After a good night of rest spent on the cold hard stone of their improvised shelter, Yu Xiang was feeling surprisingly invigorated.

The moment his mind transitioned from deep sleep, to semi conscious awareness, then into full blown wakefulness the young reincarnator started stretching his sore back, letting out a couple of sighs of pure contentment as he felt his spine pop.

Not even his refined body could completely negate the discomfort that came hand in hand with sleeping on hard surfaces apparently, so Yu Xiang decided that the best course of action available to him was to get up and start moving around until his body loosened up.

Firstly, he picked up Lin Fen, who had fallen over his legs in his sleep, and set him down on the thick blanket at his side, after which he got up from his seated position and made his way to his pack, from which he extracted a canteen full of fresh water that he drank from with gusto.

Once he was satisfied, Yu put it back in his pack then made his way out of their small man made cavern.

He briefly looked over towards the still sleeping Lin Fen, chuckling slightly under his breath so as to not wake up all the other people still resting.

The feline cultivator had assumed a position that Yu was very familiar with. His arms had pressed against his chest and his knees had risen against his abdomen in the same fashion, while his long grey tail wrapped itself as far as it could around his body in some kind of instinctual mechanism ailing back from his spiritual cat ancestor. A bastardized version of the classic ‘loaf’, the best that could be done with a humanoid body.

Yu Xiang just shook his head in amusement, finally leaving the cavern.

His eyes were assaulted by the morning rays of the sun but it didn’t take him even a second to acclimate himself to the difference in lighting.

Out of the corner of his eye, the green eyed cultivator could see the crimson clad Chun Dai still leaning a few steps away from the entrance to their cavern, in the same exact place he’d been occupying the night before, although Yu could see that his eyes were currently closed.

The young reincarnator highly doubted that the stoic swordsman had fallen asleep on the job, but still, he refrained from approaching him in the small chance that he’d actually succumbed to the siren call of rest.

He wasn’t eager to learn what dealing with a cranky Chun Dai would be like.

Instead, Yu Xiang seated himself around the cooled remnants of the campfire, trying to find a comfortable position before he started his day with his daily session of cultivation.

He was getting ever closer to breaking into the second stage of the constitutional realm, only a few more days, a week at the latest if he really struggled with his cultivation. But he doubted that would be a problem since he still had some cultivation pills made by Lin Fen left over from his last batch.

The green eyed cultivator popped one of the aforementioned cultivation aids in his mouth, waiting a moment for it to melt into pure spiritual energy before he began adding it to his already full spiritual channels.

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The pressure mounted slightly and in a constant trickle as Yu was careful not to dump everything at once in his system, lest he mess up his perfectly controlled internal flow of energy.

As the pressure inside his metaphysical veins increased, Yu Xiang could more easily notice where his spiritual energy found obstructions in its path, slowing down slightly as it impacted against a blocked off road.

Clearing those avenues was his goal. The moment the pressure in his pathways reached a tipping point he would push against those blockages with his will until they were broken through, expanding his spiritual channels and starting another round of body refinement.

But that came later, for now, he just concentrated on slowly raising the pressure.

Like that he spent some time in meditation, transitioning to working on his Intent once he was done.

He’d become able to reliably summon the steely flame representing his Intent in his mind’s eye by this point, and even his manipulation of the mysterious force had grown with constant practice. Furthermore, the crackling grey flame seemed to have even grown slightly!

Very, very, very slightly.

But Yu Xiang was still satisfied despite the relatively slow improvements on this facet of his cultivation. He’d started working on this step a lot earlier than he would’ve normally been supposed to, after all. So some setbacks were to be expected.

After he was done with his training for the day Yu opened his eyes, immediately noticing that all of his teammates had already woken up and taken position around the dead campfire, taking cues from him and getting on their own cultivation grind while the day was still young.

Quietly, the green eyed cultivator got up from his seat, making his way towards the core disciple who now stood with his eyes open and no longer leaning on the hollowed out giant rock.

Yu Xiang bowed slightly as a greeting towards the senior disciple, whose cold gaze flicked towards him for a moment before he returned to staring at the far distance.

“Brother Chun, now that you’ve had some time to meditate on what we found last night, do you have any idea what exactly it is that we’re dealing with?” Yu asked the aloof swordsman quietly so as to not disturb the other disciples.

The core disciple took a few seconds to answer his question as he ruminated over his years of experience.

“A few.” He started in his usual curt and stilted tone. “Could be a nest of aberrant spiritual beasts, or a spider leader crippling its brethren to keep its rule uncontested.” He then moved his shoulders stiffly in a motion that Yu interpreted as a shrug.

"Aberrant spiritual beasts?" The green eyed cultivator said questioningly, confusion filling his voice as he'd never heard the term before.

Chun Dai's blue eyes settled once more upon him, seeming to be weighing if his curiosity was worth the trouble of talking more.

In the end his duty as their unofficial teacher for the trip won out, and he briefly illuminated Yu Xiang on the subject. "Spiritual beasts can have various paths of cultivation just like humans. It's simply extremely rare for their path to swerve so drastically from that of the average spiritual beast that they forgo their natural inclination to forming a beast core altogether." Once he was done with his short explanation he stopped paying attention to Yu Xiang, a clear signal that he'd exhausted his willingness to humor him.

Knowing he wouldn’t be getting much more from the older man, the young reincarnator whispered his thanks for the illuminating new tid bit of information, before he settled down to wait for his companions to be done with their cultivation.

It was a few hours later that the group of young explorers finally set out, fully expecting not to return to their temporary camp site until it was time to end their expedition, if they even returned to it at all.

If only they knew what was waiting for them in the not so distant future then they might not have been quite so hasty in saying goodbye to their temporary abode...

But then again, you know what they say. Hindsight is twenty twenty...