The next day, Li Dong woke up, and when he checked his body, he was shocked. 

“My cultivation…” He gaped, and seemed incapable of making a sound. 

“So, what happened?” Travis asked. 

“I’ve advanced a level. I’m now at the fourth level of Qi Condensation. Not only that, I’m half a step into the final level.” A look of horror and excitement flashed across Li Dong’s face. 

“Wang Tao, this plant!” He gingerly picked up blunt he had inhaled once the night before. He looked at it with fervour, as if it were now a divine object. After he had calmed down he asked, 

“So what level has your cultivation progressed to?” 

Travis smacked his own head. “I haven’t checked yet.” With that, he sank his consciousness into his body. He ended up in the vast realm with the Bodhi tree far ahead of him. He walked, and walked until he started noticing that he was walking in circles. 

“So, just above a hundred thousand miles, meaning the fifth level. As I recall, it should’ve took me over a year to get to that level by the pace Wang Tao was going. Who knew smoking weed had so many benefits?” Travis shook his head, and was about to leave when he froze. 

He looked ahead, and saw the edge of a giant chasm, ten times the size of the Grand Canyon.

“Bridge Building means to literally build a bridge. These cultivators in Jiang Hu really are straightforward most of the time.” 

Travis left the realm and his eyes refocused. 

“The beginnings of the fifth level,” he told Li Dong. 

Li Dong looked like he had just swallowed a cat. 

“The f-fifth level?” He stammered. He gazed at the Sky Divine Grass with a completely different look in his eyes. Previously, Wang Tao had had a pretty rough time cultivating. For whatever reason, resources didn’t have much of an effect on him. It was testament to the powers of the Sky Divine Grass that Wang Tao’s cultivation was able to shoot up by such leaps and bounds. 

Li Dong was shocked, but then realised something. Wang Tao had probably been using the plant for a while, so it wasn’t so surprising. Li Dong then remembered that he had only inhaled once, yet jumped a whole realm. 

‘With the help of this plant, we will be able to ascend to extreme heights!’ 

Li Dong clenched his fist. The feeling of powerlessness was awful for him - for any weak person in the sect, even in the whole of Jiang Hu. For a world that focused on strength, the weak had to bow and scrape to have the right to go about their lives with relative ease. 

Li Dong lifted the Sky Divine Grass to his lips and inhaled. A powerful burst of spiritual energy rushed through his meridians. Li Dong was disappointed to notice that the strength of the energy was half of the first time he inhaled. His cultivation was raised into the beginning of the fifth level. 

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Li Dong asked Travis why that was the case. 

Travis exhaled a thick plume of smoke. “Dude, I don’t know. I don’t care either.” He looked at Li Dong with bloodshot eyes. “Don’t you feel amazing every time you smoke?” 

“Now that you mention it…” Li Dong slackened, and his eyes rolled back into his head. He sighed. “Wow…” Li Dong felt like he was flying, high in the sky, soaring over the clouds. Vivid colours danced across his mind, and beautiful women scampered around the vicissitudes of his vision. He reached his hand out to grab one, but he grasped air. 

Li Dong was well and truly high. 

Travis looked at him grabbing at air and chuckled. “He’s a good guy. He reminds me of Joel.” Travis stared at the blunt in his hands. “So, the kush raises cultivation. But it seems like it doesn’t work that well if you keep using it.” Travis scoffed. “It’s not like I give a shit anyway, I smoke weed to get high - cultivation is just a cool benefit.

“Wang Tao’s hunger is interesting too. It’s like he had the permanent munchies. Plus, he needed a bunch of energy to cultivate. There’s something off about the whole thing. Why did I have to jump into his body? There’s a big mystery here.” Travis inhaled. “But I guess it’s pointless to think about if the answers are impossible to find.

“I have bigger damn problems. The ‘Silver Wolf Gang’… I’m probably not strong enough to protect myself against them. Li Dong said that their leader was way too strong.” Travis rolled his eyes. 

“There are other ways to take them out.” He grinned evilly. “I think there was one time… yeah, I should be able to use that against them, even in this world. If they try to step up… there doesn’t need to be a ‘Silver Wolf Gang’ in this damn sect.” 

His eyes danced with a crafty light. 

“It seems like this world will be interesting after all.” 

***

The Void Immortal Sect was a cultivator’s sect, but there were many people living there who weren’t cultivators. The boulder had a population of 300 million, and only one percent were even attributed to the sect. The rest were either rogue cultivators, martial artists or ordinary mortals who lived their lives quite simply. The peak of society was of course to become a cultivator who was a part of the ruling sect.

There were quite a few villages, towns and cities, the biggest of which being Void City, which had a population of 20 million. It was sprawling, set upon swathes of land. Considering they were living on a boulder - so the majority of the land was extremely uneven, finding such a huge plot of completely flat land was admirable. 

Void City was split into three quarters: the wealthy quarter, the trading plaza and commoners section. In one of the grand houses in the wealthy quarter, a group of twelve women sat in a beautiful garden, laden with rosebushes. They were all beautiful, and all had the air of mature women - that feeling of grace mixed with confidence.

“My son, in the sect, has just gone up another level! He is now at the fourth level of the Qi Condensation realm. He says that at his pace, it isn’t long before he can start his Bridge Building.” One of the women, Rong Er, boasted as she sipped her tea. 

Everyone at the table glanced at Rong Er with interest in their eyes. Rong Er’s son, Wu Tao, was just eleven years old, so his speed of cultivation was quite outstanding. 

Another woman, Bing Luo, scoffed and said, “My youngest, Ye Xiaofan, has just gained an insight into a merit law!” Everyone’s heads swivelled toward Bing Luo, completely forgetting about Rong Er. Rong Er gritted her teeth, and asked,

“What kind of merit law? Don’t tell me it’s something useless?” Rong Er sneered. 

Bing Luo stared at Rong Er with mirth in her eyes. “Of course not! Do you take my son as a fool? My Ye clan has always been the best! Whatever we do, we always excel! Naturally, my son gained an insight into the concept of ‘Absolute Zero’.” 

Everyone stilled, and gaped at Bing Luo. 

“Ab-absolute zero - the normal level merit law?” Rong Er’s teeth chattered, almost as if she had been frozen to her seat. 

Bing Luo chuckled. “Of course!” Bing Luo then looked towards the woman who sat at the head of the table. “Xiao Mei, my son is of course inferior to yours.” 

At the head of the table, Xiao Mei smiled. She was a supreme jade-like beauty, and although she was around thirty years old, like all of the women at the table, she was the most beautiful by far. Her skin glowed and seemed as tender as a teenager’s. Her lips were luscious, and her body ignited the flame of any man who set eyes upon her. But what attracted people the most were her eyes. They radiated with two parts sex and two parts wisdom. They were filled with intrigue, as if any man who conquered her would never truly know her heart. 

Since she had been widowed, she had been beset by suitors from every inch of Void City, but had turned them all down. Each man she had spurned never gave up though, they were all enamoured by her - her eyes, her face, her body… her mind. 

“You don’t need to sell your son short. Although my Lei Wei has cultivated in the superior level merit law ‘Pyroclastic Flow’ since he was a child… truthfully, there is a lot of pain behind him understanding the laws behind such a profound art.” Xiao Mei looked towards the heavens with pain between her brows. 

The table grew tense. Everyone knew the circumstances behind Lei Wei’s cultivation of the merit law. It was a truly sad and unfortunate event. 

‘Are the fates playing tricks on us?’  Xiao Mei sighed and regained her composure. A smile crept across her face. It didn’t reach her eyes. 

“Of course, such melancholic discussion here leads to nothing but sadness in our hearts.” Xiao Mei looked towards another woman. “I heard your daughter was to become the disciple of an elder?”