Chapter 25:

I brought up my sword quickly, parrying a blow aimed at my head. A small opening appeared in my opponent's guard. I struck for it, aiming for a stab with the full intent to pierce through their head.

His sword came back up and diverted my stab. Then he flicked his sword and nearly cut my hand. I managed to pull back just in time to avoid that. But it left me a bit off balance and allowed my opponent to continue his attack.

I fell back on the defensive as a flurry of blows was launched against me. Doing my best, I tried to parry and block it all, not able to even try for a counterattack. Each blow was fast and precise, almost too fast for me.

Rips started appearing on my training robes for the many blows I couldn’t fully defend against. Below them, shallow wounds were cut into my skin. But they were of little concern to me. I was more used to the pain now, and with my Vitality, they didn’t really affect my fighting.

Some of our audience cheered while others jeered as I was pushed back. I ignored it as best as I could, trying to keep my focus on the spar.

Still, I couldn’t help but feel just a bit annoyed. Not at our audience, but at my inability to keep up with the relentless assault against me. If I was fully boosted to 3x like Qi Devourer was able to do at max, then this wouldn’t be such a difficult fight. Unfortunately, I wasn’t being bolstered anywhere near that much despite using the boost.

That was something I figured out over the last week of training and sparring in the Sun Compound. My stats were now too high—have been since I reached Rank 1, likely—and the 250 Qi stored in Qi Devourer’s reserved pool wasn’t enough to get me to 3x anymore. It could only reach around a 1.5x boost.

Still impressive, but not nearly enough for me to really have a chance when sparring with Jianfeng. With my spirit beast cultivation, I was stronger than him in pure strength when boosted, but he had me beat in speed using a wind movement technique. Not so much to be overwhelming, but when combined with his greater experience and skill, the only reason the spar was still going was he was holding back.

Over the last week, the only time I’d managed to barely win a spar against him was when I surprised him with my crude workaround to getting enough Qi for a 3x boost.

Something I couldn’t do now. Both because I wasn’t supposed to be relying on that expensive technique, as well as the fact that it was easily worked around by anyone who knew what I was doing. Thankfully, I still had other options available to me. I hadn’t just been spending the last week practicing my swordsmanship, after all.

I parried several more slashes, accepting more painful but superficial cuts on my arms as I stood my ground. Then I activated my newest Skill, one that I’d been working hard to adapt to.

Earth Constructs(Active) (Rank D): Create constructs out of earth within range shaped by your will and imagination. Additional Qi can be expended to increase the size or strength of constructs.

* Cost: 5 Qi

* Upkeep: 1 Qi per 5 Minutes

* Range: 5 Yard Radius

Spears of hardened rock shot out of the ground from both sides of me. It still wasn’t quite as fast as the Skill Rock Spears—Earth Construct requiring much more focus and willpower to achieve the same results in exchange for its greater versatility—but it was enough. My training with the Skill was paying off, though not so much that I was going to risk consolidating further to Earth Manipulation.

Not yet.

Jianfeng’s eyes widened at my move, and he lurched back while slicing apart the spears aimed at him. That gave me enough time and space to funnel even more Qi into Earth Constructs for the next part of my plan.

My Qi rushed into the earth and this time a dome of solid rock started to form around me. One large enough for me to maneuver in. Jianfeng rushed to try and disrupt me before I finished it. But I held him back by making more spears of rock grow out of the forming dome. Just long enough for my construct to finish forming, leaving me safe for the moment. I’d channeled a lot of Qi into the dome to make it tough enough to be quite hard to break.

Grinning at my plan working, I held my sword up at the ready and moved away from the center of my shelter. I kept track of Jianfeng’s attempt to break through my defense with Earth Sense, attacking him with spears of rock to slow him down. At the same time, I activated Metallic Razor Slash as I prepped my attempt at winning this match.

I didn’t have too much time to prepare this, as the dome took a lot of Qi to make and so did my rock spear attacks. Despite having a lot more Qi than most people at my level, I didn’t have enough that I could keep this up much longer without draining myself dry.

So once my Skill was prepped, I lined myself up with where Jianfeng was still trying to slash through my deteriorating spiky dome. Then I used Earth Construct once more and opened up that part of the dome by shaping the rock there inward.

The moment the path was cleared, I activated Burst Step and lunged forward with a metal Qi-enhanced stab. I aimed right for Jianfeng's throat. A week of an old man berating me for not being vicious enough in the spars—despite having a late-stage Qi-Gatherer as a referee—kept me from aiming anywhere else.

For a moment, I thought I was actually going to get my second win against Jianfeng. But despite my surprise, and despite all my speed, he still somehow managed to parry the blow.

He met my glowing silver blade with his own glowing a duller light. And even though I couldn’t really see it, I knew the wind was guiding and aiding him in his movements. Shifting the line of my attack ever so slightly, he forced me to miss his throat, and then he slashed down with his sword.

I froze when his sword was just above my head, close enough to tickle a couple of strands of my hair.

My breathing was heavy from the brief period of extreme speed and adrenaline. Yet Qi still surged through my body because of the boost from Qi Devouring, leaving me feeling oddly energized and wanting to continue our spar.

But I lost fair and square, so I held back on that urge.

Instead, I sighed and pulled my sword back as we both straightened from where we’d stopped. I also tried not to feel frustrated at the loss. I’d only been training for a week, after all. I should be proud of how far I’d already come. And it wasn’t like I didn’t have my own advantages. Advantages that I make use of very soon, hopefully.

“My win again,” Jianfeng said, smiling as he sheathed his sword. I moved to do the same.

Off to the side, sitting on stone benches, our audience cheered. The loudest were the two—non-disguised—girls there, Feifei and Sun Yun. They tended to cheer for Jianfeng. Partially because he was the better fighter. However, I suspected it also had something to do with the crush both girls seemed to have on the man.

“Yeah, kick his butt!”

“That was wonderful, Jianfeng!”

I didn’t take it too personally though, as it wasn’t like there wasn’t anyone cheering for me. Lin did so… Well sometimes. Half-heartedly. But at least Big Chui did so with more vigor. He was another one of Lin and Jianfeng’s friends who were taken in by Sun Xia. Around the same age as the rest of us, but almost a whole head taller and really broad. Hence the nickname. A very nice guy as well, happy to cheer for the underdog in the fight.

“Good effort.”

“That was a great attack!”

And, of course, then there was Little Tao and Sun Yan.

Little Tao was much younger than everyone else in the training yard, maybe ten at most. He’d also been with Jianfeng and Lin when they were still on the streets before meeting Sun Xia. And, as expected of his age, he just liked to watch the fighting and cheered everybody loudly as he hopped up and down.

“Yay! That was so amazing!”

Sun Yan was near the complete opposite. He was the fraternal twin of Sun Yun but seemed to have some health issues. It left him a bit on the thin side, as well as a bit quiet. Still, he clapped politely from the sidelines.

Of course, not everyone was so positive about all this. One person watched all this with his arms crossed and an unimpressed frown on his face. This was Gou Shi, the trainer hired by Sun Xia to help teach all her retainers. He was a late-stage Qi-Gatherer and a retired Alchemist Guard.

He was also, as far as I could tell, never happy.

“Terrible, just terrible,” the older man said, shaking his head as he walked over. He turned a very stern glare at me, making my spine stiffen. “You’re doing better at using your techniques while fighting. But only because you were completely inept before. You still need to weave your techniques into your swordsmanship. Don’t just swap between the two!”

“And even if you’ve got a lot of Qi for your cultivation,” the old man continued, “that doesn’t mean you should be spending it so freely in a fight! That dome was impressive for your cultivation and gave you space, but it was also incredibly wasteful! Against more than one opponent, even if you manage to defeat an enemy with your move, you would end up draining yourself dry. And don’t you dare think you can just recover with spirit stones! Even if you can do it faster than most, you hardly have the resources to be so wasteful.”

The old man shook his head in disgust and glared at me.

I winced and rubbed the back of my head sheepishly. He wasn’t wrong about anything he said, and I was still working on following his advice. I also couldn’t blame him for the attitude either. Not after I realized why he was so against the way I used spirit stones before.

My time in a spirit stone mine had left me with an incorrect idea of their actual value and rarity.

A single spirit stone could feed a normal family of four for half a year. It could be used to buy several monster cores—depending on the type—and was a very important cultivation resource. Especially if you didn’t have access to a Qi-rich environment. So my style of just scarfing them down really was absurdly wasteful.

It was like I was eating tens of thousands of dollars each time I ate a full stone. If I’d seen someone doing that back on Earth, I’d be rather disgusted as well. Which was why I was trying to break that habit by not relying on them so much.

I’d even managed to figure out how to fill up my Qi Devourer reserve manually with my own Qi instead of using stones. It took some trial and error, but it was something I was very motivated to do once I understood the value of a spirit stone.

“And you,” Gou Shi said, turning his glare onto Jianfeng instead. “What have I told you about the Stormchaser Steps? You should be living and breathing the second form. Not just…”

I relaxed as Gou Shi’s ire was turned toward Jianfeng instead. While I appreciated the advice, that didn’t mean I liked having the man’s attention any longer than necessary. He could be quite intense after all.

As Gou Shi went over everything he felt that Jianfeng did wrong, I took the free moment to clean up the training yard a bit. I used Earth Constructs to deconstruct the dome and filled back in the ground as best as I could.

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I also did the same with all the chopped-up spears of earth. It wasn’t quite perfect, as I didn’t have a good way to completely fuse the stone without making the ground harder to deal with for the servants who would be cleaning up after us. But it was better than just leaving everything to the groundskeepers.

I could have probably done more with Earth Manipulation if I consolidated my Skills further, combining Earth Constructs with Reinforce Burrow Creation. But I was holding off on that for now. I was still getting used to Earth Constructs. My hope was that getting better at this Skill would make the transition to Earth Manipulation easier. Allow me to keep doing what I could now, instead of having to relearn it all from scratch.

I wasn’t quite sure if that would work, but if I didn’t test these things then I’d never know. Also, I wasn’t willing to give up Discreet Earth Wader for Earth Manipulation either by combining it with Reinforce Burrow Creation. Recreating that Skill with Earth Manipulation seemed like it would be incredibly hard, and it was just too useful of a Skill to lose for however long it took me to relearn it.

I couldn't use it too easily in a direct fight as I was still working on how quickly I could drop into the ground. And someone who knew I could do that would be able to take advantage before I was fully submerged. But despite all that, it was still an incredibly powerful tool for ambushes, scouting, and escaping.

If I was planning on staying away from fighting for a long period of time, I might not have been so cautious about this. I would have just taken the short-term loss for potentially long-term gain. However, the more I learned about this world, the less willing I was to take the slow and steady approach when it came to getting stronger.

This world was simply way too dangerous for my liking. And it would continue to be that way for me until I had the strength to truly protect myself. The fastest way I could reach that point would be, ironically, to take on more dangers. To hunt spirit beasts for even more Skills as well as cores.

And a Skill like Discreet Earth Wader would be far too useful for that to give up on now.

Of course, I doubted I would actually reach the level of strength needed to be truly safe any time soon. But, it would at least make me feel better if I got all the low-hanging fruit first before I focused on more long-term gains.

Gou Shi was still not done by the time I cleaned up as best as I could. But, two familiar figures walking into the yard interrupted him, much to Jianfeng's visible relief and my surprise and excitement.

Was today the day?

“And another thi—” Gou Shi started to say before he noticed what I had. He straightened up at the sight of Sun Xia and Zhao Wei before turning to face them and bowing. “Young Miss. What can I do for you today?”

“I just need to speak with Li Lan for a moment,” Sun Xia said, gesturing toward me with a smile. Having gotten a bit more used to seeing her around the Sun Compound, that didn’t make me feel as nervous as it used to.

“Of course,” Gou Shi said respectfully. Then he turned to glare at me. “You heard her, boy. Don’t keep the Young Miss waiting.”

I did my best not to roll my eyes at that. Mainly because the man could likely snap me in half with barely any effort, and I did appreciate his training even though he technically didn’t need to bother with helping me. I wasn’t one of Sun Xia’s retainers after all.

Instead, I walked over to Sun Xia, a feeling of anticipation in my chest. We’d met and spoken a few times when we ran into each other over the last week. But she hadn’t sought me out like this before. So I could only assume it meant that she was ready to help me with one of the three rewards I’d ask for.

“Walk with me,” Sun Xia said as I neared before she turned to leave the courtyard. Zhao Wei nodded at me before following her mistress.

I rushed to follow suit.

“I’ve managed to procure something for your privacy issue,” Sun Xia said, stopping in a small empty courtyard away from the training yard. She turned to face me and pulled a wooden box out of her spatial pouch. I couldn’t help but marvel at the sight of the too-big box leaving the little pouch at her hip. It was like a magic trick but better. “So it seems your time locked up in the compound is at an end.”

I grinned at the news and eagerly took the box when she handed it to me. Opening it up, I saw what appeared to be a simple silver necklace with a jade charm. I had something similar when I was a little kid.

“As long as you have that on,” Sun Xia said, gesturing to the box. “You will not have to worry about even a Foundation Establishment Cultivator finding out your secret. Not unless they know exactly what they are looking for and force the issue. But if that ever happens, you will already be in a very dangerous position.”

“Thank you,” I said, grinning with anticipation. “I really appreciate this. It’s good to finally not have to worry about that and get a chance to see the city.”

“You are welcome,” Sun Xia said, nodding. “Have you thought of where you would like to go first with your newfound freedom?”

I nodded at that as I took the necklace out of the box. Zhao Wei offered to take the box to free up my hands, which I accepted gratefully. Then I finally put on the necklace. A strange feeling seemed to wash over me for a moment before it disappeared.

“Yeah,” I said, just a little distracted as I tried to get a feel for what the necklace was doing. But it was too elusive for me to really feel anything from it anymore. “I’ve discussed it a lot with the others. Lin and Jianfeng offered to show me around the city in general, but the one place I know we will go to is the Starguard Hall.”

Sun Xia nodded at that. “Prudent. I was going to suggest the same if you hadn’t brought it up. Even should you choose to become my retainer, they would still be a very valuable source of information and techniques. They might even have something that could help you with your unique cultivation.“

“Yeah,” I said, grinning. The moment I learned about the Starguard Hall, I knew I would be joining it. Very little strings attached, access to a lot of resources, all to do what I was already planning on doing to cultivate and harvest Skills. Not that I would mention that last part to Sun Xia. “That’s the main reason I want to join. But the money I can get wouldn’t hurt either.”

“Yes, I suppose that would be another benefit,” Sun Xia said, smiling. ”Now, this is one part of my repayment to you done. As for your two other requests, I should have time in five days to oversee your cultivation experiment, but the spirit beast hunting will need to wait until next week. I hope you do not mind.”

“Not at all,” I said, shaking my head. I wasn’t in a rush or anything, and I knew Sun Xia was still quite busy from what I’ve heard. “This necklace is already amazing. I can wait for the other things.”

“Excellent,” Sun Xia said. “Then I won’t keep you any longer. Enjoy your newfound freedom.”

I grinned at her and nodded. “I will.” Then I rushed off to let the others know.

—line break—

Jianfeng, Lin—still using her male disguise—and I left the Sun Compound at around noon. Though not before saying goodbye and hearing quite a bit of grumbling from the rest of my new friends. Mainly it was Sun Yun who was still not allowed to leave the compound because of her reckless attempt to save Jianfeng and Lin. But there was some grumbling from the rest too. Feifei had duties at the compound she had to attend to. Big Chui had yet to reach Early Qi-Gathering and couldn’t skip his daily cultivation. And Little Tao had daily lessons he wasn’t allowed to skip either.

So it was just the three of us who left the compound and headed out into the city.

For the two of them, I imagined it was a rather mundane thing. For me though, it was very much exciting. Not only because it would be my first time leaving the compound after being stuck there for a week. But also because it would be my first time in what was essentially an alien city.

Sure, it wasn’t completely alien to me. There were a lot of things that seemed familiar, even if I’d only ever seen them in fiction and historical recreations. But even then, those things hardly matched one-to-one with this world and city. And pictures and videos were very much different than seeing things in real life.

We started off in some kind of rich residential area where more compounds like the Sun Compound resided. It was mainly composed of wide streets bordered by a bunch of walls for the various neighboring residences. There was still greenery mixed into this however, beautifully worked to look natural and perfectly maintained. Not a stray blade of grass or weed in sight. Also not many other people around.

As we continued moving south, however, the compounds got smaller and smaller until they were replaced by single homes. We saw more people walking around as well, most wearing cultivator robes in a variety of colors. Then after that, we finally reached what Lin told me was known as the Cultivator District.

The streets widened up even further here, and soon I found it hard not to gawk at everything like a tourist.

The buildings here were much more eye-catching and vibrant than what I’d seen so far, except for maybe a few of the larger buildings in the Sun Compound. Even then, most of those hadn’t seemed like they were designed to draw attention like the ones I was seeing.

All the colors here popped more from the painted wood and tiles of the buildings; mainly an assortment of reds, blues, and greens. There were intricate-looking murals on many of the walls depicting landscapes, spirit beasts, and what might have been battles. Alongside those were carvings and decorative flourishes on the rest of the buildings, as well as intricate—almost life-like—statues at the entrances of the shops.

Even the various shop signs looked beautiful. The characters—which I could read thanks to subtitles from the System—all looked to be made out of gold, silver, or jade. Jewels or intricately carved wood frame them, along with icons that fit the theme of the various shops.

Everything was just so different from the utilitarian architecture of modern cities I was used to that I couldn’t help but want to look at every little detail. And that wasn’t taking into account the various things being sold, along with the most stunning thing of all.

As if all the beautiful—if normal—art wasn’t enough, many of the stores and restaurants had more fantastical decorations. One had a simple cloud of mist that glinted against the noon sun, highlighting a shop called the Heavenly Lotus Blossom. It was dense enough, and the light reflective enough, that I knew it couldn’t be normal.

Another shop called the Raging Flame Forge—which was much further into the district and well away from the Residential District—had a burning red anvil made out of fire right over their sign.

And another shop called the Heavenly Water Pavilion had several water fountains in front of the shop. All the water was incredibly pristine and clean looking, but what really caught my eye was the streams of water twisting in the air in impossible patterns, along with bubbles of water that just floated through the air around the building's sign. Apparently, that was a really well-known and expensive restaurant owned by members of the Shen Clan—the greatest clan in the city.

“Is the whole city like this?” I asked in awe as my attention was drawn away from the fancy restaurant by a man descending from the sky. The sight in the light of day still took me aback despite having seen Master Fang Hong and the Black Wind. How common were cultivators that could do this, I couldn’t help but wonder.

Lin scoffed and shook her head. “Not even close. The streets are only so clean in the richer parts of the city. And all those wasteful spirit array decorations you’ll only see in the Cultivator District. The rest of the city is hardly so bright and clean as this place. Don’t let all the pretty sights fool you.”

Jianfeng sighed at his friend but didn’t correct her. Instead, he said, “He isn’t wrong about that. Most places in the city are hardly as nice. And as beautiful as this place seems, you should be careful. Even in the nicest parts of the city, you can run into danger if you get on the wrong side of some people. Especially if you are alone and don’t have the protection of anyone more powerful.

I sobered a bit at that. Right, this was still a cultivator world. I could run into some arrogant young master and end up with an ever-escalating feud if I wasn’t careful. Thankfully, I wasn’t a confrontational kind of guy, so that shouldn’t be too much of an issue.

“Come on,” I said with a sigh. “You couldn’t let me enjoy the moment for a while?”

“Sorry, sorry,” Jianfeng said sheepishly. “Not the most fun topic, but it had to be said.”

“Better no fun than dead,” Lin said with a deadpan. Though perhaps she was a bit apologetic as she followed that up by saying, “But at least for today, you don’t have to worry too much about that stuff. Just stay close, and we’ll keep you safe while you gawk.”

I couldn’t help but smile a bit at that. “Well, alright then. Thank you.”

We headed west through the district where the governor's palace loomed overhead on a hill. I continued to look at the various displays outside of shops and what I could make out of the merchandise being sold. There seemed to be a shop for everything, from clothes to weapons, to armor, to foods, to what might have been alchemical ingredients, to other things that I wasn’t really sure about.

Then, finally, we reached our destination. The Starguard Hall. It was ten stories tall, each level above smaller than the one below, creating a sort of pyramid shape. Each roof of the layers curved up at the ends elegantly. Five stars—seemingly made out of golden light—hovered over the double-wide doors that led into the building. Patterns of the same light, along with silver and bronze lights, decorated the red and white exterior.

I couldn’t help but grin at the sight. Its appearance was impressive, but I was much more excited about what lay within.

Over the last week, I learned a lot about this world from talking with Lin, Jianfeng, and my other new friends. And I quickly realized my thoughts on becoming some kind of bandit-hunting merc were very much possible. Both because there were, unfortunately, a lot of acceptable targets in this world, as well as because of the Starguard Hall’s existence.

They were pretty much the ideal organization to help support me, able to provide all sorts of resources in exchange for doing what I already wanted to do—hunting bandits and other outlaws, as well as hunting spirit beasts.

Said resources were everything from money, to information about all known spirit beasts, to cultivation techniques that would hopefully make better use of my Cultivation Skill. All of it would be available to earn once I joined, with a lot fewer strings attached than any other organization.

Of course, joining the Starguards wasn’t as simple as just walking in and asking to become a member. There was a test that needed to be taken. A trial involving all the people that wanted to join in a period of time.

Today, I would just be signing up for this trial. Not a big deal, but it was a good first step toward truly settling down in this world. Even should I end up not becoming Sun Xia’s retainer, the Starguard would let me support myself if the need arose.

My grin grew at the thought, and I gave the impressive building one more long look. Then, the three of us made our way inside.