Chapter 11: Dimensional Shifting
The trio's elation for finally landing two attacks on their senior was short-lived, as Hualing suddenly vanished.
Frantically the three quickly got into formation, forming a triangle with their backs facing one another, giving the small group the maximal field of vision.
Suddenly reality started to distort, everything seemed to split and a slight offset formed between the two halves of reality, and again everything split, then split, then split.
And suddenly, almost as if reality was simply made up of small blocks, the pieces began shifting, twisting, and rearranging themselves in a way that didn't make any sense.
Looking around, the trio noticed that they had drifted apart from each other. Try as they might. They were completely unable to regroup.
Every movement that they made only served to bring them further from one another. It was as if they were each locked into moving in a certain vector.
Yet after Xiuying attempted to use her Dao of Information, she knew that it was not so simple.
Neither of them had an X, Y, Z Cartesian Coordinate that she could overwrite. Each of them only possessed a single X variable for their location! And not only that, the axis between them was totally out of sync.
Editing the X value would move everyone in different directions, and that value, whether positive or negative, would only move them further and further away from each other!
This was Dimensional Shifting, one of Hualing's most potent abilities. The way this ability worked was by creating a bunch of arbitrary dimensional planes. In traditional 3 dimensional space, these planes would be the X plane, Y plane, and Z plane. Furthermore, each of these planes would be perpendicular to one another.
But for Hualing, who possessed the Dao of Dimension, it was not difficult to create and impose as many planes as she wanted. Moreover, these planes did not have to have to be perpendicular to the other planes.
Using these dimensional planes, she could segregate reality, impose locality restrictions, and even manipulate who or what could interact with which plane.
Unfortunately for the duo, Xiuying and Gao Liang just didn't have the conceptual comprehension to combat such a powerful ability.
As Gao Liang, Xiuying, and Zhongming were still trying to make sense of everything, a sense of dread filled them as they felt a hand softly grabbing one of their shoulders. Then, turning their heads instinctively, they could all see the unnervingly sweet smiling face of their senior sister.
Fortunately, before anything else could happen, another hand firmly clamped on Hualing's outstretched wrist.
"Alright, everyone, let's stop here!" Xue Jian announced.
"Senior brother, why do you have to be such a spoilsport." Hualing pouted as she released her ability.
Rapidly reality began rearranging itself. All the pieces previously chaotic started shifting, twisting, and rearranging in a way that made sense again; after not much time, everything had returned to normal.
"Using that Dimensional Shifting ability, on Nascent Soul and Core Formation cultivators, we are here to train with our juniors not to bully them."
"Senior Brother, I was just having a little bit of fun with our three cute juniors. How could you call it bullying?"
"Your concept of fun is warped..." Was Xue Jian's curt reply.
With a snap, Xue Jian released the array that he had cast at the beginning of the training session. There wasn't much damage to heal, but Gao Liang and Xiuying would surely be grateful to have some of their bruises removed.
In a battle between cultivators in different realms, especially cultivators who were conceptual in nature, any injuries inflicted by a higher realm cultivator became difficult to heal. This was due to karma, specifically the portion of karma that dealt with causality.
Basically, cultivators did not have the ability to negate an effect imposed upon them by a higher power. So if Xiuying had tried to overwrite the bruise Hualing had inflicted on her, it would not have worked.
To heal herself, she would have two choices, either by waiting and allowing the karmic ties to grow weaker over time, or she could have someone in the same or higher realm than Hualing heal her.
"Hmm… Hualing seems like you'll have to heal yourself." Xue Jian commented as he was mentally searching through all the dimensions, looking for any copy that has retained an unblemished version of Hualing.
Apparently, Gao Liang's Karmic Control and Xiuying's Information Override was potent enough to affect every single copy of reality that was stored by Hualing's prototype array.
"That's fine," was all she said, and with a mere wave, she reverted any damage that she had taken from that fight.
After healing the two Nascent Soul cultivators, Xue Jian addressed his three juniors.
"I'm actually quite impressed by how well you managed to work together. Normally, Nascent Soul cultivators are quite helpless against Soul Integration cultivators. Yet, you three, through ingenuity, were able to, for however briefly, take control of the battle against Hualing."
Due to the domain of locality, cultivators were limited in not just destructive capabilities but were also constrained by time. Due to this, physical combat, such as martial arts, was very relevant for even high-level cultivators, despite their conceptual nature.
Because of this, even many Soul Integration cultivators would have a hard time dealing with Hualing's Dao of Dimensions. So as far as Soul Integration cultivators went, there were not many who could contend with Hualing.
"I was certainly not anticipating how you three would end up bypassing my ability," Hualing said as she nodded in agreement.
"Well," Xue Jian began as he adopted a thinking pose." Now that Hualiang and I have seen what you three can do, why don't we have a brainstorm session and figure out the best ways to utilize our abilities in tandem."
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