My pet woke a few hours into the night and looked around, panicked. I made a small cooing noise, and send her an image of approaching me for food. We had to start small after all.

Minx looked around the tent and darted under the low table one of the guards put there for me the moment she spotted it. Moments later she cautiously peeked at me. How cute. Still, I repeated the suggestion and waited. I knew she must feel pretty hungry by now, and that juicy rabbit was just waiting for her to dig her little teeth into its side.

Now, I just had to wait. Successful cultivation required no small amount of patience, and I was content to simply sit here and wait until her hunger was greater than her fear.

She started crying after a few moments, probably hoping for her mother to come and save her. Her mother could not rescue her though, being more than a dozen kilometres from here. Instead, I send her a feeling of calm. By now I probably fed her more qi than she had ever had in her life simply by using my qi to communicate with her. Now I just had to wait for her to stop crying, and maybe repeat the image of the rabbit next to me being free to take a few times.

Only minutes after she woke she finally approached me, deciding defeating her hunger was more important than the huge, unmoving form next to the rabbit. I barely concealed my smile and watched her tear into the rabbit with relish.

After her feast, my pet went to explore the tent a little, as in search of something. Water! How could I forget that? I moved slowly, forming my hands into a cup, and floating some of the water in a nearby decanter into my hands. Minx immediately retreated under the table, carefully watching my once again unmoving form.

I send her another image in her head, she could find water in my hands.

This time she took a little less time to approach me. Carefully, she climbed my sitting form, followed my arms, and took a careful sip. And another. After nothing happened, she started drinking without reservation, uncaring for even a minute movement I made to test her courage.

Good.

After she was finished drinking, she returned under the table, rolled up in a ball and fell asleep.

I looked next to myself, and the bloody rabbit lying there. Most of it was still there, uneaten by the small being. Though she did eat surprisingly much of it. I shrugged, scraped all of the remains from the ground with liberal use of gravity, opened my tent flap, and catapulted the rabbit far out of the camp. I’d just spoil before my pet woke up again, and hunting food for her was no challenge to me.

How would I transport her tomorrow though? Forcing her to sleep on my shoulder again wouldn't be a good way to build trust between us. I needed some way to transport her though. This shouldn't be too hard to solve. My aura still covered everything around us, so it was trivial to find a bunch of sticks of about equal size, and pluck some grass from the ground.

With deft, practised hands I wove the long grass into a piece of fabric.

With a little more grass, this time woven into a thin rope, I build a small cave, a cave I deposited my new pet into, carefully lifting her with my gravity qi, making sure she didn't wake up. I didn't have to worry though, she slept like a dead man. Perfect.

The rest of the night passed quickly, and soon enough, I was once again sitting on one of the wagons. Only this time, a cage of grass and wood sat on the wagon behind me. I could feel a weak gravitational anomaly from within, pulling at everything that wanted to escape the cage unseen. Like a small mink. I didn't even know if she would try to escape, but if she did, keeping her in there only took a negligible amount of my qi - my cultivation sucked in more qi every second than it took to keep the anomaly up for two hours.

Roughly four hours had passed since we started moving and a certain someone finally woke up. I called one of the many small rodents around us into my hand, broke its neck, and climbed in the back.

I opened the small flap in minx’s cage slash cave and repeated my actions of the previous night. If she wanted to drink, she needed to do it from my hands. If she wanted to eat, she needed to come up to me.

She was a smart little mink, drinking and eating directly after another, allowing her to minimize the time she had to be near me, before returning into her cage, rolling up to sleep again. A pity, I would have liked to groom her a little.

I reapplied the qi technique, and returned towards the front of the wagon, scanning the road ahead for threats. As always, I found none and started watching nature again, searching for some more of minx’s relatives, to see how they hunted, lived, acted. Just about everything I’d need to know to allow her to grow up as healthy as possible.

I didn't find all that many of them though, I was simply unable to take in everything within my aura at once, and sorting through all those beings took time and effort. So I cultivated, talked with my guards, about their hopes, their dreams, about cultivation and even the weather.

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And cultivated.

Travelling was boring. I’d send someone else to do this the next time! This time it had to be me but after that? I would not leave my home again, before inventing the car or something.

When planning my journey, I decided I didn't want to insult the mayors of the towns I wanted to trade and sell products in by sending one of my underlings to negotiate an agreement. I let loose a sigh. That had been a lie. I didn't care about the mayors of those towns or insulting them. I just wanted to travel a bit, explore the world.

But the horses were so slow! Sure, they were faster than they had been back on earth, but really? Sixty kilometres a day? Travelling anywhere would take ages! I wished I had a car right now.

I could drive down the whole route in a day, and return on the next. No wonder travelling was a privilege of the rich in the middle ages. Any vacation to a warmer climate would take several months. Months that couldn't be used to work.

Even my small trip would take a month at least, and I only made my way over to some of the towns near the first eternal forest. I planned another few trips toward the other two forests, but considering I felt bored by this trip only a day in? I wouldn't be going on those!

Not a chance. If the mayors of these towns were angry I didn't come to visit them personally? They could come to me to express their displeasure, I didn't care.

The next three days passed in a flash, only interrupted by a fox chasing one of the strange rabbits over the road in front of us, and me hunting another of these rabbits down to feed my pet. After all, if I wanted to keep her for any length of time I best start feeding her qi rich meat now and hope she managed to break into the second realm naturally.

And maybe make her break into the second realm with liquid qi naturally creating itself in her head, making her even smarter. Because Minx was a smart mink. She knew where to get food without prompting after only two feedings, and didn't need her cave anymore - she decided to just sleep curled up on my shoulder, hidden under my long black hair. Sure, I had to take care she didn't fall off, but she was light and thus easy to keep glued where she slept with a little use of gravity intent qi.

Now a town had entered my aura though, significantly smaller than my home town, with only a thousand or so inhabitants. But they had a forest nearby, a forest that felt very similar to the forest of my friend.

“I will need two of you to guard the wagons, while I go talk to the mayor.” I said.

“The rest can go dive in the forest if you want, but make sure to allow everyone some time in there if they want to. I won't be able to help you in there, you all know that third realm cultivators aren't allowed inside such locations by their lords. And I don't want to cross a forest lord.” I said.

“Yes milady. But I think only very few will take you up on that offer. The fight gave us a lot to think about, and we are burning to try some of the things we saw need improvement.” Targo said.

“I see. Well, you probably will have a lot of free time for the next few days. I'm sure the mayor will want a sample of my goods. We’ll just park our wagons in the middle of the marketplace, the inscriptions will allow everyone to know just what we sell.” I said.

“You know what to do, just behave as you would in my shop.” I said towards Talia.

She was one of my original clerks, but had taken to cultivating and fighting more than store work, and changed towards being a guard herself.

Still, for the trip, she had agreed to act as a clerk again.

“I know, don't worry. We have you as a backup after all mistress. Few cultivators around here can best you.” She said.

I sighed. I had seen it in all of their eyes, at least a little. Worship. Apparently, they finished the fight extra fast, just to see me fight. And flying was rare enough that they saw me as some kind of genius, even worse than before. I let loose another long-suffering sigh and banished the thoughts out of my head.

They were unimportant now, negotiations needed to be approached with utmost focus, even negotiations with a random second realm cultivator like the one I felt sitting in the town hall. Well, I didn't need to worry about anything happening to us in this town.

“The mayor is just a second realm cultivator, but let's not anger him anyways. Angering cultivators always comes back to bite you.” I said.

“You don't need to worry about us mistress. Worry about yourself.” Targo said.

“I will control myself.” I said confidently.

Adding a most likely inside the secrecy of my mind. I reacted badly to insults, and insufferable pricks talking down on me after all.

Did I want to trade with the idiot running this town though? The town hall didn't have any mortals inside, the cultivator themself had not moved since he entered my aura. And few cultivators lived inside the town. Though they probably entered the forest by now, searching for treasures. I sighed, and left the caravan behind myself, entering the town hall.

“And who would you be? Barging into my house without so much as a knock?” The young man asked.

“I am Triss, a second realm cultivator. I and my people are here to sell some spirit robes.” I introduced myself.

Suddenly, a cone of fire left the man in front of me, crashing into my robe. I made sure it did not disrupt the small being sleeping on my shoulder and sighed. I would have to be insulting.

“Now that's just embarrassing,” I said. “That fire couldn't even hurt a fly.”

“Now that's just rude. I didn't want to hurt you if you turned out a fraud.” He said.

“And attacking a visitor is not rude? Anyways. This is what's going to happen. I will sell my stuff for a few days and be on my way again. Afterwards, my people will visit regularly.” I stated.

“How about a duel?” He asked. “I don't have problems with your business if you agree to a real duel.”

“Defeat one of my second realm guards first. I don't care which one. But be prepared to lose, I don't fight fair.” I said, turning around to leave.

“You really don't care about me, don't you?” He asked.

“Of course not. You're the mayor of an irrelevant little town in the middle of nowhere. If you go out on a journey to get revenge on me and manage to catch up? You’ll owe me.” I said with a shrug and left. This town was too small to matter, the few cultivators living here wouldn't be the market I needed.