Communication

"Yeah, the white-haired yokai woke up! But he won't show me his magic!"

The little girl exclaimed towards the old man.

This, she's making fun of me isn't she?

Even though I still can't understand what they're saying, I really feel as if that girl is irritating.

Which reminds me, I first have to solve this issue before even thinking about learning about this world. How can I begin gaining knowledge when I don't even know how to read or speak their language here? Of course, this was no problem in the past as Immortals could use spells and treasure items to compensate for the language barriers.

Stronger cultivators like me could even use our Spiritual Energy in directly speaking inside the other party's head. We call this skill 'Voice Transmission'. It allows us to gather the words we are trying to say without speaking out loud into a small ball of energy and shoot them into the target's head at the speed of light. But now that I can't even use the simplest of spells due to the lack of said energy, it would be a fool's dream to use that complicated skill.

"I see. You want to see the yokai's magic?"

"Yes, I heard that they could change their faces and fly around!"

"Where did you hear that from?"

"From a classmate at school! She told me all kinds of things about ghosts and yokai!"

"Well that's great. You made a friend today."

The old man began to rub the little girl's head even more. To which the girl found that her hair was messed up and quickly backed away from the old man.

"!?..."

Don't make that heartbroken face, old man. You look as if you aged ten years.

The silence in the room made it easier to hear a faint sound of something being smashed to pieces.

Maybe that was his heart, but I couldn't care less.

After what may be an eternity of the old man despairing, he finally came to his senses.

"*Cough* Granddaughter, have you fed the boy already?"

Switching back to his earlier sagely appearance, the old man shook his head and said something to the woman who was thinking deeply about something with her scrunched up eyebrows.

"Ah, yes grandfather. He had a surprisingly large appetite after the several surgeries he was put through. Even his bullet wounds and fractured ribs had almost completely healed after a week."

"I see. This boy isn't anything ordinary judging by how his injuries healed rapidly. And also.."

Suddenly, I felt the old man's gaze move behind me, scrutinizing the black dragon brand on my back. Does he recognize it somehow? If that was true, it would make it easier to find my origins.

But that's for the future.

My present goal is to gain a means of communicating with the inhabitants of this world. By doing that, I could gain every single bit of knowledge here with a bit of effort.

I have some flying treasures in my storage but I doubt I can control them with the limited energy I have. Thus, I would also need some kind of transportation like those metal machines from earlier that moved at high speeds.

After I have collected all the information I need, I can begin to find places with Spiritual Energy. If it was impossible, I could try to formulate a way to cultivate without it. Which would be very difficult.

Well, let's think about that problem when I get to it.

"Granddaughter, take Hana home, she has school tomorrow. I need to speak with the boy."

"Understood grandfather."

"No, I still want to talk to the yokai, let go of me!"

"Now, now, you have to finish your homework. It's time to go home."

Before I knew it, the woman had picked up the little girl in her arms and carried her out of the room. Her wails and cries of indignance kept getting softer as they moved farther and farther away.

After they were gone, only silence was left.

I notice the old man trying to examine me from every direction, trying to see through me.

You can look all you want, old man. Even the great sages of the old empires couldn't see through my disguises in the past, and they were supreme existences in the Immortal Realm.

Let alone a mortal who developed blood lust, even a heavenly eyes deity would not notice me if I did not expose myself. In the meantime, why don't I find a way to communicate.

First off, since words won't work, let's try basic signs and gestures.

I slowly raise my right hand and wave it from left to right repeatedly.

If I'm not mistaken, this is how mortals said hello to each other.

In the past, I only needed to nod to someone to greet them and they would soon be all smiles as if they had been over the moon and back.

I remember a strange demon race emperor who flew thousands of miles just to see me. He loudly exclaimed to get my attention. Apparently, he was looking to test his strength against me.

Since he didn't have bad intentions, I limited my cultivation to have a spar with him.

Even so, he was crushed in two moves.

But he wasn't disheartened at all. He said that just surviving one of my moves was something to be proud about. In fact, he was so happy that he opened up a bottle of 'Draconic Fruit Wine' and shared it with me to celebrate. After all that, he left after saying he will come again to spar with me.

That was a memory I was quite curious about. I wonder what had happened to him now that I was gone. But no matter, I will make it back to the Immortal Realm and the place beyond it soon enough.

It only takes some effort, that's all.

"Hmm? You can't talk? Are you mute little boy?"

The old man suddenly seemed cautious after he noticed me waving at him.

I still couldn't understand a word he said.

I guess this doesn't work.

Maybe I could...

"Huh? What is it now?"

I grasp my fingers into a writing position and drew in the air in order to get his attention.

In the past, doing this would incinerate the skies and I could write letters throughout the stars, but now I was just simply moving the air around my arm. Ah, how low have I fallen.

"Ah, I see you want something to write with!"

The old man seemed to realize what I was trying to say, and he quickly went outside to talk to someone before coming back with a stack of papers bound together like a book, but only flatter and wider. Instead of a writing brush and ink, he brought me a cylindrical object with a black tip.

This annoyed me because as soon as I tried to write, the words that appeared on paper were all messed up and looked like string lines and blotches of black dots.

This writing brush is defective. I'm sure of it. It's too short, and I cannot write legibly by holding the tip of its handle. But my struggle seemed as if it was funny to the old man as he began to chuckle.

An urge to beat his face into black and blue arises within me. But I soon realize that I was still too weak right now, so I quickly gave up on that thought.

"Not like that boy, you have to hold it like so."

Mumbling what seemed to be curse words, he smirked and took the cylinder away and held its middle part clasped between three of his fingers and held in place by his fingertips.

The old man began to demonstrate how to write on the paper and I was soon embarrassed about my earlier appearance of trying to write in an elegant style. My face slightly reddens but I bury the shame deep inside. I fell into a trap, how could I have known that these new brushes were used differently. Now I regret not taking the chance to learn about reading minds from the Deep Void Walker back then. If I had done that, I would not be stuck being ashamed like this.

After my breathing calmed down, I took back the writing utensil and began to form letters, then words, and finally an entire sentence. Then, I slowly showed it to the old man.

"Let's see here-!?"

But as soon as I did, the old man seemed to have been shocked with his eyes wide open.

"Not possible. This shouldn't be possible."

The original calm figure of his shook like a leaf, and with a raised finger, he pointed at me and said.

"Boy, who taught you this? Who exactly are you?"