Tang Ze exited his bedroom, to see that Zhang Long had placed a wooden box in front of him. “Before I forget, here’s your split from what we got from those Diamond Dust idiots. We have a few pills here, and they should help you advance.”
“Thank you,” Tang Ze said, observing the three pills, which were about the size of a thimble each, round, and were a dull gray. They were not high-grade pills, only somewhere between low and medium quality, but it would be unreasonable to expect those kinds of people to be carrying high-grade pills anyway. As it was, he was sure that these were still quite expensive by mortal standards. “I bet they weren’t expecting to lose these otherwise they wouldn’t have been carrying them.” As Tang Ze was about to reach for one, Yin Tiang closed the box before him quickly, as it contained some kind of venomous snake. “Wait - before that, what realm are you at? I can’t sense any Qi coming from you.”
“Zeroth Realm,” Zhang Long said. “So he can’t even start cultivating - which is why he needs some resources to help him with-”
“Wait, Zeroth Realm?” Yin Tiang asked. “In that case… you definitely can’t consume one of these!”
“Eh? Why not?”
“There is a limit to how much Qi you can consume through pills,” Yin Tiang said. “When it comes to natural Qi in the environment, the body absorbs as much as it can, and expels it out slowly as well, so there is never any risk of overloading the body. When it comes to pills though, as they go directly through the stomach and through both the dantians and the meridians, without a proper outlet, they can easily overload a person.” He then sighed. “As another example, one can drink water of course - water is necessary to life. But even drinking too much of something as harmful as water can kill you.”
There was something called ‘water intoxication’ where the body couldn’t get rid of water fast enough, and it would accumulate, leading to swelling of various organs, most significantly of the brain and this could be fatal.
In that way consuming too much Qi like this could also be fatal.
That was why even if the pills were appropriate for the cultivator, there was a limit on how much they could take at a time as their bodies would dissipate the excess Qi gradually which had a limit to it. And if the pills were too high of a grade, they couldn’t be used at all.
There was a story about a Qi Condensation cultivator who had broken into the house of a famous alchemist, and found a pill appropriate for Golden Core cultivators. The thief, not understanding what he was doing, took it, and then burst into flames, dying nearly immediately from Qi overload.
“But these are just low to medium grade pills,” Zhang Long said. “So why can’t he use them? A single one shouldn’t hurt.”
“Yes, and they would be fine for someone like you or I,” Yin Tiang said. “But at the Zeroth Realm, his meridians have not even fully opened. So when he swallows a pill, where does the Qi go? It is the equivalent of trying to eat food when one’s stomach has been removed. The Qi will be forced to disperse through his other organs, damaging them permanently. Just as blood has to flow through vessels and if such a vessel ruptures inside the body it is an internal hemorrhage, Qi also has to flow through its own proper channels being the meridians and not some other part of the body itself. It will be too much for him.”
“Alright,” Tang Ze said. Yin Tiang did not look like he was lying, and it wasn’t like Tang Ze was going to pop a pill just to prove him wrong. “So, is there anything that can help me clear the Zeroth Realm?”
“No,” Yin Tiang said. “Actually - there probably is, or at least a way to make something like that, I guess? It’s just that no one would develop something like that, because well… no one would actually need something of the sort. So why even bother with that in the first place?”
“Wait - you’re really stuck at the Zeroth Realm?” Chen Yu asked incredulously. “Our family’s maid’s daughter was only able to pass that at eight years old, and her mother was worried sick because of her ‘slow cultivating progress.’ What have you been doing for the past few decades? I mean, I was called a slacker when I was younger, but even I cleared this at six years old.”
“I guess it has something to do with my alternate powering method?” Tang Ze said sheepishly. “So, there really is no way to improve myself then?”
“The best thing to do,” Yin Tiang said. “Would be to go somewhere where there is a lot of natural Qi in the air - only thing is that such places are coveted cultivating locations, and all of them are taken up. Our sect has access to a few, but they wouldn’t let an Initiate like you visit them.”
“So I really am hopeless then?” Tang Ze sighed. “Well, at least I can focus on other ways to power up until then. And then I can eventually use these pills.”
“Ah, about that,” Yin Tiang said. “Pills have an expiry date, at least the lower-quality ones do. If you don’t use these in about…” he picked one up, examining it, “...six months, they’re as good as gone.”
“Oof, that’s right,” Zhang Long said.
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“If you want, I know a few alchemists who will buy a few,” Yin Tiang said. “And then you can keep the money you get and use them later.”
Tang Ze thought about it for a minute, and then said, “Rather than that, there are three pills left over, each of you can have one.”
“Eh?!” three voices exclaimed.
“Yeah, they say that cultivation is the greatest treasure, right?” Tang Ze said. “So why sell the pills for something else when they can help you three? As it is, I can’t use them right now, and so, I think it’s better someone makes use of them.”
Tang Ze knew that he was still ‘the new guy’ here, and in his mind, giving up these pills was a small price to pay to earn the goodwill of his squad. As it was, for the foreseeable future, they would be working together.
He offered them these three pills as a gesture of friendship. Not that Tang Ze thought that Zhang Long needed that, but he did not know the other two.
“Is this really alright?” Zhang Long asked.
“In return,” Tang Ze said, “can you guys help me get a few things?” There were some materials for costumes he needed, and he wasn’t sure where the best places to get them in the sect would be, or how much they’d cost.
Tang Ze took stock of the situation. At his level, even if he broke through the Zeroth Realm, a minor ten percent increase in strength was nothing compared to what he could achieve with his cosplay.
Of course, eventually he would need to focus on cultivating, but he could focus on his own power system right now.
Cultivation wasn’t the only way to gain power in this world, after all. Mages did exist, and there was his own talent. Why cry about what he couldn’t change when there was something that he could change?
It was better to make use of what he could do.
“Sure,” Zhang Long said. He gave the other two a gist of Tang Ze’s powers.
“So, as I understand it, what you’re dressed up right now is a famous hero from where you’re from?” Chen Yu asked.
“Yes,” Tang Ze said.
They wanted to hear some stories about him, and Tang Ze began narrating some of them.
Eventually he moved on to other things.
Back on Earth, Tang Ze had read and watched quite a bit of media - not just western shows, comics, anime, and movies, but Xianxia and other genres as well.
Basically anything to escape from the mundane realities of life!
As he went towards them, enrapturing his squad mates in the process, they all suddenly stopped as… something happened to Zhang Long. There was a strange shift in the air, though Chen Yu and Yin Tiang were the ones who could pick up on it far better than Tang Ze could.
Tang Ze thought that he was having a seizure for a moment given how his eyes were fluttering and his body was shaking, but neither Yin Tiang nor Chen Yu seemed to be alarmed enough for that to be the case.
“What’s going on?” Tang Ze asked.
“Can’t you tell? Can’t you feel the spike of Qi in the air?” Chen Yu asked.
But, the thing was that no, Tang Ze couldn’t. Realizing this, Chen Yu added, “He’s breaking through a minor realm!”
Zhang Long’s face was flushed with sweat as the episode was over, but he breathed as he calmed down somewhat. Yin Tiang handed him a vial of some red liquid which Zhang Long gulped down and within five minutes was mostly back to normal afterwards.
“Sorry - what happened again?” Tang Ze asked.
“What’re you sorry for?” Zhang Long asked. “That was incredible! I was listening to your story, and something in it, just… struck a chord with me, you know? And before I knew it, I felt as if the Qi in my body had swelled up, and then my meridians just flared with Qi.”
Cultivation was usually a slow and gradual process, as Tang Ze understood it, but there were points where cultivators would stagnate for long periods of times, called bottlenecks. On the other hand, there were times, usually when cultivators had a surge in emotion, were in dangerous situations, or had suddenly realized some deep and profound mystery of the universe, where their cultivation would suddenly advance. They might even find themselves being able to reach new horizons after this breakthrough.
Cultivators often longed for breakthroughs, whether to get past bottlenecks, or to just quicken their progress. They would meditate in caves for years on end, sit under waterfalls, travel the world over, or fight dangerous enemies - all in the hope of getting a breakthrough.
Now, Zhang Long was still at Qi Condensation so a breakthrough really wasn’t that much of a big thing - he had just recently used some pills from the Diamond Dust raiders earlier and had felt that he would be nearing the next minor realm within a few month’s time anyway, but it turns out that not even that was needed. More important than the jump though, was whether his future progress would be faster, as sometimes happens after a breakthrough as well.
The pill he had just been given by Tang Ze was still there, unused.
Tang Ze wasn’t sure what to make of it - it was clearly a big deal, and he understood that, but he couldn’t help but feel a pang of jealousy in the moment.
Here he was, helping Zhang Long jump up a minor realm, while he himself was not at Qi Condensation yet, and not only was he not there right now - there was apparently nothing that he could do to quickly bring himself up to that point. He couldn’t even use resources to try to make this step quicker.
But this was only a fleeting feeling, as he congratulated Zhang Long.
What bothered Tang Ze more was what they told him next.
“Let’s hit the hay early,” Chen Yu said. “We have to wake up extra early tomorrow.”
“We do? Why?” Tang Ze asked, greatly alarmed.
“We have to fill up this building’s reservoir with water tomorrow,” Zhang Long said.
Tang Ze sighed inwardly.
If there was one thing that he hated, it was having to get up early.
This had been the same back on Earth, and had been a big reason as to why his performance in school tended to be as mediocre as it had been.
Quite frankly, if the secret of immortality involved waking up before sunrise to obtain it - Tang Ze would prefer to keep dreaming.
And to be told that they had to get up extra early for this task?
But, Tang Ze could do no more than groan.
He tried testing out a few new ideas on how his talent worked before heading off to bed.
That night, Tang Ze dreamed.
His dream started off as it had many times before.
Tang Ze was walking down a crowded street, back on Earth. Only he wasn’t himself, he was watching the scene from the side, like he always did in this dream.
The worst part was that he was frozen like that, unable to do anything in this dream.
No matter how much he wanted to shout out, or move, it was as if he had been petrified and turned to stone.
There was nothing he could do to warn himself about what was coming up.
There was a flash of steel in the crowd in front of them…
And then his dream shifted.