“Ha-ha, we have won big this time!”
“Quiet,” Jenny commanded. “Sit down and stop moving, so I can take a look at your injuries.”
As Elijah approached the warriors he listened to the excited chatter as he watched Jenny hastily look over their wounds. The warriors clothing was dirty, torn and stained with blood, but that didn’t lessen their excitement. They continued to proudly and loudly proclaim that they made a great achievement.
“Don’t you all know what time it is?” Elder Jeb sternly asked. “Everyone is getting ready to have dinner and you all were nowhere to be found. Even Jamal and the other hunters have returned on time. Everyone was worried to death and thought something terrible happened.”
“Really? But the sun hasn’t even started to set.” One of the warriors said.
“Did you all forget that were having dinner earlier now? Let me say this, when twilight comes you all better be ready to cultivate. I don’t care if you’ve eaten or not.”
“Okay, let’s all calm down.” Elijah said. “Elder Jeb you can always discipline them later. Right now, we should head back to the village, so Jenny and I can help them heal. But first, I want to hear about the great achievement you all were talking about.” The moment Elijah asked about the achievement all the warriors became lively and immediately started talking all at once.
“Chief, Chief, you won’t believe what we found.”
“Hehe, even I can’t believe it and I was there.”
“We should’ve died, but we actually managed to beat all those beasts.”
“Who would’ve thought that we would actually-”
“Can you all speak clearly?” Elder Jeb demanded. Instantly all the warriors stopped talking. “Justin, you speak. The rest of you, keep quiet.”
Justin nodded and began describing what they experienced. The group were on their way to check out one of the locations that the hunters told them about, when they sensed a large amount of astral energy surging toward a specific area. Justin talked it over with the other warriors before he decided to investigate the disturbance.
As they got closer to the area, they noticed a sharp increase in various types of beasts. Bears, bunnies, wolves, and different types of birds were all heading toward the area that was pulling in all the astral energy. Justin wavered when he saw the large number of beasts, but after a brief period of hesitation he decided to press on.
“Idiot!” Elder Jeb rebuked.
Justin wasn’t bothered by his grandfather’s rebuke and responded with a smile on his face. “If I hadn’t gone forward then we would have missed out on a great treasure.”
“Do you think I care? No treasure is worth your life. You should have left the moment you noticed something was wrong.”
“What if the treasures we got were Qi Fruits?”
The moment Justin said the word Qi Fruits, it felt like the entire forest got quiet. Elder Jeb’s mouth was a gape, and his body seemed to be struck by lightning. Elijah’s eyes widen as the memories from his future self, rushed to the front of his mind.
“Did, did, did you just say…”
Elder Jeb was in so much shock that he wasn’t able to speak clearly. Of course, he didn’t have to. Justin held out a hand to one of his fellow warriors and the man immediately tossed him a bag. Justin opened the bag and took out a green sphere the size of a baseball.
Item: Qi Condensation Fruit
Tier: 1
Description: An astral herb filled with a large amount of astral energy. This astral herb is useful for helping a cultivator break through a bottle neck, improve their cultivation level or temper their foundation.
Requirements: Peak Body Tempering Realm, Qi Condensation Realm
At the moment, the Qi Condensation Fruit or Qui Fruit didn’t have any outstanding characteristics. There was no unique luster, and it did not emit any astral energy. However, it’s ordinary appearance didn’t dampen the groups excitement.
Elder Jeb burst into laughter and only calmed down after several seconds passed. “Hehe, Great! Great! You all have done an amazing job. Everyone in the village will call you heroes once they find out about this. Right, how many fruits did you managed to get? Two? Three?
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“Not many,” Justin stated with a crafty grin on his face. “We only managed to get eight?”
Justin grinned as he watched his grandfather’s stunned appearance. That grin turned into a full-blown smile when Elder Jeb once again burst into laughter and began to jump around in excitement. Elder Jeb’s joy was infectious and soon the warriors were laughing and jumping around with him.
Although Jenny was excited as well, her desire to hell others took precedent over the joy she felt. Jenny tried to calm them all down so she could tend to their injuries, but Justin simply grabbed her hands and pulled her as he continued to jump around. Elijah stood at the side and smiled as he watched this happy scene.
For a normal person, a Qi Condensation Fruit was enough to change their life and the lives of their family. However, Elder Jeb and the others failed to realize they were no longer normal people. The cultivation technique Elijah gave them would allow them to easily step into the Qi Condensation realm. The fruits would simply help speed up the process. Of course, there was no need for Elijah to speak up and ruin the happy moment.
“Should I stop using my Supreme Will?” As Elijah watched his people, he couldn’t help but ponder this question. After a brief period of hesitation, Elijah deactivated his talent.
Boom.
Immediately, Elijah felt a wave of joy wash over him and try to submerge him into a sea of euphoria. Thankfully, Elijah had prepared in advance and focused his mind on resisting incoming emotions. Still, even with his preparations it wasn’t a walk in the park.
Elijah had the urge to laugh out loud and jump around in joy. He was only able to resist doing so by focusing on his will power. Nonetheless, Elijah wasn’t able to completely resist the emotions of his followers.
Wearing a goofy grin, Elijah occasionally chuckled as he watched his followers. Thankfully this didn’t last longer than a few minutes. As Elijah’s followers began to calm down the unrestrained waves of joy died down as well. Although this could be considered a happy moment, Elijah couldn’t help but feel some complex emotions toward what he recently experienced.
Did Elijah enjoy seeing his people happy? Yes. Did Elijah want to share his people’s joys? Of course. However, just as he didn’t enjoy being overwhelmed by their anxiety, he didn’t like being overwhelmed by their joy either.
“Alright that’s enough,” Jenny said with a smile on her face. Jenny had been swept up in everyone’s joy and had willingly jumped around and laughed with everyone after her initial resistance. “Let’s return to the village so I can give you all some proper healing.”
Elijah pulled himself free from his own thoughts and quickly voiced his agreement. “Yes, let’s start heading back.”
“Hehe, with these Qi Fruits we’ll be able to raise eight Qi Condensation cultivators in our village,” Elder Jeb said. “It’s only a matter of time before we can leave this forest and return to civilization.”
Elijah shared Elder Jeb’s excitement about having villagers who would reach the Qi Condensation realm. However, he was not as enthusiastic about leaving the forest as Elder Jeb. After all, Elijah was mindful of a danger that Elder Jeb had not fully recognized.
Players. Elder Jeb may have been aware of people coming from different worlds, but he didn’t have a good grasp of the mindset and personality that some of these people might have. They wouldn’t act like complete sociopaths, but there will be times when they do not treat the characters in the game like actual human beings. At the very least, Elijah knew that many players wouldn’t hesitate to cause chaos and disruption in his territory once they found out another player was in charge.
“Let’s not put the cart before the horse,” Elijah said. “For now, let’s head back and enjoy a nice dinner. Justin, you can tell us the rest of the story on how you managed to get the fruits on the way back.”
On the way back, Justin proudly told them about how he heroically obtained the eight fruits for the village. When Justin and the other warriors arrived at the tree growing the Qi Condensation Fruits, four astral beasts were already engaged in combat for the thirteen fruits and two more were about to join the battle. The battle went on for fifteen minutes and an astral beast that looked like a tiger came out on top.
Unfortunately, after fighting against five other astral beasts, the tiger didn’t have much energy left. At that time, several ordinary beasts charged at the tree in an attempt to snatch a fruit for themself. The tiger tried to intimidate them, but all the beasts were like moths to a flame.
It didn’t take long for the enticing scent of the Qi Condensation Fruit to be covered up by the smell of blood. Bloody and mutilated animal carcasses littered the area around the tree. Without anything encouraging them to move forward many of the ordinary beast were intimidated and began to back off. However, there were plenty of beasts that weren’t deterred.
At some point one of the beasts managed to grab one of the fruits, but it was quickly chased down and killed by the other beasts. Justin said that watching the beast get chased down helped him figure out how he would get the fruit. Before he put his plan into action, he told most of the warriors with him to retreat to a safe location and he carefully approached the tree with three other people after they switched to the hunter job.
Justin led them as close as they could get to the tree without attracting any attention. Once they were in a position, Justin slashed at the tree and chopped down three fruits. The fruits fell amongst the rampaging beast and made the situation even more chaotic than it already was.
“We used the chaos to grab the remaining fruits and ran for our lives,” Justin proudly said. “I had to throw away one of the fruits that I grabbed, otherwise we may not have been able to escape.”
“You made the right decision,” Elder Jeb said. “Treasures are important, but your life is even more important.”
“You did well,” Elijah said. “I do have one suggestion. Since you were fighting against ordinary beast you could have let the warrior distract the beast by firing arrows from a hidden location. Intelligent creatures definitely would have found and attacked them out of anger, but ordinary beast wouldn’t have done anything. Even if they did, they would have had enough time to escape.”
Justin thought about what Elijah said for a few seconds before he responded. “Ah, you’re right Chief. The others were already injured, and I didn’t want them to fight, but attacking from the side would have been fine. If I had planned things out better, then we would have gotten nine fruits.”
“It is alright. I probably would’ve made the decision you did. Just remember to review your success and your failures and try your best to improve.”