Logan read through the options on the screen in front of him. The choice was obviously between moving to the final stage and moving to stage 3 with increased difficulty. Standard difficulty was for normies.
Heh. Normies. Such strange vocabulary given to me by the system.
Logan decided to follow his gut and selected moving to the third stage with yet another difficulty increase. The previous difficulty increase seemed to introduce enemies, and it buffed them as well. He doubted that the system would throw those at people who had stats in the 30s at most, which was the average for stage 2 of the tutorial. Before moving on to the next stage, Logan decided to check his status. “Status,” he said to the stars in the night sky.
Status for user Logan:
Approximate Level: 50 [LEVEL CAP REACHED FOR STAGE]
HP: 1500 / 1500
STR: 200
DEX: 120
INT: 90
WIS: 350
CHA: 80
VIT: 150
Why is my charisma still so low! System! I literally took a month just to perfect how my body looks!
Choose a reward for achievement “Wise:”
[Qi Upgraded] [Mind Upgraded] [Body Upgraded]
Logan seriously pondered about the system’s intelligence. Why was this even a choice? He pushed the [Qi Upgraded] button.
Whatever thoughts Logan had at the time, they fled his head like daylight fled from the moon. He blinked once, and found himself falling backwards, unable to open his eyes again.
***
Logan woke up due to a rapid pinging sound and a pounding in the back of his head.
-10 hp
-10 hp
…
-10 hp
Logan checked his health, revealing it at a less-than-comfortable 137 / 1500. He tried cycling qi towards his leg, to heal it, and found it much easier than it had been earlier. His leg started knitting itself together at a faster rate than ever before. Logan watched as the number ticked up for a few minutes, until it reached 1000 / 1500. After confirming that his health was at a normal amount, he took some time to look around for anything that may have caused his injuries while he was unconscious. He sat in silence, cycling qi to his ears, hoping not to alert any beasts that he was awake.
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
While hoping for his attacker to show themselves, Logan looked around. He was sitting in a small clearing of dirt in the middle of a moist jungle. The jungle produced a loud chirping in the distance that sounded… off, somehow. A shuffling of the bush nearby alerted Logan of a lifeform tumbling towards him at a deceptive speed, and it was accelerating.
The blur of a glowing orange tiger rushed towards Logan, and it was moving at a faster pace than he had ever seen before. The drumming of paws against the ground woke him up from his trance, alerting Logan of the danger he was in. Before he could react, a set of claws left scratch marks on his left leg, targeting the spot he was injured while unconscious. A beep alerted him of his loss of health and the infliction of some sort of status condition. For some reason the wound didn’t heal or stop bleeding for a second before finally beginning the process of knitting back together using hair-thin strands of pure qi.
Logan extended his hand as he had to the monkey that had attacked him in stage 2, and screamed at the tiger, “Qi Void!” Once his hand clenched into a fist, the tiger slowly slid back, flailing wildly at Logan. He had already turned around, getting ready to check what other things the system had to say to him, before his back was hit with a burning pain. He turned around with eyes wide as saucers to see that his ultimate technique had abandoned him, only taking one of the tiger’s legs and its tail.
The tiger tried swiping at Logan again, but to no avail since he had rolled out of the way a split second before the claws would have hit. Limping, the tiger pounced with less than half the force it had before, and didn’t even reach its target before being sucked into a whirling mass of pure qi.
***
Logan checked on his core, visualizing his dantian. It seemed the past few days had taken a toll on his qi, because the white ball was mostly transparent, barely a quarter of it filled with the white liquid. Although pure qi was everywhere, the techniques that utilized it usually needed twice the amount. At least with the system and its gifts, Logan actually had a small chance at succeeding as a cultivator, to, if not beyond the level of a Gold Core.
Warning! Unclaimed reward [Meet an immortal who uses pure qi] will no longer be available to claim in: [3 days and 7 hours]
Are you kidding me?! You should remind me of those things when I’m SAFE! Not in danger of being mauled by a tiger at any moment!!
Logan had come to terms with the system not being some malicious mind technique. He decided to claim the reward of meeting an immortal that could utilize pure qi as soon as he could confirm that he was in no danger of being interrupted. It wasn’t every day that you met an immortal that happened to use the difficult-to-master pure qi.
*** 10 hours later ***
Logan opened his eyes and uncrossed his legs. He floated himself down to the ground. Levitating on pure qi took practically no qi, but pushing yourself vertically with it was much harder. That was why he had never seen anyone flying over the sect, but so many sitting on air, or in the River Flowing Sky Wind Lightning Tribulation Fighting Sect’s case, liquid lightning.
Taking a single deep breath, Logan prepared for the worst and pushed the [Meet an immortal who uses pure qi] button.