My trips to the forest had not been without peril. Even though it was right at the border of the sect, stepping inside the forest still put a person right into the midst of “monster territory”. Of course, the woods near the proximity of the sect were much, much safer than the “deep” woods, since the sect would periodically cleanse the proximal part of the forest for the “larger” threats, while leaving only the small fry to challenge the younger disciples brave enough to go inside the underbrush, myself included.
I would often run into regular wild animals, from wild hares to boars and the odd solitary wolf from time to time. During my first encounter with a wolf, I ended up being stuck up a tree for more than half a day, until the beast got bored of camping out for my ass to maybe fall down and just left.
From that incident it had become quite obvious to me that I needed some sort of a weapon at hand to deal with these kinds of situations.
You might ask me, “But aren’t you an awakened cultivator? Couldn’t you have just fought it off? Used your martial arts and went WA-TCHAH on his ass!” and then I’d tell you that even regular wolves in this world are some big-ass motherfuckers that grow to the size of alaskan malamutes from Earth-counterpart aka up to half-the-height of a regular human, which for me meant that the beast was ⅔ as tall as myself. Now YOU try fighting a storm of fangs of that size, and see how YOU like it! No, I just hauled ass at the very sight of him and used my “cultivator body” to run up a tree as fast as I could instead.
And as far as using my “martial arts” were concerned, the only “fighting techniques” that I had available at the moment were my karate lessons that I had taken back on Earth, which I had learned during grade school, since I had quit at yellow belt when I had graduated the “little leagues” and had moved onto Highschool later on. And let’s be honest, karate grade school lessons are more like calisthenics rather than specialised training on “how to kill a wolf with your bare hands in the forest”.
While I still had 13 skill points available, I had not found any combat skill that really seemed “worthy” of investing points into yet. Therefore, I had to solve this problem the same as our caveman ancestors had done in the first place. I had to craft myself some ranged weapons and set some traps.
Since I was still absolutely broke, I had been forced to sculpt myself a self-bow. It was a good thing that I had watched enough survival videos on YouTube back on Earth to have a decent idea about what I was doing.
Of course, unlike the videos, where everything was in fast forward mode and the people that were being showcased actually knew what they were doing, it took me almost an entire week until I got a barely-functional weapon in my hands. I had to sculpt the damn thing until it was properly balanced with the only tool that I had available, which was a small steel dagger/kitchen knife that had come along with the house.
Still, once I got the hang of shooting the bow, things became much, much easier. Timmy even acknowledged my efforts by unlocking the [Archery] general skill progress bar. I could now even go out hunting and provide myself with some extra meat for my meals.
At first, I had been very squeamish about shooting innocent animals, and I had almost cried when I shot and skinned my first bunny. The little bugger kept staring back at me with his big judgemental, googly black eyes even after being dead, and I felt guilty as hell. But after tasting the juicy meat of the recently deceased critter, it had all felt better. This was just a natural circle of life, with the hunter eating the prey, I consoled myself. I was not just some bow shooting bloodthirsty maniac that would kill every animal he came across for minor XP gains.
While cultivating, I noticed that doing so would also increase my appetite by a large margin. I was now stuffing enough food inside of my gullet to feed an Earth-counterpart bodybuilder, yet I was barely putting on any weight.
Lingfeng told me that it was only a temporary thing, and that once I had a good grasp of my Qi control, I would begin to require fewer and fewer of the “mortal necessities” like water, food or even sleep.
True immortals were said to sustain themselves with only the energies of the heavens.
But for now, I was quite ok with stuffing my face with meat on a daily basis, because I had also figured out which of the harvested plants could be used as seasonings or bait, and was cooking up quite a mean hot-pot that even Fung and Lingfeng began to enjoy.
That had also properly unlocked my Cooking skill, and Timmy had “adjusted” it to the “level” that it had at back on Earth, which was quite decently high, since I had lived alone for quite a long period of time and had been forced to cook for myself a lot. I now even had a full menu screen of all of the recipes that I had ever cooked in my previous life, which was quite nice.
My Cooking attempts had also won me the affections of Fung, who was now dropping by regularly. I did not mind sharing the meat, but I also was milking him for petty cash by making him bring me all sorts of seasonings from the market so I could cook the meals better. He did not even seem to notice that he was spending money and was just glad to share in the meals. In the end, I had managed to get my “reputation” with Fung to 100% [Friendly], and Timmy told me that I was now capable of “recruiting” him, whatever that meant.
The forest was a veritable cornucopia for ingredients. Just about everything that I could get my hands on, had one use or another.
I would very often come back home with my backpack filled to the brim with all sorts of plant life.
Of course, after harvesting so many medicinal plants, the system became kind enough to award me with a radar-like passive skill, which allowed me to feel the medicinal Qi inside of any plants that were within my proximity. Since this was a game-like world in the first place, I was not that surprised when I had gained that skill.
Still, after a few ingredient hauling runs, it had become obvious to me that my backpack was way too small for my alchemical needs.
I still had that spatial ring that I had “confiscated” from Sect Master Fury Bone, but Timmy had told me that the damn thing had a lock on it. The ring itself was level 50, but I had a “starter module” that ignored equipment level requirements. The problem was that the ring also had a “security” lock of level 75, that is 50 Normal levels + Paragon 25. It was almost impossible to open. I did manage to “persuade” Timmy to “partition” the damn thing though, almost like it was a hard drive, but I only wound up with a total of a cubic meter of “free” unsecured space in which I could carry stuff, and it was not that much. It amounted to almost 2-3 backpacks worth of stuff, but it was still awesome because the quantity stuffed within did not weigh me down.
Spatial rings were weird. Fury Bone’s spatial ring looked something comparable to the LOTR “The One Ring”, albeit it was colored platinum and instead of high elvish it had the local runic/spell language written on the rim instead. It also had an auto-fit feature. The first time I had put it on, it had turned from a massive, man-finger sized object to a rather smaller fitting size for my scrawny girly finger after turning magically black, shrinking to a proper size, then back to platinum color again.
At least for this spatial ring that I had, it was necessary for me to touch the item “targeted” for storage with the ring, but I knew that I was probably doing it wrong, since I had seen Yi, Lingfeng, and even Fung just wave their hands and produce items out of thin air. Maybe I needed to enable a “gestures” option like on some of the smartphones?
Once the target item was “stored”, it would show up on a grid-like list similar to mmo inventories that showed up in my UI when I had the ring equipped.
Another peculiarity was that some items were stack-able. Items only occupied “more” space if they were not of the same type. But if you had, say, 50 identical potions, then they would become “stacked” once stored in the ring’s grid interface, and would only take a small amount of space. Stacks went up to 50, 100, 200, or even 1000 depending on how small/cumbersome the item stacked had been in the first place.
I still had no actual idea how the rings actually worked in reality. Were the items getting teleported to some sort of a pocket space? Or were they literally getting disassembled and reassembled by the System on the spot when recalled? Or maybe they were getting “moved” to a hypothetical 4th spatial geometrical dimension? The fact is that upon getting stored, the items would literally just vanish from wherever they stood. Recalling would produce the exact same item in the exact state it had been stored. Jumping or rolling around with the ring did not affect the storage space. An item stored upright, like a cooked dish on a plate, would remain upright even if I was hanging upside down with the ring when recalling it.
The ring that I owned did not have the capability (or I was too dumb to use it properly), but Lingfeng had told me that some of the higher level rings even had a “timestop” feature on them, which allowed for all stored items to remain “like frozen in time” once they got deposited away on the grid.
A stored steaming hot dish would get recalled back as a steaming hot dish even after sitting inside of the ring for years. The rarest of the rings though, were the type that even allowed for living things to be stored, and were mostly considered “illegal” because of the secondary implications, aka body snatching.
“Normal” storage rings (like my own) on the other hand were quite adverse to the storage of life. It’s not that it wasn’t possible to move the object into storage, but rather that the storage space was so cramped, that it had no oxygen inside of it and the target would just die from asphyxiation or wither away in case of living plants. You could theoretically have someone jump inside of a ring while holding his breath and survive in there for a couple of minutes, before getting recalled back to reality. Those that had attempted such crazy things and had lived, all recalled that they had only been surrounded by darkness and something akin to a membrane that enveloped their whole body once they had been shoven inside the storage space.
Preventive measures had also been installed on all produced rings after the “Royal Collector” incident around 2000 years ago, where a Mad Cultivator Scientist had “collected” into his storage rings all of the Royal family members of all of the Empires, and had almost led to the downfall of all of the Dynasties.
The new “mandatory” measures installed on all spatial rings now disabled the transference of any living things to the storage space.
Of course, it was not a total “foolproof” measure, because the ring only checked for lifesigns, therefore a person that “seemed” biologically dead but actually wasn’t, could in practice get stored into the ring. But very few people ever had any reasons to circumvent such protections nowadays.
Since I was fiddling with the ring anyway, I remembered that Fung also had a spatial ring. I wondered, what sort of capacity did that ring have? How many backpacks-worth of plants could I stuff into it, if I “recruited” Fung as a follower, as Timmy kept suggesting.
Meh, might as well ask him when he comes over!
A few hours later, Fung was at my door again, He still smelled like flowery soap, and I did not mind that at all. Clean men are much more attractive than smelly, sweaty savages in my book. Not that I felt even a little bit of attraction towards Fung, mind you. Quite the contrary, he was the antithesis to my newly acquired “taste in men”. Plus, I still liked women a whole lot more. And girls almost never stink, if you were to compare.
Since I was now over the required “reputation” for recruitment, I went straight down to business and I asked Fung whether he could spare the time to help me with the ingredient gathering inside of the forest, and how much stuff his spatial ring could carry.
He was a little hesitant at first, but finally agreed to lend a hand after I bribed him with more food. Mom was right afterall, the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. This also led me to the next “awkward” discussion, and the problem it was meant to address, which was the fact that Fung had developed a slight crush on me, and I did not want to have to deal with that shit at all.
"Ok Fung, ol’ buddy, ol’ pal, I have to come clean with you. But what I am about to tell you is very, very secret, and could even get Elder Lingfeng into trouble if anyone found out. Do I have your promise that you will keep your mouth shut? Pinky swear on it!"
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"Mhmm!"
"Ok Fung, get ready for this. I am, In fact, A MAN! Wait, don’t give me that look, wait for my explanation! You see, this girly body of mine that I have right now? I’ve only had it for a few months. Before that, I used to be a dude just like you, had a weiner and everything and I liked girls, right before an Evil Cultivator captured me and turned my body into that of a girl. Lingfeng rescued me together with the Hero of the Sun, just before the Hero died. The Evil Cultivator had turned my body into the image of the Hero of the Sun’s little sister, and was planning to use me to manipulate the Hero for his nefarious deeds, but the whole plan got wrecked when they rescued me, and then the Hero died. So this is why my existence must be maintained as highly confidential. Lingfeng said that the curse is somewhat semi-permanent and that I will remain a girl until I can find my True Love and have HER kiss me to break the curse. Yes HER as in female. Come on, Fung, don’t give me that look, I know there’s gotta be some other people in this world that are batting for the opposite team too!
Anyway, the point I’m trying to get across is that Yes, I have noticed your slight infatuation with me, but the plain fact is that I cannot reciprocate those sorts of feelings back towards you, because I LIKE GIRLS, since I AM A MAN! And also, because you look like a Gorilla, but that’s besides the point. You can still be my Bro though."
Fung looks back at me like he had been stabbed by 1000 arrows.
"Ok Fung, stop pissing your eyes. There’s nothing I can do about this. If you do not believe me, just ask Lingfeng as well, he’ll corroborate my story. You can still be my MAN friend, but not my Boyfriend. I just cannot see you in any sexual way. What I CAN do though, is help you get laid as a compensation. That Shi girl you were after? I’ll help you get into her pants, make her fall in love with you, then YOU can dump her away and make her cry after you instead. Doesn’t that sound nice?"
Fung bared his shiny teeth back at me with a bitter smile. It’s ok big guy, you’ll get over it. I’m not the right “girl” for you.
----------
The next few days, myself and Fung had delved all across the forest, and had gathered a significant amount of Spirit Plants for my alchemy needs. Fung’s spatial ring could contain about two cubic meters of plant stuff, which was barely double than my own, but it made a significant difference. I could now gather a whole lot more plant matter each day, so I could “grind” my Alchemy skill to a higher level.
Fung was also learning pretty fast which plants were useful, even though he still sometimes confused the poisonous mushrooms with the edible ones. I had to smack some Rotguts away from his hand a few times before the moron ate them and poisoned himself into a coma. I did NOT want to have to drag his gorilla body all the way back to the Sect just because he had knocked himself out, even with my new and strong cultivator body.
Fung had initially come with a chinese sword as his weapon of choice to the insides of the forest, but had quickly seen that it was pretty useless. While it could still cut some of the foliage, it was not MADE for that sort of shit. After a few days though, Fung had swapped his weapon to a much more useful machete, and had also bought himself a bow. Of course, the bow was ridiculously decorated, but still worked just fine for what we were doing.
After a couple more days of harvesting, I was almost nearing my “quantity” goal. I had also gained another passive skill, thanks to Timmy’s benevolence and my hard work at brutalizing Spirit Herb spawns.
Timmy: You have unlocked the [Green Thumb] passive skill.
This skill provides only a flat bonus, so it does not have a progress bar.
Description:
Every Spiritual Herb you personally harvest from now on retains double the amount of medicinal Qi when plucked from the earth.
FUCK YEAH!
That basically doubles the usefulness of my ingredients from now on!
What did surprise me though, was the fact that Fung had also gained the same passive skill almost at the same time as myself, alongside with the other “plant radar” ability.
It literally meant that I had just quadrupled my medicinal Qi intake capacity in one swift go.
I was now ready to grind some Alchemy level ups!
Except that after “grinding” 10 more Progress Points, I ran into a problem.
All of the recipes began to ask for “primers”, which were basically other smaller recipes that created “component” ingredients, rather than wholly finished products.
The components would then be used together to create the end pill or potion.
Creating the “primers” was a tiresome and annoying work, even with the auto-craft skill on.
Therefore, I thought that I could use Fung instead.
He said he was glad to help and was absolutely amazed when I showed him how to unlock the auto-crafting option.
Except there was a snag even with that.
He had no “Unused” skill points to put into it.
Because he was a “normal” person, he had so far in his life been auto-leveled by the system, which had included all of his attributes and skills, therefore he had no “spares” available. I was also pretty sure as hell that there was no world-famous hero or villain anywhere around the Sect just asking to be peacefully murdered, so that Fung might get a +skillpoint that way, from the achievement.
Which meant that the only way to get the spare point was through a level up.
I immediately navigated Fung through the menus, and I showed him the options for disabling the auto-allocation of attributes and skill points. He swore on his Clan Head's life that those options had never been there before, so I told him that Timmy....cough...I mean Mother Earth hides such things from the common folk, and awaits only for the wise and the worthy to uncover these things by themselves.
Once he heard that, he gave me a long gaze of utter worship, like I had shared some sort of earth-shattering secret with him freely. Which turned out to be true. Gimmicks like these “hidden options” were very well guarded secrets in the Cultivation world, because they could provide an “unfair” advantage compared to someone who did everything using only the Mom Earth provided “base menu” or the “regular” cultivation methods. He told me that entire sects have murdered eachother for only one such meager “secret” option, and now I had at least 3 available, out of which two I had already shared freely with Fung, which were the disabling of auto-allocation for skills and attributes and the auto-craft options. That made me think.
Hey Timmy, how many more of these “hidden” options are there, you little crazy circuit board?
Timmy: A shitload. Just can’t tell you which. Protocol and all that. You gotta figure them out by yourself, and if you guess them correctly, I’ll enable the skills or options for you.
Ok, so another thing that I gotta do is to squeeze the system dry for the hidden variables.
But for now, back to Fung.
"Hey Fungus, how many more XP points do you need to get to your next level up?"
"Umm...I...don’t know...my XP bar is at somewhere over 70%, but I can’t tell precisely."
"Dude, just enable the numerical overlay for your bars."
"The what?"
Hrr...Ok, so I guess that’s ANOTHER hidden option. I guess that I already had all of these options “enabled” by default because of my gamer background. The system had found it pointless to hide such minor options away from my soul, because I would have figured or requested for them immediately upon my first time browsing the menus anyway.
"Ok Fung, let’s figure out where that Option is hidden."
After a few minutes of poking at the menus together, we finally located the damn numerical display thing, and Fung turned it on.
He was at 73% XP and needed 11888 more XP to reach the next level.
Therefore, we had to find some way to gain some free XP, really fast.
The only way I could recall to get XP by doing almost nothing was the method through which I had gained my first two levels, by basically just opening my meridians. So why couldn’t Fung do the same thing?
For that matter, I should probably see if I can open some more of my own meridians as well.
"Hey Fungus...have you opened any of your meridians yet?"
"Meridian opening? No way! That’s way up there within the Foundation Establishment cultivation bracket. It’s gonna take me tens of years to get them all cleared!"
"You’re kidding me, right?"
"Why would I?"
"Because opening meridians is as easy as popping balloons. I already have two of them opened and I have not even bothered to do more."
"What! NO WAY! Meridian opening is serious business! People can DIE from that. Your Dantian or meridians can burst and your cultivation can get ruined!"
"Ok, hold on there big boy. We’re obviously not thinking of the same thing. Let’s take turns. First, you tell me about the method that YOU know for opening meridians, and then I’ll tell you mine."
He begins to tell me how meridians are opened by over-filling the dantian to the brim with Qi, then contracting it very hard, until the “weakest” of the barriers separating a meridian away from the dantian would break, which seemed to be a random one. The process would then be repeated over many years, until all of the meridians would become open and available. He also said that each time a “breakthrough” was attempted, all of the “separator” membranes would become stronger after being pushed so hard, which resulted in the outcome that every subsequent breakthrough further on from the first one would become harder and harder to achieve.
I was facepalming so hard. No wonder that these morons were so inefficient at cultivation! They were doing it all wrong from the start. It’s not amazing anymore that all of the Heroes rushed by everybody like a rocket when it came to gaining levels, because they probably already knew or had guessed the correct method from the beginning.
I pulled Fung closer, and then I told him that what he was doing was all wrong. I then started by teaching him how to “braid” the qi inside of his dantian, and how to manipulate the Qi-braid tentacles. After a few hours of fumbling around, he had gotten good enough at moving his Qi-tentacles that we could proceed on the next step, which was the opening of the meridians. I told him to start with his spinal meridian just like myself, then work his way up to the crown dantian towards his Spirit Root. Of course, I was not going to have him move his Spirit Root like myself, because that was just too dangerous and could potentially kill him, but just the fact that the lower dantian would become connected to the crown dantian meant that white Qi could freely travel or intentionally be brought up from the lower dantian to the Spirit Root, so it could be nourished and grow further.
I also warned him that my “method” had only been tested on myself, and that I had no idea how it could affect him or how it could go wrong. But Fung seemed to trust me implicitly, and he told me that he’ll just follow my instructions without any doubt, which was actually kind of heart-warming.
After a couple of agonizing minutes after he started “penetrating” the barrier separating his dantian away from his spinal meridian, Fung suddenly scrunched up and made a face like he was orgasming. It was a terrifying sight. Poor Fung, he’ll have to get used to performing his kamasutra arts in the dark if he ever wants to have any chance at getting any girl bedded, otherwise the lass would just run away scared from him if she ever saw that mug. His expression also told me that he had succeeded and that he had taken away his own “meridian virginity”.
"Ahahaha! It’s open! My spinal meridian is OPEN! I can feel it filling with Qi right now! It FEELS SO FUCKING GOOD!"
"Good job, big guy, but keep all of those orgasmic expressions to yourself. You’re creeping me out, m8!"
"Sorry…! I did get a lot of CXP out of doing that though! I’m at 93% now!"
"Hah, nice, way to go you big lunk! High five!...umm...come on, don’t leave me hanging...High Five!"
"Ugh...I do not know what you expect me to do, Trina. You’re acting weird again…"
"Just slap my palm back when I raise it like this. It’s a shared sign of triumphing over something. High Five!"
Fung slaps my hand so hard that it turns red !
"Arrjjjj...Fuck...I should have seen that one coming!" I hiss while cradling my swelling palm away.
After a couple more hours, Fung was ready to push for a second breakthrough to open his Crown dantian.
It took a little bit more to adjust his Qi-braid, since it was now tightly tucked up his spinal meridian, but he eventually began to push.
After about 5 minutes of him looking like he was laying an egg, his eyes suddenly rolled back into his head and he crashed backwards while convulsing. I panicked and I jumped right on top of him to prevent him from dislocating a bone or swallowing his tongue.
Unfortunately, right at that moment Lingfeng walked into the room, and spotted what looked like Fung doing the pumping action below me with myself on top as the ride.
"OOPS, sorry if I intruded on something!" Lingfeng instantly rushed out of the room while slamming the door, all red in the face.
"NOO WAAIT! IT’S NOT WHAT YOU THINK!" AAaaa….dammit he left.
Fung continued to convulse for about 1 more minute, then stopped moving under me. Once he settled down, he began sporting an absolutely disgusting grin of satisfaction all over his face, which meant that he either had managed to break through, or had taken enough brain damage to simulate an orgy fantasy in his mind.
After about fifteen more minutes, Fung rebooted his brain and confirmed that he had, indeed, managed to open his Crown Dantian, and that the spasms had been caused by the flood of white Qi hitting his Spiritual Roots. He had also Leveled Up to 16 and was now an Over-Leveler since his level was now higher than his age. He now also had 5 Unassigned Attribute Points and 1 Unassigned Skill.
Of course, he immediately put the skill into auto-crafting, unlocking it for use.
I now had an “apprentice” that could do the boring part of the job for me, and craft all of my primers! YEY!
Now I just had to “grind” Fung’s alchemy levels to near mine as well, which meant only one thing: MORE TRIPS TO THE FOREST TO GATHER INGREDIENTS!
Be it in games or other planets, grinding skills is always a pain in the ass.