A panting Finlay sat at the table in a towel and a tired Lu Bao sat in the opposite chair as he set down a cleaning bucket and a dirty rag, having just helped Finlay with the clean up.
“Senior brother, what was that all about? Did you eat something terrible?”
Finlay seriously looked at his naive brother, still unblemished by the truth’s of the world as he answered, “Brother Bao, that is what progress looks like in one’s cultivation. Remember, burn the memory into your soul and never let your guard down.”
“...brother, what are you even talking about?”
Finlay was too tired to explain to the confused young one at the moment, but vowed to explain the dangers of cultivation to his good brother in detail at a later time. For now, he had the aftermath to deal with.
He first brought up all the notifications from the advancement that he had to put aside.
*Ding*
Congratulations on completing the Fourth layer of cultivation of the Body Transformation realm.
Restriction Unlocked on skill : Analyse (Grade E+ –> Grade E+)
*Ding*
Congratulations on completing the Fifth layer of cultivation of the Body Transformation realm.
Restriction Unlocked on skill : Analyse (Grade E+ –> Grade E+)
*Ding*
Congratulations on completing the Five Element Body Transformation of the Origin sutra.
You now have increased control over the 5 elements and increased capacity for Qi due to the harmony achieved through the 5 elements.
Your body is now primed and ready to cultivate the full Origin Srushti Mantra cultivation art.
*Ding*
Special memories and training unlocked. Click to proceed when ready.
Finlay’s gaze lingered on that final notification for a long time.
*sigh*
‘Finally! I wonder what awaits me in these memories. But I cannot now. I will have to wait till I leave this valley and find a safe space.’
Finlay continued on to the next notification.
Congratulations!
The Fire affinity of your body ranked up!!
Fire elemental Qi answers your call easier than before!
Apart from the notifications, he could feel that he now has access to vastly more Qi reserves than before, yet there was a feeling of emptiness. He knew that was because he hadn’t yet established his Qi sea in his Dantian and his Qi reserves would only increase at that point. Apart from that, he also felt the emptiness of elemental Qi in his body, signifying that it was ready to cultivate the next realm of his physical body. For now, he would hold off on that in case he triggers the cultivation detection formation of the valley, forcing him to graduate early.
Moreover, he still hadn’t cultivated the Lightning element that could technically be cultivated if only he could gain access to the right resources. On the other hand, the Yin/Yang attribute is special. It wasn’t simply a physical element but also contained a conceptual aspect to it. Essentially, it requires an understanding of the component of its Dao, the concept of the laws of Yin and Yang itself. If he could manage something like that, he should be able to use the special elixir he received from Senior Kang to complete it, but he wasn’t too hopeful of that.
He did hear about a Lightning attribute legendary deer in the valley hunting zone and considering it’s the valley where only Tier 1 beasts are allowed, Finlay should have no problems dealing with it. Apart from that, it had only been a little over three months since he entered the valley. He didn’t want to attract too much attention to himself. After some thinking, he decided that he would spend the rest of this month practising Alchemy, learning Formations and maybe even some smithing if the old man co-operates. And waiting till the next month will allow him to sell a lot of Harmonising pills to accumulate some wealth and Body transformation pills. While they are not directly useful to him, they can either be sold for money or he could give some to his brother Lu Bao.
With his mind made up, Finlay took Lu Bao to the market place to spend some relaxing time. Once done, Finlay went to the Blacksmith and called out the old man for a ‘private chat’.
“Little brat, what is this nonsense about a private chat? You need something?”
“Hehehe…Old man I have an interesting proposal.”
Looking at the abnormal grin on Finlay’s face, the old man felt something off, but since he knew the annoying little brat before him would have big accomplishments in the future, he still decided to listen to him.
“How about you take me in as an apprentice. It won’t be for too long, just this one month. How about it?” Finlay put on his best cheerful expression.
“What nonsense are you spouting now? I’m too old to deal with apprentices and even if I do, what sort of apprenticeship is even possible in just one month in the field of artifact forging? Besides, I’m sure you can find someone better than me if you ask the sect elders to find a proper Artifact Master for you.”
“Well, I have my reasons for not wanting to borrow the sect’s support and as for the short duration, you’d be surprised at how much I can pick up on it in just 1 month. I have previously studied some aspects of the field. Trust me I won’t be a waste of time to you…If you’re still not convinced, how about this? I’ll pay you back for your time and resources wasted. What do you say?”
Finlay and the bewildered old blacksmith had an argument and then a bout of negotiation before the Blacksmith relented under the persistence of FInlay. The final nail in the coffin had been when Finlay revealed to him that he is almost a graduate now. No matter how reluctant the old man was, he was shocked and impressed at the speed of Finlay’s progress. They would officially begin the classes that day evening. As for the payment, Finlay would pay 2 poor grade spirit stones and in addition will have to take on certain resource gathering missions periodically, to supply the smithy.
Next, FInlay went to the library to use the remaining book token. He picked out a suitable book on Formations and Qi circuits. Not only was his comprehending ability in Formations a pretty decent at ‘B-’ tier, his experiences as an Engineer in his previous life has set him up with the perfect knowledge to excel at it. Although it was considered a time consuming field of study, he had exactly that on his hand right now.
Next he went to various Alchemy stores to buy up large amounts of resources to make Harmonising pills. Since he was going to be practising Alchemy, he might as well use the chance to earn some profits. Especially after he completed his Five element body and completely merged his elemental Qi. He was really looking forward to the improvement of its effects on Alchemy. He spent the day till dusk to experiment on exactly that.
That evening, Finlay began his Apprenticeship as a blacksmith. The old man began with a lot of study materials describing the basic concepts of metal working including purifying metals to forging. Finlay already had a basic understanding of Metallurgy and metalworking. Some of his knowledge might be even considered more advanced considering the extreme industrial nature of Earth that he had come from. His biggest hurdle in translating that knowledge into this world is the subtle differences in materials both of the mundane kind and the magical. Once again, Finlay was a bit baffled at how Qi changed so much about the basic behaviour of even the seemingly normal things.
Fortunately, he did not need to extensively study Qi infused methods of metal working to begin his basic classes. He struggled initially due to completely lacking any significant practical experience in working as a blacksmith, but once he picked up on the basics of working at a magical Smithy, he blitzed through the initial stages, giving a shock to the old man. Often, Finlay spent nights working on his techniques and making practice items. Within a week, he successfully made a decent quality sword of the mundane kind. The old man was particularly impressed by that.
Yet it was not something that came to Finlay very easily. The only reason he was able to accomplish that was because of his incredible physique and his overbearingly strong and high quality Qi giving him a large advantage in using some of the tools and allowing him to work long hours without breaks in such heat. The next step involved learning about carving runes or magical restrictions on to a suitably made tool to allow the user to channel Qi and exact particular effects like creating a sharper blade, a fire covered blade or send out Qi blasts when swung, that last one in particular being one of the higher tier and difficult to carve ones.
The quality of the weapon depended on its basic form, the complexity of the Qi circuit carved onto it and the amount of Qi that it can withstand. Still, the value of the weapon itself depended on how the crafter themselves made use of those limits to create an appropriate tool that delivered the best results for the use case. This was not so different from the idea of tool making in general and is something Finlay understood extremely well. This part also was helped by his comprehension of Formations and Qi circuits that he recently started studying.
Hence other than spending his time as an apprentice blacksmith, he spent most of the time studying and thinking about formations and a ‘B-’ tier affinity was nothing to scoff at as he rapidly improved at the fundamentals. Much to the joy of Finlay, Formations were rather reliant on some fields of mathematics like Geometry, tautology, Algebra, Trigonometry etc.
‘I see them increasingly look more like Coding or Integrated Circuit designs. It's a shame that I do not possess academic knowledge on electronics in general,’ Finlay couldn’t help but lament.
But he didn’t dwell on it too long as he already had a massive leg up compared to all the others starting out in this field. Like this, he spent his time with a very busy schedule, but he also practised alchemy whenever he was bored and would sell it to random Earth element cultivators in alleys in his masked attire to keep his identity a secret. Finlay found this secret drug dealing very amusing and often delighted in surprising his customers by suddenly appearing and disappearing.
‘Hehehe! So, Batman must have felt this exciting as well. No wonder he loved doing this so much.’
There were hundreds of Earth attribute cultivators with thousands of Candidates in the valley in total. Saving 2 pills each month added up to a lot over the years and almost everybody accepted a trade of 1 Harmonising pill for a Body transformation pill. There was a hesitation only at the beginning, but soon with reputation, came increased sales. With each passing day, his wealth was growing tremendously as well.
Apart from these, he obviously was forced to enter the Hunting zones periodically as well to fulfil his part of the apprenticeship deal. He did his best to choose the hunts in the outer areas to reduce wasting his time travelling, but today, he had been asked to take on an important mission into the depths to collect a number of Mid tier poison cores for a special project. Finlay grumbled at the old man for forcing it on him, but after seeing the compensation amount, he relented in the end.
If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.
“You better count this as at least 3 or 4 missions old man! And you can forget about me doing this again.”
With next to no opposition, he simply ran at full speed till he reached the lands of the hellspawn, the dreaded mosquitoes. In truth, he was slowly losing his attitude of annoyance whenever he saw a mosquito these days. His mind has come to associate them with the imminence of relieving his boredom by the act of killing them, but today was a different story as he was not here on his own terms.
He didn’t waste time and set up a prepared bait atop a tall tree to lure the mid tier mosquito generals and took a suitable vantage position with his bow ready. As the mosquitoes streamed in, he joyfully unloaded his large bundle of arrows. He was here to get 10 of the mid tier cores. Yet by the time he was done, he had over hunted as he lost himself in the act. He had even claimed the life of a Late stage mosquito brood mother. That one had been a somewhat exciting fight as the beast easily controlled huge swarms of the insects to overwhelm Finlay, but he had simply kited them around and used his vastly superior speed to dodge and strike with his spear. With his Qi reserves, he simply used the Fire spewing ability of his weapon to the fullest and burned the lower tiers to a crisp.
He collected his bountiful harvest and returned back before the sun even got close to the horizon.The harvesting and looting part took too long and he even gave up on more than half of the lower tier corpses. On the way back, he had run into a bit of a weird situation as he was surrounded by dozens of Deer beasts and several of them seemed to be of the Dual Wind and Earth attribute elements.
‘What is even going on? Did I just stumble across some sort of crude religious ritual of these beasts?’
Unfortunately for FInlay, the truth was revealed to be more than an awkward encounter as a Giant Beast with towering, branching Antlers sparkling with lightning walked towards him from amongst the herd. It had muscles rippling across its skin as it slowly walked towards him, menacingly and all the Wind attribute beasts gathered around to face Finlay. Finlay was just left dumbfounded. Although he had a large luggage on him, he wasn’t the least bit concerned about being surrounded by these beasts without escape, but he was definitely weirded out at the scene.
‘What is even going on? What have I ever done to these stupid beasts? Is this a grudge on me or something? If anything, those Mosquito bastards should be the ones doing this instead.’
As Finlay was starting to get nervous at the sheer number of beasts surrounding him, he saw the large beast stop a dozen metres from him. It growled and huffed at him a few times before flaring up its lightning, putting Finlay on alert. The Lightning snaked across its horns in a dazzling display and slowly, even the surroundings. The snaking lightning formed an image on top of the horns in a familiar form of a Wind and Earth attribute deer. Finlay was confused for a moment before guessing at what the beast was implying.
‘Why is it showing me that? wait…I remember killing an odd one a while back. Shit! Is it saying this is revenge for me killing one of its important members? That’s just stupid! It wasn’t even my fault back then…’
Of course, Finlay only cursed in his mind, there was no reasoning with a beast, especially after such a large determined crowd already gathered. Finlay released the full might of his 5 element Qi as he held his spear in front of him, gathering Qi for a large attack. The beasts were startled and some tried to put some distance between themselves and Finlay, anticipating a powerful attack. Suddenly, Finlay took off at his full speed, utilising his water attribute shoes and the fully mastered movement art to escape the encircled beasts. The Magical beasts, although somewhat more intelligent than mundane creatures, were still only at Tier 1 and were easily fooled by a human's most basic impromptu cunning plan, allowing FInlay to escape the encirclement before the faster and stronger beasts recovered. The Large herd leader let out a thundering roar, commanding the others to give chase.
The few breaths of time before the large beast started the chase were enough for FInlay to put quite a distance, even with his clumsy and heavy load. Unfortunately, much to the shock of FInlay, the Lightning beast was astonishingly quick as it seemed to have used a special skill to practically fly across the ground in a trail of lightning. Finlay was so startled upon witnessing the scene that he almost lost his footing before recovering.
‘Shit! What sort of beast is this?! How can it possibly keep up with me??’
Finlay still kept running at full speed as he furiously thought about any methods. Before long, the beast almost caught up to him and released a skill to disrupt his movement technique as he had to dodge out of the way. This immediately allowed the lower tier beasts to catch up. Finlay’s heart sank. Not only is this beast able to keep up, with it disrupting his movement art, he is falling behind just enough for these creatures to keep chasing him. He decided he had no other choice but to drop the luggage and deal with at least the lightning beast. Else, he was going to have a miserable time. WIth that decided, FInlay took out a smoke bomb he had purchased when, he wanted to cosplay as a ninja drug dealer, to temporarily cover up his whereabouts. With the smoke confusing the beasts, he quickly took out a rope and tied off all his luggage to a rather high branch of a tree before appearing on the ground as the smoke cleared.
Without the luggage, he was clearly faster than the herd leader and he took advantage of the fact to separate it from the herd before turning back to finish it off in one strike.
----------------------------------------
The lightning beast had already chased this crafty vile human for long enough to lose its initial rage and it was now very wary of the human stopping suddenly after it got separated from the herd. So, when the human sent out an attack immediately after turning, it was prepared to defend with its horns and in the same motion, it also launched a blast of Lightning storm towards the now very close human. In a surprising turn of events, the human was completely overwhelmed with the lightning attack. It was sure the vile man was either going to be burnt to a crisp or end up a twitching mess on the ground. It would then take its time to take out its frustration of losing its favourite concubine, while also showing off to the others of the harem how well he treated them.
As the beast was getting distracted in its imaginary victory, a mighty blast of Qi came from within said lightning storm. The blast immediately reached the distracted beast and caused its head to be muddled for a second and before it could even have a chance to think about what was happening, a fiery red flower bloomed on the back of the beast’s head followed by a fierce looking spear head, now covered in blood and brain matter. The beast’s corpse fell limply onto the ground.
To be continued.
Preview - System Status
Identity :
Finlay
Male
14 yrs old
–
Mortality :
Sura (Mortal)
Job :
None
Titles :
None
Cultivation:
Body Transformation stage completed level 9+ (Five Element 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