After Lan Jin finishes listening to Moxian and turning all of the green Qi within his body into a purple cloud located in his Dantian, he decides to leave his uneaten bamboo shoot inside of its pot of water for the morning and get some rest. He figures he’d done enough over the course of the day to warrant going to sleep early. Though, he didn’t know whether he wanted to look forward to the morning because he already knew he had a lot to plan for.
He still had to try to figure out where he was and if there was anyone else around, and that meant he’d have to try to get to a higher vantage point— possibly even climbing a mountain to see things in the distance. But for that to even be a possibility, he would need to prepare food, water, something other than his hoodie to carry things, and whatever else he decides he needs between now and when he goes exploring.
He also had to ask Moxian whether his having purple Qi would be a bad thing. He didn’t know if she would have the answer, but he could already imagine the mess he would find if he looked up ‘purple Qi’ using the Omega Browser. The only question is whether he would waste more of his soul’s energy trying to pry it out of Moxian or by using the Omega Browser. Or maybe he should look up the Auspicious Tri-Colored Flame first. That might send him down the right path even if it does end up taking multiple searches to find the answer.
Just thinking of how much he has to do in the coming days is exhausting enough for him, so he buries his fire in the dirt, covers the bamboo pot holding the shoot with more bamboo, and crawls his way into his shelter before laying his head down on his arm and closing his eyes.
But as he tries to sleep, Moxian chooses to ask him random questions at irregular intervals— ones he cannot answer due to his lack of energy. It’s incredibly distracting and he wants to cover his ears to block out the sound of her voice, but with her voice being inside of his head, he has no way to cancel it out.
Eventually, he manages to fall asleep despite her talking. But as he sleeps he dreams of a red-eyed woman with long black hair and a body that could drive a person to sin. And unfortunately, in his dream, the woman chooses to repeatedly jab him with a stick whenever his mind begins to wander.
***
Moxian grins happily while sending random messages to Lan Jin. She frankly doesn’t care about most of what she’s asking him, but she feels unsatisfied with the fact that Lan Jin wasn’t able to respond to her assistance with his gratitude. She fully understood that he probably couldn’t reply to her right now due to how weak she assumed his soul is, but that fact didn’t deter her from intentionally distracting him to pass the time.
So for more than an hour, Moxian asked him questions that she forgot about as soon as she sent them past the confines of the little blood bubble that held a portion of her power.
She also paid close attention to the darkness outside of the bubble while trying to figure out what it was. After she had sent Lan Jin several dozen messages, she noticed that the darkness began to writhe and churn inexplicably. It concerned her as it created ripples that completely encapsulated the blood bubble, but she relaxed when she realized that nothing harmful seemed to be happening to her. Instead, it almost felt like a tiny part of her soul was being massaged by a gentle pulse of water.
She even felt her soul being strengthened by it, but given the small amount of her soul exposed to the ripples and compared to her own cultivation, it was hardly worth mentioning. Still, she found herself wanting to know more about the strange darkness that could not only allow her to communicate with someone who existed somewhere else entirely, but also slightly increase the strength of her soul as well.
Her grin widens.
“It seems I’ve managed to choose a very interesting pet!”
After a moment she frowns.
“But I will need to find a way to punish him for not being able to respond to me. Who ever heard of a pet ignoring its master? Or should I reward him for my soul benefiting from him— it’s hardly doing anything, but a small gift is still a gift, right? No, no. Rewards and punishments must be considered separately and neither can be forgotten. Then what should I do to reward him? And how can he be punished?”
Moxian’s thin eyebrows furrow slightly as she considers rewards and punishments, but Lan Jin isn’t aware of the fact that he’d made himself a more interesting play thing to a woman who has much more free time than himself.
***
Lan Jin wakes up in the early morning feeling refreshed. His weird dream that was, without a doubt, caused by Moxian’s constant questioning had faded sometime later in the night and he managed to get some restful sleep after that. Even better, his now-purple little star had rejuvenated in his sleep and looked to be just a little brighter now than it had been before he had searched for the monument with the man holding the bronze mirror yesterday.
With that thought in mind, he begins thinking about how he should start his day. Once again, he has three options at the front of his mind. The riskiest was asking Moxian for help figuring out whether his having purple Qi was a bad thing. The next option would be to directly search for purple Qi using the Omega Browser, but he felt that was a real hit-or-miss scenario, and given how many options were always available when he searched, he was sure he’d find something, but he doesn’t know if it would be helpful. The final option would be to take it slow and start from the Auspicious Tri-Colored Flame. This would inevitably lead to the results he was looking for, the only question is how long it would take.
While thinking his choices over, Lan Jin uncovers the ashes from last night and makes a fire saw out of a piece of bamboo in order to restart the fire. Then he puts his bamboo pot with the shoot still inside of it next to the fire to let it warm up and kill any bacteria that got into it over the last several hours.
However, before he is able to make up his mind, Moxian begins contacting him.
“Is your energy recovered? After so long it must be, right?”
Lan Jin blinks slowly and finds that he suddenly feels exhausted despite just waking up. He even wonders if he made a mistake by asking Moxian to help him save his life. After all, given what little he had to work with, he may have bumbled across the method of throwing the fire inside of his Dantian to purify the green Qi. After all, he’d already turned the Qi into purple mist outside of his body, and the fire was normally inside of him in the first place. If Moxian had never contacted him, he’s fairly certain he would have tried it out eventually.
Though, with that being said, he did discover the method of rotating his Qi from Moxian. He also learned a lot more about the Qi Gathering realm from her. And if he had bumbled across the method of throwing the fire into his Dantian by himself, then all of the purple mist it released would have gone straight to the Omega Browser’s Space instead of forming a cloud inside his Dantian.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
“Should I humor her? She did help me out and, other than her weird pet fetish, she’s likable enough. Plus I still have no clue how I can get rid of the blood bubble.”
He thinks it over for a minute before letting out a sigh and grimacing at the purple star full of energy.
“I feel like I’m about to waste a whole ton of energy for nothing.”
Shaking his head, he resigns himself to messaging Moxian.
“Hi, Moxian. Energy is back. Still weak. Do you know of purple Qi?”
Her response is immediate.
“What Moxian? I’m your master! You have to remember to call me Master! When have you ever heard of a pet saying their master’s name? For that, I will increase your punishment for not responding to my questions by half!”
“And I regret messaging her already. That didn’t last long.” Lan Jin lets out a heavy sigh and turns his attention back to the bamboo pot of water warming up by the fire. It still isn’t hot, so he doesn’t think he should eat the shoot inside it yet, but he hopes it won’t take too long to warm up as he feels a little peckish.
“I should have eaten it last night and just cut up another one this morning. What was I thinking?” He shakes his head at himself and stands up to stretch a little bit.
“Hurry up and call me ‘Master’!” Moxian warns him. The message makes her sound authoritative, but for some reason, Lan Jin can’t help but think that Moxian is pouting. It doesn’t even make sense because there are no facial expressions involved in sending the messages back and forth, but he’s certain that Moxian is upset.
“What the actual fuck? Do emotions bleed over while sending messages or something?” Shaking his head, Lan Jin wonders if he should acquiesce or not. Though it had been in a moment of desperation, he had called her ‘Master’ once already. And she had followed through with her own promise.
“But I never promised to keep calling her master.” He reasons with himself. “She just made me say it to help me, and she didn’t even do that much…”
Lan Jin struggles with his thoughts. He absolutely doesn’t want to call her ‘Master’ and encourage her even further, but it’s his own fault that he’s in this situation to begin with.
“If you don’t refer to me as your master right now you can just wait to see how I find trouble with you!” Moxian warns, a hint of anger clear in the message she sends and Lan Jin can’t help but worry about his own well-being.
Reasonably, she should have no way to punish him. But she also knows a lot more about magical things than he does and she may very well have a way to find him that he doesn’t know of. And if that happens, he’s sure she could do whatever she wants to him and he couldn’t do a thing to stop it.
“Fuck it. I’ve already thrown away my pride once. Doing it again won’t hurt me.”
Gritting his teeth, Lan Jin decides to bite the bullet and not burn this bridge just yet.
“I’m sorry Master. It takes a lot of energy to send messages.”
Several seconds pass before Moxian replies, and during that time Lan Jin checks on his food.
“Even if that’s true, I don’t want to hear it! From now on you can only call me your master! And if I ever hear of you betraying me or not giving me face, just wait and see what happens to you! Now what did you say about purple Qi? Why are we talking about purple Qi all of a sudden? Wasn’t it green before? Did you eat something else?”
Lan Jin really doesn’t want to reply to that question, and only a small part of the reason is that it would take more energy for him to do so. But the real reason is that, considering the number of times he’s consumed the purple mist without actually knowing what it is, he’s sure Moxian might have some things to say to him.
“Fuck it. She already views me as her pet. My standing in her eyes literally couldn’t get any lower anyways. But sending a message to describe the Qi…”
Lan Jin hesitates and wonders if he could do it in another way. He already knows he can send messages to Moxian’s blood bubble, and those messages are just energy from the purple star. And since the energy from the purple star partially consists of the purple mist, he sees no reason why he can’t directly send her a strand of purple mist.
“I guess I lose nothing by trying…”
Not wanting to mess around with the purple cloud in his Dantian, Lan Jin summons his flame into his hand and burns a leaf before sucking in the strand of purple mist it releases. Without him putting in any effort to make it rotate within his Dantian, the purple mist charges through his body before disappearing and reappearing in the Omega Browser’s Space. Once it’s there, Lan Jin controls it and sends it directly into Moxian’s blood bubble.
He is happily surprised when it works as planned, but what he doesn’t expect is Moxian’s reaction.
“Ak!” She squeaks, the sound clearly audible even within the Omega Browser’s Space and Lan Jin wonders if she did it on purpose or if the purple mist just shocked her that much.
Several minutes pass without Moxian saying anything and Lan Jin begins to wonder if something happened to her, but not wanting to spend more energy than he needs to, he instead focuses on eating his meager breakfast consisting of a single large bamboo shoot.
It isn’t until nearly half an hour later after he finishes eating, cleaning up after himself, and getting ready for the day that Moxian finally messages him again.
“That stuff should be something good! Do you have more?”
Lan Jin looks at the purple cloud in his Dantian and the purple star that he’s pretty sure is his soul and sends Moxian a reply.
“Yes, Master. Then is it okay if my Qi is that purple stuff?”
Silence falls between them, one choosing not to reply and the other not willing to spend more energy to do so. At first, Lan Jin waits for her response, but when too much time passes, he can’t help but wonder if something came up that drew her attention away.
Eventually, Lan Jin begins activating the Heaven and Earth Refining Spirit Fire jade to strengthen his Auspicious Tri-Colored Flame. He worries about it for a brief moment because he doesn’t know if Moxian can hear it, but when he realizes that it’s been in the Omega Browser’s Space for less time than Moxian’s blood bubble, he stops worrying about it because if she could hear it, she would have heard it already.
Then he starts working on chopping down all of the bamboo separating his shelter from the stream. Given that Lan Jin doesn’t know how long he’s going to need this shelter, he wants to make sure he makes the area as livable and comfortable as possible. That means he wants to be able to move freely around the area and see far enough to know if there are any dangerous animals lurking nearby. After his close encounter with the monster echidna, he didn’t want any other monsters to be able to get close to him because he didn’t know if his luck would hold out for a second time.
For several hours, all Lan Jin does is chop down bamboo and then drag it into an ever-growing pile near his shelter. It is made easy with his bronze blade, most stalks taking only one or two swings of his blade to cut down, but it is still exhausting work to clear a large path between his shelter and the stream, and widening the path and the area around his shelter by several meters only makes the work that much harder.
When he finishes his work around noon with a pile of bamboo taller than him laying on the ground near his shelter, he is famished and so chooses to eat a pear while also moving the Auspicious Tri-Colored Flame down to his Dantian to purify the Qi the pear deposits inside of him. Then, still hungry, he walks down to the stream with his spear in hand to catch another couple of fish for a quick lunch.
Catching the fish doesn’t take him very long, but he is distracted on his way back when he hears the cracking and falling of bamboo somewhere in the distance. The sound makes him nervous and so he quickly brings his fish and spear back to his shelter before grabbing his blade and returning to the stream to figure out where the sound came from.
It doesn’t take him very long to realize that the sound is approaching his area quickly. Or rather, he realizes, it is approaching the area of the stream quickly. In fact, having done it himself so much over the last few hours, he even recognizes the now-familiar sound of a blade striking through the bamboo.
His eyes widen in surprise at the same time as he starts to feel nervous. So far, he was two-for-two with only having met crazy people since he arrived in this new world, and that was only if he didn’t count the other girls on the bank of the River of Fate who he really hadn’t interacted with.
He begins wishing that, whoever it is, they are reasonable people and, preferably, not immortals. Having met two immortals already, he was worried about what would happen if he managed to irritate immortals in person. Especially seeing as he only just began cultivating the night before.
A few minutes later, when three men appear out of the line of bamboo in front of him, Lan Jin feels as though his wish was granted. They seem completely normal to him other than the fact that they’re in the middle of nowhere and holding weapons, but seeing as he is also, he doesn’t have room to complain.