With both the bandits dead, Jason takes a moment to loot them, but doesn’t find much. He can only shrug, assuming if he wanted more than 12 coppers and a couple bows of worse quality than beginner gear he would need to manage the leader. A thing he very much does not want to try at the moment and so continues his escape on foot for the extra speed. Though not before dismissing his gains from that short fight.

{Brachiating Break Away: +3 Agility

Double Header: +2 Agility, +1 Strength, +1 Toughness}

Quite the jump in his Agility, though after Jason checks his stats, it still isn’t starred. Not that he expected it to be, but you never know. What is known though is that he can’t stick around.

While Jason doesn’t believe they would be able to beat him, there isn’t a good place to heal up. He has a good long while left to be on the road and to be wounded this early in the trip could cause a downward spiral to death. After all, even with his personal ability to ignore broken bones to an extent you never know what might be behind the next turn.

So finished with looting, Jason takes off at a loping run. Nowhere near as fast as his previous speed, but much more sustainable and spends the rest of the day eating up the miles. It isn’t until near dinner time that he joins back up with the main road and settles down.

After a quick look around, Jason is happy enough with the location. The road is curving enough that you can’t see too far in one direction or another and there is a campsite cut out of the trees on both sides of the road. He doesn’t believe the bandits will bother going this far to look for him, but just in case he sets up camp on the side that doesn’t allow incoming traffic to see him.

A larger group would likely feel safer on the other side as whoever was on night watch would be able to see for a good distance but being alone removes that possibility. Jason nods at what was clearly a sign of decent planning by whoever laid out this road originally. Though he admits that it might just be this way so that multiple parties can camp out at once as well.

Not that it matters to him for the moment. Instead, Jason focuses on his portable planter. After having rearranged the plants to match his cultivation, there was a slight uptick in growth. Not much, though, likely because it only grew faster when he was actively cultivating with it. Still, when the growth cycle of a plant is measured in years like with the ginseng, any little bit can show amazing results.

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More interesting is said ginseng, even if the interesting part is how its growth was sped up. All the rest of the plants had been growing almost evenly. Only the ginseng seemed to have had its growth kicked into overdrive by the change. Of course, it was a plant that took years to grow so it wasn’t like it would be ready anytime soon. However, there was definitely something going on that caused it and Jason’s guess was that most of the extra energy from the new formation had been focused there.

Sure, the center of the planter as that makes some sense, but more specifically to the herb he used to represent his understanding of [Ascendance]. This would make some sense as his cultivation did focus on it by using the solid outer wall for defense and most of the space within to cultivate. However, this does cause him to reconsider.

Jason does not want ascension to come out on top. In his last life, the idea that might makes right and the strongest rules was the way things worked. It didn’t feel right to him, though. Even in his new life despite the various upheavals to the status quo, those at the top still gripped power beyond what is reasonable.

Not that Jason believed a ruler should not be able to make decisions. Rather, a proper joining between the will of those who are ruled and those who rule is needed for the best outcome. His cultivation had strayed from this path. At the start, he had tried to make the three pieces equal if uneven. Now, though, his planter had shown this was no longer the case.

Over the many nights of cultivation, Jason had strayed and he knew why. If his cultivation was a village, he had been focusing on the village head. Sure, Jason admitted that the farmers were important to keep everything running and the guards were needed to keep everyone safe. However, the idea of advancing faster had overtaken him. So, in courting the head, Jason almost lost the body.

Good thing he managed to catch it now before he went too far with clearing his meridians irl. The foundation of his first realm was sturdy but Jason had almost built the next on loose sand. This revelation shook Jason such that he didn’t even try to cultivate or even look into it that night. His mind just wasn’t ready.

Then, throughout the next day, Jason spent the time walking at a slow pace. He could afford the slower pace after the rushed flight from the day before and the extra time to think was needed. Just looking at the percentages the System had for his three concepts already showed the imbalance.

Sure, [Substance] was close enough to [Ascendance], but [Civilization] had lagged behind by a massive amount. On one hand, it felt odd to Jason that this would be the case. He had lived in two very different civilizations, soon enough three if you count NeoRealm itself.

There had to be something missing in his understanding of the concept. A very hard thing to remedy as if he knew what was missing, it wouldn’t be missing. Still, now that he knew about this oversight, he could start to ponder on what a civilization actually was, at least from his point of view.