That night, Finlay used the plentiful Wind attribute cores to push through the final stretch to complete another of his element’s cultivation. He took one of the more potent Harmonising pills he had set aside for himself and started absorbing the Qi from the pills and the surroundings. He slowly passed it through every cell of his body, slowly infusing it throughout his entire body. Eventually, he hit the invisible threshold that signified the breakthrough. He stopped cultivating to feel the changes in his body.

By now, he was used to the little bit of filth that got extracted as he broke through barriers. Moreover, it seemed to be getting smaller and smaller in quantity. Hopefully, it would become too small to notice before long.

‘Ah I feel a lot stronger and my Qi flows a lot smoother and quicker.’

Once he opened his eyes, the now familiar sound of the system brought his attention to a notification.

*Ding*

Congratulations on completing the Third layer of cultivation of the Body Transformation realm.

Restriction Unlocked on skill : Analyse (Grade E –> Grade E+)

You can now gain information from more targets.

  He was immediately delighted that the latest progress seemed to break the threshold between E and E+, but frowned upon reading the description.

‘What does it mean by more targets? Is it saying I can check the status of multiple people at once?’

He tried it out on some of the people a bit farther away from him. Unfortunately, he couldn’t identify multiple statuses at once. Annoyed at the vagueness of the description, he started trying to identify random creatures around him.

Centipede; Mundane insect :

NA

Dung Beetle; Mundane insect :

NA

??? Sparrow; Mundane Bird:

NA

Pok Tree; Mundane Tree:

NA

Granite stone

Mundane rock material

Twin blade grass; Mundane Plant :

NA

Wait what?! He scrolled back to notification with the rock being identified. He quickly tried to identify other lifeless objects.

Crude Beast leather armour

Crude common grade armour made from the pelt of a water attribute Tier 1 Magical Beast.

Crude Fire Element attuned spear

Crude common grade weapon made from beast materials of a Fire attribute Tier 1 beast.

  Finlay was only a little happy at discovering the new feature initially, but as he thought more and more, he realised the implications. He would no longer have to worry about not knowing about an item or material. Even if he has no knowledge of something, he could still read the description to gain some understanding of it. He also was sure that the further the skill rank of Analyse progressed, the more information he could see in the description. This would also be of great benefit in shady situations, just like the one he would be attending in a few days, the secret meeting. With this new ability, hopefully, it will give him a much better advantage in being able to find some Qi infused materials for his Metal attribute element.

‘Ah! Finally, I gained this popular Isekai super cheat. I can be unstoppable when hunting for treasures in the wild.’

Searching for Alchemy ingredients in unfamiliar places is a very time consuming process and with his new ability, Finlay will have a much easier time and can focus more of his valuable time on hunting for cultivation materials, cultivating and practising Alchemy.

It was almost morning by the time he was done with his experimentation of the new ability. With nothing else to do, Finlay set off after saying his thanks and goodbye to Dokgo Xu’s group.

“Haha, we’re brothers now aren’t we? No need to thank me for such trivial things. If you want to show your gratitude, we should definitely meet up over drinks and have a good time”

“Haha! Definitely. But this is a busy week. So, perhaps we’ll meet in the next one?”

“Of course brother I understand…And don’t forget about the timing of our next meeting here. The next morning after the pill distribution, we will meet here before we set off to the secret meet.”

“Yes!...Alright brother Xu, it's time for me to go.”

As Finlay left the Archery area, he clearly felt eyes upon him. He frowned at the sharp increase in attention.

‘Perhaps directly selling the Harmonising pills in the open is too much attention. This time I was able to avoid trouble by claiming I just happened across a few of them, but if I keep doing it like this, brother Wang or others familiar with Alchemy might figure out that it was me who made these.’

As he travelled, Finlay pondered over the problem and couldn’t come up with any fool proof solution. The best he could do was cover up his face and sell it to individuals in secret. The secret meet coming up was another excellent place to sell a decent amount of them. But neither was a good long term or sustainable solution. Fortunately, he didn’t need to be long term or sustainable as long as he could get enough resources in exchange in the short term.

With his vastly superior cultivation, none of the beasts he encountered were a bother to him and the annoying ones like the Mosquito generals, he simply ran away as he picked off when he could in his path. The only peculiar event had been against one of those rather tough and fleeting Earth and Wind dual attribute Deer type magical beasts. Although it took a bit of effort, it was insignificant to the current Finlay. He simply overpowered it. The thing that made it peculiar about the fight was that, usually these dual attribute deer always ran away once they found Finlay to be superior in raw strength, leaving him helpless with their incredible agility and speed. He didn’t mind though. He simply harvested what he could carry before moving on.

In a few hours, he reached the outer areas, even before the sun set. With another 3 days to go before the pill distribution, Finlay didn’t want to be in a hurry to get out of the hunting zone. After thinking a bit, he decided to go find a Red Kicking Demon. He was in need of fire attribute beast cores and with his new found strength, it was time to get over his fear of the beast after the struggle he had with the first hunt. With another hour of sunlight, he started searching for one. It wasn’t long before he found an area devoid of all the other late stage beasts and sure enough, there was the familiar Red feathered majestic bird on one of the tallest tree’s branches, eating the thigh of a big Deer beast.

With the beast busy with its snack, Finlay got to work, preparing for the fight. He prepared 2 traps with all the strong metal arrows he got on hand. Nothing as intense as the first hunt though. It was just in case things go wrong and he needs to entangle the beast and slow it down, so that he could either finish it off or run away.

By the time he was ready, it was twilight. He didn’t want to fight it in the dark nor did he want to spend the night. So, he hurried up to the beast and took out the bow and aimed at the beast still perched on the tree, grooming its feathers. With all the practice with the mosquitoes, he had all the quick draw practice required to familiarise himself with the archery skill he picked up. He could now easily shoot 5 so quickly and at different angles of attack that they would all reach a target a mere 50 metres away. That meant he was shooting at an inhumane speed of 5 arrows within half a second. At such speeds it no longer made sense to pull out arrows from the quiver individually. For now, he was holding 10 arrows in his hand holding the bow. In the future, he needs to come up with a better solution to keep up with his speed.

This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

With the target in sight, Finlay quickly shot off 5 arrows and then proceeded to shoot another 5. The first 5 hit the wing it had open and was grooming, along with its back and a leg. There was immediately a shrill cry as the wing got completely pierced and the leg was injured, but the arrow failed to completely pierce the feathers on its back and the little blood they drew indicated only a superficial wound. The next 5 arrows were a bit spread out, trying to predict the birds movement after being hit and only 1 of them dealt any significant damage to another leg.

Finlay frowned, not expecting the bird to be able to resist the stronger bow and arrow combination. Perhaps he had gotten lucky the first time. Meanwhile, the angry bird screeched and tumbled to the ground WIth one of its wings gone, there was obviously no chance of it flying, but its legs were also injured. Sensing the treat to its life, its panic mounting, it desperately searched for the enemy. Finlay put away his bow and slowly approached the beast with his spear in hand. Once the bird spotted its enemy, it instantly became even more vigilant, noticing Finlay’s superior strength. Fiery red mana surged out of it and shrouded its feathers immediately. Finlay stood on guard, recalling the last time when this happened. But no attacks came his way, if anything, the beast was warily staring at him as it tried to back away.

Confused, Finlay tried to approach it and found that the bird had given up on the fight. Still vigilant of the red aura, Finlay tried a jap to test waters and discovered that the defence of the bird was boosted significantly, leaving no visible injury.

‘So it can even use that Qi to defend itself. Perhaps the last one I fought was too young and arrogant.’

He once again attacked, but this time, he channelled the little bit of the fire attribute Qi he had into the spear for a stronger attack and it instantly pierced the defence of the bird, taking another of its wings. The bird screeched from pain. By now, with its legs partly disabled, with its wings gone and the fighting spirit crushed, the bird was too scared of Finlay to put up much of a fight. It kept backing away in fear.

This gave Finlay pause as he hesitated to take the life of a creature that wasn’t posing a threat to him or was even putting up much of a fight. But he knew he couldn’t afford to be soft in the pursuit of his path to immortality. At the same time, he couldn’t deny his humanity and feeling sympathy for his opponents or lives he had to take as he walked the path. He took a moment to control his feelings. He didn’t simply suppress them but let himself feel and waited till they passed it through. Once he was resolved, he lunged and took a powerful, quick swing ending the beast’s suffering in one hit.

He closed his eyes for a moment and took a deep breath. He knew logically what he had to do but he couldn’t help but hesitate at the sight of the pitiful creature. This was not such a big problem when dealing with an enemy vastly weaker than him, but if he had done the same and let his guard down against a more equal foe, he could have suffered for it, potentially losing his life. Even if he were to completely avoid killing, purchasing the required resources for his cultivation, those resources still had to be coming from somewhere and pretty much all of it involved directly or indirectly killing other life forms. Unlike a mortal, he couldn’t just sustain himself on farming unless he had the backing of a gigantic sect with a farm thousands of years old and even then, building such a sect will involve killing and probably a fair amount of it human or other intelligent sapient life forms.

By the time Finlay had resolved his moral dilemma, the sun had already set completely and the sky dark. He was already very close to the exit and he wasn’t as weak as he used to be. He simply decided to run back in the night. He also tied up the bird’s wings & legs and carried it over his shoulder. The corpse did attract a few of the flying beasts, but with his strength, he had no trouble facing taking them down. He felt slowed down by them not because of their fighting ability but the time it took to harvest the valuables from the dead enemies.

He reached the exit a lot earlier than the sun broke the horizon. Fortunately, the valley had the culture inherited from the immortals of the sect and Immortals didn’t need sleep or rest nearly as long as a mortal. He quickly sold off the materials apart from the Fire element beast core. Together with the selling of the abundant supply of the poison cores he had been collecting the entire month and the unneeded valuable Alchemy herbs in his possession, he had a bountiful 3 Poor grade spirit stones and 8 bits to his name. That was enough money to purchase some resources for his metal element cultivation, but due to the scarcity of the materials, he would probably have to wait a long time before he could buy enough of them to complete his Body transformation stage. And Finlay had no intention of wasting that long in this valley. That was why the upcoming secret meeting was going to be very important for him in quickly graduating out of the valley.

He decided he was going to spend the remaining time preparing more Harmonising pills to use as currency during the meet. With his mind made up, he used 4 bits to purchase some more of the missing herbs essential for the Alchemy. With that he counted enough herbs for about 20 attempts at the Harmonising pill, which should net about 10-15 successful batches or 20-40 pills depending on his luck. However, before that, he would do his best to raise his Fire element level so he could get better success with the Alchemy.

And so Finlay locked himself up and spent his next few days till the pill distribution day in seclusion mostly as he first raised his cultivation as far as possible and then focused on the Alchemy. He did make sure to bring the meat to Lu Bao so he could enjoy a good, well cooked meal though. By the night before the pill distribution, Finlay had been exhausted from the continuous efforts to concentrate on Alchemy. With red eyes from a lack of rest and his dishevelled appearance from a lack of washing himself, he went straight to the bath house for a nice shower and went to sleep to rest up in preparation for the upcoming events.

By the morning, Lu Bao had to forcefully wake Finlay from his sleep.

“Senior brother, this is so unlike you. Hurry up and get ready. We need to get to the market soon or we might not even get our monthly pills.”

Finlay quickly apologised and hurried at full speed. He practically dragged Lu Bao like a kite, much to the terror of the victim. They got their pills and didn’t dally around for long. Once he was back, Finlay quickly packed up his gear and the necessary supplies for a 2 day trip. He also gave 3 of the best quality Harmonising pills he had saved for himself to Lu Bao, giving instructions on how to best make use of them. Lu Bao was once again very grateful and admiring of his senior brother’s generosity and profusely thanked Finlay.

Once Finlay was ready, he said goodbye and left for the Archery hub area in the deeper zones of the hunting zone. This time, he simply ran at the fastest sustainable speed and used bursts of sprinting whenever he drawed the aggro of enemies. With such a speedy and prudent attitude, he reached the destination a lot quicker than the day he took when exiting the hunting zone.

He waited for the Dokgo Xus group to meet up and once they did, a small group of 3 together with Finlay set off towards the secret meeting spot, wearing masks or disguising their attire. With over 3 poor grade spirit stones and about 35 Harmonising pills, Finlay was feeling confident in his purchasing power as long as there were useful resources to exchange.

To be continued.

Preview - System Status

Identity :

Finlay

Male

14 yrs old

–

Mortality :

Sura (Mortal)

Job :

None

Titles :

None

Cultivation :

Body Transformation stage level 9 (Water, Earth, Wind Triple attribute cultivation)(🠕)

Stats :

→open←

Skills :

The All seeing eye (Analyse) :

(Grade - E+)(🠕)

Authority granted by the first god of the world, Dinn. You can peer into the secrets of things and beings of this world as long as you know what you’re looking for. (Requires activation conditions)

Inventory space :

(Locked until Foundation Establishment)

Universal Language comprehension (Grade A+);

Mana Blast (Grade F+)

Preview - Stats

Spiritual :

Cultivation Talent :

S+ Grade (Appears as C-)

Divine Sense :

None

Law Comprehension :

S Grade

Physical :

Body Type :

Five Element body (Grade : B+(Aggregate)) (Appears as C-)

Elemental Attunements :

Metal

S- Grade

Five Element Body Type

(Dominant trait)

Earth

A Grade

Wind

C+ Grade

Fire

C- Grade

Water

D Grade

Light/Darkness(Yin/Yang)

D- Grade

Lightning

F+ Grade

Other Talents :

Weapon Talents :

Sword/Bladed type

A+ Grade

Ranged

C+ Grade

Hand to Hand

C Grade

Polearms/Spear

D Grade

Soul based/Mental type

D- Grade

Qi Circuits :

(Arrays, Formations, Magical Restrictions)

B- Grade

Crafting Talent :

C+ Grade

Alchemy Talent :

D+ Grade