Chen Yu frowned at the ‘Young Master’ title - he didn’t like it.

Back home, it was a symbol of the familial expectations he often found to be suffocating at times. At least when his brothers called him ‘Little Emperor’ there was a touch of endearment to that name. Here, in the sect, it was usually said by Yin Tiang to needle Chen Yu as it was said ironically. Chen Yu had specifically asked everyone he knew not to call him by that title - Yin Tiang still did so as a joke of course, but no one said called him that with any seriousness.

However, Chen Yu didn’t express his discontent - he knew this farmer was just doing his job and trying to give him the due respect he thought Chen Yu deserved.

“Yes, I’m ready,” Chen Yu said.

He was not that far from the sect division where he usually lived - so close that he could, if he wanted to, go back within three hours. He didn’t and stayed in place near here just because that much traveling would be exhausting, but it just went to show how far they had gone out of their way to screw Tang Ze over.

These fields were specially owned by the sect and grew Ironthorn Fruit. It was very useful for nearly all kinds of alchemical recipes depending on how ripe they were - but they were extremely difficult to grow and even more difficult to harvest.

The fruit was tiny, so small that one of them could easily be balanced on the pulp of one of Chen Yu’s fingers.

The fruit was so called because it grew along a vine. The vines could be as thick as Chen Yu’s body in places, though most of the time they were only as thick as a limb. They were covered entirely with barbs that were incredibly sharp, hence the vine’s name. The fruit was hidden within the vine, and naturally, to get to it one needed to dig through the thorns.

Despite multiple millennia of trying, people had not been able to breed a variation of the Ironthorn Vine that would grow fruit superficially in large numbers. Instead, the vine had a tendency to grow in layers, with most of the fruit only nestled at the very bottom.

It was very hard to harvest for this reason - there were not that many ways that one could get to the fruit while bypassing the thorns while also not damaging the fruit, which was incredibly fragile.

The fruit also grew in very little proportion to the vine, to the point where a field as big as a room might only have a handful of the fruit.

But, harvesting it was only difficult if one did not have someone like Chen Yu with them. Thanks to his talent, he had a technique that allowed him to be able to reach for the fruit with little difficulty without risking damaging them, and so this was why he had not been surprised when the sect assigned him to this role once again. He was a natural at doing this.

His technique was called [Steelskin]. Even most Qi Refinement cultivators did not have a special technique like this given that they usually did not have full control over their Qi at that level, but this was the benefit of being born with one of the Five Attributes!

There was a weaker version of [Steelskin] known as [Ironhide] which some Golden Core cultivators could use, but it had drawbacks that [Steelskin] did not, not to mention [Steelskin] was something that Chen Yu could use even at his low level of cultivation.

It was thanks to this technique that he was confident of fighting any Qi Condensation cultivator in a one-on-one fight in the sect and coming out ahead - and even most Qi Refinement cultivators as well.

Well, perhaps Tang Ze could find a way to break through this defensive skill using the powers he got from his odd ‘cosplaying’ skill, but he was quite the outlier.

Chen Yu had not yet mastered the technique to the point where he could make his entire body as hard as steel, but he was able to use it on a part of himself. The hands and the arms were the easiest parts.

And so, Chen Yu’s hands suddenly turned gray and were more well-protected than if he were wearing several layers of inch-thick plate armor over his arms.

Despite how heavy his hands looked, it did not affect his mobility in any way whatsoever. They were still as flexible as they always were, which is where the lethality of such a technique lay - to be able to strike through bone and skin without sacrificing flexibility or agility!

Not only that, if Chen Yu were able to use this technique to its fullest, he could cover up his body completely, leaving no weak spot. Normally areas like the groin, neck, and eyes would be especially vulnerable to attacks, but [Steelskin] could completely negate this weakness.

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If Chen Yu practiced further using his attribute, he could branch out into other abilities like [Soul of Iron] which defended from soul-based attacks as well.

Even the sect acknowledged his innate talent and was willing to invest more in him so that he could continue to build upon it, though right now, he was still at Qi Condensation and couldn’t do much more with it other than using it to cover parts of his body for short periods of time.

It would only be at Qi Refinement when more avenues would open up for him to use his attribute to its fullest!

For now, he used his hands to weave through the Ironthorn Vine. The vines were stacked on top of each other and were so crowded it was nearly impossible to find a way through them without cutting them, but this risked damaging the fruit and also injury to whosoever did such.

Not to mention it would be very time-consuming.

For Chen Yu however, it was child’s play. The thorns could do nothing to him as he went elbow-deep into the vine, easily finding the bottom, and able to easily remove several pieces of fruit without damaging them or hurting himself.

The fruit was tiny, almost like a raspberry, and the light color of saffron. It did not look that remarkable when one glanced at it - and someone, if they didn’t know what it was and left it out on a counter, might even eat it, not realizing that what they had eaten could fetch a price that could feed an ordinary mortal family for nearly a month.

Normally, there would also be some slight damage to them no matter how careful one was while retrieving them, but by now, Chen Yu was a seasoned hand at this kind of work and was able to extract them with minimal loss.

The amount he managed to get out was worth more than its weight in gold.

“Amazing!”

“So this is the power of one of the Five Attributes!”

“Young Master Chen Yu truly is superb! To be able to work so fast - he can harvest more than twenty of us put together!”

Chen Yu was used to such praise - as it was, it was coming from mortal farmers so he didn’t put too much stock into it, but it was quite satisfying to see the talent he was born with actually be useful in some way other than in trying to fight.

Who knows how far it might take him in the future?

Normally, it was said that the sect spent more on Initiates than they contributed back to the sect, at least in terms of financial resources.

This could not be extended to Chen Yu, however.

The amount of Ironthorn Fruit that he harvested not only made up for what the sect spent on him, but his entire squad as well.

If he continued to improve on his ability to use his attribute, he could easily rise up in the sect at an astonishing rate!

As it was right now though, there was little else for him to do.

He could only use his ability so often in a day, and now that he couldn’t anymore after extracting a few more fistfuls of fruit, he had the rest of the time off.

The sect did not mind this, given how fruitful his labor otherwise was, so he was now left to cultivate.

He found it all to be quite ironic in the sense that he was considered valuable to the sect right now because he could harvest a kind of fruit very easily - which would be work that his family would otherwise scoff at and believe was quite beneath them.

Not that that mattered when he was in the sect. It was actually quite relaxing in a way, to be unburdened by his identity while he was within the sect for the most part. Chen Yu was basically given the same tasks as nearly everyone else, though sometimes, such as in this situation, he was given what could be seen as preferential treatment with an easy solo task to complete - though on the other hand, it was something he was being rewarded for being skillful at it.

Being the golden child had come with downsides, after all. His parents hadn’t strictly forbidden him from having friends, but they had disapproved of nearly everyone that Chen Yu had become friends with as they thought that they would lead him astray and would distract him from progressing. He also couldn’t do some things that his brothers could - such as playing games with the other children outside. His parents had been overprotective to the point that they didn’t want him to accidentally get a fracture or the like, and at the time he didn’t have the [Steelskin] ability.

Not to mention, now that Chen Yu was older and got to reflect on some of his earlier behavior, he realized with embarrassment at how much of a spoilt child he had been. When his older brothers told him stories about the antics he used to pull back during the times he was so young that he couldn’t remember them, he had trouble believing they were true until his parents would usually confirm that that had been the case at the time..

Here though, he was just another member of the sect - slightly more talented and with a greater future potential than many others, but still for the most part another sect member. He was also unburdened by many of the usual restrictions placed on him by his family, and was able to grow past the ‘spoilt child’ phase he had been in before.

He did not usually like to be reminded of his heritage while in the sect, a fact that Yin Tiang knew, and often needled him over as he knew that it annoyed Chen Yu.

But, after some time, Chen Yu had learned to ignore such things and even counter Yin Tiang’s taunts with his own.

Chen Yu watched from a distance as the farmers gathered the Ironthorn Fruit he had managed to pick up and put it carefully into boxes which were loaded upon carts before he went to focus on cultivating inside his lodgings. The place where he stayed was far more luxurious than the cottage where Tang Ze was staying; since it was so close to the sect, supplying it was not so much of an issue.

Chen Yu sat down on a mat and began breathing in and out until his breathing and heartbeat were steady, and he began to condense the Qi in the air, driving it into his lower dantian. He continued to repeat this process over and over, gathering as much Qi in there as possible, before driving it towards his meridians. Once one such cycle was completed, he repeated the entire process again.