Baiyun sat on the bed of his inn room and looked around.

It was plain and with few furnishings, merely a bed, a table and a small bookshelf inside. A small potted plant with vibrant fleshy green leaves was placed on the table, a glass spray bottle of sorts beside it. The bookshelf was only populated with books quarterway; the slightly dusty books and abandoned spiderwebs made it a rather sad sight.

While the room was far from luxurious, it was relatively clean and well kept.

Baiyun walked over to the table and picked up the spray bottle, pressing the primitive metal mechanism and squirting a few streams of water towards the plant.

He checked the shelves next and saw the books were mostly informational with a few fictions in the mix. None of them seemed particularly interesting but one caught his eye.

"A visitor's guide to Forest Tortoise."

Baiyun flipped past the uninteresting babble within and arrived at a map that listed the various facilities of the town. His eyes darted across the map quickly. He wondered if he had made a strange habit of memorising every map he came across.

It seemed there was a bookstore in this tiny town. Interesting...

Baiyun stroked his chin and headed out of the room with the book in hand.

"Baiyun! You're out!" Mohei suddenly called out.

A few thuds came from the staircase as Mohei ran up to wave at Baiyun.

"You're out?" Baiyun frowned.

He had merely been in the room for a few moments!

"Ying Shi is already heading back to the sect. He said we could do whatever we want for the next few days!"

So soon? Baiyun thought Ying Shi would at least stay the night, but it seemed the kid didn't like to waste time.

Mohei's eyes were filled with excitement. Baiyun suddenly had a bad feeling. Was he about to be buried by a mountain of duel requests again?

"I'm going to the bookstore." Baiyun said.

"Ehhh? I wanted to ask if you wanted to go fishing with me!"

Ah. Baiyun coughed, realising he had misunderstood.

"Sorry! Maybe later."

Mohei's dismayed look made him feel almost bad, but he didn't exactly have the time to dally around. This trip had unexpectedly given him a 2 week ticket away from the surveillance of the spirits, so he needed to make the most of it.

With the twisted forest close by, a plant that could sustain even a Nascent Soul beast, it was a sure sign the world veins here were particularly dense in qi, meaning the surrounding area was certain to be filled with opportunities!

"Wait, how did you even know there's a bookstore? Have you been here before?" Mohei frowned.

Baiyun merely raised the guidebook in his hands and flipped to the page with the map. Mohei stared at it and squinted.

"Wow... you barely went into the room for a few minutes and you're already digging through the books?" he said. "I thought you were just making an excuse, but you actually like reading!"

Mohei stuck out his tongue before running down the stairs.

"Bye nerd! I'm off to do something actually fun!" he laughed. "Have fun with your boring books!"

Baiyun shook his head as Mohei's voice echoed from downstairs.

He returned the guidebook to the inn room before heading out, following a road and turning a few corners. Amenities were just a short walk away in a town this small.

The bookstore was plain and devoid of decoration. About two rows of a dozen shelves full of dusty books could be seen from its open doors. Were it not for the wooden price tags, the shop could have easily been mistaken for a storeroom of unwanted books.

Baiyun frowned slightly as he walked inside. This town really needed to take care of their books better.

The store owner was a muscular old man with a permanent scowl. It seemed the population of this town consisted largely of elderly mortals.

He ignored the stare from the man as he browsed the books, searching for a specific title he hoped would be present. His eyes narrowed as they darted back and forth, before suddenly lighting up.

"Local Wildlife", "Local Vegetation".

Guides like these would be perfect for finding nearby opportunities!

He grabbed them off the shelf and flipped them open, only to be interrupted by a shout.

"Oi!" the store owner yelled. "This is not a library! If you want to read something, buy it!"

Baiyun's eyes twitched. So be it, he could just use divine touch-

"Reading my books without permission is stealing! You got that?"

Baiyun's eyes twitched even harder and he took a deep breath. Would his pride as a former elder stop him from doing the practical thing? All he needed to do was to scan the books and walk out.

...

He sighed and placed the books back onto the shelf. The price tags revealed each was worth 5 copper tokens.

What did he think he was doing by letting such trivial things bog him down? But even if it was by some ridiculous standard, he had no intention of stealing.

He comforted himself by telling himself this was a sign he had character and dignity. Probably.

Baiyun headed out, but the old man suddenly walked over and blocked his path.

"Oh? My books are too good for your refined little palate?"

What the hell? Why was this man picking a fight?

Baiyun hid his anger and forced a smile.

"I forgot to bring my wallet, so I'm heading off to pawn some things off."

"Hah! What nonsense is that? Look at that spatial bag on you!" the old man laughed. "Such blatant lies! Who on earth would put their money in a wallet when they have a storage artefact?"

Baiyun furrowed his eyebrows in frustration. Why were the people of this world so needlessly antagonistic sometimes? Sometimes it felt like people were always picking a fight with him! Was it a cultural issue?

"What's that look on your face? Are you angry?" the man jeered. "Then come at me! Hit me if you dare!"

Baiyun's face turned blank. Then the gears in his head spun.

Oh.

This man was trying to commit insurance fraud.

Baiyun walked around the man and out of the store before he could be stopped.

The store owner must have realised he was from Ying Shi's party and wanted to be beaten up by a cultivator for some kind of payout.

But it probably wasn't an actual insurance program given the rural surroundings. Baiyun imagined what he thought was the most likely scenario. Perhaps in the past, a civilian here had gotten injured by a member of the hunting party in a past trip, leading to Ying Shi apologising and personally compensating them. Word spread, attracting fools who wanted the same payout.

Hah... If the man managed to anger a merciless cultivator, his head would have hit the floor already. What compensation was more valuable than one's life?

Baiyun headed off and ignored the old man's shouts.

There was a market close by where he could sell the mushrooms he and Jingfeng worked together to harvest. They were spirit ingredients, but richer mortals would buy them anyway for their properties.

Baiyun haggled with merchants for the next 30 minutes and sold them off for a total of 5 silver tokens and 67 copper tokens, worth 567 tokens in total.

Mn. He nodded happily.

Judging from the price of herbs in the Veiled Garden workshop, this wasn't actually all that much money. Perhaps the merchants had even taken advantage of his lack of knowledge and undercharged him. But their essences were largely useless to him and he needed quick funds.

Baiyun finally had a little spending power!

He returned to the bookshop and tossed 10 tokens onto the counter, before taking the two books.

"Huh. You really were penniless earlier? Hah! Did you have to pawn something off? Seems like you lack even the slightest bit of impulse of control, spending all the money your mom-"

The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

Baiyun left before the insurance fraudster could say more, then returned to the inn and entered the room.

There was a lot he needed to do before midnight came.

He quickly scanned the contents of the two guidebooks with divine sense, then placed them on the bookshelves. He had already memorised them, so he might as well leave them here for future guests. Anyone who read them would have 2 less books they needed to purchase from that man's store.

Baiyun thought through the details of the books and came up with a quick plan for the night.

Then he took out the Thousand Wills ring and used divine sense.

It was surprisingly intricate despite being a mere qi gathering artefact. For a barrier to be incorporeal to his body yet able to block attacks, there was some complicated internal logic involved.

When he used the barrier in the caverns, he distinctly remembered the sphere phasing through the ground beneath his feet right before being shattered by the centipede's spike. It meant the ring could determine what was ground somehow!

That made sense. After all, if it treated the ground like a solid object, he would be launched into the air whenever he used it.

Baiyun did not understand formations and seals, but as an alchemist, he had a decent understanding of spellcasting. He could tell the barrier the ring summoned was incorporeal by default, but when touched by something deemed hostile, it would solidify and block the attack. If it met something qi-proof like a servant's body, it would simply wrap around the object without trying to force its way through.

The ring also had a separate sensing formation that read the air through some unknown means. If it detected anything off, it would summon a barrier. But this aspect was largely useless to Baiyun. He trusted his reaction speed more than the ring's and would always activate it manually.

It was no wonder the artefact had a staggering price of 2000 tokens despite only being a qi gathering artefact. No, even that seemed too cheap! Perhaps it had been sold to Ying Shi at a discounted price as a favour.

Ying Shi might not have been entirely shameless with his claim that it was 5000 tokens; perhaps it was his attempt at estimating its actual value.

But before Baiyun tested the ring, he needed to confirm if he could charge it. It would be a disaster if he wasted all the charges during testing and had no way to replenish it.

He could barely recognise any of the complicated mechanisms inside, but it was easy to figure out what the qi battery was. It was a dense ball of metal containing as much qi as a 5th stage qi gatherer's dantain, pulsing streams of qi into the surrounding formations.

Baiyun shut his eyes and focused as he made a thread of qi sense as thin as possible, squeezing it between the mechanisms and feeding it into the battery directly. He smiled as it absorbed his qi.

Good, it seemed he would be able to charge it without too much hassle. But it was an expensive luxury as he could not regenerate qi without meridians. Any form of qi consumption would permanently deplete his cultivation base; he would even drop in cultivation if he used too much qi!

Baiyun spent the next few hours activating the ring and fiddling with its mechanisms, trying to manipulate it in various ways. A few dents were left on the wooden floorboards by accident.

A knock suddenly came from his door as a waiter hurriedly ran up with a bowl of noodles.

Baiyun sweated. Did they hear the barrier hit the floorboards and thought he was demanding room service? He was on the 4th floor!

In any case, dinner was served. He apologised for the noise and finished his food, before heading down to return the bowl and utensils.

Midnight came soon.

The hoot of an owl echoed and Baiyun opened his eyes.

He gazed outside the window and saw a town of dark windows draped in moonlight. At this late hour, not a single person wandered the streets. He confirmed with divine thread that the disciples in the neighbouring rooms were asleep.

Perfect.

He grabbed the spray bottle and leapt out of the window from the 4th storey. The wind howled as he entered free fall; it seemed his feet would slam into the ground and be shattered at any moment.

But Baiyun opened his mouth and revealed his teeth, where the Thousand Wills ring was clutched in-between. With a quick jab of divine sense, a barrier expanded around him just in time for the landing.

It struck the ground with a strange reverberating sound and bounced several times before coming to a stop. Baiyun floated within, seemingly affixed to the middle of the light sphere.

The barrier faded and he landed on the ground with a grin.

During his testing in the room, he figured out how to make the mechanism treat the ground as a foe. It would allow him to use the ring to break his falls and enhance his jumps!

Holding the ring between his teeth was undignified, but using divine thread from his stomach was the best way to activate it quickly given his lack of meridians. He had no intention of smashing a hole through his finger each time he wanted to use it.

Baiyun ran off into the distance and past the marketplace, but a sudden light made him pause. He was surprised to see one of the stalls was still open even at this hour.

Surrounded by a sea of closed shops, that lone stall was like a beacon in the night sea. A middle-aged vegetable seller held a bucket of water and several pieces of dirty cloth as he wiped down the tarp roof. He yawned, closing his eyes and wrinkling his dark eyebags. It seemed he had trouble sleeping.

Baiyun noticed the man had yet to stash his goods away as he ran over.

"Whoa!" the man suddenly jumped. "You scared me! I didn't expect to see anyone at this hour. What are you doing here kid?"

Baiyun read the price tag and grabbed 3 onions before tossing a copper token into the stall's coin box.

The vegetable seller rubbed his eyes, but Baiyun was gone when he opened them.

"A hallucination? ...I really need some sleep."

No sane person would be buying onions at midnight.

Meanwhile, Baiyun ran to the river canal. He unscrewed the spray bottle and poured the liquid out, then took out a large bowl.

He grabbed the 3 onions and crushed them with his bare hands. They crunched and fizzed as he squeezed all the juice he could out. Baiyun's eyes were shut tightly and watering, but he could still sense the contents of the bowl with divine sense.

Enough juice had been extracted to fill the bottle, so Baiyun tossed the crushed onions into the canal as a treat for the fish. With his eyes closed, he was blissfully unaware of them fleeing in terror instead.

And the finishing touch... he plucked off a chunk of the bracket fungus from Martial Elder Guan Qiang's temple and crumbled it between his fingers into the bowl. It would slow the rate the crushed onions lost their potency.

Baiyun nodded in satisfaction as he poured the liquid into the spray bottle. He had been planning to make an "anti-beast" spray with what he could find in the wild, but a vegetable stall was still open unexpectedly.

He did a few stretches before running out of town, following the trail of destruction the bull had left.

In its mad rush, it had destroyed all vegetation in its way and compacted uneven soil, creating a surprisingly functional pseudo road.

Baiyun pushed himself to the limit and ran as fast as he could. A little over an hour passed before the Twisted Forest came back into view, much to his surprise. He thought he'd have taken 3-4 hours to get here, given the speed of the carriage.

The forest that was dark as night during day was now pitch black.

He sat down to meditate for a moment, resting and mending his muscles with his soul. Then he grabbed a nearby rock before marching in with a lantern. Light would drag attention, but it was exactly what he wanted right now.

Other than his footsteps, there was only dead silence, quieter than even a cemetery.

Baiyun sensed various clusters of mushrooms with divine thread, but he sighed and continued onwards. Now that he realised the town was surprisingly close, he wanted to return by morning; there was no time to slowly climb the trees and harvest them. Jingfeng might have taken half the reward, but when they were together, any mushrooms could be harvested in seconds.

He listened keenly as he walked, until...

Clatter clatter.

A slight distance away, a gatekeeper centipede reared its head from a nest entrance, having spotted the unnatural light. Baiyun tossed the rock and struck its head with a dull clack.

The centipede snapped its mandibles in rage, enraged by the mild provocation.

Hundreds of thuds echoed from the nest entrance as it slowly dragged its massive body out. But it did not chase, merely circling the cave. But the sound of crawling continued to echo as a swarm of worker centipedes rushed out!

Baiyun grinned.

As the skittering of over a thousand feet chased him, he ran as quickly as he could, weaving through the dense trees and leaping around like an agile monkey. It was a good thing the twisted trees only had branches at their very top, or his lantern might have been caught in them.

He escaped the forest easily and waited for a moment, picking up another rock. 1, 2, 3... He tossed the rock at them just as the centipedes burst out!

Perhaps because of their absurdly tough shells, these centipedes were easy to outrun. If they had speed similar to the wolf pups in WanLing, he would not dare to bait them.

Baiyun visualised the map in his mind and ran off the beaten path left by the bull. The tall grass was difficult to navigate and the occasional random pockets of mud killed his momentum and slowed his steps.

It was a good thing his youthful body was light. If he had the weight of an adult behind his steps, with his current strength, he would be unable to run in such terrible terrain.

His legs began to tire even with his soul constantly mending his muscles; beads of sweat trickled down his face. The centipedes behind did not slow as if they had endless stamina.

But a dense forest of giant trees came into sight. Baiyun's eyes lit up at the sight of it and he ran faster into its midst with renewed vigour, pulling out the onion spray with his free hand.

He noticed something as his divine thread swept the surroundings. There were an abnormal amount of fallen trees strewn about the forest. Many of the living trees had massive clean cuts and scars, as if they had been sliced by spatial tears. Odd...

But with the centipedes chasing him, now was not the time to ponder that. Baiyun's focus went back into the present as he ran, his feet slamming into piles of leaves crawling with bugs. Furious ants crawled all over his legs and chomped into them. But at the very least, the dense roots and fallen logs firmed the ground, making it easier to run.

"Awwoooooooo!"

A wolf suddenly lunged at Baiyun from the trees above. But he merely smiled, revealing the ring clutched between his teeth. The wolf was sent flying with a pitiful howl as the barrier slammed into it.

Dozens of eyes glowed from above.

Canopy Wolves!

They growled and prepared to pounce, but one of them let out a high pitched whine as it spotted something. The centipedes chasing Baiyun had finally caught up!

The wolves howled as they fled, disappearing into the endless sea of branches. The one smacked by the barrier got to its feet and whined, before leaping into the trees and vanishing as well.

Baiyun laughed as he ran. Just as the books said, the local animals avoided the centipedes like a plague!

He pulled out the pebble he made in the prison and nodded as he felt the qi welling up within it. This forest was quite dense in qi.

"Grrrr!"

A bear revealed itself from a tree truck. Somehow, it had hidden its massive body perfectly behind it!

Tsk. The book said "Walk 10 steps and another beast will be upon you", but he thought the author was exaggerating!

But the bear suddenly widened its eyes at the sight of the centipedes.

"Graaaa!" it quickly turned tail and ran.

Baiyun sprayed some onion juice on its back for good measure. He had prepared it just in case, but if the centipedes were this effective, it might have been for nothing.

While each individual centipede wasn't strong, they had surprisingly durable armour and would swarm their foes to death. And most terrifying of all, they would chase endlessly and never lose focus! It was how Ying Shi's guards managed to occupy such a large swarm of centipedes for so long.

If any of them was killed, they would release danger pheromones that would splatter onto the killer, unable to be washed off even by rivers. It was actually easily defeated by cleansing formations or soap and water, but that wasn't exactly an option for most beasts.

The centipedes were mostly neutral when foraging, but anything with that scent would be chased on sight by furious insects willing to fight to the death. And if the killer's danger scent was dense from slaughtering many centipedes, they would even retreat to their nest and bring an Elite Warrior with them to put down the killer once and for all!

It was no wonder the animals here wanted nothing to do with the centipedes.