Sitting around near the fire, Lan Jin, Hu Qiuping, and Hu Gongniu eat grilled fish, a bit of tough flatbread, and some pickled vegetables off of bamboo leaves while idly chatting and doing their best to ignore Hu Shentian’s construction project going on in the background.
“So you said you were out here looking for rare herbs and natural treasures, right?” Lan Jin asks, curious to find out what would make somebody want to come to this kind of place.
Nodding his head, Hu Qiuping says, “Yes.”
“Why?”
“Why?” Hu Qiuping asks, confused. “What do you mean why? Why wouldn’t we search for rare herbs and natural treasures?”
“I mean, I more-or-less understand what rare herbs are, but what are natural treasures? And what kind of rare herbs are you looking for?”
Hu Qiuping raises his eyebrows slightly. “You should already know what natural treasures are, right?”
Shaking his head, Lan Jin answers, “Nope.”
Hu Qiuping looks surprised, but after a moment he begins speaking again. “Natural treasures are just naturally formed things that contain Qi— fruits, plants, certain stones and ores, and even bodies of water can all be considered natural treasures. So long as it is not human or made by humans and contains Qi, then it is a natural treasure. As for rare herbs, we are looking for whatever we can find that has value. As for the specifics, there are just too many herbs so there’s no point in trying to list them all.”
Confused, Lan Jin asks, “But doesn’t pretty much everything have Qi? How much Qi does something need to be a natural treasure?”
After downloading and activating that strange stone monument with the words ‘Spirit Gate’ carved into it and also having injected the purple mist into his soul, Lan Jin found that he could see the Qi around him. Because of that, he discovered that pretty much all of the plants around him had at least a little bit of Qi. Granted, the amount they had was nothing compared to the pears he had eaten, but it was still something. So, either Hu Qiuping was being too-liberal with how he defined natural treasures, or there was something else going on that Lan Jin hadn’t figured out yet.
“Theoretically, so long as there is Qi in the area, then everything that grows there should at least have some Qi in it. But the important part about natural treasures is that they are treasures. In other words, they have to be taken in relation to other things of value. If every blade of grass that grows has Qi, then how could they be considered treasures? But if one of those blades of grass has ten times more Qi than all the others, then that one blade, no matter how small, could be considered a treasure.”
Shrugging, he then says, “When it comes to natural treasures, everything is relative to the value that it can offer you personally. For Gongniu, Shentian, and I, that means we are looking for things that have enough Qi to either let us take a step forward in our cultivation or numerous things with lesser Qi that we can use to exchange for something more valuable. Others don’t care as much as long as something has Qi, but then there are people who care even more and only search for the rarest, most valuable natural treasures and consider everything else to be garbage.”
Nodding his head along with the explanation, Lan Jin says, “Oh. That makes sense.”
Then, he grabs his hoodie and digs a pear out of it before tossing it to Hu Qiuping.
“Is that thing a natural treasure then?”
Hu Qiuping looks at the pear and nods his head once before tossing it back to Lan Jin.
“It is, but it is the lowest kind of natural treasure. In fact, it is so common that, even if you had a dozen of them, they might only be worth a single small silver coin. And that’s if you could find someone dumb enough to buy them.”
“What do you mean by that?” Lan Jin asks. He doesn’t know why someone would have to be dumb to buy the pears, but it makes him feel a little concerned because he’s been eating them.
It isn’t Hu Qiuping that answers him, though. Instead, Hu Gongniu speaks up and begins to slowly explain.
“That is a Red-Skinned Pear. They have few medicinal properties and are filled with dirty Qi. If you eat one, it will contaminate the Qi inside of you and make it more difficult for you to control it. The only way to remove the dirty Qi from the pear is by turning it into a sweet wine, but that takes many years to accomplish, and, if you are successful, it is something that can only benefit your descendants and not yourself. Because of that, anyone who buys it is unlikely to turn it into wine. Instead, they plan on consuming it to quickly advance, but by doing so, they will also cut off their path of future advancement unless they continue to dirty their Qi by consuming more unrefined natural treasures.”
Shaking his head, Hu Gongniu then says, “You should be careful not to eat that kind of dirty thing. Your body is a palace and you should only fill it with the best of things.”
Lan Jin looks at the pear in his hand and then examines the purple cloud inside his Dantian. Other than not being familiar with the process, Lan Jin now knew why it had been so difficult for him to control the green Qi inside of him last night. The fact of the matter was, before even realizing it, he had already screwed himself over completely. If not for the fact that he had the Auspicious Tri-Colored Flame, he would have failed at cultivation, quite literally, before he even started.
“You should just eat it.” Hu Qiuping advises. “And if you have more, you should try to eat all of them before we reach the city tomorrow.”
Lan Jin and Hu Gongniu both narrow their eyes as they look at Hu Qiuping.
“Don’t look at me like that.” He sighs and then explains, “Didn’t you listen to him earlier? He only just learned how to cultivate and it was because he ate some pears. That means he destroyed his path of cultivation before even stepping foot onto it. But that doesn’t mean he has to destroy the rest of his life as well.”
Pointing at Lan Jin’s lumpy hoodie, he says, “Look how many pears he still has. He’s only at the first level of Qi Gathering now, but if he can eat all of those before we reach the city, then he might have a chance to reach the second or even the third level of Qi Gathering. Sure, his cultivation won’t mean anything, and he likely won’t be able to advance further, but isn’t that already the case? Not only is he a little older than us, but his Qi is already polluted by the dirty Qi of the pears. In addition, with his looks, there isn’t a single person in the Southern Border City who won’t recognize him as an outsider at first glance. The best thing he can hope for now is to manufacture some value for himself so somebody thinks he’s worth keeping around. If he doesn’t, he might not even be able to enter the city tomorrow.”
Shrugging, Hu Qiuping turns to Lan Jin and says, “I don’t mind telling you this because you’ve done nothing to harm me or my brothers and you seem reasonable enough, but, unless you do something to add value to yourself, then all the city guards will see tomorrow is a stranger with an unknown background who has nothing to offer the city. And in that scenario, you likely won’t even make it through the city gates before you’re in chains.”
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Lan Jin looks at both Hu Qiuping and Hu Gongniu. He doesn’t want to believe it, but, after looking at Hu Gongniu’s downcast expression and listening to the conviction in Hu Qiuping’s voice, Lan Jin can’t help but let out a sigh as he realizes that meeting people might not be as good of a thing as he thought.
“Thanks for letting me know.” He says, clearly upset.
In response, Hu Qiuping nods his head once and the three of them begin sitting around in silence.
After a few minutes pass, Lan Jin begins chewing on the pear in his hand.
***
Time passes quickly as Lan Jin consumes one pear after another, and soon the sun disappears from the sky entirely, the only sounds within the man-made clearing being Lan Jin’s chewing and Hu Shentian’s construction project slowly developing.
Lan Jin is tired of eating the pears, but he doesn’t stop as he frets about the consequences of not being good enough to enter the city tomorrow. In his life, this was the first time he’d worried about being restricted from an entire city based on his qualifications, but when he considered his cultivation level being his passport or a visa and the city as a country, he suddenly found it much easier to come to terms with. As a result, Lan Jin eats a single pear every hour in a desperate bid to raise his qualifications, and were it not for the fact that he needs to digest them first in order to absorb the Qi inside of them, he would be eating them even faster.
Pear after pear enters his stomach, and from them, large amounts of dirty green Qi are deposited into his body. To his eyes, it looks like he has thin, glowing green veins running throughout his body, but despite the glowing green veins, Lan Jin can’t be bothered to worry because the Auspicious Tri-Colored Flame is constantly purifying the dirty Qi into purple Qi within his Dantian. From there, all Lan Jin has to do is make the purple Qi rotate and combine with the purple cloud in his Dantian.
Due to his constant state of euphoria, Lan Jin fails to catch and rotate some of the strands of purple Qi being released into his body and the ones he misses are instead absorbed into the Omega Browser’s Space where he allows them to float about freely as purple mist. Since he needs to use them to strengthen his star anyways, it only bothers him a little, but he still can’t help but hope that it won’t affect the growth of his purple cloud too much.
As for the purple Qi that is absorbed into his Dantian, it allows his already-large purple cloud to grow rapidly. A few hours before midnight, after absorbing the Qi of five pears, it even reaches a critical point, and a small fluffy cloud that looks like little more than cotton candy splits off from the larger purple cloud and begins floating around inside his Dantian.
However, despite his initial success, Lan Jin doesn’t stop consuming pears. Knowing that his cultivation might be the cause for him not being able to enter the city, he can’t even feel a little happy about the second cloud. In fact, even if he wasn’t concerned about being able to enter the city, he likely still wouldn’t care about the addition of the second cloud as he doesn’t know what the clouds full of purple Qi can be used for or if they can be used at all since they are supposed to be clear.
Lan Jin continues on like this well into the night, every hour consuming yet another Red-Skinned Pear and each hour denoting an increase in the strength of his purple clouds.
While he eats, he notices that none of the other men intend to sleep. Instead, with the exception of Hu Shentian who is still doing his own thing, the other two men are meditating.
Lan Jin would like to ask them why they are meditating, but he puts that thought behind him for now as he is more worried about his own things.
***
Several hours later, Lan Jin finally stops eating pears, but not because he has run out or because he’s reached the third level of Qi Gathering, but because Hu Shentian walks up on the three men in the dark with a wide smile on his face and interrupts everyone’s activities. In his hands are eight large silver-scaled fish. They are all clearly alive and trying to escape Hu Shentian’s hands, and none of them have so much as a missing scale, let alone any signs of obvious damage. What’s more, Hu Shentian’s clothes are absolutely spotless and there isn’t a sign of water on them anywhere.
Hu Shentian takes one look at Lan Jin and sneers before saying, “Real men plan ahead and, with a single action, are capable of accomplishing something outstanding.”
Tired and a little bleary-eyed, Lan Jin glances between the man and his fish multiple times before saying, “I’d be more impressed if you weren’t being an asshole to the poor fish just so you can prove it takes you, like, twelve hours more than me to catch a few fish.” Then he turns away and begins chewing on another pear.
Hu Shentian’s mouth pops open and his face darkens under the light of the moon, but his words catch in his throat as he doesn’t know what to say. Instead of retorting, he stands around silently and looks down at the fish in his hands and then at Hu Qiuping and Hu Gongniu. In the end, Hu Gongniu gets up and takes the eight fish from Hu Shentian before smacking each of them on the head with his palm and killing them one after the other.
Then Hu Gongniu begins admonishing Hu Shentian. “You should rest and recover your condition for now. I will prepare these to eat, but you’ve used up too much energy over the last several hours and you will need to be able to focus on the way back to the city. When you’ve rested, make sure you take down whatever it is you made. It is not good to disturb nature so much.”
Hu Shentian’s eyes go wide and he immediately complains. “But you haven’t even seen it yet! I made a bridge that funnels all of the fish to a specific point and, if you drop a small gate, it completely stops them from being able to go through! From there you can just lift a small cage and catch as many fish as you want! Let alone these eight, I caught more than a dozen of the smaller fish but only kept these big ones!”
Letting out a soft groan, Hu Qiuping stands up and walks over to Hu Shentian. “Even if that’s true, we can’t just go around building bridges and traps wherever we like. There are other people who visit this region and if we make such obvious signs that we’ve been here, especially ones that make it look like we’ll be coming back, then it won’t be long before we or someone like us visits this place and finds it occupied by bandits. Then what will happen? People will die or be injured and all of it will be because we made it easy for any random person to easily survive in the area.”
Hu Shentian’s mouth opens and closes repeatedly, and a mixture of guilt and defiance overtakes him, but eventually the feeling of guilt wins and his shoulders begin to slump.
Letting out a heavy sigh, he says, “I’ll go take care of it.”
Lan Jin immediately stands up, his legs sore after having sat for so long, and says, “I’ll help! I wanna see what you did.”
Hu Shentian scowls at Lan Jin and says, “I don’t need your help to take care of my own problems!”
In response, Lan Jin shrugs his shoulders. “Suit yourself, but I still want to look at it.”
Then, before Hu Shentian can say anything else, Lan Jin walks off in the direction of the stream and inwardly marvels at what he can see before him.
Stretching from one side of the stream to the other is a narrow bamboo bridge without any handrails. Though it’s only three feet wide and twelve feet long, the bridge itself is made up of around thirty pieces of bamboo that are laid flat over an arrangement of bamboo posts shoved into the stream bed with empty, serpent-like trails running between them. They are spaced far enough apart that the water can flow through them freely, but they are spaced so that, unless the fish are really thin, they will have to swim up the corridors to the center of the bridge where it is connected to what looks like a small floodgate. At that point, if a small bamboo gate is open, they can easily leave. But if it is closed, they will be stuck in a trap and can be easily lifted out of the water with.
Looking at it, Lan Jin can’t help but feel dumbfounded. It was very impressive, but at the same time, it was so incredibly stupid because now it needed to be taken apart.
“Why?” Lan Jin asks aloud.
Nearby, Hu Shentian walks up to the bridge and begins tearing it apart. “With this, if not for my brothers disagreeing with me, there would have been no need to slowly collect fish in the future! We could have used this location as a camp whenever we were in this region and would have had no concerns over food!”
“Uh huh… You sure you don’t want help?” Lan Jin feels tired just looking at how much work Hu Shentian has already done and all the work he has left to do just to fix the problem he made for himself. He doesn’t feel responsible for Hu Shentian’s actions, but he feels like he should at least offer him a hand since they will be traveling together today.
“I don’t need it!” Hu Shentian sniffs.
Shaking his head, Lan Jin walks away.