Chapter 12:
Hours passed as I tried to cultivate and got nothing for my efforts. Without my Skills, I couldn’t feel the Qi from the spirit stone in my hands or in the air either. I gained no awareness of my meridians, or any wisps of Qi that may or may not be flowing through them.
“How long does it normally take to actually start cultivating anyway?” I asked with a sigh as I stopped my attempt. I leaned backward and rested my weight on my hands while keeping my eyes closed.
“Depends on the talent,” a male voice said. “Not to brag, but it turned out that I was pretty talented. After my first session of cultivating I could already draw in small amounts of Qi and keep traces within myself.”
My eyes snapped open at his voice, and I turned to face Shui Jianfeng. He wasn’t cultivating anymore, but his skin was red and he was sweating even more. His breathing was also haggard, and he seemed to be in pain.
Any hope I had that he’d manage to heal himself disappeared. Especially when I saw the concerned frown on Ming Lin’s face.
“You couldn’t deal with the poison?” I asked hesitantly.
Shui Jianfeng grimaced. “No. I think I’ve contained it, so I should be alright for now as long as I don’t move much. But… I don’t know for how long. I would be impressed by just how vicious the poison is if I wasn’t the one who breathed it in.”
I frowned at that and nodded. “Alright, then I guess we’ll just have to speed things up,” I said as I stood and looked at Ming Lin. “I still haven’t managed anything with cultivating normally. So, I guess I’ll just have to cultivate like a spirit beast.”
Ming Lin gave a conflicted look at that while Shui Jianfeng looked confused.
“Cultivate like a spirit beast?” he asked with a frown.
I nodded and explained to him what Skill I could get. His frown deepened at that and he glanced between me and Ming Lin before he sighed.
“You don’t have to do that,” he said, though it wasn’t particularly convincing. “I might be able to manage to hold on for you to dig without doing something you can’t take back.”
I shook my head. “It’s… it’s fine. I’ve been sick of being so weak, and it will probably be faster this way. And even if we get out of here, who knows how long we have to travel through the wilderness? I don’t want to have to rely on just Ming Lin to keep us both safe. Not when I can change that. Besides, didn’t you say before that spirit beasts are stronger than cultivators in terms of pure power at the equivalent stages? That could make up for any possible dangers.”
I tried to be optimistic as I said that last part. Though I don’t think I did a very good job.
Shui Jianfeng just gave me a weak smile and said, “Thank you, Lan, for doing this, then. We won’t forget this. When we are all safe, you’ll have a place with us at Everlake City.”
I nodded at that and gave him a tight smile. Then I turned to Ming Lin, who was looking at me with an unreadable expression. “So, how should we do this?”
She looked at me for another long moment before she sighed. “For now, you stay here with Jianfeng. The two of you should be able to deal with any minor dangers that come up from the caverns. I’ll go hunt and cripple as many beasts as I can to bring back for you to take from. After that, well see just how fast you can grow.”
“Are you sure you should be going alone?” I couldn’t help but ask. It still didn’t feel right leaving her to take all the risk herself.
Her response was a dull look. “Yes. If you come along, I would have to focus on keeping you safe while hunting. By myself, I can focus solely on fighting. For now, you are just too weak.”
I grimaced at her answer. She was probably right, especially given how the serpents could attack from any angle down here. But that didn’t make it any more frustrating.
“Alright, then. Good luck.”
“Yeah, try not to get yourself killed,” Shui Jianfeng said, though his tone was light. “You know how much you rely on me and my strength.”
Ming Lin actually snorted a small laugh at that. Then she shook her head and walked off.
I noticed that she didn’t take either of our two remaining Picks. During the mess with the serpents, one of them had been smashed so we were down to just two. I hadn’t even realized it as they’d recovered the two when I’d been harvesting the serpent. I guess she didn’t feel like she needed it.
I watched her back until she disappeared around the bend of the tunnel. Once she was gone, I was left wondering what I should do in the meantime. Then my stomach answered that question for me with a grumble. It made me realize how much time had passed, as did how parched my throat felt.
I turned to eye some of the glowing moss with a frown.
“You’ll have to eat eventually,” Shui Jianfeng said. I turned to see the amused look in his eyes, despite his sweaty and tired appearance.
I sighed at him and shook my head. “Yeah, I guess. Should I grab some for you too?“
Shui Jianfeng just chuckled and nodded. “Sure, we can share the misery together.”
I got up after that and went to collect some moss. Then the two of us ate a particular grotesque meal of the stuff. Everything from its taste to its texture was just awful.
When I was done, I was gagging, though Jianfeng was holding out much better. He just grimaced but managed to get it all down without much of a fuss.
“I already really wanted to get out of here,” I said once I stopped gagging. “But now more than ever.”
“It wasn’t that bad,” Jianfeng said with a shake of his head. “Not good by any means, but I’ve had worse.”
“Really?” I asked him incredulously.
He gave me a somber smile and nodded. “Ming Lin and I, and the rest of our friends… family really. Most of us grew up on the streets. When things get bad like that, you take what you can get.”
“Oh,” I said, feeling somber. I hadn’t thought that they’d had such tough childhoods. And then I realized something else. Friends that were like family, huh? Shit.
“Did…” I started to ask, hesitating for a moment. I barely knew Shui Jianfeng, so I hadn’t known how close he’d been to the Stomping Bulls. “Did you get a chance to see how many of your friends survived, then? I know I saw a few people that I thought were from the Stomping Bulls in the other groups, but I don’t think I saw too many. I’m sorry if you lost anyone close to you. Especially if you considered them family.”
Shui Jianfeng jolted back at that in surprise and confusion. Then a look of realization crossed his face. “I did try and see just how many people I could recognize from the Bulls. Only around a quarter, unfortunately. But… well, Ming Lin and I are the only ones who joined the Stomping Bulls out of our friends. And we only did so recently. I’m sad that my comrades are dead, and I respected the captain greatly. But, thankfully, my family are all back at Everlake City. Or perhaps out looking for us.”
“Oh,” I said, feeling a bit relieved. While it still sucked that so many of the Bulls were dead, it would have been a whole lot worse if they’d been like family to him. Especially the kind of family an orphan on the streets would have. “Well, that's… not good of course since you still lost comrades. But, at least you’ll get to see your family again once we get out of here.”
“Yeah,” Shui Jianfeng said, a small grin appearing on his face. Then it twisted into something more grim. “And after that, we’ll gather the forces needed to make the bandits pay.”
I nodded firmly at that. I hadn’t forgotten all I’d seen from those bastards. I didn’t know how we’d do it, even after I got stronger, but I wanted to see them pay for all they did.
I opened my mouth to ask more about what we would be doing once we got out, but a sound stopped me. It sounded like scraping, and it was coming from the direction of the mossy caverns. Then there was a hissing.
I rose to my feet with my last spirit stone in hand. Shui Jianfeng moved to a crouch and grabbed the pick that was at his side.
It was probably just Ming Lin. But it was better to be safe than sorry, especially with that creepy hissing sound.
Thankfully, it was just her. However, when I saw what was causing the scraping sound I couldn’t help but gap a little. It was another one of the serpents. At least six person-lengths long and with a mouth big enough to eat one of us whole.
It would have been intimidating, since it was still alive, if it wasn’t for how most of its body was limp and its jaw broken as well. Still, despite how horrifically injured it was, it hissed and glared as Ming Ling brought it over to us. With just one hand. While her other hand was holding three moles by the nape of their necks, limbs broken but still alive.
That… was a lot more disturbing to see than I thought it would be. I should have expected it, since how else was she supposed to bring them back here alive and safe for me to handle? Still, I couldn’t help but feel a bit squeamish about it all.
“Take care of the snake first,” Ming Lin said as she came to a stop. “It won’t last much longer.”
“Alright,” I said, not wanting to waste her efforts or the suffering these things were going through. So I grabbed the other free pick and walked over to the hissing serpent nervously. Then I raised my pick above my head and brought it down right on its skull.
And in an incredibly anticlimactic fashion, it was done. A blue halo appeared around the snake a moment later, and Ming Lin let the corpse drop to the ground.
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I focused on the snake and another screen of options popped up. Spirit Beast Cultivation immediately caught my attention as one of the Skills.
Spirit Beast Cultivation (Passive) (Rank D): Gain the ability to cultivate like a spirit beast. Devour spiritually potent flesh, cores, or vegetation and create a spirit beast core. Speed of cultivation depends on the quality of what is devoured and the rank of this skill.
* Compatibility: Early Rank 2 Materials and below
* Cooldown: 3 hours to 2 Weeks
* D-Rank Feature: Consume more materials to speed up cultivation but increases safety cooldown afterwards.
* Warning: Consuming too much at once can cause extreme stress or damage to the body.
I eyed the Skill for a long moment before I sighed and selected it. The serpent's body disappeared into motes of light and another strange feeling washed over me. It seemed to concentrate on my stomach. I also started to smell something strange…
It wasn’t a bad smell. In fact, it was a bit… enticing?
I sniffed the air and moved towards the source.
“What are you doing?” Ming Lin asked, a frown on her face as she looked at me with narrowed eyes.
That stopped me cold as I realized what I was doing. I was sniffing the air like a dog and walking towards her. I winced and let out a nervous chuckle. “Sorry, I just got the Skill to cultivate like a spirit beast. For some reason, I was smelling something good and…”
I trailed off and grimaced as I realized what I might have smelled. People didn’t count as something compatible did they? Spirit beast ranks could be equated to human cultivation levels, but they weren’t the same, right?
Hesitantly, I moved close to Shui Jianfeng instead and sniffed. But… no, I didn’t smell that same smell.
“Should we be worried?” Shui Jianfeng asked with a raised eyebrow. He’d already sat back down once Ming Lin appeared. “You don’t have a craving for human flesh now, do you?”
“Ugh, I don’t think so,” I said, shaking my head. “I don’t smell the same thing from you.”
“Then it’s probably this,” Ming Lin said, reaching into the pocket of her pants and pulling out something small, round, and a little bloody. “I ran into two serpents, and I was forced to kill one and ended up extracting this.”
The smell was stronger again, and I couldn’t help but walk over and stare at it. My mouth also watered a little at the sight. Which felt very strange to me since I was staring at a slightly bloody, not quite round rock made up of many equal flat sides.
It seemed Skills could have side effects that the System didn’t mention. Great… Still, at least it made things easier. I hadn’t wanted to think about how I was gonna make myself eat some gross stuff to cultivate—especially since we couldn’t make a fire down here.
“Is that a spirit beast core?” I asked to confirm, still unable to take my eyes off of it.
“It is,” Ming Lin said, sounding a bit odd. But she handed it to me anyway.
I took hold of it gently for a moment. Then I popped it into my mouth and swallowed it whole. It went down my throat to my stomach where it sat there heavy. But then a warmth started to spread from it, flowing through the rest of my body in waves.
It felt almost overwhelming as wave after wave of energy seemed to rush through my system. It felt like every cell in my body was bathed in this heat.
It was only when my right hand started to itch did I realize that I might have let my new instincts take over too much. The warmth was obviously Qi, and I wasn’t supposed to let any of that run through the injured meridians in my hand. If I hadn’t been so enticed by the core I might have remembered that.
Damn it. I would have to be more careful about stuff like that in the future.
“Um, I think I might have made a mistake,” I said, holding up my right hand. I couldn’t see any issues, but I couldn’t see any before either.
Ming Lin’s eyes narrowed as she examined my hand. “Is it hurting?” she asked, reaching out with her own hand before stopping and pulling back.
“No, it just feels tingly,” I said, opening and closing my hand to no apparent issues. “Can you check if my cultivating is helping or hurting it?”
Ming Lin shook her head. “No. To check, I would need to push my own Qi into your hand. That could be dangerous right now. But if it isn’t hurting, and you move you hand without issue, then it's likely a good sign. Perhaps spirit beasts don’t even use or have meridians and are instead more like body cultivators.”
“Okay then,” I said, putting my hand down for now hesitantly. Hopefully, she was right.
“Do you know how long it will take you to cultivate now?” Ming Lin asked. “And how many more cores you might need?”
I frowned in thought as I considered it. Then I realized I might have a much easier way to check that and opened up my Status screen instead.
Status page:
Name: Michael Lin
Human Cultivation: None
Spirit Beast Cultivation: Rank 0 (1% to next stage) (100% in 6 hours)
Qi: 5/5
Stats:
Strength: 6
Vitality: 5 (+2.5) = 7.5
Dexterity: 5
Mind: 6
Skills (9/20 slots):
* Primal Vitality (Passive) (Rank E: 12%)
* Basic Swordsmanship (Passive) (D Rank: 0%)
* Earth Sense(Passive) (E Rank: 10%)
* Rock Claws (Active) (Rank D: 1%)
* Earthen Camouflage (Active) (Rank E: 0%)
* Spirit Stone Devouring(Passive) (E Rank: 95%)
* Qi Leech (Active) (E Rank: 85%)
* Burrow Reinforcement(Active) (D Rank: 0%)
* Spirit Beast Cultivation (Active) (D Rank: 1%)
Skill Consolidation. (10 Options available.)
“Oh wow,” I said after I found what I needed in my status. A single core was already enough to push me all the way to Rank 1? That seemed… overpowered. Then again, I was starting from nothing. And, if it wasn’t for Ming Lin, I wouldn’t have gotten a core like this so easily. “A single core was actually enough. But… It will take 6 hours for me to finish.”
I frowned as I said that and couldn’t help but eye Shui Jianfeng hesitantly. Normally 6 hours for something like this was probably really fast. But in this situation, it felt far longer. Could 6 hours mean the difference between life and death for him?
“Six hours should not be a problem,” Shui Jianfeng said, though I wasn’t sure how much I believed him. His skin was looking pale now, but he also seemed to be sweating just a bit more. “Advancing in just that amount of time is already incredible. Once you reach that level of strength, digging up from here will be a lot faster.”
“That’s good, but…” I hesitated for a moment before deciding to mention how I can speed things up. I didn’t want to risk that he was wrong, and my body didn’t feel overly stressed by the Qi running through it anyway. It felt warm and was overwhelming in the beginning, but I could likely handle more. “I think I might be able to speed things up if I had more cores. Also, I don’t really need to stop and meditate to progress. And given how strong a Rank 1 spirit beast is, I think I will soon be able to start digging even before advancing.”
“Then I will go gather more,” Ming Lin said firmly before tossing the Rock Claw Moles on the ground. “Make use of those, and I’ll be back soon. I will be quicker if I only have to harvest cores. You can begin to dig, but don’t go deep enough to leave Jianfeng alone. Also, bring him more moss as well for water. He’ll need it and shouldn’t move himself unless absolutely necessary.”
Shui Jianfeng tried to protest that he could look after himself, but Ming Lin ignored him and rushed off. When she was gone, he sighed for a moment before leaning back and closing his eyes.
“I’m going to continue to try and contain the poison better,” he said after a moment of silence. “Don’t… push yourself too hard, Lan. I may not know how your ability works, but you should not risk your future cultivation just to save me.”
“It’s fine,” I said, eyeing the pitiful moles as I walked over to them with pickaxe in hand. “I don’t think it’s that dire. It might hurt a bit and stress my body to try and force things, but I don’t think there is any major risk to my future.”
I wasn’t completely sure of that of course. The Skill description did mention risks. But from how my hand had felt before when I over-stressed myself, I felt like I had an idea of what the warning signs might be. And even with all the Qi I felt infusing into my body, I didn’t feel I was that close to my limits just yet.
“Very well then… thank you,” Shui Jianfeng said.
“No problem,” I said before I hefted my pick and finished off the moles. My stomach twisted a bit as I did it. It was a little harder to stomach killing them, as opposed to the evil vicious-looking snake. Especially with the feeling of power that came from the warmth coursing through me. It felt kinda twisted given how strong I felt and how weak they looked.
However, what hesitance I had for doing that disappeared when I harvested one of the moles and upgraded Spirit Stone Devouring to D-Rank.
Spirit Stone Devouring (Passive&Active) (D Rank): Gain the ability to eat low-grade spirit stones. Upon consumption, gain a boost to Dexterity, Strength, Vitality, Qi reserves, and Qi regeneration, increasing up to 3x based on the size and quantity of spirit stones ingested. Higher base stats will require greater spirit stone consumption to reach the maximum increase in abilities.
* Duration: 10 Minutes
* Warning: Repeated continuous use will put your body under great stress.
* D-Rank Feature:
* Qi from consumed spirit stones will now be available for other Skills for up to 1 hour or until used all at once to boost capabilities.
This upgrade was… honestly a lot better than I thought. The increased duration and boost multiplier were nice. But it was that extra ability that really caught my attention. Maybe not as useful in the long run, once I had a larger Qi pool. But right now… It meant that I could actually start trying to dig even faster than I thought. Which was perfect, since despite what Shui Jianfeng said, I couldn’t help but feel that I needed to hurry.
I quickly harvested the other two moles after that, increasing my progress for Earth Sense to 30%. Then, after grabbing some more moss and giving it to Shui Jianfeng, I started to feel around to find spirit stones hidden in the walls. I would be needing a lot more of them soon. Both to feed my Skill until my Qi pool caught up, and to make full use of D-Rank Spirit Stone Devouring.
It would probably take more or larger stones to actually reach the new 3x boost the Skill could give me. Especially since I was finally raising my stats, meaning it would take more Qi for just a 2.5x boost. Not that I was gonna complain too much about that. Since in the end, it was letting me get stronger, and Spirit Stones weren’t hard to come by down here for me.
Soon, I’d gathered more than a dozen spirit stones. Even with only using one hand for Rock Claws, with my Earth Sense and our depth in the mines, it was almost trivial. Most were on the smaller size, but one was as large as the cut example stone that big-nose bandit showed off yesterday.
With all the spirit stones within my immediate vicinity taken, I decided to test out my new Skill and see how it worked. I popped one of the smaller stones in my mouth and chewed it. I was getting used to eating them like rock candy.
Immediately, I felt a rush of energy from the stone. Unlike before, it didn’t expand through my whole body but instead gathered and settled in the center of my chest. Ready for me to use to infuse my body or to power my Skills. Opening up my status screen, I saw that this reserve currently held 20 units of Qi. That made it 4 times my current unaugmented reserve.
I couldn’t help but grin a bit at seeing that. Yes, I could definitely start digging now. Especially since I was certain I could eat at least one or two more spirit stones of the same size. That would probably put me at 40 or 60 units of Qi. And that limit might continue to grow as my cultivation progressed. Even if it didn’t, it would be trivial for me to maintain Rock Claws and use Burrow Reinforcement as long as I had enough spirit stones. All without having to strain my body with boosts or run Qi-leech at the same time.
Excellent.
After that, I messed around with Rock Claws, just to check if I needed to actively manage where my Qi was being drawn from. As it turned out, my Skills would default to that extra reserve of energy. Something I would have to watch out for, in case I needed to use the enhancement feature of the Skill and found myself without energy because my other Skills used it all up.
Once I was done with my testing, I couldn’t help but notice that the tingling from my right hand had disappeared. I didn’t try to see if it was healed just yet, worried that I might be jumping the gun. But it seemed to be a very good sign about my chances of getting us out of here.
All that was left was for Ming Lin to return and I could finally start digging.Things were starting to look up.
At least, that’s what I thought until I heard a loud crash echo in the distance. It was strong enough that the ground seemed to tremble slightly. I tried to remain optimistic and hoped that it didn’t involve Ming Lin.
Unfortunately, I was proven wrong soon after when she returned.