"There! You look good, heheh!" Fei An snickered.

Baiyun stood there speechlessly, coils of centipede shells wrapped around him like macabre scarfs. There were no mirrors around, but with divine sense and soul, he could get a rough idea of his appearance.

Such awful taste...

The centipede shells were rough and uncomfortable. Worst of all, Fei An did not remove their legs, so they dug into his skin and scratched it. If he switched from martial robes to rags, he would resemble a barbarian living in the wilderness, the type of savage who'd even spear human heads on sticks.

Baiyun sighed as he marched into the forest to test his new "outfit", ready to activate his ring at any moment. Would this really work?

But to his surprise, every beast he met now fled on sight!

Fei An walked up to him and pinched her nose.

"Wow, you stink, haha!"

After having a moment to sit, the centipede shells now had a bizarre overpowering smell. Baiyun wondered if that was the scent of the danger pheromones. If the smell could frighten beasts, he could make horrible scented candles out of them and them in a lantern.

Baiyun began to worry if he could even wash the smell out of his robes; they were the training attire Guan Qiang had given him. But at the very least, he no longer had to waste Thousand Will charges fending off beasts when the centipedes lagged too far behind.

He trudged deeper into the forest with furrowed eyebrows, Fei An floating right behind and following him.

She pouted and looked like she had something to say, but he decided not to indulge her. Most likely, she wanted to ask where he was heading, but truthfully, he didn't know either.

It wasn't that he was lost; his soul's memory gave him fairly good bearings.

But even as he spun his divine thread round and round, he could find no opportunities! If he continued to delve deeper into the forest, he would start to encounter stranger beasts that might not fear the centipedes, much like how the blackhorn beetle didn't.

He could try to circle the safe exterior, but even then, he wanted to return by morning so he couldn't search for too long. It would be very frustrating if he had to return without gaining anything.

The worst part? Other than the beetle's root, he could not find a single herb with useful essence to take with him! Guan Qiang's mountain was a paradise compared to this!

Spirit beasts being able to survive on qi alone led to strange consequences to ecosystems. Even if herbivore populations exploded and overgrazed, wiping out all plant life, they still wouldn't starve. And due to the justifiably cowardly nature of predators, many of them would only hunt the weakest prey and subsist off qi at other times.

The result: overpopulated habitats full of complacent and bored animals!

Baiyun, seemingly a mortal without aura appeared nothing more than an easy meal, attracting the attention of countless predators who hadn't eaten for years. Even if he would offer little benefit to their cultivation, he was a tasty sack of meat. It was no wonder he attracted so much attention if not for the centipedes.

It was a good thing much like the Ying Clan's bull, spirit beasts were picky with their food, or even the grass and leaves would have been stripped clean, leaving nothing but a barren wasteland of dead trees.

But couldn't they have left a useful herb or two for him at least?

Baiyun let out a deep sigh as he walked, spinning his divine thread round and round. With all the time he had with himself and his thoughts, he even began to wonder why he was doing stupid things like impulsively entering an overpopulated spirit forest alone. He felt like he would go insane if he walked out without a single benefit.

But he suddenly paused. His divine thread picked up on a strange patch of soil 10 metres away. Baiyun's eyes lit up and he ran over excitedly.

Fei An who was bored out of her mind and about to fall asleep suddenly raised her head.

"Why are you running? Did you find something?"

She shouted and quickly flew after him.

Baiyun ran to the strange soil and sent his divine thread beneath into the ground. It phased through layers and layers of hardened earth, until it met with something that resisted its movement.

No matter. He spun his divine thread like a drill, slowly pushing through the weak resistance until it was through. His thread entered hollow space beneath the soil.

Jackpot!

Baiyun lowered himself to the ground as Fei An watched with baffled eyes.

As his divine sense wormed and prodded, the hollow space was revealed to be a huge network of tunnels, only wide enough for a large housecat to walk through.

Many chambers had their soil specially prepared, various herbs and fungi of different elements growing in them. Some of the chambers even had glowing crystals affixed to their ceilings as a sunlight replacement.

Baiyun's divine thread was not long enough to navigate all the tunnels, but fortunately, it still was enough for him to find what he was looking for. In one of the chambers, a large mole laid on a pile of dirty cotton-like material, fast asleep.

It was one of the animals in the guidebook Baiyun was most interested in, the Gardener Mole!

They were intelligent spirit beasts who would gather seeds and spores from all over the land, growing chambers full of herbs for their own breakthroughs. To hide their burrows from the qi sense of beasts and qi compasses of humans, they would line their tunnels with a unique excrement that obfuscated qi, though it was no match for Baiyun's divine thread.

It was an incredibly lucky find!

The guide stated that around 80 years ago, the Myriad Herb Clan from the WanLing sect had sent a large force to excavate the soil all over the forest. If they could not locate the moles with conventional methods, they would simply use brute force.

Hundreds of gardener moles were captured as pets and the rest fled from the chaos, making them incredibly rare in this forest.

"Fei An! Go dig here!" Baiyun called out, pointing at the ground.

"Eh? There's treasure there!" Fei An asked.

"Yes, treasure!"

"Ooooo!"

Baiyun shook his head as Fei An dug around in her bag, searching for a suitable tool. He didn't feel particularly good about raiding the den of an endangered beast, but he valued his own survival more.

A strange thought suddenly entered his mind. Since they were captured and dropped off into herb gardens rather than killed, did this technically fit the definition of "endangerment"?

"Um..." Fei An said awkwardly.

It seemed she couldn't find a suitable tool, so Baiyun passed her a shovel from his bag.

"Thanks. But how did you know there's treasure below?" she asked.

"It's just a feeling. Now dig!"

Fei An stared at him doubtfully but began to dig anyway.

She raised the shovel into the air and swung it downwards like an axe, cleaving the soil and sending huge chunks of soil and rock into the air! But before they could splatter on her robes, she blew them away with gusts of wind, smashing through trees and tumbling away into the distant forest.

Baiyun's eyes twitched as he watched her massacre the earth, the loud thuds echoing. How could there be such a violent and inefficient way of using a shovel? If she was going to dig like that, she could have used one of her weapons! But she still dug a hundred times faster than he ever could have, so he decided to keep his mouth shut.

Fei An seemed to be having fun at the very least.

Underground, the mole began to stir from the faint tremors. It opened its eyes slowly and stared at the ceiling in a daze, still half asleep.

"Fei An! Dig faster!" Baiyun yelled. "The gardener mole is getting away!"

"What?! How'd you know? And you should have told me earlier!" Fei An yelled back.

Her arms blurred as she swung the shovel faster and faster, loud metallic slams echoing! The shovel's head began to dent and grow red hot, its handle growing crooked. Even at this hour, birds fled from the trees and flocked into the night sky.

The mole finally snapped away and squeaked in terror.

Above, the tremors from Fei An's attacks grew stronger and stronger. The mole was almost tearful as it skittered through the tunnels, running back and forth between its herb chambers frantically. Baiyun could tell the mole wanted to flee but could not bear to leave its herbs behind.

Finally, the mole unearthed a large red ginseng, biting it in its mouth gently before rushing into the tunnels deeper below!

A loud crackle shook the den as the shovel finally broke in, crushing the ceiling of a chamber and caving it in. Fei An let out a cry of dismay as the rocks crushed the spirit mushrooms beneath.

"Ah! What a waste! Ow ow ow, hot!"

Fei An quickly tossed the shovel aside; though the wreck of red-hot melted metal could hardly be considered a tool at this point. It bounced onto the ground and burnt the grass it touched into ashes.

She quickly unleashed her aura as a burst, flooding the tunnels with qi sense!

"Found you! Tempest hand!" she yelled.

Fei An clasped her hands together and a ball of swirling winds formed within. She loosened her fingers and opened a small gap, a column of swirling wind with 5 fingers snaking out and rushing into the tunnels beneath!

The little mole dug desperately into the soil and struck its burrows to collapse them. But it was far too late; Fei An's tempest hand pierced through the loose soil and wrapped its swirling fingers around it. The mole squeaked as the winds spun it round and round until it was too dizzy to fight back.

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The hand began to flicker as it yanked the mole out and tossed it onto the grass, reaching its limits and dissipating into thin air. Fei An let out a sigh of relief.

Baiyun squatted down before the mole as it squirmed on the ground desperately, hugging the red ginseng in its paws as if it were a precious baby.

He sighed.

If the mole had been a little more resolute and ran off immediately, Fei An would not have been able to capture it. But he couldn't help but sympathise. From the experiences of his past life, he knew just how much effort it took to grow a herb garden.

He truly had wronged this little beast. Baiyun conveniently ignored how he felt none of this sympathy for the centipedes and blackhorn beetle for being less "presentable".

Fei An suddenly snatched the mole from the ground and held it high in the air.

"Whoa! It's so cute!" she squealed.

She reached out a hand to pet it, but the mole let out a furious shriek and chomped onto her fingers!

"Ow! Bad!"

Fei An hurriedly pried its mouth open and revealed her unharmed fingers. If even red-hot metal could only slightly scald her, such a paltry attack wasn't getting through her body cultivation.

She placed the mole down on the ground and stared at it with a troubled look. Then her eyes lit up as she reached a hand into her bag.

"Here, yummy!"

She grinned as she passed it a juicy grape, but the mole hissed and swatted it away.

"Ah!"

Fei An hurriedly summoned a gust of wind before it could hit the ground, then floated it into her mouth.

"This little guy is so stubborn..." she complained as she chewed.

Baiyun shook his head as he watched her.

"Fei An, let's discuss splitting the spoils."

"Oh! I almost forgot!"

Fei An shot upright and mused to herself.

"Wait... but how do we split the mole? It's not like we can cut it in half..."

Baiyun nearly spluttered at her words. If it had been earlier today, he would only take it as a joke, but he had just watched her bisect a swarm of centipedes!

"Don't!"

"I won't! Do you think I'm crazy?" she huffed. "Well, I guess I could take the mole while you take the herbs, but our clan doesn't really need a gardener mole..."

He decided not to mention she could technically sell it.

"Fei An, what if you passed the mole to me? I want to see if I can tame it."

"Eh? In that case wouldn't it be quite unfair for you? Since I couldn't have found it without you, you should have the herbs! There's no way you'll be able to tame it!"

Fei An looked at him doubtfully.

Baiyun wondered if he was being a little too suspicious for a moment, but he had already dug himself into this hole, so he continued.

"You said your clan didn't need the mole, right?"

"Yeah but..."

Fei An seemed strangely reluctant.

On the ground, the mole noticed the two humans seemed to be distracted. It tried to dig away stealthily, but a tempest hand materialised out of nowhere and flipped it onto its back where it squirmed helplessly. The hand pulled glowing bindings from Fei An's bag and tied the creature down.

"Just give me a week, okay? If I still haven't managed to tame it by then, we'll negotiate again." Baiyun said.

"Hnn..." Fei An seemed troubled.

She thought to herself for a good minute before nodding.

"Fine. But don't blame me if you can't tame it!" she grumbled. "Oh, and I'll pass you some of the herbs later."

Baiyun coughed. It seemed she was still a little sympathetic to him, giving him a share of herbs anyway. If he did successfully tame the mole, would this be taking advantage of her?

Perhaps as an elder, much like how he refrained from using Ying Shi's bow earlier, he should have a little more integrity and refuse...

...

...

Baiyun couldn't. He was unable to muster up the strength to reject her offer. How could an alchemist ever say no to spirit herbs?

He sighed and quickly pondered his life decisions. Where had he gone this astray?

Meanwhile, Fei An picked up the squirming mole wrapped in artefact bindings and plopped it into his hands.

"Here. If you want to turn the bindings off, I'll tell you the keywords."

She paused for a moment.

"Giant Squid!" she yelled.

The bindings flashed for a moment before coming loose. It continued to cling to the fur of the mole, but the creature was now free to move. The mole squeaked and jumped into the grass, immediately plunging its claws into the soil.

"Big Monkey!" Fei An yelled.

Baiyun watched speechlessly as the bindings tightened around the mole once more, leaving it stuck in the soil with its behind sticking out.

He sighed deeply.

"W-what? The elders told me I should use unusual keywords so the bindings wouldn't activate by accident! Don't give me that look!"

Fei An said defensively, waving her hands around. Then she paused and turned away.

"Um... Don't tell anyone about this." she said. "Or I'll get you!"

Embarrassed, she jumped into the massive hole she dug before Baiyun could say anything. How convenient.

Baiyun thought for a moment that he was supposed to be the one telling her not to say anything, given how he had been trying to sneak out in secret. But this was actually a good thing, since he didn't know if he could trust her to keep quiet. She was quite talkative after all.

As Fei An summoned tempest hands to harvest the various herbs, the mole suddenly let out a shrill cry and struggled in its bindings. Baiyun covered its eyes and walked away. No one should have to witness their herb garden being looted.

"Whoa! Glowberries!" Fei An's voice echoed from the hole.

Baiyun slowly inched further and further away. No reaction from her. Then he took off running at full speed!

He pulled out rags from the bag and wrapped the mole in a bundle, shielding it from brambles and branches as he rushed through the forest. He ran onwards for 30 minutes, huffing as he came to a stop.

Fei An should be too far away to find him by now. And from his divine thread, it seemed to be a secluded spot devoid of spirit beasts.

Baiyun placed the mole on the ground gently and unwrapped the rags. The mole stared at him listlessly, too deflated to struggle, as if it had accepted its own fate.

He reached a hand towards the mole to comfort it, but stopped. He didn't feel like he had the right to, considering he was the culprit behind its misfortune.

In any case, it was time to get to business.

Baiyun closed his eyes and focused, letting out a wisp of soulsense from his mouth. Soulsense stemmed from the very essence of one's soul and could not be cultivated.

Excluding spirits, the souls of most life stemmed from the same source, the shattered remains of the origin deity. That similarity made it possible for soulsense to convey the purest essence of thought, transcending even the language barrier.

"Little one. Let's negotiate a soul contract." Baiyun said.

The mole widened its eyes and froze in shock. It was not rare for the more intelligent spirit beasts to have languages, but it was a solitary creature who had never communicated.

It began to squeak in fear. Strange hairless monstrous giants had kidnapped it and now one of them was forcing strange thoughts into its very soul! They were foreign and alien concepts it could not comprehend, overwhelming it and shaking its mind.

The mole rolled around in the ground in agony.

Ah. Baiyun quickly halted the flow of thoughts, feeling slightly awkward. Perhaps he was a little too hasty.

He reached into its mind again but this time conjuring imagery instead. Even if it didn't understand language, he was confident it could comprehend it.

The mole froze as a vision entered its mind's eye.

Baiyun and the mole entered the illusion together, the dark forest gone.

Suddenly, it was in daylight, in a different forest teeming with herbs and precious fruit! The strange giant took it around the forest and harvested seeds with it.

The giant mouthed unknown noises that sounded like the alien thoughts previously, before pointing somewhere into the distance and taking it there.

They arrived at a massive herb garden, one unconstrained by dark chambers, endless fields of herbs stretching as far as the eye could see! A wondrous aroma filled the air, tinged with the delightful smell of essence as sunlight cascaded from above onto the myriad herbs, their vibrant colours converging like a rainbow.

Baiyun nodded, thinking he had done a good job, before realising the mole was squirming again. He subtly read its intentions and figured out what was going on.

Too bright! Too bright! The sun was too bright!

...he began to regret making the vision theatric. How had he forgotten an underground creature would hate sunlight?

Baiyun snapped his fingers. The sun rushed across the horizon and set in an instant, the moon rushing over in its place. Then, endless clouds hid it from sight, blanketing the garden in darkness.

The mole was finally able to focus and stared in awe. It had never seen so many herbs in its life. With them, it could become the strongest mole ever!

It watched as the giant pointed at the garden, then to it. Strange thoughts from the giant forced themselves into its mind once more, but much more subdued this time.

It finally understood what the giant wanted to tell it.

An incredible garden like this could belong to it. All it needed to do was to follow him.

No. No no no no!

Clearly, the giant wanted it to grow a garden like this, so he could take everything away and use it for his benefit instead!

The illusion began to distort as the mole envisioned its own thoughts.

All around, clones of Fei An and Baiyun rushed into the incredible garden, snatching the herbs away and running off. The mole might not know language, but it was smart enough to know not to trust invaders that attacked it!

Baiyun began to get a headache.

After all he did to the mole, he wanted to give it a fair contract that treated it as a companion at the very least. Did he really have to force a contract on it? That would make him no better than a slaver.

He sighed. Even if it wasn't human, a spirit beast able to analyse essence and grow herbs with such efficiency was no less intelligent.

But he couldn't just give up.

Baiyun rushed around the vision and stopped every clone of himself and Fei An, beating them up and taking the herbs back! Having to beat up clones of himself made him feel rather strange.

He summoned a massive cauldron, then gathered the stolen herbs and plopped them in. Flames surrounded the cauldron and it rumbled, before spitting out a shower of pills that glittered like gems!

Baiyun snatched the pills out of the air and ran back to the mole, where he stuffed pill after pill down its mouth as it squirmed. The mole began to glow as mighty power filled its body.

Foundational! Core Shaping! Nascent Soul!

The mole widened its eyes and looked at itself in disbelief. What was this incredible power that filled its body? It felt like it was the strongest in the world and that nothing could stop it! Even if a million giants faced it, it would defeat them all in 1 attack.

But just as quickly, it shook its head angrily. Impossible, impossible!

Having forced the mole's suspension of disbelief to its absolute limit, Baiyun's imagery exploded and shattered into countless fragments, snapping them out into reality.

They were once again in the dark forest, Baiyun wrapped head to toe in centipede shells once more.

Baiyun tried his best to read the mole's thoughts to figure out what was going on.

It huffed in anger. Turning precious herbs into weird shiny pebbles that could make it strong? That was the most stupid thing it had ever heard in its life! Pebbles were obviously not edible!

Baiyun's face went blank.

He was beginning to realise diplomacy was not his forte.

Baiyun did his best to analyse its thoughts and figure out how to communicate with it without frying its brain.

30 minutes of struggling passed as he tried his best, until finally, he managed to convey what he actually wanted to ask.

The mole stared at him in silence. For some reason, it didn't feel afraid of him anymore. Perhaps it was because the giant was surprisingly silly.

If the giant fed it a "shiny pebble" made of herbs that truly advanced its cultivation, it would agree to follow him! Though the mole was unaware this was a dao agreement, a concept too complicated for it to understand.

Baiyun sighed.

It seemed he had a week to tailor a pill for the mole's breakthrough. This mole seemed to be of the 9th stage of Qi Gathering, so he would need to induce a Foundational breakthrough to make any progress.

What an unreasonable deadline...

And since the mole had 0 combat ability, it wasn't as if he would gain a powerful ally. All higher cultivation would do was allow it to tend to Foundational herbs, which he didn't need right now.