"Yui, it's about time you learn something about cultivation." Tora announced after the shop finally closed.

"Not only can I not always protect you, but many advanced techniques for alchemy, forging and enchantment will require you to know how to use spiritual power."

Having come into contact with cultivation only through listening to the various customers they had, Yui was curious how one would cultivate in the first place.

"Sure, where do I start? Do I sit down and meditate or something?"

Tora shook her head. "You have grown up in a spirit starved environment and are already rather old to start with a regular cultivation technique. Not to mention with your personality, you're about as useful as a wet log in a campfire when it comes to cultivating."

With such a blunt way of telling her she's not suited to cultivating, Yui was rather depressed.

"Cultivators in the lower realms usually start by using their own body to refine spirit energy. They internalize this energy in various ways, then at some point when they have enough of it, form a core and later an origin infant and then they pretty much connect to heaven and earth to become what they call an immortal here."

"That sounds rather exciting." Yui admitted. "Can I really not do that?"

Once again Tora shook her head. "Nah, you're not suited for this approach, not to mention it’s a big waste of time for you. Other's have to rely on internalizing energy because they have no other way to progress. You on the other hand are the master of the Earthly Treasures Pavilion."

"You don't need to collect energy really. All you need to do is learn to control this energy, learn to understand your own dao path and step by step cross over to the higher realm. While that alone will take you a while, all those little steps in between should be more than enough to have some means to defend yourself."

Seeing Yui staring at her with big confused eyes she put her palm on her face and tried again with a different approach.

"Let's put it this way. People here form their own rechargeable batteries by improving their bodies and carry it around with them. Once they have enough energy and understanding they use that energy to shoot themselves to a higher plane of existence."

Explained in such a way, it seemed to make a lot more sense to Yui.

"You on the other hand are an owner of a nuclear power plant. You don't care at all about the little batteries. All you need to understand is where to find the power socket and how not to blow yourself and the power plant up in the process of using the energy."

"That's nice, so I can just skip most of the work!" Yui thought that this seemed a lot easier.

"Well we do skip a large part yes, on the other hand, as we don't temper your body, we have to make sure you have great control to protect yourself at all times. Your body will be the same as a mortal's without supporting it with energy, weak and frail."

Tora smiled and poked her nose. "I doubt you want to go through years of pain and suffering to temper your body, so you better make sure to learn control properly, understood?"

"Yes sis, I will learn it properly."

Tora grabbed her hand and dragged them into Miyuki's room, before giving Ryoma a task.

"Ryoma, the shop is closed, we're going to teach Miyuki a few tricks, perhaps gather some materials that we can work with and sell tomorrow."

After all the benefits he and his daughter received, he was happy to finally be of some help and quickly made his way to the mine. Yui looked a bit curious what Tora wanted to teach Miyuki though.

"It's probably a good idea to train Miyuki at the same time as you." Tora started to explain.

"Kids learn so fast after all, so I don't have to worry about her once she is your age and have to start all over again. Also, it should be helpful for her to learn control, to make it easier for her to resist the ambient spiritual energies."

"Will you teach her the same things as you teach me?"

"No, unlike you, she has a much better base for cultivation. As long as you keep up your work and make the pavilion grow, giving us enough resources to support her, by the time we can permanently resolve her issues with her constitution, she will likely be ready to ascend and overtake you in terms of personal power."

"That's awesome! She's so lucky to have an aunt like you." Yui had a big grin on her face.

Unlike others who might be jealous, Yui was totally content with Miyuki becoming strong in the future. Tora on the other hand was surprised.

'When did she learn to tease me? She would usually just roll her eyes or be embarrassed when I call the little girl my niece.'

-

Early next morning, the peaceful silence was broken by an unexpected outburst of Tora's voice.

"No no no! You're supposed to keep a steady flow of energy on your body, steady, you silly girl steady, what you're doing here is more like a flickering lightbulb close before it dies!"

It was the first morning Ryoma was alone with Miyuki again after she has woken up from her fever. While she was already feeling well the last evening, most of his time was spent gathering resources to repay the favor of Yui and Tora supporting them.

Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

"Why is aunty Tora shouting so much? Is she angry?" Miyuki mumbled, making Ryoma smile at the innocent question and the worried look in his daughters' eyes.

"Don't worry, she is only like this because she is worried about her sister, she is not really angry."

"Mommy is not good with cultivation." Miyuki happily laughed, making Ryoma freeze for a moment.

"Mommy?" he carefully asked, wondering how that came about.

"Aunty Tora said I can call her mommy if I want. Can I not?"

With his daughter looking at him with eyes that could outmatch any puppy when it came to pleading stares, he quickly gave up any idea of contradicting her 'aunt'. Seeing his daughters look, he was sure even his late wife would not disagree.

"I guess if Yui is alright with it, it should be fine."

-

Like usual the mornings after opening the Earthly Treasures Pavilion, were by far the busiest time for Yui.

With the opening of the Thousand Beasts Grasslands, the number of people who wanted access to their unique locations was even greater than the days before.

When the flood of people finally all had their talismans, things calmed down a little bit.

"We don't have so many spirit shards to get all of us inside." Yui overheard the conversation of a group of young people.

"I don't want to fight those beasts alone though, they are probably still too tough, we just started after all."

The group of youngsters, perhaps 13 to 15 years old, was made up of two girls and two boys, all arguing how they would enter the Thousand Beasts Grasslands with the little spirit shards they had.

"Just go with them." Tora mumbled. "There are no customers anyways so I can keep an eye on the shop. You need some experience in a real fight. Alone you'd probably just run away."

Before Yui could even argue with her, Tora already shouted to the kids.

"Hey you there! You want to enter the lower Thousand Beasts Grasslands, right?"

The group of young people was startled and stopped their conversation, looking over to Tora.

"My sister has to check on the quality of the environment anyways, she will just tag along. You can keep all the things, but we can waive the entrance fee this time."

"Miss, you mean we can enter for free if your sister comes with us and we can still keep all the materials we get from the beasts?"

"Exactly. My sister is going to assess the difficulty of the fights for cultivators like yourself, to improve our services further."

They all exchanged looks and then looked over at Yui with a happy smile expecting someone like Yui to be of a much higher cultivation level than themselves. This seemed like a free ticket with an escort who didn't even want a share of the spoils to them, too good to be true.

-

The grasslands were just like their name would indicate, pretty much void of a large number of trees, but not as dry as Yui would have expected. The fresh green and vibrant spiritual power in the air, was not just an ideal environment for spirit beasts, but also made one feel refreshed just by being here.

Mostly flat land with a few soft hills here and there and no mountains in sight, the grasslands were a lot easier to travel around in than the Old Vine Forest.

Yui walked next to the group of young cultivators, watching how they planned their trek through the area in search for a target, doing her best to keep up the air of an experienced cultivator, rather than a clueless beginner.

The girls and one of the boys were from the Oshima family and the remaining boy seemed to be from a branch family and acted like some sort of subordinate. With all having grown up together though, there was a sense of equality, with no one mentioning anything about status.

"These are my sister Nariko and my cousin Haru." the boy who seemed to be the leader of their group introduced the two girls. "My friend over here is Tashiro of the Toma family and you can call me Jou."

"I see. You can call me Yui. Myself and my sister Tai Tora are owning the Earthly Treasures Pavilion, as you probably already know. Nice to meet you and thank you for taking me along. How are you going to plan to hunt the half spirit beasts here?"

"Nariko is using a bow, Tashiro will be using a saber and has an aptitude for fire elemental energy, while I will be using my spear and act as a distraction and engage the beast."

Curious why only three out of the four people of the group were mentioned Yui asked them about it right away.

"What about Haru?"

"Ah, well ... that ..." they all had a guilty look as if Yui caught them doing something wrong. Haru herself looked quite embarrassed as well.

"I'm not very good at fighting miss Yui." she said after a while.

"We've been together since we were young. It seems not right to leave her at home." Nariko explained the problem of Haru's situation.

"She usually helps us with various tasks like keeping track of where we are and things like that as she cannot cultivate."

"Yeah Haru is really smart!" Tashiro added, as if to defend her, making Jou and Nariko laugh, while Haru started to blush even more.

"Isn't it just an issue of holding power?" Yui mumbled a bit confused and took a closer look at Haru.

"The cultivation techniques that our family use are all not working on her." Jou sighed.

Yui took Haru's hand and concentrated on what she had learned so far, with her own weird way of thinking.

To her, a dantian was nothing more like a battery to be charged and meridians were the pathways used to gather and channel this power. She only had to find a proper pathway that didn't make the whole human short circuit and then it should work.

What seemed to be so easy in Yui's mind was pretty much impossible to do for any regular cultivator. They simply did not have the huge source of spirit energy to constantly radiate it around them and use it as a way to sense meridians and spirit energy.

Regular cultivators could only guess and learn from others, as they had no way to compare things like meridians, unless they had an extremely powerful teacher to help them.

"You just start from here, go there, and then continue on to here."

Yui repeatedly poked Haru and pushed some spirit energy into her meridians, opening them and giving Haru an idea of a proper route to circulate the energy.

"Once that is done, with your dantian active and all of that, you should be able to figure out how to spread out your energy and activate the others on your own. How far you go from these basics though, will rely on your own understanding and effort, as you have to make up something unique that works for you."

Yui somehow felt like a high schooler teaching a primary school kid basic math under the disguise of a wise monk. With the right way to get to the end result, it was not really hard, but it could be really difficult without someone explaining the basics.

Not to mention that she had to keep up appearances and hide her own lack of knowledge with phrases like 'how far you go will rely on your own understanding'.

Seeing the awestruck faces of the people around her, Yui did her best to change the topic, but was actually really excited that her acting seemed to work so well.

Taking out a few snacks and some blankets out of her dimensional pouch, she sat down on a stone and started to prepare what looked like a picnic, once more catching the others by surprise, both because of the dimensional storage, as well as her relaxed manner of treating this place like some peaceful spot of land without dangers.

"Why don't we take a break while Haru figures out how to start cultivating?" she asked them, doing her best to look as if nothing special happened. No one asked any more questions, realizing that Yui didn't really want to talk about it.

They just all sat down and enjoyed the snacks Yui provided, hoping for the best that Haru would be able to start cultivating this time.