Yu Xiang spent the remainder of the month mostly working on his new technique while he also kept cultivating whenever he had some spare time.

Lin Fen followed his example and concentrated on his advancement, spending a few weeks of effort fully fixated on cultivating until he finally managed to break past the half step and properly enter the Constitutional Realm, after which he once again focused his entire being on widening his knowledge of alchemy.

The young reincarnator himself made some shockingly swift improvements to his cultivation base, reaching the halfway point towards the second stage around the end of the month. Which he mainly attributed to the excellent environment of the inner compound.

The atmospheric spiritual energy outside their house was already many times higher than the one further down the mountain, and once he stepped into their cultivation room, which was equipped with some kind of chi gathering formation, that concentration heightened even further.

With all the free floating spiritual energy in the air, it would've been harder to not make quick advancements, in Yu's humble opinion.

Something that unfortunately didn’t go as smoothly was instead his practice with his new skill.

He’d started full of vigor, ready to devour the contents of the scroll and master the defensive technique in a matter of hours, but quickly enough reality slapped him in the face and his progress came to a startling halt as he hit a wall.

Simply put, he didn’t really understand the instructions written on the scroll.

He still remembered the clear and concise explanation that had taught him how to perform his two golden techniques. The flows of spiritual energy were neatly illustrated and explained in detail, the author of the scrolls showing off their deep mastery of the two techniques as every facet of their function was delved into and dissected for ease of understanding.

The [Snake Skin] scroll instead was rather more vague in its explanation, merely hinting instead of explaining in full, quoting other texts that Yu Xiang did not possess and rambling on and on in every paragraph about the author's experience with the skill, which while useful once he got to actually using it in real combat, was pretty much useless for someone who was still trying to learn it from scratch.

His difficulties with the technique were not new to him, however, for he’d already gone through something much like this back when he was still an outer disciple, when he’d first picked up his sole offensive skill, [Piercing Fulmination].

That technique had taken him months to decipher as well, but at the time he’d merely chalked up his difficulties with learning the skill as a lack of experience and power on his part, something that wasn’t quite as believable now as the technique he was currently trying to learn wasn’t anywhere near as complicated to him as the lightning spear had been for his younger self.

It was the damn scrolls' fault, or rather, of whoever had written the stupid things in the first place.

Was it really so hard to explain things in a clear and concise manner?!

Thankfully, as much as Yu Xiang moaned and complained both to himself and to an amused Lin Fen, he did, in the end, manage to learn the technique, something that had filled him with an almost embarrassing amount of pride since it really wasn’t that complicated.

So the green eyed cultivator found himself in his garden, now properly tended to once more and filled with vibrant colors, courtesy of Lin Fen who had decided to transform part of their small plot of land into a spiritual plant farm.

Nothing truly precious or that would invite thievery of any kind as they were just lowly herbs to most inner disciples, just something to fuel the ever curious feline’s experiments and research, with the added benefit of creating a serene place for Yu Xiang to practice that wasn’t their home’s sterile cultivation room.

A glowing shell of spiritual energy covered his flesh for a fraction of a second before a wave rippled through the conjured armor and gave it a greenish tint and a more solid appearance. The entire frame segmented itself, the independent scales curving to follow the shape of the green eyed cultivator's body and attaching to his skin like, you guessed it, the scales of a snake.

Once he'd gotten his mastery up a bit through his own solitary practice and he became able to activate the skill fast enough to be used during live combat he decided to take it for a trial run.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

Access to the treasure mountains available to inner disciples worked much the same way as it did for outer disciples. One had to pay a large sum of money to get in, but unlike lower ranked disciples they had a way to lower the price tag on this indispensable service.

Outstanding service to the sect would lower the price, which meant that the more missions a disciple carried out for the sect the easier and cheaper it would be for him or her to get access to the higher ranked treasure mountains. A clever stratagem that was obviously put in place to incentivize disciples into working more than the necessary minimum to not get kicked out of the sect.

Unfortunately for Yu Xiang, this didn't really help him at the time since he'd taken full advantage of his free month to work solely on himself, so he had to grit his teeth and shell out the full price for the ride towards one of the lower ranked mountains, no matter how much it pained him to part ways with so much money.

The mountain he along with a bunch of other disciples in the constitutional realm were taken to, if it could even be called that as to Yu's eyes it looked more like a gigantic hill, was different than any of the ones he'd seen back before rising in rank. First of all, there were almost no trees to be seen anywhere and the ones that he could see were dark shriveled things, twisting on themselves, that seemed to be on the verge of death.

That kind of shot his secondary objective of gathering herbs for his feline companion in the foot, but maybe he could still find some spiritual moss somewhere? Maybe? Hopefully?

Fortunately, he wasn't left to suffer alone, because alongside him on this trip were Feng Liu, as polite as ever, and Zheng Yin, whose short red hair seemed to have gotten even wilder since Yu had last seen her. They'd crossed each other’s paths while waiting for the barge that would be their transport and from there it had been a piece of cake to enlist their help in searching for herbs for the feline alchemist.

All he'd needed to say was 'free pills' and they'd been ready to carry him on a stretcher all over the mountain if he so asked.

Eh, cultivators, how gullible.

Of course, as this was Yu Xiang's first foray into a higher ranked mountain, he made sure to burn a proper offering at his makeshift altar to the Heavens. You know, just hedging his bets and all.

The first couple of hours went by with little to no complications, the three of them explored the lower levels of the squashed mountain, and Yu's fears were quickly abated as with their combined efforts they managed to find various spiritual plants.

They began their search around the small pockets of greying vegetation that Yu had spotted from the flying barge, but they hit the jackpot only after Zheng Yin had let her temper get the best of her due to their initially lackluster findings, punching a boulder hard enough to shatter it in a million pieces and revealing a tight clump of herbs that had been hiding under the rock.

Yu Xiang's eyes met with Liu and Yin's. A wicked smile bloomed on the redhead's face while the barest hint of a smirk twisted the usually composed cultivator’s expression and soon enough the trio of young cultivators found themselves upending any rock in their path in search of loot.

Surprisingly enough, Yu Xiang ended up finding out that spiritual moss was indeed a thing.

As they kept hunting for pill ingredients the young cultivators gradually started rising up the glorified hill, battling the odd spiritual beast or two that were after their spoils, until cruel fate threw a wrench in their plans.

"Oh heavens," Moaned Zheng Yin in abject despair. "Not another tunnel!"

Indeed, unfortunately for the trio, the higher levels of the mountain were peppered with gaping holes that led deep into its guts, revealing the peak as nothing more than a giant nest. This also explained why they'd met so little opposition from errant beasts, they were all waiting for them underground.

Feng Liu echoed the fiery redhead's sentiment with a defeated sigh while Yu himself just grimaced in consternation.

The prospect of finding themselves in a cramped space under tons of dirt once again however wasn't enough to discourage them and so they swallowed back their distaste and ventured forth.

They traveled far into the tunnels, walking down deep into the bowels of the earth, far enough that they'd surpassed even the point where they'd first set foot on the mountain, then they kept going even deeper. Only once they'd started thinking it might be better to turn back did something change. A faint bluish light spread through their tunnel, coming from what they immediately realized was the end of their road.

They walked forward, their hearts filled with trepidation, and as if the heavens themselves had heard their thoughts a breathtaking sight welcomed the young disciples.

An enormous space opened up before them, filled with bioluminescent plants giving off green and blue glows, and that took every inch of space available to them, forming a natural wall of vegetation that was impossible to see through with just one's eyes.

But it wasn't just the floor that was covered in untamed nature. Vines, mosses, and other plants crawled their way upward in defiance of gravity, covering the walls of the enormous underground biome and stretching all the way to the cavern's ceiling, which rose far far above their heads and that was just as obscured by wild, untamed plants as the rest of the underground space.

Their small group took in the grandiose sight, a testament to the enduring strength of nature, for even here under a literal mountain of dirt and rocks, beneath an arid dead terrain life still managed to thrive.

Yu Xiang's eyes shone with renewed vigor once he'd fully digested the new environment, mirrored by his two companions who were just as excited by their discovery, and in silent agreement convened by way of aura they all moved towards the primal forest below them.