Regrettably, his plan was not as effective as he hoped it would be. A few of the enemy were wounded by flying lava, but for the most part they were intact. Having caught up with him, Sage felt the number of pursuers increasing, the only problem being that they weren’t foolish enough to get tangled up with the natural disaster following him. Instead of getting killed by the giant tortoise, they just shadowed it from the sides. He’d brought this behemoth back to try and use it against them, but now it was being used by them.

A couple of the Fu Clan traveled underneath the giant tortoise, clinging to its underbelly. They’d somehow managed to escape its notice and withstand the proximity to its volcano heat. The other groups spread out to the sides, letting the tortoise follow him while they spread out in a hunting or search pattern to make sure he couldn’t slip away.

Sage could only resign himself to his fate. Using the tortoise like this, he couldn’t change his trajectory very easily. Before, he could just make wide turns with the tortoise stuck following behind him. Now that the others had created a sort of wall behind him, if he turned they’d be able to catch up to him. He was forced to flee in a straight line directly away from them if he wanted to keep from being ambushed.

Well, at least the Fu Clan had to pull back. Constantly being harassed by them was not fun.

Even if they’d only been surrounding him for a few hours, he’d felt the pressure. It was already stressful enough to be constantly on the run from the giant turtle, but as much as he hated to think about it, he was already quite experienced with a life on the run. After having spent a couple years on the run, he’d become somewhat resilient to the struggle.

Do anything enough, and it will become normal to you. Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. The body and mind can adapt to the stresses they face, to a point. Hardship is a form of training, but there is a limit. If that point is reached, instead of growing stronger you’ll shut down. Physical injury, starvation, dehydration, or even a complete mental break are all possibilities. Will it be too much for me to bear this time? I always thought I’d die exploring some random place I shouldn’t be, when my curiosity gets the best of me. Will I fall to all these enemies that I’ve acquired along the way without meaning to?

Defeatist thoughts aside, he continued to push forward. He had no plans to roll over and die, instead just waxing poetic as a way to mentally occupy himself, distancing himself from the stress of being hunted. Death loomed behind him, and living in the moment only seemed to heighten the stress. He detached his emotional and mental state from the adrenaline pumping chase and turned introspective as a distraction. Sadly, analyzing the situation eventually brought him back to the moment and with greater weight. It was only a stopgap after all. Pondering the meaning of life did nothing to stop the freight train barreling down on him from behind.

Days and weeks passed, Sage had no idea where he was, only that he was moving in a western direction. From the 10,000 Wave Province, there was an ocean to the east. The things that lived out to sea were far more dangerous than those on land, and while Sage was better off on the water than most Cultivators, he wasn’t going into such a dangerous place while being chased. Last time he’d run north and eventually left the Dou Kingdom and headed towards what he’d heard called the ‘Shou Empire’. They’d taken him in, but they wanted to turn him into a sort of pet, using his Inner World for their benefit.

He’d already made the decision not to take that deal when Guan Zhenyan took him away, and he didn’t desire being faced with that choice again. To the south, the Shihu Kingdom was where the Holy Flame Sect was located, but he also had many enemies there. Knowing how to use Seals put him onto many most wanted lists. So, Sage chose to head west. He had no idea what lay in that direction.

Just as before, while the initial chase was frantic, as time went on the pursuers grew just as weary as he did. They could stop to rest, rotating out with others to keep up the pressure, but then those who’d stopped had to catch back up again and expend their energy. With certain death behind him, the unexpected elements actually lay before him. Luckily, most Demonic Beasts were spooked by the constant molten boulders flying his way. On the downside, his opportunities to rest were sparse. That mountain sized tortoise chased him for a week at a time before it finally stopped to consume an actual mountain. It snapped off huge chunks of stone and flattened the top of the mountain before digging deeper. It’s face came up dripping with molten rock and metal. It seemed to know where dormant volcanoes were and it fed upon them.

During the time it was feeding, Sage would suffer attacks from his other pursuers. Only, they couldn’t pursue him too far, merely harassing him and keeping him under watch. They made sure he couldn’t rest for more than an hour at a time, forcing him to stay alert and wary of attack. The first time the tortoise stopped to rest, they’d taken up the chase themselves and harried him for a hundred miles. The only problem was that when the tortoise finished eating and resting it caught back up to them and the combination of molten boulders and building sized legs crashing down killed a dozen of them.

They’d learned their lesson at that point and let the tortoise lead the chase. While the tortoise got to rest, Sage did not. He had to maintain a sort of half-aware state at all times, ready to react to a surprise attack. Driven to the edge, it didn’t take long for him to remember how to sleep with his eyes open and ready to wake at even the slightest disturbance. He suffered for it, but he was a Nascent Soul, and at this pace it would likely take a decade to break him. A battle between normal people was measured in the minutes, while two Nascent Souls could go on for weeks. They would need to throw a lot more at him to stop him. The giant tortoise also didn’t need to ‘rest’, so much as it was just gathering more material to spit at him. Sage recharged his energy stores while the monster reloaded.

Even so, this couldn’t go on. He wasn’t heading towards anywhere in specific. At this point, he was basically relying on dumb luck. Would he stumble onto something that killed him, or saved him? The situation was far from ideal.

Yet, he was far from giving up.

There was a whole world within him. When he first achieved the 5th rank, time there was ten times faster than the real world. More amazingly, every time he improved it would become a fold stronger. When he was a level 58, an eighth stage Core Formation Cultivator in the local parlance, the time dilation had improved to eighty times normal. When he broke through to the 6th rank that multiplier was at 100 times. Sage was now a level 63, due to increasing his degree with the Law of Corruption, and time on the Inner World was 300 times that of the outside world.

While he ran for a few weeks on the outside world, nearly twelve years had passed on the inside. The Tiankong Siblings had already healed up long ago and were organizing many initiatives. For one thing, the Inner World had never been calm. Their mothers led the administration of the largest city in the Inner World. They drove the descendants of the many Hoplites, Dragoons, and humans who had taken refuge on the planet to improve. The many techniques that Sage had acquired in his years of travel and adventure were used as rewards for fighting tournaments. Those with the greatest talent were rewarded with skills and they used those skills to found their own Clans and Sects.