[Activating system]
[User currently has 1 empty slot for seed binding]
[Detected 1 seed in user’s possession]
[Bind the seed?]
Sentences upon sentences materialized in his head as he went through quickly.
A seed? My golden finger is related to a seed? What am I going to do? Plant trees to fight monsters? How is that related?
Spencer wasn’t interested in knowing the how, he doubted if he would even get the answers if he was interested. Nor was he about to bind whatever seed he had on him right now, in front of Alice.
The girl was a disciple of Lord Lysander, who, according to Elena, seemed like a pretty powerful person. So even though she might be lazy, sleepy or cute, Spencer knew enough to not shrug off anyone as dumb.
If something extraordinary or even out of place took when he binded the seed, he could pass it off as talent. But he didn’t want to, before getting a safe place to live. He would then experiment with it himself before exposing it to the outside world.
He quickly finished the remaining food in about thirty minutes, longer than it took him to finish the first half since he now had to confront a perpetually lazy and indignant woman.
He wiped his mouth and washed his hands before following Alice out of the door. The lazy disciple was in denim shorts, with an oversized white t-shirt on the top. Her long brown hair flowed freely in the light breeze which occasionally drifted about the streets of the city. It seemed she had no intention to change before heading towards where the sect was located.
Her green eyes were barely open as she opened her mouth to speak once again.
“Damn, master keeps giving me work to do. Can’t he see I am already so busy with my own personal stuff to do? He thinks I am lazy, but I am really not. Just because I don’t focus on cultivating doesn’t mean I am lazy. He needs to understand that not everyone is like him, a crazed lunatic who only knows to fight and cultivate.”
Spencer thought of keeping his mouth shut before swiftly deciding otherwise. He didn't have any information in the first place to even withhold anything. In this situation, it was better to communicate and glean any information he could.
“What were you— uh, what was senior sister Alice busy with?”
Spencer abruptly remembered that he couldn't be casual with people above his seniority here, so he changed his way of addressing mid sentence. Alice didn't notice the first half, and even if she did, she completely glossed over it with no expression and spoke in an obvious tone to address the question itself, as if it was a matter of fact he should know.
“Sleeping and mastering my cooking of course. It takes a lot of hardwork and talent to develop the skill of cooking to my level. Don't you know that? It makes me so tired that I want to sleep all the rest of the time.”
This is not the information I was looking for.
In hindsight, Spencer realized he didn't ask the right question either. Or maybe, it was the right question, but he asked the wrong person.
“Did you not bring anything with you? I’ve seen people bring loads of stuff from their home when they were chosen to enter the cultivation world.”
Alice spoke again with curiosity in her voice.
Spencer shook his head. “Elena said nothing in the mortal world would be of use in the cultivation journey, so I didn't take anything. I have no attachment to the things I left behind either so that works in my favor.”
Alice took a look at the newbie who was courageous enough to leave everything behind when heading into the cultivation world.
She had seen some people bring a fortune in hopes of currying favor with the seniors, some carried precious items which held value to them even if it wasn't vital for cultivation. And, there were also some rare kinds which fell into the lucky category. She spoke about them to Spencer in a teasing tone.
“Don't you know, there were some people who brought all their things with them to pawn it off for spirit stones. Some rare ones among them turned out to have a treasure among their belongings, giving them a huge boost in terms of wealth for their cultivation. Many of these items happened to be their family heirlooms, don't you think you might have some treasure too?”
Selena was my only treasure.
On the side note, he was an orphan. The orphanage said there was no accessory on him which could be used to find his identity. When he grew up and used a DNA test to find out his parents, he realized they had dumped him in the orphanage because ‘the time wasn't right to have a baby’ back when he was ‘unfortunately’ born. Later in time, they were a happy family with two young girls and didn't wish to take him in.
Spencer respected their wishes and never contacted them again. Which meant he didn't have anything like a family heirloom either.
Now that I think about it, Selena once said that this locket of hers was quite old. It was worn by every main line member of her enormous family tree as it kept progressing, and she was the one who had it in this generation. Doesn't this mean it counts as a heirloom too?
His steps faltered a bit as he came to a small realization after his sight fell on the seed encased in the locket he was holding.
Did this locket give me the system? Is it because the seed is placed in it that it was able to sense it and prompt me if I want to bind it? Is locket the main body of the system?
Spencer controlled the growing temptation in his mind to experiment with the system and dutifully followed behind Alice.
He could see a multitude of buildings in this city. Some were modernistic and some had a rather old style.
“Are you wondering about the buildings?” Alice asked when she saw him looking at them. Without waiting for his reply, she began explaining with vivid hand movements while pointing at various buildings.
“The modern buildings are where the mortals live. The ones whose ancestors discovered this cultivation world and decided to settle down. There are also plenty of cultivators who decided to move their family inside this world.
“I wouldn't blame them either. This world has abundance of qi, the energy which we cultivators use to fight and practice cultivation with. Even for mortals, it was a healthy alternative as it passively nourished their bodies.
“The old buildings were made with materials of the cultivation world and were made to withstand pressure if a fight between cultivators broke out. We can't needlessly waste these materials on building a place of residence for mortals, so the old ones you see are the ones which were made countless years ago and withstood the passage of time.
“Among the modern buildings you see, some are made with those cultivation world materials too. These modern buildings with better materials are dedicated to organizations which have come into existence in the recent decades or a century, and those with old style are for the old organizations or for the city administration.
“All the other buildings are made with materials from Earth or from more common resources found here. Look, we are already near the transport station.”
Spencer raised his eyebrows in thought as he understood even buildings had major differences here. With increased speed he followed behind Alice who was heading towards the transport station. What she called the transport station was simply a small-scale version of the parking lot he saw as soon as he entered this world, just that instead of jeeps it was filled with even high suspension vehicles and enchanted caravans.
How did he know they were enchanted? The outside of their structure was filled with glowing lines. Some of these enchanted caravans were floating a bit above the ground so it was easy to guess they weren't normal.
He kept mum while watching Alice haggle with one of the enchanted caravans down to the last spirit stone.
For reference, he found out that to keep his stomach full for the entire day it took less than 1 spirit stone. Boundless Sky coin was the value used by people for transactions below spirit stones. 1 spirit stone was equal to a hundred Boundless Sky coins.
Considering that his entire belongings would’ve only amounted to a dozen, it was a rather pricey price for food. But if it was so high, the earnings must be pretty high too so he wasn't worried.
When Alice finished negotiating the price and sat in the caravan, he followed her in and sat himself onto the comfy cushion like seats opposite to her. It wasn't until twenty minutes later that they finally left the city. When he saw that there was only a clearing through the trees rather than a proper road heading towards the sect, Alice was quick to speak once again, as if she had kept all the explanation ready.
“The majority among the entire population in this world are the mortals, a good portion of them aren't interested in cultivating nor do they travel much. The next majority is cultivators who, at even lower levels can easily cross the distance between cities on foot within a day.
“Ultimately, it's a matter of supply and demand. The high suspension vehicles and enchanted caravans only exist to serve as comfort during travel rather than actually crossing the distance. So there wasn't much need to spend more on roads when they would be destroyed by rogue monsters anyway.”
Spencer’s doubt was solved before he even had the chance to voice it out. He realized if there was one thing Alice was not lazy at, it was talking.
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She had all the things in the world to talk about without ever running out of them. He got to know plenty about the sect from her without asking about it. Whether it was a procedure to introduce Earthlings or her talkative nature, he didn't know, but he was grateful regardless.
The strongest sect in the cultivation world, the Boundless Sky sect was composed of six mountain peaks. The biggest one was in the middle, where the outer sect disciples resided, and all the main buildings, like Credit hall, Merit hall, Crafting hall, Alchemy hall, were built. It was also where all the intra-sect tournaments were held.
The other five mountain peaks surrounded the main one, with each belonging to four Grand Elders and one Elder of the sect. There, inner sect disciples lived along with the personal disciples and the other necessary staff.
Alice informed him that Lord Lysander was that Elder who owned one of the five mountain peaks.
“Shouldn't you be living there then?”
Alice was after all a personal disciple of Lord Lysander. But as soon as he spoke, he already had an inkling of what her answer would be.
“They don't let me sleep.” As expected, it really was about that.
She continued with a tired sigh. “Those disciples keep disturbing me with one thing or the other. It also doesn't help that I am the only personal disciple of my master. Which means there would be no one to overlook them if I don't do so.
“Quite obviously, I don't want to do that. Let Master handle everything once he returns from the demon world, who told him to always leave his peak unattended and go play with demons?”
Alice puffed up her face as she folded her hands.
The rest of the journey was uneventful as he heard many gossips he had no interest in. There weren't any sort of big walls like the city to demonstrate that one had entered the sect's territory. As soon as the caravan stopped outside, Alice stepped down and paid the driver, who didn't have a satisfied look on his face.
If one had to do business in a city under the control of a sect, it was common sense to have information about all their notable figures. So he obviously knew about personal disciple Alice. It was a misfortune she chose his carriage as he couldn't be too rude with someone of her status, he ended up taking the lower end of the bargain.
Alice ignored his expression and gestured for Spencer to follow her. If you thought that the chatterbox would stop once they were in the official premises of the sect then you were wrong. She kept talking even as they walked up to the small hill.
“This is the entrance of the sect. Small hills like these are present occasionally throughout the mountain range between the five peaks. One needs to pass through these to enter the main peak in the middle, or any of the five peaks.”
She dropped useful information like these once in a while as he nodded his head to show that he understood.
They made it through the guards, and walked towards the main mountain peak. The Administration hall was situated right near the bottom so they wouldn't be ascending the mountain. Spencer got to witness a multitude of scenarios as they walked through the sect.
For one, it was rough and rocky all around, which was expected since the sect was built on mountains. Occasionally he could see some people—who Alice introduced as outer sect disciples—moving around holding various kinds of weapons and garbed in all kinds of clothes.
All of them had one thing in common, a white armband. According to the lazy disciple, white armband was for outer sect disciples and red for inner sect disciples. There was no other uniformed clothing except when there were inter-sect tournaments.
By the virtue of Alice being a personal disciple and Spencer being a talent scouted from Earth, they were given a priority and he was registered in under five minutes as soon as they reached the Administration hall.
The hall itself was every bit as majestic as the enormous mountains. The builders probably didn't know any other thing apart from size when they made this thing. It had the most basic of design, same as any other modern building, but it was extremely huge.
It took them 5 minutes to leave the building once Spencer was done registering himself.
“Alright, I’ll drop you off here since my job is done. The receptionist already told you about where your living quarters are situated so you can find your way there. Our first interaction was me being appointed a work by Master so I hope we never meet again. Cya ~”
Even though the last part wasn't polite, Spencer didn't feel any negative feelings like disgust emanate from her. She didn't even look like she really meant it, if anything, it seemed like she just didn't want another task to come her way after meeting him again.
Before Spencer could say anything though, he watched as the personal disciple of Lord Lysander disappeared before his eyes. There was no movement, no fanfare, one moment she was there and the next moment she wasn't.
Damn! So cool, I want that too. What if someone invisible grabbed your ancestral pearls, aka balls? Hehehe
Spencer giggled maliciously in his own head and headed towards his living quarters.
As soon as he was out of sight, a petite female figure became visible some distance away. She looked in Spencer’s direction and cheekily chuckled.
I hope that motivated him somewhat for cultivation.
Unbeknownst to Alice, the newbie’s imaginative mind seemed to have been motivated in the wrong direction.
After twenty minutes of long walking, Spencer reached his living quarters after taking a detour through the outer ring disciple market. He bought 2 seeds using the gifted spirit stones, deliberately haggling intensely so that no one suspected he had a lot of spirit stones. No one bothered him during that period of time, since he was an unfamiliar face, and the low amount of people in the surroundings only added to that fact.
Are they cultivating? Or fighting somewhere? Maybe they’ve gone to the demon world?
Unfortunately he didn't have any information to make any correct guesses. For all the talking Alice had done, there didn't seem to be any important information. As expected, no personal disciple would be dumb.
His ‘living quarters’ seemed to be just a cave in the main mountain. Most likely because of his low status, his cave was situated only near the base of the mountain.
The main door had a string of numbers carved on top of it, which was his disciple ID. He opened the door and stepped inside to find a well marbled wall roughly two meters long riddled with multiple gaps, probably to keep his footwear. At the end of the wall was just a single room, probably 4m*4m*4m from the looks of it. It was completely empty, without a single furniture or accessory.
It is indeed a small quarter just like Elena— oh, senior sister Elena had said so. They said that the common bathroom was just a few distance away, I need to cultivate and move out of this place if I want to live comfortably. It’s far worse than my house on Earth.
Spencer didn’t waste any time to remove his shoes and lock the door from inside. He kept aside the paper bag in his hand and leaned against the wall in the living room, if you could call it one. The paper bag consisted of two sets of clothes, a common cultivation manual, a book on rules and regulations and coupons for a basic restaurant, enough to last a month considering he ate three meals per day.
It means I at most have a month to start earning some spirit stones for myself. That is considering I spent all the spirit stones by then, else I could last a few more days. If things get worse, I’ll have to borrow spirit stones or look for a place with free food.
Spencer didn’t have any thoughts about borrowing or eating free food. He was an orphan, things like pride weren’t too well ingrained in them. Anything which helped them survive another day in a world full of strangers, people who you couldn’t call yours, was as good as anything else.
He considered it a blessing to wake up once more every morning and have food to eat on the table. The orphanage fortunately didn’t skimp out of education and taught him enough so that he could fend for himself when he became an adult.
Getting rid of those thoughts, he began fiddling with the locket for a while, then he carefully pried open the film covering seed and took it out. Placing the seed beside him, he intensely thought about the system. Contrary to his thoughts, there wasn’t any message about the seed but what seemed to be an information panel materialized in his head.
[Name: Spencer Lowell]
[Age: 21]
[Cultivation level: N/A]
[Wealth: 1200]
[Flora bound: 0]
[Notifications: 1]
The first thing he noticed was the wealth, which was at 1015. There was no suffix behind it, it was simply a number.
I guess anything can be wealth, and that the base value for wealth is spirit stones. 1000 is my gift, up to 12 should be my belongings on Earth. Considering a meal for a day costs less than 1, coupons for 30 days should be around 25-29. That’s max 1041. Considering the cultivation world’s prices, My clothes and all should be around 30? The rest of the wealth should’ve come from the cultivation manual. Is my own body counted? Or this unknown seed? Maybe it doesn’t take into consideration the things it doesn’t know the price of?
After dissecting wealth value. He moved onto the notification and focused his thoughts on ‘clicking it’.
Immediately after, a pop up like the last time materialized in his head, overlapping above the information panel. This time it was slightly different.
[Detected 3 seeds in user’s possession]
[Please choose 1 seed for binding]
So it isn’t the locket. I’ve already removed the seed from the locket, but the system can still sense it.
Spencer was relieved. If the system was somehow connected to the locket it would’ve been troublesome since it was a physical object in the end. As much as he would care for it given its origin, he ultimately couldn’t be certain about not losing it. This was a dangerous world when even his own life might not be safe.
He didn’t choose the two seeds he had brought from the market, but gambled by choosing to bind the unknown seed which was placed in Selena’s family heirloom.
He placed the seed in his hand and focused on ‘binding’. He didn’t exactly know how the system worked, so he could only shoot in the dark and hope it stuck. It did.
[Do you agree to bind the seed in your hand to the empty slot 1?]
[Please note: This process cannot be reversed. Your binding slot will forever be bound to the seed you’ve chosen.]
Spencer didn’t hesitate since he had already decided on it, and focused on ‘agreeing’ in his mind.
[Binding the seed to empty slot 1]
[Binding successful]
The popups disappeared shortly, but Spencer noticed the counter of [Flora bound] to have gone up by 1. He focused on that particular tab and a stream of information materialized.
[Slot 1]
[Seed name: Eternal Starwood]
[Stage 0: Seed +]
Cool name.
He also noticed there was a + sign behind Seed. Feeling curious, he focused on ‘clicking’ it. Instantly, his wealth decreased by 10 and the information changed, along with a pop up appearing once again. Without paying attention to it, he first checked his belongings but nothing had disappeared.
So I basically have double wealth? One which will increase in the system once I earn something but if I spend it in the system, my wealth in reality won’t disappear. This is crazy.
He redirected his focus on the new information.
[The seed has been activated. The young Sapling is beginning its journey toward becoming a mighty Ancient Tree. Ensure its growth is well-supported, as it will reciprocate the care and assistance you provide.]
[Sapling name: Eternal Starwood]
[Stage 1: Sapling +]
The introductory pop up instilled expectations into the young newbie as he clicked on the ‘plus’ sign once again. This time, his wealth instantly decreased by 100, but the information remained as it is.
Instead, what appeared was a pop up which made Spencer’s eyes go wide.
[Time element affinity +1, Star element affinity +1]