The next two days are filled with preparation, discussion, And a healthy amount of anxiety, between the three… four of us. Even Ai, who has been making great progress lately, seems to be staying up for longer and longer times.

In terms of our preparation, Gong actually had me do, what I could only call ‘fitness tests,’ due to patterns she’s been seeing in my body. In a long straight tunnel, she had me sprint at full speed, to see how fast I could move.

Pretty fucking fast.

I used my scan to figure out how fast I was going, which was around 45 km/h. I’m basically Usain Bolt at his fastest possible speed. And I felt completely fine afterwards, almost as if I could go indefinitely with it.

This isn’t to say that I wasn’t trying to go as fast as I could… It was almost as if I just had too much energy and not the right ways to put it out.

It brings back to mind, that I didn’t realize what it really meant when Shi was asking me earlier whether I did body cultivation.

When I really think of it, even in the fights that I’ve been having I’ve never been tired due to exhaustion, but instead fear or anxiety.

Of course, Gong was extremely excited, and decided to take it further.

She apparently had multiple hallways prepared for this sort of training, but things had come up that delayed it.

The next hallway has one of my favorite creatures in it, the worm that buries itself under your skin and likes to crawl underneath it.

Apparently, she had noticed my discomfort towards that trap specifically, and prepared many more with it in there.

I found out that people apparently like calling them, Gray Diggers.

Mostly, because by the time they stop digging, you are already dead. They are even able to borrow into hard insect carapaces, which require a nail and a hammer to get through.

Which makes no sense to me, but fuck this bug in particular anyway.

Nonetheless, she instructs me to not use my taming ability on them and to only use my body to try to avoid them falling on me.

This next hallway, has the entire hallway going down for two miles in a straight line. And packed into the ceiling on top of trapdoors, Are heaps of these bugs.

For two fucking miles.

Is this honestly what she’s doing with her and the spiders time? Because I think we need to reprioritize things.

Despite my irrational fear of this, I run the trial. Since she also wants to train my pain endurance, she’s instructed me to also wait until the first batch drops just above my head before I run.

Her exact words were, “If they start burrowing in, just use your healing to push them back out. Easy, right?”

I’v never called a woman so many names in my head, than I did this day.

At the start, I activated my scan so I could get a believable head start from when they drop towards me, but still allowing me to avoid them. Gong is using spiders to trigger them, so she has full control over how fast or how slow it they come down.

While my plan worked in the beginning, to have me escape that first batch of worms, unfortunately Gong knew exactly how fast I am. And was trying to push me farther.

Almost immediately after the start, she dumped the ones in front of me down, causing me to push even harder and harder.

I managed to keep ahead of them, going faster than I ever believed possible.

With my scan on, I could tell just how fast I was going, beating my previous numbers at a fast 60 km/h.

That all changed when the first bug got in my eye, near the end of the route.

Gong had finally gotten me, by setting off one just enough ahead of me, that I couldn’t move past it fast enough.

I could see them, practically in slow motion, as their little plump bodies wriggled down onto me and into my hair.

Obviously I had ducked down, to try to avoid as many of them as I could, but I had inadvertently threw one forward just ahead of me and it went right into my eye.

At the speed I was going there is no other place for it to go, but to stay in my eye socket.

My eyes, now at a superhuman strength because of my healing constitution, could see as its little, but extremely sharp mouth dived towards my eye. Trying to avoid the fast winds, while perched on my eye socket.

I don’t remember what happened in next couple of minutes after that.

What I do remember, is the sheering pain that I suddenly found myself in, now 2 additional miles down the way. Covered in bug juice.

I had slammed into the ceiling and wall from moving so fast on an uneven plane, with a variety of turns. And still running.

Blood and guts were streamed along the whole way behind me and my emergency automatic healing had gone off, several times, to save my life.

There were even multiple body parts. Including a not insignificant piece of a head.

When I saw that, I threw up a little.

What was left of me, was a perfectly smooth and naked body.

Ugh… I don’t feel so good.

At least, it’s a good thing I stopped wearing my clothes from Earth during training. I actually like those.

Also, at least now I know I could really take some damage, in the worst-case scenario…

As I use my scan in that direction, I can see Gong is on the way with her spiders, desperately trying to catch up and seems sickened/horrified at the mess.

I send her an ‘I’m okay’ message, which calms her down, but also scares her further.

Hell, I’m scared too.

Finally relaxing a little, I feel a slight bit of pressure on my arm, potentially a piece of rock from the wall I’ve made an indent into.

When I looked down at my arm, I could see a single, thick resilient worm, desperately trying to enter my skin, but feeling like the briefest tickle to me.

I smashed that thing so hard, that I broke my arm.

Fuck those worms.

I’m using that for my worst enemies.

I tame a few as a backup for that plan. Letting them breed a little, but not too much. Making sure they are actually under my control.

I double check a few times to be sure.

Nothing else was done for training that day, since I just ignored Gong from that point. She seemed OK with it, being simultaneously horrified and contemplative.

Later on, my scan told me my freaking out speed was 150km/h.

As a group, we also further refined how we speak to people of a higher level than ourselves, in addition to knowing and understanding who the big players are and which of their members are likely to be sent to join this Revolving Heavenly Light secy.

When they first told me about the major players there might be joining this sect, I naively assumed they were talking about the gangs. Which made Gong laugh quite a bit too long for my liking.

Who she was actually talking about, is the major clans, noble families, merchant groups, and the children of important, but loose cultivators.

In some ways, I was suspecting would be the case.

Another one of the things that we discovered during this time, from Gong’s information network, is that the Alchemy Guild is desperately looking for me. They’ve found out my information, but it apparently took them quite a bit of effort to do so.

Which according to Gong, meant the Yellow Sashes went above and beyond to keep their word.

The Alchemy Guild is a powerful group, who is more powerful than the Yellow Sashes, but not as powerful in this area.

Apparently, Gong has word that it would be better to send me in a different pickup group than the one they are in. So, that they will find it more difficult to find me, buying me time to travel with the sect. Which is the point where they can no longer interfere.

However, we will each need to still wait with the cart until everyone arrives. Which means a whole day of just waiting for people. A large risk.

It looks extremely bad if you don’t arrive early though. Influencing your start with the group, unless you have status and connections. In which it is actually seen as an indication of your strength. Double standards.

Either way, this isn’t going to be an easy time…