39 A general is only as good as the army they lead

"What the shit?"

Jin Fang watched on as Nepherage and Zhen Liu began perform a dance that she had never seen them do before in complete and perfect unison.

She had seen a myriad of performances done by travelers coming and out of Stone Claw City, from Stampeding Bison square dancing to the careful subtle movements of Golden Lotus street ballet. What she was seeing now was very...out of this world.

The two of them were dancing with ease and flow, their hands would move in a controlled and measured manner, while their hips and feet would be rhythmic and powerful.

Jin Fang could barely keep her eyes off of Zhen Liu's hip movements....for reasons.

As the dance kept going, the two of them began performing more and more intense moves that seemed wilder, more acrobatic and more chaotic. The weird thing however, Jin Fang could feel Zhen Liu's aether expression grow stronger with each move... and change.

Initially, Nepherage's aura eclipsed Zhen Liu's. But as the dance went on, Zhen Liu's aether grew stronger and stronger until it almost matched Nepherage's.

When the marionette moved the two of them into doing a finishing pose to their dance, Zhen Liu's aura perfectly matched Nepherage's, causing something very strange to occur.

For a brief moment, quicker than a blink of the eye, it appeared that the very existences of Nepherage and Zhen Liu overlapped each other and became a single being. Jin Fang doubted her eyes for a bit, but she swore she saw a single, fierce woman made of volcanic material appear from his overlap. But before she could be sure, Nepherage, the marionette ghost and the superimposed woman disappeared!

As for Zhen Liu, he collapsed to the ground like a puppet cut from his strings. Thankfully, it didn't take long for him to regain conciousness.

"Ughhh, what just happened?"

"Zhen Liu!"

_________________________________________________

"You don't remember doing any of that?," Jin Fang asked, a concern plain in her face. She was fairly certain Zhen Liu was too young to lose memories, but she had heard of cases before.

"No? Also what do you mean stronger?" Zhen Liu proceeded to form the hand seal necessary to check his formula. "I haven't been able to condense aether at all, remember? Even after I established this formula, how could I...huh."

"What?"

"I...somehow went up a ring."

"What?!"

"Yeah... I'm not even sure how..."

Zhen Liu's shocked tone wasn't unwarranted.

This was quite literally the first sign of actual progress he had made in strengthening his formula since he got the damn thing forcibly imprinted onto his soul.

Over the past few days, Zhen Liu finally had time to exercise his newfound abilities without risk of dying, and discovered a few things about himself, Nepherage and their limitations.

Firstly, he noticed that while he was finally able to maintain a formula foundation and technically cultivate, he couldn't cultivate like everyone else. That as to say, he couldn't condense aether and form rings, because he didn't have any sutras, mantras or meditations to work off of. Nepherage could condense aether though, which didn't make much sense to him. He did however made sure to have Nepherage cultivate in his stead and checked her progress regularly.

Secondly, his formula gave him a crazy strong body that allowed him to punch up at least two levels above his current one. This sounded strong, but it was kinda pointless if his opponents could waste him with a strong enough aether art before he could get in range to punch them. Not that he minded, it was weirdly satisfying punching in the face of someone who thought they were hot shit.

Lastly, the kaijin creation thing was cool and was the main purpose of [Chaos Body Forge], as far as Zhen Liu could tell, but it was unfortunately a very expensive part of his formula.

After he acquired the [Core of Regret], he spent a few days going about and trying to find what would be considered "sufficient material". It was during this time that he found a mineral encyclopedia and discovered that Crimson Jade was the type of material that became more valuable and powerful the longer it spent time in the ground.

Apparently ten pounds of Crimson Jade that is about five thousand years old, sells for about five hundred thousand gold pieces. Zhen Liu basically used up the equivalent of something worth millions to create Nepherage, and he definitely didn't have the funds to acquire anything of equivalent value to do that again anytime soon.

He had initially thought that the weird chunk of amber he picked up from the old guy would've helped, but when he tried to use it, he got a weird error message that read, <Supplemental material insufficient>, whatever that meant.

Zhen Liu finally settled on just improving and modifying Nepherage's abilities until he could figure something out. She was his "puppet" in the eyes of the world, so improving her would technically be seen as improving himself. He didn't know that had a much more literal meaning than he had thought.

[Nepherage, how are you feeling?]

[Significantly lighter milord, why do you ask?]

[Lighter? What do you-hold up...]

Zhen Liu stretched his senses beyond his own formula foundation and checked on Nepherage's foundation. While Nepherage's level hadn't gone down, she was still a Fifth Ring Acolyte, he could sense that the amount of aether she had inside her was much less than when he had checked yesterday. This observation made Zhen Liu come to a rather interesting conclusion.

'I can't cultivate aether normally, but my kaijin can, so in order for me to advance at all, I have to drain the aether from them? Does...does that make me a parasite? Wait...but I created her and she uses my aether to enhance her abilities so...the hell kind of feedback loop is this?'

Jin Fang noticed Zhen Liu's apprehensive look and asked if he was okay. He quickly shook his head about before saying he was.

"Yeah I'm fine, just...had a bit of an epiphany..."

Someone once said that a leader was only as good as their team, and this was the mindset that Zhen Liu decided to take in regards to this revelation.

'Granted I'm going to need more kaijin if I want a proper "team"...but how the hell am I going to get the materials in order to do that?'

_________________________________________________

"You're going to be participating in this year's Prospecting Challenge."

"Say what now?"