Kneeling near a Serpent’s Tail plant, his figure illuminated by the early morning light, Hu Qiuping looks at the plant in frustration while Hu Gongniu shakes his head behind him.
“There is no more room. Not only have we used all of the Jadewood boxes we brought along with us, but we have even had to resort to packing as many of the same types of natural treasures in each box as possible. If we grab anything else, we will be sacrificing quality for quantity, and even if we can find many more things, it will hurt us in the future if people start thinking we are only good for bringing in a large number of poor-quality natural treasures.”
Hu Qiuping clenches his teeth, but even though he understands the logic of Hu Gongniu’s statement, with another natural treasure right in front of him, he feels like he would be harming himself by not taking it.
Behind Hu Qiuping and Hu Gongniu, Hu Shentian stares at Lan Jin while Lan Jin runs his fingers through his hair awkwardly.
“How did you manage to find so many natural treasures? Are you really a treasure-seeking beast?” Hu Shentian asks accusingly.
“Er… No? I’m just looking for them.” Lan Jin replies awkwardly.
Hu Shentian scowls and says, “And you think we’re not looking? In the last four hours, you have always been the first person to notice every natural treasure we’ve come across! How is that?”
“How the hell should I know?” Lan Jin retorts. “All I’m doing is looking around and finding them. It’s not like I’m the one putting the plants in our path— in fact, I’m not even the one who chose where we entered the bamboo forest after turning away from the stream!”
“Even still! It’s not natural that you’re able to find so many of them! Are you hiding some kind of secret? Or are you really just that much more capable of sensing Qi than the three of us?”
Shrugging his shoulders, Lan Jin asks, “How the hell would I know that? This is my first time out with you guys and all I know is that I’ve been able to notice the natural treasures first. I have no clue how good you guys are normally or how many of the natural treasures you would have noticed if I hadn’t pointed them out. I don’t even know how my being able to sense Qi compares with other people’s ability to sense Qi. If you don’t remember, I learned how to cultivate not even two full days ago. I’m just learning as I go.”
Hu Shentian clamps his mouth shut and starts looking a little sour. Given how many natural treasures Lan Jin had found so quickly, he had completely forgotten that Lan Jin had only learned how to cultivate the other day. Granted, part of him doesn’t believe it because it hurts his pride to compare his own ability to sense Qi to a novice that is so much better at it than him, but he knew that, at least as of yesterday, Lan Jin had only been at the first level of Qi Gathering and had since managed to reach the second level and was closing in on the third after eating so many of the Red-Skinned Pears.
Lan Jin, on the other hand, turns his attention back to Hu Gongniu and Hu Qiuping.
“So… what do we do with the stuff that we can’t grab? Are we just supposed to leave it here and come back for it later?” He asks curiously.
Hu Qiuping sighs. “We’ll have to leave it. As for coming back for it later… well, if we have the opportunity and it’s convenient, we might. It’s just that we normally don’t come out here that often and, even when we do, we usually prefer to carve a new path through the bamboo forest because it makes sure we don’t over-harvest any one area.”
Lan Jin nods his head and looks at the Qi-rich leaves of the Serpent’s Tail plant and can’t help but ask, “Is this plant poisonous?”
“Poisonous?” Hu Qiuping thinks and then shakes his head. “No, it isn’t. They are normally used as supplementary materials in low-grade pills and are even sometimes fed to tamed beasts to supplement their diets.”
“Oh…” Then, Lan Jin walks up to the Serpent’s Tail plant and, following Hu Qiuping’s examples from earlier, uses his fingers to pinch off two of its branches.
“What are you doing?” Hu Qiuping asks, alarmed.
Shrugging his shoulders, Lan Jin says, “I’m tired of eating pears. Plus, I don’t know how far away I am from forming the third cloud in my Dantian, so I figure I’ll try some of these instead.”
To Lan Jin, because he has the Auspicious Tri-Colored Flame to help him, he sees no real difference between eating the pears, which may as well be poisonous given the amount of dirty Qi inside of them, and eating the leaves, which look like nothing more than small pieces of spinach and contain triple the amount of Qi compared to the Red-Skinned Pears. Plus, because they are smaller, Lan Jin hopes the leaves will be able to digest faster in his stomach.
“That’s…” Hu Qiuping begins speaking instinctively in an attempt to dissuade Lan Jin, but when he thinks the situation over, he realizes he doesn’t have anything to say. To his mind, Lan Jin’s path of cultivation was severed from the moment he ate so many Red-Skinned Pears. At this point, so long as Lan Jin didn’t eat all of the leaves of the Serpent’s Tail plant at once and get sick because of it, then it might actually be a good thing to eat them because it will guarantee his success in reaching the third level of Qi Sensing before they arrive at the city.
Sighing, Hu Qiuping says, “You might as well. It won’t make a difference at this point anyways.”
Lan Jin nods and says, “Yeah, that’s pretty much what I figured.”
He then plucks a leaf off of the branch and tosses it into his mouth before chewing it slowly. The leaf is surprisingly chewy and unpleasantly sour, and before he’s willing to swallow it he lets it sit in his mouth for a minute to see if anything happens. When nothing bad seems to be happening to him, he swallows it and begins waiting for it to digest so he can start purifying the Qi inside it.
The situation seems surreal to him as he’d never expected to need to rely on random leaves in the wild in order to survive before, but, in a way, the leaves might be the very thing that allowed him to continue living in this new world. The pears, though useful so far, had a limited amount of Qi and he only had six of them left. He might be able to reach the third level of Qi Gathering with them, but that would take six hours of methodical, brain-numbing chewing in order to accomplish it.
He felt that he would still probably reach level three Qi Gathering before they arrived in the city at that rate, but other than stopping to pick up natural treasures, the four of them had been making good time so far. Though the path through the bamboo forest was slow and they’d only traveled around nine miles in three hours, that was mostly because Lan Jin found at least one or two natural treasures per mile in the bamboo forest and it took time to harvest them all. On the other hand, the five-mile trip alongside the stream was much quicker and only took just over an hour to accomplish. Once they reached the pass through the mountains, they would probably be traveling even faster as they wouldn’t need to stop so frequently to pick up natural treasures. So, depending on how hard they push themselves, they could travel the remaining distance to the city in a little under five hours.
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Given that his ability to enter the city might very well be decided by a single pear, he decides not to risk it.
Even still, the nasty, sour flavor that sticks to the back of his mouth and throat after he swallows nearly makes him gag and causes his face to turn a little green.
After Lan Jin eats the leaf of the Serpent’s Tail plant, the four men set off again with Hu Gongniu leading the way. Unlike what Lan Jin had originally expected when they got ready to turn away from the stream several hours ago, with Hu Gongniu leading the way, traveling through the bamboo forest was more like walking slowly through a grassy field. Hu Gongniu simply didn’t need any help to clear a path as he casually swung his massive boning knife through the air and felled stalk after stalk of bamboo faster than five of Lan Jin could manage if his life depended on it. The only thing that kept the men from being able to run forward freely was the need to wait for the bamboo to fall forward after being cut down. But even still, they were largely able to walk forward at a normal pace.
Lan Jin for one is grateful that he doesn’t need to focus on doing anything more than digesting the Serpent’s Tail plant’s leaf, though. The amount of Qi it has inside causes him to stumble about multiple times as he begins converting it into purple Qi and, before he has even made a dent in it, Hu Shentian turns and rolls his eyes at him.
“Hey Qiuping, you sure that leaf wasn’t poisonous?” He asks loudly while smirking at Lan Jin.
Before Hu Qiuping can respond, Lan Jin feels his face turning red and quickly explains, “I don’t think it’s poisonous, it’s just a little hard to absorb this much Qi at once. The Red-Skinned Pears were fine because it took a while for them to digest, but all of the Qi from the Serpent’s Tail leaf just hit me at once.”
Hu Shentian’s smirk grows wider and he turns his head back around as he continues moving forward, presumably satisfied with either the explanation or with having made a joke at Lan Jin’s expense.
Hu Qiuping, on the other hand, is a little more concerned.
“If you can’t handle it, you should tear the leaves into pieces and absorb them more slowly. Being distracted while moving through the wilderness is, at best, wishing injuries upon yourself. And in worse scenarios, you might even lose your life.”
Lan Jin nods his head once, feeling awkward about causing a commotion when everyone else was paying attention to what was going on around them. But, even still, he can’t stop what he’s already set into motion and he has to start converting the large amount of Qi he just consumed into the purple Qi before he can absorb it into his Dantian. And, unfortunately for him, he can’t help but stumble around awkwardly while trying to ignore the massive rush he gets from absorbing a large amount of purple Qi at once.
After realizing how quickly he can digest the leaves from the Serpent’s Tail plant, Lan Jin doesn’t dare to consume another whole one and instead follows Hu Qiuping’s advice. The rush he got from that one leaf was just too much for him and, even after acclimating himself to the purple mist and purple Qi over the last two-to-three days, it was still unbearable. Though he has to admit that absorbing that much purple Qi at once felt amazing and he wouldn’t mind doing it again under different circumstances— namely, at any time when he wasn’t moving around and risking breaking his neck if he tripped over a stone or a cut bamboo plant.
However, even with slowing down his rate of consumption, when the four men exit the bamboo forest twenty minutes later, Lan Jin finally absorbs enough purple Qi and a small chunk of the second purple cloud in his Dantian separates from the rest of the cloud and begins floating about independently.
Lan Jin lets out a sigh of relief as the three purple clouds, two large and one insignificantly small, float around freely within his Dantian. Just the sight of them makes him feel as though he now suddenly has a place in this new world and a wave of relaxation washes over him as he looks at the path in front of him.
“You broke through?” Hu Qiuping asks him.
“Broke through? Do you mean getting another cloud in my Dantian?” When he sees Hu Qiuping nod his head in affirmation, Lan Jin says, “Yeah. I just, uh, broke through.”
“That’s good for you. I know the way in which you broke through was… less than desirable, but at the end of the day, the only thing that matters is the results. As for what comes later…” Hu Qiuping shrugs his shoulders. “In the Southern Border City, most family heads in the outer region of the city never get past the sixth level of Qi Gathering— and that’s with the combined effort of their families doing everything they can to prop them up so they can stand evenly with their peers. You being a third-level Qi Gathering cultivator can’t be considered high, but no one in the outer regions of the city will go out of their way to exclude someone who might benefit their family.”
“Oh. That’s good.” After pausing for a minute to think things over, he asks Hu Qiuping a question. “Do you think it will be hard for me to get a job?”
He immediately feels uncomfortable at Hu Qiuping gives him a strange look. It’s not Hu Qiuping who responds to his question, though.
“If you want a job, just sell yourself as a treasure-seeking beast! Once people find out how many natural treasures you can bring them, they’d shower you with gifts as long as you worked hard for them.”
Lan Jin turns his head and sees Hu Shentian smirking back at him and he can’t help but feel as though something is wrong with his suggestion.
“What’s the catch?” He asks.
Hu Shentian’s grin widens before he says, “What catch? If you can bring them treasures they’d be more than happy to provide for you— a house, a few wives, all the food you can eat, cultivation materials— if they even matter anymore— and whatever else you want.”
“A few wives?” Lan Jin asks, confused, but he immediately changes to a different line of thought. “That sounds too good to be true. There’s gotta be a catch somewhere.”
Hu Shentian’s grin widens and he says, “Maybe, but it should be something that you’re used to.”
Narrowing his eyes, Lan Jin asks, “And what’s that?”
He Shentian smiles victoriously as he says, “Treasure-seeking beasts are pets. But, don’t people normally want to make you a pet? Wasn’t that girl you mentioned the same way?” He lets out a couple of forced chuckles and then says. “I thought you were joking at first, but with your ability to find treasures, I actually believe it now.”
Lan Jin glares at Hu Shentian, but he hears Hu Qiuping strained breathing behind him and he can easily see Hu Gongniu’s shoulders shaking up front.
Tearing off another piece of leaf to throw into his mouth, Lan Jin scowls at Hu Shentian and says, “Dick.”
After that, the four of them begin moving through the pass at a fast pace. The route they are traveling is little more than a country road, and a poorly maintained one at that, but Lan Jin thinks it is infinitely better than moving through the bamboo forest. Though there isn’t much to look at on the road itself, the mountains to his left and right make Lan Jin’s mouth pop open as they look nothing like what he had expected of mountains.
To him, mountains were tall, wide, and made of hard rock. Sure, they sometimes had vegetation on them, but, in general, there was more rock than anything else. But in the pass, the mountains were not like this at all. Instead, they looked more like pillars or large fangs reaching up more than a quarter of a mile into the sky. Some of them had a lot of visible rock, but for the most part, they were covered in green foliage so dense that it was hard to tell where one plant began and another ended.
As they continue forward, Lan Jin feels like an insect standing between the feet of giants and he can’t help but hope that none of the pillars fall over. He even begins imagining the mountains as large dominoes just waiting for a sufficiently powerful force to tap into one of them and cause them all to come tumbling down on whatever unsuspecting victims happened to be in and around them. The thought is so clear in his mind that he’s far too anxious to even think about talking to the three men traveling with him.
It takes just over three hours for the four men to make it through the pass, and during that period of time, no one says as much as a single word.
When everything is over and they finally make it through, all four of the men breathe loud sighs of relief as they look out onto the rolling green fields in the distance.