Finlay could see a mounting head-ache coming. Not from any intense cultivation but after calculating the amount of resources he would need to properly finish his body transformation stage before starting his Qi cultivation.

He understood that he would need to cultivate each element of his body separately. The 5 pills provided by the sect will be just enough for a single element type to cultivate to completion by the end of the 6th month. Which equals 30 pills, assuming the person is able to use all of the pills without losing them to others.

Now with a 5 element type body, Finlay would require about 125 pills if he included the increased Qi absorption rate provided by his body type. Or he could simply take two full years to complete his cultivation, assuming no accidents happen.

Of course he could inform the sect that he possesses the rare five element body type and get taken care of but he didn’t want to reveal it since they failed to notice when he joined. The lower profile he is, the more peaceful his future cultivation will be.

Finlay’s body not only demands higher resources, the speed at which the Qi is absorbed and the medicine is used up is also increased significantly, so he used up the medicine very quickly and had been cultivating the second half of the session without any additional support from the medicine. So it didn’t matter if he ended his meditation now. He went out to be greeted by a much lively looking Lu Bao.

“Good morning Senior brother! How was your cultivation session? It seems, it went well? Haha”

“Indeed brother Bao, thanks to you.”

Lu Bao waved his hand to show his disagreement.

“What nonsense. I merely recited something I’ve read in that book you also have. You would have figured it out eventually.”

Finlay couldn’t help but chuckle in embarrassment remembering how he had simply chucked said book to the side without even reading it once.

“Anyway, yesterday you prepared me some much needed tea and food when I was suffering. Today, I will prepare some good dishes I learned from a good chef at my home. You sit here and wait for me to finish.”

Finlay didn’t stand on ceremony. He used the bathroom and took a seat by the table as he pondered on a solution for his pills problem.

‘Maybe I should give up the perfect path and choose to advance using a single element instead?’

He immediately shook that thought away.

‘No! If I do that, what is even the point of all the preparations we’ve done before starting all this? I have to take the best possible path. What’s the point of hurrying to curry favour with the sect? Even if I don’t end up becoming a disciple immediately, I will sooner or later be taken as one once they find out my strength and cultivation speed later on.’

‘No need to stress on this so much. Let’s explore my options first. Maybe that hunting grounds will provide some opportunity.’

After he had some delicious dishes prepared by Lu Bao, he was preparing to leave for the central zone to see his options. As he was about to go for the door, he heard Lu Bao speak up.

“Senior brother, wait! Are you going out?.....Then you will need this.”

After hesitating for a while, he brought out a pitch black mask that looked like something rich people might wear for fancy parties. After being stunned at the unexpected item, he immediately accepted it, realising his roommate’s thoughts.

“I know with senior brother’s strength and speed, most of those wastes, calling themselves ‘Seniors’ will have no chance of catching up to you but it’s still best to hide your identity to avoid trouble later on. Here is some mortal gold too. It should come in handy at the central zone.”

Even though they have embarked on the path to cultivation and mortal currency should be considered useless, it still not completely valueless amongst the low levels who hadn’t even started cultivating Qi yet. And even some early Qi cultivators see some value in them. Finlay was especially surprised when he casually received multiple pieces of gold. He hadn’t even seen a gold coin before in this life.

Finlay didn’t resist too much, he simply asked if Lu Bao needed anything from the places he was visiting, he left all his money and anything of value with the orphanage and Mother Bai after all.

After he left his residence, he quickly left the spot in case there were people watching the surrounding buildings. This time, he didn’t have to restrict his speed to match others and ran at full speed and tried to reduce his visibility as much as possible by running behind buildings, trees and bushes. As expected, nobody was on his tail by the time he approached the central zone. He secretly took off the face mask in a dark alley before walking over normally.

He visited various places like the library, weapons stalls, alchemy stalls and even stalls with monster parts and equipment. All of them require either poor grade spirit stones or the monthly distributed body enhancement pills. Finlay was only interested in increasing his number of pills, not giving them away.

Although there weren't many who took mortal currency, he finally found a stall, the owner of which seemed to be practising smithing. Finlay had some practice and knowledge regarding smithing from his previous life and his 1 year with Yellow rock town’s blacksmith. He could tell at a glance that most of the affordable ones were completely bad. Outside here, he could easily commission much better equipment for far cheaper but he didn’t have that option now.

He bought some simple armour for his upper body and one of his arms, up to the shoulder. He spent most of his money on a functional longsword. He also went over to a clothing stall and bought two short cloaks with a hood. The clock was shorter than his shirt and was in an uneven dirty brown colour. It wasn’t particularly good looking but Finlay very much found the simple design to his liking as his fashion sense came from a very different world. He also bought some supplies for camping just in case he gets stuck for long in the hunting grounds.

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Those who want to hunt in the woods will first have to visit the administrative building to report. This was a protective measure in case accidents happen and one needed rescue. One will also receive a tablet that has a special function of deploying a distress signal in case of an emergency. Although it required one pill to be deposited as collateral, Finlay didn’t feel reluctant in the least. He could tell at a glance that the one pill price is still too low for a Qi treasure like this and is purely a way to reduce uncommitted candidates from risking their lives halfheartedly. He soon entered the hunting zone.

Finlay kept going further inward till he could spot no one else hunting nearby. He quickly scanned the dense forest that was mostly filled with mundane animals. He did spot a few magical beasts or at least beyond ordinary creatures being hunted on the way here but he had to stay away else, others might consider him an opportunist.

He quickly scanned his surrounding terrain and climbed onto a tree on a small hill and surveyed his surroundings, unsurprisingly, he only saw regular animals and insects. He wasn’t discouraged and kept wandering about. He eventually killed a couple normal rabbits, intending to take their meat and pelts back for his roommate. He started a campfire and roasted the meat as night approached.

As he was almost finished with his meal and was about to pack up the remaining meat, he spotted a flash of azure blue in the dark. He subtly rested his hand on the weapon as he keenly observed in the direction. Soon, the flash appeared again. This time, he caught a glimpse of the creature. It was a rabbit with azure blue glowing eyes that was very fast. He couldn’t make out much more than that in the moonlight.

He didn’t have to wait long as the rabbit-like creature approached the covered up pit where he had disposed of the innards and entrails. It dug up the buried remains and started munching on them. It had blue fur similar to its glowing eyes but it was normal fur as far as he could tell. It wasn’t any bigger than a normal rabbit, but had a small horn on its forehead. Finlay couldn’t help finding the furry form cute as he slowly approached it.

He held a piece of a thigh in his hand and once the rabbit noticed his presence, he kindly offered the meat to it. It stared at the human offering food for a second and slowly approached the hand. Once it was close by, it quickly jumped and tried to bite off his hand. Finlay was quick to retract his hand and before his shock from the unexpected subsided, the rabbit pounced at him in a flash of blue.

Finlay couldn’t react fast enough and had to use his left arm to defend his face as he tried to dodge to the side. Immediately, he felt intense pain from his forearm and was shocked and furious to find a long, bleeding gash on it. The thought that found the rabbit cute had long evaporated. He was completely furious at the cute rabbit that tried to sneakily bite his hand and tried to return his kindness with blood.

He dropped the piece of meat and reached for his sword. He pulled it out even as he dodged another flash of blue, successfully this time. He didn’t give the rabbit a chance to recover as he thrust his sword with his full force, aiming to impale. His lack of practice with a sword showed. He missed and only left a small cut on the rabbit. After an intense doging and swinging around his sword without much skill, the rabbit was defeated without any further injuries, except on his pride. That night, finlay stuffed himself with as much of the evil blue rabbit meat as he could in revenge, even though he had already had dinner.

The next morning, Finlay woke up from his meditative rest to find that his arm was half healed already. He took out a dimly glowing, blue, irregular crystal that was smaller than his thumb nail. It was a surprising find from the evil blue rabbit yesterday. He had almost swallowed it whole in his furious devouring session of the rabbit meat. It clearly was a lower level tier 1 magical beast.

Even more surprisingly, Finlay could sense water element Qi from the core and was able to easily extract and refine the Qi for his own cultivation. He calculated that each of these beast cores were worth at least one body enhancement pill. He was overjoyed at the discovery and decided that he would look for more of these Magical beasts right away. He dressed his wound and set off with his things before the sunlight even came out. He soon found another flash of blue. This time, he carefully set a piece of meat as bait close by and waited on a tree.

Soon, the blue rabbit couldn’t resist the temptation but this time, attempted to flee with the meat in its mouth. Finlay was unfortunately waiting in the direction it was fleeing and ambushed it, killing it immediately. He frowned at the last development and decided that he would tie the meat to a tree next time. His luck wasn’t very good after that and couldn’t find any more of these blue rabbits. The sun was already pretty high up and he was starting to feel hungry from all the running around. He decided to have a quick breakfast.

‘Maybe the rabbits only come out at night? That would explain why there were none that I spotted after the sun rose. No matter, rabbits can’t be the only magical beasts in this forest.’

His guess proved correct. He soon spotted some birds with clearly wind attribute mana. They were regrettably too fast and his attempts to sneak up on them with a sword proved fruitless. After some thinking, he made a crude spear with a rabbit horn and tried his luck again with a spear throw.

It took a few attempts and a broken spear but he finally got a bird perched on a tree. By the time he cut up and packed away his kill, it was already evening and he decided that he would first return and see what the materials were worth and cultivate with the three cores he had obtained before coming back.

He didn’t have to worry about being lost as the tablet also showed the direction of the exit from the hunting grounds. Finlay exited without event

and checked the prices for the materials. Unfortunately, the sect took away half the meat he was carrying as part of the rules and the materials apart from the beast cores weren’t very valuable but it did net him a single very poor quality spirit stone, the standard currency in the current region and rank. He didn’t waste anymore time as he bought the supplies requested by Lu Bao and returned to their place.

With the new cloak, he was easily able to lose any followers and quickly make it back. As he approached the building, he saw several figures at the front door, banging and throwing threats to open up the door. He sighed and decided to stay hidden in a nearby dark alley as he kept an eye on them to disperse. After half an hour, their number only seemed to increase, worrying Finlay. He decided he had to act and waked out in the open. When he approached the ‘seniors’, he showed his bulging bag and promptly took off once he got their attention. Immediately, 2 of the 4 took off after him.

Not long after, Finlay returned without his pursuers, much to the surprise of the 2 seniors.

“You bastard, who are you? Which Clique do you belong to?”

The ‘seniors’ had clearly mistaken his identity, which served Finlay well. He kept silent as he pulled out his sword. The 2 finally took him seriously as they approached him with drawn weapons of their own.

Finlay didn’t want them to investigate his place for future trouble and he led them away as he dodged their attacks. Once he was far enough, he overwhelmed one of his opponents with his sheer strength and speed without much technique and just stared down at the other. The remaining trouble maker didn’t have any further thoughts of fighting after seeing the display of strength and fled leaving his friends behind.

Finlay later just returned with all the additional pills he found on the 3 ‘seniors’ bodies, which amounted to only 4. He assumed that the majority of them were on the stronger looking one who fled in the end and regretted not beating him up.

“Brother Bao, they have left. It’s safe to open up.”

Soon the door was opened and Finlay saw the shaken up Lu Bao inside.

“Thank the gods you came back safe. There were some of those bastards camping outside till a while ago. It looked like it was going to get bad for a bit there.”

“Don’t worry. As long as you don’t yield to their threats and open the door yourself, they wouldn’t dare to destroy the sect property by forcibly entering. Also, here are the things you asked for and here is the gold you lent me.”

“Woah Senior brother, there is no need to repay that gold. My father is rich enough for me to not worry about such amounts.”

“No you have no way to get more right now and besides, I have enough money now and can make more too. Also, here is some meat I acquired. Can you help me cook?”

Lu Bao’s eyes instantly brightened up at looking at the meat and he forgot about the previous topic entirely.

Using his excellent cooking skills, apparently learnt from top chefs, the meat was made into delicious dishes with various spices Lu Bao bought from home. Even Finlay with a refined palette from his previous world was impressed by the taste of the various spices on such delicious meat dishes.

“And Brother Bao, I forgot to mention that a mask would be dangerous for you. I will get you another one. Sorry.”

“Ah that’s fine, Senior brother, it was just some silly party mask anyway.”

“Okay I will take I’ll be in my room, let me know if you need anything else.”

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  In the next couple of weeks, Finlay used up the beast cores and all the pills on him but more importantly, he discovered another key piece of information. The medicinal pill had much better efficacy when practising earth element body cultivation. He was already forming a plan around acquiring more pills with said information.

To be continued.