped forward, grasped the man by the collar, and forced him down to his knees. “Also, torture’s never really been my thing. I don’t have the stomach for it.”

He tilted his head slightly, his tone almost casual. “But I can do this.”

He placed his palm against the man’s head.

The effect was immediate. The man’s eyes bulged and rolled back, his entire body convulsing violently. His throat strained as ragged gasps tore out, foam gathering at the corners of his mouth. His limbs jerked erratically, showing every sign of a mind being torn apart from within.

Jiang Yeming didn’t need to look twice to recognize the technique. It was brutal, invasive mind-reading. The kind that shredded everything in the process, memories, personality, even the basic reflexes that kept a person alive.

Liu Feng wasn’t trying to spare him pain. He wasn’t even trying to leave him alive.

Ten minutes passed before Liu Feng finally lifted his hand. The body slumped forward, twitching faintly as vomit and foam spilled from his mouth. The man’s lungs convulsed once, twice, and then stilled.

His body had forgotten how to breathe.

Liu Feng closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead, humming softly under his breath. Jiang Yeming could sense his consciousness shifting through the fragments of stolen memories, sorting them, absorbing what mattered, erasing the rest.

She frowned slightly. That technique was dangerous. Absorbing someone’s memories wasn’t just knowledge theft, it was contamination. The longer one practiced it, the more their mind blurred with those they consumed. Eventually, the boundary between "self" and "other" dissolved completely.

He would notice it sooner or later, someone like him always did. But still… she made a note to warn him subtly later.

After a moment, Liu Feng gathered a wisp of gray mist at his fingertip, likely the residual mental energy of the memories, and released it into the air, letting it disperse harmlessly. Then, with a casual flick of his wrist, he formed a blade of wind and cleaved the corpse’s head clean off.

He didn’t stop there. One by one, he raised his hand and sent more blades slicing through the remaining bodies, until all five were reduced to mutilated remains, blood soaking the forest floor.

The metallic tang of blood filled the air, thick and clinging.

Five cultivators, each stronger than him on paper, died without even injuring him.

And Liu Feng stood there, calm as ever, as if he had simply finished a tedious chore.

“It seems some people already see where this road with the Blazing Sun Sect is heading,” Liu Feng said, still massaging his temple as his gaze drifted toward the sky. “Looks like they’ve decided to hedge their bets, selling us out to the other sects for a reward or a cushy position as outer elders once they switch sides.”

“They weren’t here to kill you, teacher,” Jiang Yeming said quietly. “They came to recruit you. But they were too arrogant to understand your value. In their eyes, you were just another scholar. Useful, but not someone they would risk their lives for to restrain.”

Liu Feng didn’t reply, but his faint smirk made it clear he agreed.

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Back in this era, cultivators rarely respected scholars. Many believed them to be weak and saw them as people who hid behind theory to mask their lack of natural talent. It was an opinion that would change completely in the future, when even the most gifted cultivators would be required to master the foundations of science, formation theory, and Qi dynamics.

The few sects that clung to “tradition,” rejecting study for blind cultivation, would vanish from history.

Just as that thought passed through her mind, a low, guttural roar thundered from above. It was so deep it seemed to vibrate through her bones. The ground trembled beneath her feet as the sound rolled across the land like a storm breaking.

The temperature dropped instantly.

Jiang Yeming exhaled and her breath came out as mist. Her brows knit as an unnatural chill prickled her skin. It was midsummer, the sun high, the day warm and bright just moments ago. Yet now, the air felt like winter’s breath.

Her gaze snapped upward. The clouds churned violently, their white turning to heavy steel-gray. She could see the texture shifting too, the softness gone, replaced by something dense and oppressive.

Then came the sound, like a rending tear in the sky.

The clouds split open.

A massive head pushed through, its fur white as snow, patterned not with stripes but dark, jagged spots that rippled as it moved. Two piercing blue eyes opened, and in that moment, the world seemed to shrink beneath their gaze.

A tiger’s head. Enormous. Majestic… and terrifying.

A Core Formation beast.

Jiang Yeming’s heart slammed against her ribs. The sheer pressure of its aura made her Qi quiver out of control. Escaping from a Core Formation being was nearly impossible, even for her. Not at her current stage. Even her spatial techniques, her greatest trump card, were useless. She simply didn’t have the Qi reserves to fold space while carrying a living body.

But the beast wasn’t looking at them.

Its massive head tilted slightly, eyes narrowing as it focused on something far away, beyond the trees, beyond the horizon. The deep growl in its throat rolled like distant thunder, vibrating through the clouds.

Then it descended further, revealing its full form. A gigantic frame covered in white fur speckled with black, muscles coiling beneath every motion, its very presence pressing down on the forest below.

Recognition flashed through Jiang Yeming’s eyes. The pattern of its fur, the faint glacial aura radiating from its body, she’d seen it before.

One of the guardian beasts of the Wisdom Hall.

Her breath caught.

Was it just the same species? Or could this be some crazy coincidence? Or perhaps something else...

But the tiger was not alone.

It hovered effortlessly in the sky, its immense paws resting on nothing, as though the air itself had condensed into invisible stone beneath it. The atmosphere warped subtly around its bulk, trembling under the sheer pressure of its existence. Its eyes icy blue and utterly unblinking remained fixed on a point far in the distance, sharp and cold enough to pierce mountains.

Then the clouds stirred again.

A second figure emerged a four-armed winter bear, its fur thick and silver-white, every strand dusted with frost. Its breath poured out in visible clouds, steaming in the freezing air. It gave a guttural growl, deep but not thunderous, the sound rough but weak next to the tiger’s thunderous resonance. Standing beside that regal creature, the bear looked almost pitiful like a servant, its intensity diminished by proximity to the greater predator beside it.

Was this the same tiger that would one day guard the Wisdom Hall?

If so, what a strange coincidence.

Though perhaps not so strange, Jiang Yeming mused. Many beasts in the future had joined the Wisdom Hall to gain an edge over humans, to learn, to grow, and to protect themselves from indiscriminate slaughter. In exchange, they were granted shelter and a sense of purpose.

Initially, most humans were reluctant to share an institution with beasts. Jiang Yeming had been one of those doubters. But in the end, it worked. She’d even befriended one of them, a mermaid beast with a sharp wit and a love for music.

Ah, right… mermaids hadn’t been discovered yet. They were still hiding beneath the deep lakes of the northern continent.

The thought made her smile. The world was beginning to move again. Slowly, it was reshaping toward the one she remembered, perhaps even a better one.

This life was already better than the last. Her roots were intact, her cultivation stable, and she wasn’t chained to that lying, cheating, good-for-nothing husband who’d once dragged her down. She could barely even remember what she’d seen in him anymore, it was simply the effect of first love, perhaps. Or just plain foolishness.

But all of that was behind her now.

Everything would be different once Wisdom Hall rose again.

After all, Wisdom Hall was the reason humanity survived the beast waves. When the beasts joined its ranks and learned to coexist, the endless slaughter had stopped. And ironically, many of those beasts turned out more loyal than the human scholars who came only to steal knowledge and give nothing in return.

Her reverie was broken by the tiger’s movement.

Its jaws opened slowly, and for a heartbeat the entire sky seemed to pause. The clouds froze mid-shift, the wind died, the forest below fell silent.

Then came the hum.

A deep, resonant vibration, low enough to rattle bones and then a beam of blinding white light burst from the tiger’s maw.

The blast ripped through the heavens, freezing everything in its path. The very clouds crystallized, fracturing into glassy veins of ice that shimmered in the sunlight. Then they shattered, scattering downward as snowflakes that were soft, glittering, and utterly alien in the middle of summer.

The air turned razor-cold. A deafening boom followed, rolling across the sky like the crack of divine judgment.

Far on the horizon, where the beam had struck, a vast bloom of frost exploded upward as a pillar of light and shattered Qi, rising like an icy flower in full bloom.

Jiang Yeming extended her senses, consciousness sweeping across the vast landscape like ripples through still water. Far in the distance, just at the edge of the blast’s devastation, she caught faint traces of Qi, flickering weakly before being snuffed out completely. The residue was faint but distinct. Someone had been there.

Cultivators.

Her brows drew together. Enemies? Or sect members caught too close to the wrong place?

She turned to Liu Feng. He stood calmly, hands behind his back, gazing at the fading clouds where the tiger had vanished. His face was as unreadable as ever, with not even a flicker of concern.

That alone was suspicious.

Liu Feng was many things, but indifferent to the deaths of his own sect members was not one of them. Even if he didn’t recognize the Qi, he would at least be cautious or alert, assessing the situation. But now… nothing.

Unless he already knew.

The realization hit her with a quiet certainty: those cultivators hadn’t been allies. He knew it.

The tiger roared once more, a deep, resonant sound that shook the clouds, then turned and flew off with its four-armed companion. The two beasts vanished into the horizon, their forms shrinking until they disappeared entirely.

Still, Jiang Yeming’s gaze lingered on her teacher.

This wasn’t the first time her suspicions had stirred, but the inconsistencies were beginning to stack up with too many small cracks in the recorded history she had read.

On the surface, everything looked as it should. The events she remembered were unfolding in the correct order, and the people were where they were supposed to be in most cases. But some things didn’t fit.

Why would a beast attack enemy camps instead of the sect’s front lines? Why was Wu Yan already under Liu Feng’s guidance decades earlier than they were supposed to meet? And why was his connection with Song Song so close... closer than any record hinted at?

If she didn’t know better…

Did she know better?

It was said Liu Feng never took another lover after Fu Yating’s death. But she’d never exactly kept track of his private life either. That wasn’t what bothered her most.

No, what unsettled her was how different he was. His methods, his mastery, even his thought process... it all felt ahead of its time, out of place in this era.

He didn’t act like a man living in the past. He acted like a man reshaping it.

And if that was true…

Then, when had he started working with the beasts?

Because clearly, this alliance and this silent understanding between Liu Feng and the monsters didn’t match the timeline she knew. The beast had noticed them, there was no doubt about that, but why didn't it attack them? Someone had shifted it.

Someone had rewritten history.

Tiny things, minor inconsistencies no one but a time-regressor like her could notice, had been altered. Subtly, deliberately.

And there was only one person in existence who could have done that. Someone who had a tight grip on the information of the world, and someone who could modify history books when they were printed.

Her gaze hardened.

Liu Feng.

He was hiding far more than he let on.