There is always a heaven above heaven.

Those words echoed in my head once again as I reminisced about the past. My mother was a staunch advocate of obeying the stronger and abusing the weak. It shouldn't come as a surprise really. In our world, everything revolves around survival of the fittest. Humans slaughtering each other for rare plants and materials, beasts clawing and ripping at each other to get at the other's magic stone, even the plants strangle each other to collect more nutrition from the ground or light from the sun.

It wasn't a surprise to see my mother disappear one day, leaving behind her kits. It also wasn't a surprise that all of them started a bloody fight for the leader position.

Mother would disappear for months at time to come back with a new litter, filling up the numbers the weaklings left.

I decided I wanted none of it. I didn't want the power struggle, I didn't want to fight for the rest of my life to climb mountains of corpses. An infinite meat grinder for power, pushing away happiness to a later point in life to get through suffering. So I just left for the wider world.

I was part of a rather common breed of beastfox. Like the cultivators in the world are separated into different realms of power, so are we separated by ranks and evolutions. For human cultivators the realms are always split into nine ranks, after passing each rank they are finally able to break through their limitations to reach the next power realm. To make it even more complicated, they have three different cultivation systems. One to cultivate the body, one to cultivate their mana and the last to cultivate their soul. 

The names of each realm? They don't matter. Believe me, every few years people come up with new realm descriptions when other people finally reach the perceived end realm, only to be surprised by even more ranks. There is always a heaven above heaven. The human ranks aren't as important as having a general overview of their might is. So I summarized them to  novice, apprentice, adept, expert, master.

Monsters have similar realms but we focus on overall cultivation. Collecting mana passively or actively trains all three disciplines the humans pursue in their craze to reach ultimate power. Each new realm allows us to evolve into a higher state of being. Some beasts are able to take human forms earlier than others of their race. Fox beasts are usually able to take up human form at the adept level, ironically allowing us to become even stronger by stealing human fighting techniques and spells.

"There you are, you lazy floofball. I found the blistered thousand year old twin ginseng you told me about." 

My inner musings were interrupted by a shaggy black haired individual. Dirt and scratches matted his body, doing nothing to distract from his piercing gaze and blue eyes. He looked malnourished and shorter for a human his age, which was completely understandable with a tragic backstory as his.

Growing up as an orphaned child, barely surviving on roots and berries, his life turned around for the first time when he was accepted by the noble family of his region at the age of four. During testing his cultivation potential was at the level of a once in ten thousand years genius. With clear and strong neutral spirit roots, he was able to train in any cultivation method to train his mana. 

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Life was a lot better after that, he trained a lot, becoming stronger by leaps and bounds. He was picked as the favourite of the lord, who even betrothed his own daughter to him at the prospects of his future. Of course I wouldn't be here in the wilderness with him if that was all there was to his story. 

When he was nine, a noble brat from a different city came to visit, to strike up better relations with the local lord. Without rhyme or reason, the brat decided he didn't like how the lord's daughter looked at him once and started shouting. "You imbecile, don't you know who I am? You have seen Mt. Tai but have no eyes. Give me face and I'll only cripple both your arms and cultivation but leave your body intact. Never appear before this jade beauty again."

Said jade beauty, his betrothed was confused by the interaction but before she could blink, it was all over as shouting filled the room. The noble brat indeed broke both his arms and crippled his cultivation, tainting his clear spirit roots. The normal reaction of the lord should have been to admonish the noble brat and throw him out, but as a ruler of a region he couldn't cry over spilt milk. Demanding huge concessions in their trade agreements, he pushed forth to get an amazing deal for his region to prosper at the cost of someone already broken. Brutal and heartless some might say, pragmatic others might counter. 

With an added bonus of rare high level magic beast cores in exchange for banishing his once son in law, he healed his arms as an apology, before kicking him out and banishing him from his household.

That's where I came into the picture. Seeing the potential of a tragic backstory as the main character screamed for vengeance, I quickly sidled up to him in the position as infinitely wise councilor and sage beast. Will he find out one day that I am a fraud? Possibly. Will he take revenge and off me after finding out? I doubt it. It's in both his and mine best interest to make him powerful. He will have the main characters heaven defying luck, which will rub off on me and of course I'll make him share the resources he finds. As a wise sage beast I'll be his guide. Let him do the heavy lifting while I'll enjoy the peaceful sunrays.

I turned my head towards the youth again to see him tapping his food in impatience. Good, he got used to waiting for my input. "Well done boy, we collected enough for your medicinal bath. You only need to collect the Fiery Yang Flower and the Moonlight Devourer Yin Shroom. One grows in places where lots of sunlight gathers and I'll help you find that one.

The other one grows in most caves with an opening towards the sky, it loves to absorb moonlight which is nourishing for it's growth." I rumbled lazily and yawned hard enough to crack my jaws.

Do those things exist? Probably, I mean stuff like that always exists, even if it has a different name. He's also the main character, he will stumble upon it accidentally, then get woven into some silly life or death conflict and barely escape with his life and rare material intact. I looked him over again and rubbed my face against my paw. "Come here and lie down on the ground." Like usual he lies down and closes his eyes. An old folktale in my past talked about healing powers of cats and dogs. Licking wounds was seen as a way to accelerate their healing. As a fox beast looking like a mixture of cat and dog I decided it was close enough.

Stretching lazily I trotted towards the downed youth, licking the deepest and worst of his wounds. With his spirit root tainted I told him he'd have to cultivate in either body refinement or soul refinement.

I still remember his excitement about being able to train again and become strong enough to get his revenge.

As is usual with genius characters, even vague hints help them breakthrough to new level!. That means I'm able to vaguely describe and do things and they always turn out to be true enough.

Slight subterfuge and being vague to hide the truth. The truth? That behind my wise persona I'm probably even more clueless than him. 

"That tickles." He giggled as I licked his last wound.

"Remember to do your core strength training again before you search for the Icy Yin Shroom Of Life And Death." I said, walking to my favourite spot of sunlight.

"Wasn't it a Moonlight Devourer Yin Shroom?" He mumbled so lightly, that if I wasn't a monster I wouldn't have heard.

"Yes, those too. Whichever you find first, either will work." I rolled up in a cozy sleeping position. "I thought I'd mention the second one to help heighten the chances of finding a fitting material." I yawned once more and closed my eyes. I knew I was safe here and could sleep in peace till he wakes me up the next time.