First things first though. I touched every plant in the yard and memorized their information. There weren't any useful plants in the yard, but it was interesting nevertheless. There was something that was just fun about learning about these plants. I’d never felt this way before. Maybe this was one of the side effects of being The Cultivator.

After I learned all I could, I shredded every bush, tree, and weed into sawdust. If my plants could be divided into two power levels, Brian and Vincent, then the normal plants here were sub-human.

The pots interspersed around the garden were all shoved in a corner. I now had an area of dirt and shredded plants to build on.

I carefully constructed a defensive field of traps. Half a meter underground, hidden from sight, the entire garden was covered in Twentytacle Traps. These traps were not nearly as deadly as they could have been because I didn’t put Poison Spikes on any of them. However, many of them had blades attached to the tips of their tentacles.

“Hey!” Somebody pounded on the gate.

“Shiet.” I didn’t expect somebody to intrude in the middle of my building process. Nobody was supposed to see my powers yet, which meant I couldn’t open the gate.

I walked up to the gate and did two warm up hops before hopping over the four meter fence. I landed on the other side of the fence. I stumbled a bit and caught myself.

“Who the hell are you? And why are you making so much noise!” he yelled.

“My name’s Jin. Sorry about the that, I’m working on something in there. I won’t be making much more noise.” Shredding the garden had been noisy, but I was done with that part by now.

He inspected me more closely, “Are you our new neighbor?”

“Yes. I was told I could live here for the time being. ” I asked.

“Right, right,” he said in a low, gruff voice, “Don’t make so much noise anymore, alright?”

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“Sure, sorry again,” I said. He hobbled away and I hopped back over the fence. I went back to reconstructing my garden.

I scattered a couple Pluto Fly Traps over the garden. These were simple venus flytraps, except large enough to swallow a human and their mouths were lined with poisonous spikes. I also planted a vine with a gigantic blade attached at the end.

My final stroke of genius was burying all of this under the old plants in this garden. It took less than a hundred mana to replant all the old plants. Somebody walking in would think nothing had changed. To finish, I used Program a few hundred times and it didn’t take any mana.

I walked into the house to see if there was something fun to do. I found a bedroom, kitchen, and bathroom. It was all finely decorated, intricate carvings and statues everywhere. I lie down on the bed.

I don’t know what I expected. This was no fun at all.

I looked sideways and found a small shelf filled with many books. I leaned over and slid one out. It was gray and bound by a red string. “Basics of Qi Cultivation,” it read.

I pulled out the book next to it, “Basics of Dao Cultivation.” Through the gap left by the two books, I could see the title of the books next to them, “Sixteen Spear Forms and Their Uses”, and “An Introduction to the Sword Dao.”

Bored but curious, I stretched over to see what the other books were about. “Unified Raisin Dictionary”, “Foundations of the Dao of Fire”, “ Alchemy” and “Soul Cultivation Basics” where among them. All of the books here didn’t go deep into their respective subjects.

This was perfect for me. I didn’t know about any of these anyway, books that barely scratched the surface were just what I needed. The first thing I wanted to do was see exactly how this “Dao” and “Qi” stuff worked.

The books were all short, just a few hundreds of pages each. I finished both of them by sundown. I learned a lot about how cultivating each of them worked, but in summary:

Qi was the power and life force in every living being. It was focused in the living, but small amounts existed everywhere. It was in our atmosphere and in the bed I was lying in. People could harness both the power inside and outside themselves.

If Qi was power, then the Dao was how they used it. Improving in the Dao was a mental process. Every person had to pave their own Dao, although they could be assisted by mentors or books.

The nine Dao Cultivation Stages were all Qi related, however, one was supposed to practice their Dao first and foremost during these stages. The books emphasized that Qi should always come second.

Going up a stage dramatically increased the amount of Qi that could be wielded, but this didn’t mean a first stage Daoist would necessarily lose against a second stage Daoist. A well established Dao could easily allow a Daoist to transcend the normal limits of Qi.

Not to mention the power of external Qi. Without raising a finger, Daoists could control the Qi that permeated the world to crush their opponents.

The sun was setting, so I planted a Glowing Pineapple to light the room. I picked up the book on alchemy. I had barely reached page two when another Glowing Pineapple suddenly turned on.

I slammed my face into the alchemy book. I had used Program to set up an alarm system to tell me when there were intruders in my yard. The pineapple sitting on my counter only glowed when somebody was snooping around. My face rested between pages two and three. “One, two, three, four… five, six, seven, eight, niiiiiii.”

I glanced sideways. The pineapple was still glowing.

“Niiiiine point fiiiiiive. Goddamnit, leave.” I rubbed my face into the book. “Ten.” I turned on the sentry mode on my plants.

A crash, a shake, and a yelp.