Abstraction for a bad world

Chapter 179 Conquerors and Challengers, the Way to Breakthrough (4.1k)

The air was so thin, but Lash could smell a sweet scent from it.

That's the smell of freedom.

She conquered this mountain over 8,000 meters high with her own hands and achieved the goal she had stated in her heart at the starting point at the foot of the mountain.

If it were her old self, she would have definitely shouted for Farandelle to come and take a look.

But now Rush had no urge to show off to anyone.

If it is not considered original and clean.

The girl bent down and scooped up a handful of pure white snow from the mountain top.

I just feel that my body is so light.

"Congratulations."

After a long time, Farandelle's voice came, and there was a hint of smile in her lazy tone: "How do you feel now?"

“It’s good, but not good enough.”

Rush placed the snow on his head and thanked Flandre solemnly: "Thank you, Sister Flandre."

“Instead of thanking me, you should thank yourself for not giving up even though you have failed thousands of times.”

Farandel in the outside world spread his hands and said, "I just provided you with a simple place... If I feel that you really want to give up or if you say these words yourself, your short journey will end here."

"Is that so?"

Rush nodded, curling his lips.
"Then I am pretty good myself."

She felt the cold air coming from above her head, and amid the exclamations of the phantoms under her feet, she went all out from the 8848-meter peak—

Jump down!

Amid the howling of the atmosphere and the terrifying feeling of weightlessness, Rush opened his arms and laughed loudly:

“The feeling now is really great!”
.
pat.

The girl fell onto the wooden floor.

She happily put her hair up, took a deep breath, stood up, and smiled at Flandre: "Long time no see, Sister Flandre."

"Long? I don't think so."

Flandel, who had replaced the wheelchair with a soft seat and sunk into it, pointed to the clock beside him and said, "It's only been less than two hours."

Ugh?
Rush couldn't help but be stunned.

Two hours?

In this amount of time, I haven’t even climbed a hundred meters.

Flandel pushed the white crystal ball with a snow mountain inside to the center of the table. "Even if you take into account the ratio of the time flow rate inside the crystal ball to the outside world, you have only spent less than fifty hours."

Time ratio?

Rush blinked when he heard the new vocabulary - this was quite magical, but fifty hours was far from enough for him to conquer this peak from scratch.

"But I feel like at least a week has passed..."

Rush expressed his feelings.

Flandre smiled:
"Have you ever heard that if a person is completely immersed in something, his subjective perception of time will be stretched, and correspondingly, the speed of time outside will slow down."

Looking at Rush, whose spirit and energy were completely different from two hours ago, Flandre applauded: "Rush, congratulations on living five days longer than others."

The girl gave an expression of "I see", and accepted the applause calmly.

"I'll give you this crystal ball as a small commemorative gift."

She pushed the crystal ball on the table towards Rush.

Rush carefully picked up the white crystal ball and looked at the black and white snow-capped mountains in it. He showed an understanding expression: "I was just in this crystal ball, right?"

Farandelle nodded.

The girl showed a hint of joy, wiped its surface with her fingers a few times, and happily put it in her arms: "Thank you, Sister Flandre~"

Flandel hesitated for a moment, but still added: "Of course, don't be too complacent. Climbing this snowy mountain is just the most basic test of your will. If you can't even persevere in this kind of thing, then I will send you directly back to Yuan Qingzhuo."

"Moreover, Yuan Qingzhuo can do this in a matter of minutes... He doesn't even need the protection of 'immortality'."

She tapped her fingers and watched the girl's joy gradually fade away.

"If you want to catch up with him, you need to work a hundred or a thousand times harder than an average person, and go through countless more life and death tests than an average person."

"——There is only a slight chance to stand shoulder to shoulder with him."

"I know."

Rush nodded.

"I've known this for a long time... No one knows how powerful Brother Zhuo is better than me."

The girl smiled sweetly. "Besides, I don't plan to stand shoulder to shoulder with Brother Zhuo. If I can stand behind him and provide him with help and support without being pulled too far away by him, Rush will be satisfied."

Tch... In this day and age even kids want to feed me dog food, that's really annoying.

Flandel frowned slightly, waved his hand unhappily, and conjured up seven exquisite crystal balls of different shapes.

Then, he pushed a crystal ball that was completely blue in color in front of Rush.

Without waiting for the girl to answer, Farandel quickly said, "This is the test you will undergo next - [Water Creature]."

"You will initially stay on a small island with a diameter of 100 meters. There will be a surfboard powered by ectoplasm for you to use."

Rush, who was originally curious and wanted to touch the crystal ball, suddenly became serious. She listened carefully to what Flandre said:

"And what you need to do is to rely on this surfboard to survive until the big wave comes in ten minutes."

A malicious smile appeared on Flandre's face, and a spell bloomed from her fingertips: "If it fails, everything will start over again... But believe me, drowning is not a good way to die, and being beaten to death by the waves or being eaten by those little guys is even worse."

Rush clenched her fists subconsciously. She felt her body was much more flexible and her spirit was fuller than before, and nodded slowly.

"By the way, the test you went through before was the most basic [Lord of Fate], and this is an advanced version."

In the final moments, Rush asked, "Sister Flandre, I feel like I've reached a certain limit. Can I break through the White Iron Step first?"

"that's not allowed."

Farandelle smiled.

"If you break through the White Iron Stage and then do these, the rewards and difficulty will be much smaller... The mentality before and after becoming a true transcendent is completely different."

After saying that, without waiting for Lash to answer, the azure crystal ball burst into a brilliant blue light and took Lash in.

"I don't know if I can succeed after a thousand attempts..."
.
The interior of the crystal ball.

Rush, feeling a little dizzy, stood up from the warm sand, looked up, and saw the endless blue sea.

The clear sunlight shines through the calm, surging blue sea, making the whole place sparkling.

Rush, who had only seen descriptions of the sea in books, was stunned for a moment.

"What a nice view……"

At this moment, she was not thinking about finding a surfboard, nor was she thinking about jumping into the sea to have some fun.

Instead, he wanted to record this scene using a spell and show it to Brother Zhuo when he returned.

After several dozen seconds, Rush suddenly realized that he only had ten minutes. In ten minutes, Sister Flandre said there would be a "big wave" coming.

But big waves.

Rush looked down at the small waves breaking in front of his white ankles.

How big are the waves?

Ten meters? Or twenty meters? Or even higher... fifty meters!

Rush imagined a fifty-meter wave rising upright—that would be the wave that hit his ankle magnified a thousand times.

The girl suddenly felt a little chilly.

This is not like a mountain 8,400 meters high. The waves seem to move...

Rush did not linger on the beach soaked by shallow sea water. She turned around and easily saw a small house located in the center of the island.

——Of course, there was also the huge surfboard that was almost one meter long and almost as tall as her!
If you ask how Rush knew it was a surfboard...it was because there were three big words "Surfboard" written on the board!

Rush is not Caroline; she can read.

She rushed over and picked up the surfboard leaning against the small house, and looked at the house with some confusion - why was there a house in the middle of the island?

And as if to answer Rush's doubts, a laughing voice suddenly came from the room:
"——Hello, Challenger!"

The next moment, the thin door was kicked open, and a silver-haired woman in a black swimsuit holding a surfboard walked out.

The silver-haired woman lowered her head slightly, revealing a pair of eyes as bright as rubies under her sunglasses, and waved at Rush.

The woman looked at Rush, who was only as tall as her waist, with a look of surprise on her face:
"Still a child?"

Rush looked at the silver-haired woman warily: "Who are you?"

Sister Flandre didn't tell her that there was a strange woman on the island before she threw her in.

And looking at her opaque body, it seems that she is not the shadow of the challenger from the past.

"I should be the one asking who you are..." The woman muttered, glanced at the spiral horns on Rush's head, smiled brightly, walked over to her and said, "You can call me 'the do-nothing', which means a guy who does nothing but eat, drink and have fun all day."

This doesn't need any explanation...

Rush broke free from the arms of the "idler". She knew that time was running out and she had to hurry up and practice the skills of using the surfboard in her hands.

"It seems that you are not very satisfied with my name."

The Idle Man sighed in disappointment, looked at Rush's back as he turned and left, took off his sunglasses and said, "Before this, you can also call me 'Conqueror'."

She looked at Rush who turned back and curled her lips:
"——It means the one who conquered this sea."

The Conqueror walked slowly to Rush's side, looked at the white waves approaching the other side of the horizon, and whistled happily: "This wave looks unusually big."

Rush, who was trying to inject spiritual essence into a smooth surfboard on the top, was stunned and asked, "How big is it?"

"Hey."

The Conqueror picked up Lash and threw her into the gradually surging sea water not far away: "How big is it? You will experience it yourself later!"

Rush fell into the water with a splash.

Time, four minutes have passed.

She frantically grabbed the surfboard and floated to the surface, coughing out the sea water in her throat... Just in that one cough, she must have drunk at least a pound of sea water.

So salty...

Rush retched, feeling himself being tossed about by the sea water.

That's really bad.

So thought Rush, the landlubber.

At this moment, she became a beginner again - because no matter how advanced her rock climbing skills were, they could not be used in sea water.

In contrast to the embarrassed Rush, the Conqueror was already happily circling around her on his surfboard.

"What's wrong? You must have climbed the mountain to get here. Is this all you can do?"

The Conqueror laughed and pointed at Rashi:

"You're not coming here without knowing how to swim?"

RUSH: …

She struggled to carry the surfboard back to the shore and tried again to inject spiritual essence into it - because if she didn't inject spiritual essence, she would slip into the water as soon as she stepped on it.

Under normal circumstances, maybe Rush would spend another ten or twenty minutes to start using the surfboard...

It suddenly got dark.

Rush, who was concentrating on his work, looked up in confusion, and heard the conqueror's joyful laughter: "What a wave!"

The wave is coming.

Rush's movements froze.

Wait...is this a wave?

The girl looked at the huge azure wall that was who knows how many hundred meters high and the white foam like cloud waves above it.

This is... a wave?!
Rush swallowed hard.

The huge waves were at least several kilometers away from him, but even at such a long distance, the sun in the sky was still obscured by it.

How can I survive under the cover of such a disaster?

Even Rush, who had just jumped from a height of 8848 meters, couldn't help but feel astonished.

This is impossible...

As Rush was thinking this, he saw the woman who called herself a conqueror riding a surfboard and rushing towards the catastrophic wave without hesitation.

"Sister Fa also said that this method is generally fine."

At Caroline's home, Yuan Qingzhuo took out his notes and said to Caroline who had been waiting for a long time: "But there are a few key issues."

Next, Yuan Qingzhuo told Caroline the advantages and disadvantages of the three methods, as well as the difficulty of simply using the soul fire to forge a pure soul.

He originally thought that with Caroline's level of thinking, she would crash directly and fall into a long period of contemplation.

Unexpectedly, the girl looked up as if it was a matter of course: "What's so difficult about this?"

"I have no objection to setting the time for the breakthrough at the Martial God Festival five years from now. It will be a good opportunity for me to continue to hone my understanding of my current state."

Caroline grinned proudly: "If I break through too early, it won't be fun to go over there and bully the kids."

"As for the witnesses..."

She raised her eyebrows and pointed at Yuan Qingzhuo: "Isn't there one here? Will it be difficult for me to let you watch my game?"

Yuan Qingzhuo didn't expect this answer. He smiled with a complicated expression and did not tell Caroline about his plan to start a breakthrough right away.

Witnessing is only necessary at the last step.

Therefore, from now on, I will transform my martial arts will into the fire of the soul and begin to temper my soul.

This is a very slow and painstaking job.

(End of this chapter)