《Primordial spark》 0.0-Prologue Jing Tu disliked this part of his obligation to the Serpent. Ferrying junior cultivators from one universe to the other, whenever he returned to an outpost of theirs got bothersome quickly. Providing commentary about their approximate location in the void in relation to universes of note. Even preaching outdated gossip of universes he had visited briefly at one point or another could not keep the boredom at bay anymore. Examining his two passengers in the immortal boat he noted that they had once again buried themselves in the frills of their clothing. Blind to the world or lack thereof surrounding them. Jing Tu considered himself a patient cultivator. However their complete lack of care for what was a perilous journey at the best of times rubbed him the wrong way. Deciding to teach them a little lesson to aid their comprehension, he adjust the course of the immortal boat. Now they would pass a shoal of low-ranking void fiends. Nothing dangerous to him, but maybe it would shake up his passengers a little. Jing sighed, doing something so petty simply to gain the attention of his passengers felt beneath him, but what was he supposed to do without coming off as rude. They were far beneath himself in cultivation, but such things mattered little to immortals. Tempting an eternal grudge without any chance of time ending it before anything came of it, was foolishness incarnate. Not that he would bow his head to them, as long as their cultivation was three steps below his own. The tiny boat shook as it passed the void denizens, tentacles, wings and other morphing appendages leaving imprints in the transparent cocoon surrounding the boat. His passengers making sounds of distress, finally having eyes for the world around them. ¡°Calm down Bao An, look at how calm Jing Tu is, these void creatures look horrific, but they cannot hurt us in here.¡± ¡°Oh Li Jiahoa, they may not be strong, but that barrier is the only thing between us and complete dissolution. Jing Tu likely has techniques to traverse and navigate the void. We do not.¡± Jing Tu felt annoyed by the implication that he would abandon his task due to the lowest dregs the void produced: ¡°Should this immortal boat be destroyed I would not leave you to die, the boat exists as a luxury, not a necessity. Grabbing you both and dragging you to our destination is well within my capabilities.¡± The immortal boat under his control lurched slightly to the side and stopped. A highly unusual occurrence as he had not commanded it to perform such a maneuver. No matter what was wrong with the boat he had to first deal with the void beasts, before he could fix the boat. ¡°Stay calm and wait here.¡± He coated himself in a voidwalker technique and reinforced his voidseer technique he had cast on his eyes, then he stepped outside of the immortal boat''s bubble of space. A young universe in close proximity to the immortal boat was leaking void fiends for whatever reason. Significant parts of the universe seemed to be outright missing, he couldn''t tell more from the outside. He felt brief displeasure, before deciding that it was not his problem to fix. Using his space-rending blade he cut the beasts in twain, cut an opening into the small, damaged universe and unceremoniously guided the fiend''s bodies inside before they could attract more powerful void beasts. Maybe they would become a fortunate encounter for someone else or the little universe might use them to repair some of the damage. None of it his problem anymore. Disposing of the void fiends had taken little effort. He went back to check on his passengers. They were hugging again. A lost cause, it seemed. Slowly checking the front of the immortal boat with his divine sense, revealed a tiny crack in the void. Something the immortal boat had gotten stuck in. Cracks like these were fairly common around universes as leftovers from entries into the void or other techniques. However this lone crack had no obvious reason to be here. It was out, randomly, in the wide void. There was no sign of a dying universe having been in that spot, the entire area was young. He returned to his passengers. ¡°Li Jiahao, Bao An, I found something of great interest to me.¡± ¡°What is it?¡±, Li Jiahao retorted. ¡°I may have found a resource stash or a hidden realm.¡± Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more. ¡°Why are you telling us this?¡±, Li Jiahao asked, confusion visible on his face. ¡°I do not want to leave this discovery unattended. I can bring you to your new home right now and come back later, but that would take up valuable time. I would much rather that you tag along and gain some of the spoils I find less useful.¡± ¡°I need to discuss this with Bao An.¡± He left them to it, and went back to concentrating all his attention on the little rift. Normally a technique that created these types of rift would briefly cut open a small rip in the universe it came from, accomplish a purpose and then close incorrectly, leaving a scar. Their shape depended on many factors. However, he had never seen one such as this before. This scar looked like someone had poked tiny holes with a needle, all following a line, occurring at both irregular and regular intervals. Frankly, he had no idea what the purpose was behind doing this. Li Jiahao waved him over. ¡°We are willing to tag along.¡± Jing Tu extended his voidwalker technique to include both of them and put the little immortal boat into his storage ring. He aligned himself properly and prepared to cut open the scar that seemed to be the most recent. Bao An and Li Jiahao looked uncomfortable. Jing Tu cut into the scar. The next thing he knew, they were surrounded by primordial QI dissipating into the void. Primordial QI was extremely rare and very volatile. If it came in contact with other types of QI it violently decomposed into its components. Stunning and leaving any cultivator caught up in it completely disoriented. Something that would be a death sentence in the void. Paling, he jumped them through the rift and slammed it shut behind himself. He jumped without an inkling of what was on the other side, yet he still preferred maybe dying over dying for certain. Primordial QI went off all around him. He lost any control he had over his own QI. His lungs gasped for air, something they had not done in millennia. He found none. His techniques snapped back into place as his control over QI returned. Jing Tu brought out the immortal boat and placed the convulsing bodies of Li Jiahao and Bao An near the bow. It would take a while longer for them to recover. Needing to calm down himself, he sat down in a lotus position on top of the cabin and waited with his eyes closed. He swept his divine sense outwards. Primordial QI was still being converted to normal QI in an expanding bubble around his original point of entry. This bubble served as a barrier that his divine sense was unable to cross. The rapid conversion seemed to be accelerating, maybe due to the total amount of chaotic QI inside the bubble becoming larger every second. Aside from the QI being in a chaotic state all around them, there was little else to see. The space the bubble occupied was empty. The mere fact that space and time were non-corrosive in nature, was the only differentiation from the true void they had just left. Li Jiahao and Bao An stirred. ¡°Whaath happened?¡±, Li Jiahao slurred. ¡°All of us got hit with primordial QI.¡± ¡°Where are we?¡± ¡°Inside the secret realm. It is filled with primordial QI.¡± ¡°Why would you dive into the realm without exploring it with divine sense first.¡±, Li Jiahao accused. ¡°Primordial QI swamped us in the void. Going unconscious in the void is a death sentence, not even the warding of the immortal boat would have helped us.¡± He elaborated. He followed it up with some advice: ¡°Sit down and use your divine sense to try and gain something from the conversion going on all around us. Cultivators from stages far above me would give a lot to witness what we caused here by accident.¡± They paused before sitting down in a lotus-position and obeying. The bubble kept expanding ever more rapidly until it reached a seemingly maximal velocity. Li Jiahao broke the silence: ¡°It''s too far away, my divine sense can no longer discern what is happening.¡± Jing Tu set the immortal boat in motion. They caught up with the wave front. Cultivating while observing the phenomena gave all three of them benefits of thousands of years of pure cultivation in a few days. Li Jiahao and Bao An advanced an entire realm while they sat in silence prodding and experimenting with the volatile QI. On the sixth day Jing Tu reached a point where he could no longer gain any new insight from the current reaction of primordial QI, he would have gained more from observing inert primordial QI, but that was no longer possible, especially considering his relatively low cultivation rank in comparison to people who normally paid for the location of primordial QI. Li Jiahao had reached a similar bottleneck and had just taken to cultivating normally in the QI-rich environment of chaotic QI. Bao An had taken to firing various QI constructs at the wavefront, observing the reaction they caused. On day eight the wavefront reached a star ''above'' their current location. It confused Jing Tu, hidden realms or treasure realms would not normally include a star. Especially not one filled to the brim with primordial QI. He brought them closer to the star to observe the reaction on the sun, as the wavefront washed through it. Their strength was high enough that they would not be harmed, even should the worst happen and the star detonated. There was a remarkable absence of reaction as the wavefront passed through its core. No change in color or any other sign of something unusual happening. By itself the lack of reaction was mystifying and enlightening. As the wavefront swept through the core of the star it also reached the ecliptic plane. Revealing that the star had a solar system with one tiny inhabitable planet and several barren ones. ¡°I found something of interest. There is a small realm with human inhabitants orbiting this star.¡± ¡°There were people living entirely submerged in primordial QI?¡± Li Jiahao asked incredulously. ¡°It appears so.¡± He brought them closer to the realm to get a better resolution on his divine sense. ¡°This is odd. There are thousands of small items orbiting this realm. Might be debris from immortal boats, we should stay and observe from outside the potential dangerous zone.¡± Bao An added: ¡°There are realms with heavens that strike cultivators down if they try to leave before they reach immortality or the debris might be from attempts at ascension.¡± ¡°The realm is flush with newly created chaotic QI. I cannot detect a single cultivator. There are a few rank one spiritual beasts.¡± ¡°A world without cultivators, we should see what the mortals have been up to without our guiding hand.¡± Li Jiahao interjected. 1.0 Dave disliked loud sounds, which was the primary reason why he had moved out into the countryside. With springtime upon him, the birds were incredibly loud. He even bought ear-protection in an attempt to sleep through their early-morning serenades. In the end it still got through to him. Flicking his wrist he threw his hearing protecting back onto his bed. He''d stopped making his bed after he left the military, he liked the lived-in look of an unmade bed. It helped cover the soul-burning loneliness of being out here all by himself. His company didn''t see a point in forcing everyone to return to the office after the pandemic. He''d made sure that wasn''t something which would change anytime soon. The second he''d been certain of it being possible he''d bought a house on the outskirts of a village in northern Montana. The rest of the inhabitants were older people, so there was little chance of finding a romantic partner. A worthy trade-off for the beautiful landscape and clean air. There was a national park nearby. The state had recommended that everyone in the village buy special bear-proof trashcans. Was kinda embarrassing how long it took for him to figure out that bloody thing. At least the bears wouldn''t have an easy time. He jumped in the shower for a quick rinse-off and put on some clothes. The weather was perfect for a little trip on his bike. He grabbed it from his garage and set off. He rode down the gravel road leading up to his house, past an ancient abandoned cabin and onto the gravelly bike-lane adjacent to the main road. The landscape spread out, with a large grassland to his left, a mountain or large hill to his right, Hank''s Outpost was an outstanding general store, with a large assortment or wares, with only a thirty percent markup on perishables and around ten percent on everything else. It was on the other side of the road from a tiny hotel and cafe. When he pulled up there was an argument going on in front of the general store. ¡°Hank, man. Don''t be a cunt.¡± ¡°I can''t sell them to you. You told me what you wanna do and it''s a crime.¡± ¡°You can''t be serious, man.¡± ¡°I''m gonna be an accessory if you shoot them now.¡± ¡°Please man, they took one of my sheep.¡± ¡°Go to Johnson''s, but leave me out of it. They''re protected animals.¡± Dave brushed past them, went inside the store and tried to forget what he''d eavesdropped on by accident. He bought smoked sausage and rye bread. On the way out he noticed a discount on rope, so he got some, just in case something broke during gusty season. Securing the rope on his bike without having it get in the wheels was something he should''ve considered before buying it. As he turned off the main road he felt like he was being watched. He scanned his surrounding and the feeling went away. Maybe the conversation he''d heard made him paranoid. He went inside for a droll day of loom-calls and Hexel spreadsheets. The world turned, it became late afternoon. He got off work in a horrid mood. One of the new guys had made a consistent mistake through several documents. Fixing it had him bounce calls around, bothering everyone involved. Even still he wasn''t certain that he''d got every instance of the mistake. He couldn''t even blame the new guy, it was an easy mistake to make and someone else in his department should''ve caught it before it went out to everyone. Dave decided to go on a small hike before it got dark. He wanted to forget about work, walking around in the pine forest on the slope of the large hill behind his house should get him in a better state of mind. Maybe he''d even forget about the clusterfuck he''d have to clean up tomorrow, while also doing his normal workload. He quickly checked the temperature on his oil boiler to make sure that everything was in working order. It was something he''d gotten in the habit of doing, the thing was supposed to be extremely reliable, but he wasn''t taking any chances this far up north. Not even in spring. Strapping on his boots he set off on a little evening walk. Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author. Walking through the cooling crisp air made him delight in the many different sights. Orange from the setting sun shone through the pine trees surrounding him. He heard a growl from his right. At the root of a tree lay a large timber wolf. Utterly massive in comparison to even the biggest dog he''d ever seen. Its fur was Grey, white and seemingly sticky around the left hind leg. It growled at him again and tried to get up on its front legs. It twitched in pain and fell back down. Dave swallowed heavily while backing away. He didn''t dare turn his back on the wolf, until he was out of its line of sight, and even then, he kept his head on a swivel. Walking back was an unnerving experience. Gone was the feeling of safety and wonder, originally brought on by watching the approaching sunset. He remembered the conversation he''d heard by coincidence, back at the general store. It''d make sense if they''d been talking about a box of shotgun shells filled with buckshot. Hank sold a variety of ammunition, but no slugs and this wolf appeared to be wounded. Meaning that the sheep-guy had used up his ammunition to defend his sheep and had gone to Hank for more, leading to the argument. It was an impressive wolf and he hadn''t gotten a picture of it. You really weren''t supposed to feed wildlife, since they''d become dependent and used to humans, but curiosity nagged at him. He felt restless. Eventually he gave in. Grabbed some smoked sausage, since he didn''t have anything better on hand, took his flashlight and Glock before heading out. The walk was tense, he kept second-guessing his terrible decision, but kept going through with it anyways. He felt curiosity drawing him ever closer to dipshit territory, but he couldn''t get over himself. When he reached the wolf it was still roughly an hour until the sun would fully set. He had checked by holding his hand fully outstretched from his body and counting how many fingers were between the horizon and the sun, with each finger being fifteen minutes worth of daylight. He approached in a way that would give both of them ample warning, so neither would feel surprised. When the wolf growled, Dave stopped and threw the sausage near its head, which caused it to twitch. Dave took out his phone, held it in front of himself so it wouldn''t silhouette in any way and took a picture. Doing it this way, he hoped, wouldn''t cause the wolf to remember the ''ouchy pointy thing'' it had been shot with. He left before seeing whether the wolf ate the sausage. Sleep came easy that night. In the morning he biked to Hank''s and bought some frozen venison and some sausage for himself. Work wasn''t going too well. Sadly he''d been correct, it had become a cascading error, because several people had input incorrect data into automated systems, which had extrapolated incorrect things and ruined everything further downstream. As the first error of this type, there had been no defense against this. A lot of variables didn''t even care that they were completely out of range of anything sensible. At least it made it easy for the workers to tell when an output was wrong. Dave had left the venison to thaw during his work-hours. He was almost certain that the wolf wasn''t going to be there anymore. If that were the case he''d just be firing up his pan and eat steak for the next few days. Not a terrible outcome. After getting off work, he kitted up and headed out again, this time earlier in the day. The wolf was still there. Dave threw the venison and left quickly. He spent the rest of the afternoon and evening just walking around on the large hill his house lay at the foot of. The wolf seemed to be immobile, hence he figured it''d be fine. He had nightmares that night. Filled with smoke and ash. Dave started off the day by reading the news. Something groundbreaking had been discover at the highest level of particle physics. Journalists were really trying to hype it up. The articles themselves were complete bollocks, claiming wild breakthroughs in potential sources of energy. Listening to what the actual scientist was saying boiled down to ¡°We had some changes in our results that should''ve stayed constant and we aren''t really sure what''s causing it. We''re working on it.¡± He hated how journalists sensationalized every little discovery in the sciences, to the point of being outright misinformation. On the other hand he understood why they did it. Generating interest and promising wild results would get them more funding and it would draw attention to the journalist''s work. Work was uneventful, they had a debriefing about the wider effects of the error, in which it was suggested that the automatic propagation of a complete bogus input should be prevented at the onset by denying said input in the future. It fell on his head to fix, basically. Not that it was hard. It was just another annoying software update. After work he grabbed his gun, some meat and went out to face the wolf again. He encountered the wolf in the outskirt of the forest behind his house. ¡°It must''ve followed my scent back¡±, Dave thought in shock. Dave threw the meat and quickly retreated to his house. Looking out his rear-facing windows he could see the wolf from inside, as it lay under a tree. He went to sleep, after he moved his bed upstairs and locked the door behind himself. No nightmares this time. Day four after he discovered the wolf started off with him driving to Hank''s in his car. Better to not risk getting attacked on his bicycle. Dave bought a lot of meat this time around. Thankfully he had a large freezer, since his house''s previous owner had been an avid hunter. There was something interesting on the internet. A text seeming to be a masterpiece of art, describing a workout routine had been uploaded to a Fakebook page by someone named Jonathan. Every person reading it interpreted it wildly different which was what drew a lot of people''s attention. Regardless of interpretation it seemed to energize people when performed. Sounded like some modern art bullshit. Dave saved it for later. Seemed like neat little gimmick to deconstruct. Work was uneventful, everyone had calmed down and he was left alone to make the fix, to prevent future incidents. He''d taken his laptop down the stairs, so he could watch the wounded wolf out of his back window. It didn''t move around a lot, lying down most of the day. When Dave went to feed it this time, it immediately walked towards him as he went out his back door. They met halfway, he didn''t wanna throw the meat fearing that it might startle the wolf. He held the venison in his outstretched hand. The wolf took it and walked away. It didn''t seem to be in pain anymore. Odd, since it had only been a few days since it''d been shot. Dave went for a hike in the other direction today. Across the wide open grassland, until the sun set. Wind played across the tall yellow grass and moved it to its whims in waves spreading out towards the horizon. 1.5-Interlude This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° 2.0 Dave woke up to the sound of shattering glass echoing up the stairs. He was out of the bed before his brain had even woken up. It all came back to him as he was scrambling for a rifle that didn''t exist. Gun in hand, he made his way slowly down the stairs. On the counter next to sink sat a squirrel, he slowly approached while scanning for the wolf. A window behind the squirrel had been broken, but he couldn''t see the wolf yet. This squirrel must''ve been just as scared as he was, it was just sitting there in shock. Dave tried to shoo it away, when that didn''t work, he reached forwards to brush it onto the ground, to get a better view out the window. He got a face-full of claws. Reflexively twitching back in pain and shock he fumbled at his face with his left hand, but the squirrel was already gone. ¡°What the fuck.¡± He whispered under his breath. In the bathroom mirror he examined his wound. It was three shallow red lines running down his cheek, they weren''t bleeding. He felt a tiny bit violated. Squirrels weren''t supposed to get the drop on humans like that. It had moved so quickly he''d only seen a brown blur before getting shanked. He washed his face. Googled whether or not squirrels are carries of rabies. Luckily there were no known cases of transmission, even though this particular squirrel had behaved oddly. The window was broken by something small, like as stone being thrown at it. Large lower shards were still sitting in the frame undisturbed, meaning that nothing large could''ve entered through it. He went outside and carefully removed the large shards of glass and placed them against the brick wall. Inside, he used a broom to clean up the smaller shards and a vacuum-cleaner to make sure that he got all the tiny ones as well. Finally, he took a cardboard moving box apart and taped it across the missing window. Hank''s had Plexiglas panes for sale, for whenever a bear got into a hunting cabin while the owners were away. When he''d made sure that squirrels weren''t likely carriers of rabies he''d noticed that something odd was trending about animals, but he was too tired to figure out what new cat video had hit the scene tonight. The next morning, after brushing his teeth he drove to Hank''s to buy a pane of Plexiglas and some sealing strip. Hank had the news running on his surveillance TV. ¡°This is some crazy shit.¡± Hank blurted out. ¡°What?¡± Dave asked. ¡°Animals are getting smarter.¡± ¡°Sure they are. You sure that we aren''t just getting dumber?¡± ¡°Some dude in Ohio has a pet Raven and he was able to hold an actual conversation with it. Also, fuck you too.¡± ¡°Staged, probably.¡± Dave scoffed. ¡°I figured the same, they sent a news crew out there and they were convinced afterwards.¡± ¡°You can convince people about a lot of stupid shit. Ravens are smart, but not that type of smart.¡± Dave said with finality. ¡°By the way. What happened to your face? Did you get a cat?¡± ¡°Squirrel got me.¡± This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it. ¡°A squirrel... are you serious?¡± ¡°Fastest fucker I''ve ever seen. Got into my house and scratched me when my guard was down.¡± ¡°Do you need to get that checked out?¡± ¡°Nah, there''s no danger of rabies, I should be fine.¡± Their attention drifted to the TV, where a reported was standing in front of a picture of a raccoon: ¡°A large number of raccoons in the LA area seem to have figured out how to open doors. They are running around in large Gazes and have ransacked houses in their path. It is recommended to stay indoors until further notice.¡± ¡°Those guys were already good at doing that to begin with. This hardly proves anything.¡± Dave protested. ¡°I''m not trying to prove that the end is coming or something, I don''t remember this being in Revelations, so we''re good. My point is that we have to be careful out here, we''re all alone. You should buy a shotgun. Just to be on the safe side.¡± ¡°There it is. Should''ve called it.¡± Dave said, with a small eyeroll. ¡°No matter how smart a bear gets, it ain''t gonna outsmart buckshot.¡± Hank, laughed. ¡°Here, I''ll give you a ten dollar discount.¡± He said victoriously. Dave left the store with a new Remington 870 and three boxes of buckshot, with fifty shells in each. He had to go back into the store to get the Plexiglas pane he''d originally set out to buy. Back home he enjoyed his day off, he''d decided to wait with fixing the window until the following day, because the weather forecast looked fine and he didn''t feel like doing it right away. Instead he did some cursory research using the internet. There were a lot of videos of pets supposedly behaving oddly, but most of them were only actions that seemed off to the owner, but were still well within expected boundaries of normal pet behavior. Mostly opening doors or some social interaction that was supposed to prove their newfound intelligence. A very unsettling video of a parakeet questioning its owner about whether or not it was human, was hopefully just a doctored video. Honestly, watching videos of other peoples pets doing funny stuff could hardly be called research and he might''ve done it anyway on his day off. Regardless of Hank bringing it up. This time the wolf met him halfway between the treeline and his house. Standing across from him it became clear how truly enormous it was in comparison to a normal large dog. Dave put down the chunk of venison and backed away slowly. He decided to stay, watching at a distance. Watching the wolf eat the meat was educational. It seemed concerned about not wasting any of the meat, in stark contrast to some dogs. He walked backwards until he hit the door of his house with his heel. Turned around and hurried inside. Getting more meat from the freezer was a bit messy since the pieces had frozen together. He hoped that the wolf wouldn''t mind some frozen meat, since this piece hadn''t been thawed out. The wolf was laying down in the grass where he''d last seen it. It stood up when he approached it. Dave held out the meat and the wolf took it from his outstretched hand. The wolf carried the piece of meat in its mouth and walked off into the woods. Dave returned to his house, took off his shoes and hyperventilated from late-onset fear. Calming his breathing he remembered the exercise he''d saved from the previous day. It should help him get his mind off the danger in his backyard. This exercise was more complicated than he''d initially thought and the creator had tagged image-training onto it, probably in some attempt to appeal to a younger audience. Dave figured that doing it as accurately as possible would give him the ammunition to discredit it afterwards, there were a lot of bogus training-routines floating around. Some of them did actual harm. If this was the case here he wanted to help stop it before someone got hurt. It took a while to figure out what the original writer had tried to convey, the language used was unnecessarily flowery and at times even seemed arrogant. As if the author was looking down on the reader. The method itself was a collection of stances that strained his body when he held them for a period of time, while doing image-training, probably to distract from the pain. A few repetitions later he was too exhausted to continue. His muscles hadn''t start to hurt yet, but he didn''t want to overdo it and become incapacitated from muscle-pain the next day. There didn''t seem to be any immediate issue with this method of training. It just seemed to be playing into mystique and needlessly complicated language to entice people to follow it. Nothing wrong with that if it encouraged more people to stay in shape. Dave turned on the TV and crashed in front of it. ¡°-experiencing a crisis in material science. A lot of measurements from just a few years ago are no longer reproducible, with increases or decreases in hardness of more than ten percent from previous measurem-¡± ¡°-living in changing tim-¡± ¡°-tracking a boat on radar, before it vanished in the Baltic sea. A search and rescue operation is currently lead by the USS Providence, the same ship that originally tracked-¡± ¡°-Hanna Cortana has had her second-¡± He turned the TV off again. Questioning why he even owned a TV when it was just a continuous stream of ads, fear-mongering and celebrity bullshit. The next morning he found road-killed deer on the main road. He hauled it onto the bed of his truck. It would serve well as food for the wolf. Something odd was definitely going on, but he wasn''t certain if he wasn''t just getting cabin fever. He passed Hank''s, who was closed for today and went to church. The sermon was about standing strong together. Leaving church, Dave felt refreshed. He drove home. At home he looked up a video on how to skin and butcher a deer, but the one he had was mauled beyond recognition. He ended up just cutting off bits and limbs before stuffing it in the freezer. Dave fed the wolf and left out a bowl of water for it, just in case. He once again postponed fixing the window and went to bed instead. 3.0 Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings. ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡°Here in the studio it seemingly coincided with the launch of a Soyuz rocket carrying three astronauts to the ISS. It is likely just a coincidence, but tune in later to hear more.¡± ¡°Well that was odd.¡± Dave sighed. ¡°I''m just glad that I''m not going crazy, or at least that everyone else heard it as well.¡± ¡°The whole world is going crazy.¡± He drove back home. Dave grabbed a box of nails and gloves from the garage. Walking to the broken window he carefully considered how to best fix this. There were still bits of glass stuck in the window, so he put on the gloves and removed them, carefully. Nailing the sheet metal to the outside was tricky, but he got it done. He touched the metal, it was very cold. A major problem for the temperature of his kitchen. The garage had some old rockwool laying around from fixing minor problems around the house. He cut a piece of insulation into shape and stuffed it into the cavity from the inside. Then he nailed another piece of sheet metal over the window to lock the insulation inside. With the window finally fixed and itchy from the insulation, he went inside for a hot shower. After the bath he waited until he was dry and nailed another two sheets over the window to his pantry, just in case. The next nine months were relatively uneventful, no more strange noises swarms of animals or other stuff. For him, that is. The rest of the world were dealing with increasingly odd occurrences. Animals were becoming more intelligent, there was no doubt about it. They developed other abilities from this intelligence. Up to and including actual speech and comprehension for ravens and some parrots. Anything believed to be fully sapient was declared a protected species. This law mostly protected above mentioned birds, a lot of whales and elephants. There was an Indian elephant that had learned to read and write. Other animals developed interesting abilities suggesting some increase in intelligence, but nothing as incredible as full sapience seen in some exceptions. One notable outlier were insects. They had started increasing in size, while at the same time decreasing in number. Dave was really happy that he did not have to deal with this change yet, as it was the deepest winter where his little house was positioned. Stories from Australia had made him consider how far north he could move with his salary. Plants down south had begun growing more in size, vibrancy or in other aspects that ended in entirely new abilities. Such as some, individual, trees of a species developing rudimentary traps for insects, while others did not. On an entirely different note. Particle physics were in turmoil. Positrons were far more strongly affected by gravity, by as much as five times, whatever the consequences of that may be. On the macroscopic level very little had changed. Dave kept feeding the wolf. He decided to name it Lydia. 4.0 ¡° If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. ¡°This could be near my house, but the time of year is clearly wrong. Did that spot hold us in stasis until fall?¡± He thought. ¡° ¡°A different country?¡± He thought. ¡° ¡°Please behave yourself Lydia.¡± Dave begged on the inside. 5.0 ¡° ¡° ¡°Xun Ma, there was never any doubt, he picked up our language with surprising speed.¡± Li said. ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere. ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡°No list of forms and description of how to move your qi? You have clearly entered body refining, so you must have cultivated somehow.¡± ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° 6.0 Dave continued to cultivate for three weeks. Until Xun pulled him aside and said: ¡°You are ready to break through now. I can teach you what you need to know. This is arguably the hardest breakthrough cultivators make, since their use of qi it is what definitively is what separates them from mortals.¡± ¡°What do you mean.¡± ¡°This breakthrough is all about sensing and manipulating qi. Monstrous beasts naturally develop the ability to sense qi and use it in attacks. Humans do not naturally posses such an ability and they do not automatically gain the ability to use qi.¡± ¡°What should I do then?¡± ¡°Now that you are at the peak of body strengthening you have enough qi in your body to start reaching out and touching other qi. You will use this ability to pull in qi and gather it in your spiritual body. It will enter the ''shadow'' of your physical body in the spiritual realm and burn meridians into it until it reaches your dantian. In your dantian you will compress it into a liquid. Easy, right?¡± Xun remarked sarcastically. ¡°I got that I need to sense qi and pull it in.¡± ¡°Good enough.¡± Dave took a sip of tea and asked: ¡°And, how do I do that?¡± ¡°Normally we would bring the initiate to a place with a high concentration of fire and earth qi. In the case of our sect it would be the caldera of the active volcano our sect is named after. Then they meditate there until they figure it out.¡± ¡°So we have to go on a trip?¡± ¡°No, this place is even better. You saturated the entire area with ice qi, you should be able to sense it with relative ease. It will be uncomfortable though.¡± ¡°Then let''s begin.¡± Dave said enthusiastically. ¡°Okay, leave your jacket here and go outside. ¡°Understood.¡± He grumbled. Dave took off his jacket and dropped it on the floor next to the table. Walking outside he looked at the hut that had been his home for the last three weeks. It had a low thatch roof, shutters on the windows and mud walls. It was robust in its construction. Everything outside had been covered in a coffin of clear ice. It was breathtakingly beautiful as it was deadly. Lydia came running from behind the house and wanted pets. He obliged for a few moments, before he sat down and crossed his legs. At first he only felt the cold of the ice below him, but as he concentrated he could feel something evaporating off him along with the residual heat. He tried to influence it with just his thoughts but it just wavered out the way like a slippery gas. He continued his attempt until he had to give up and go back inside. ¡°No luck yet?¡± Xun asked. ¡°Nah, I think I can sense qi, but can''t pull it in yet.¡± ¡°You could try drawing it in instead of pushing it around, at least that worked for me.¡± ¡°Thanks for the help.¡± Dave said sincerely. Dave waited for a bit until he had warmed up, then he went outside again. He tried to apply a suction from inside his body, but he did not know how to get he started. A whirlpool might be what he needed, so he tried it and surprisingly it worked. It slowly drew in the qi that was rising from his spiritual body. What followed was a sudden and intense pain coming from everywhere all at once. He watched as the incoming qi slowly carved its way inside his spiritual body towards the whirlpool. Dave tried everything to make the pain stop. It did not. He was spasming from the pain. It kept going until he blacked out. This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source. Dave woke up to Xun standing above him and talking with Li. ¡°So you are telling me that he is supposed to faint in pain?¡± ¡°No, while qi gathering is fairly unpleasant it is not supposed to make him react like this. It is a slow process where he was supposed to carve out meridians so he can proceed to foundation establishment.¡± ¡°What went wrong?¡± Li asked. ¡°It must have something to do with his physique. It might have fed him so much qi that he shot through qi gathering and he got hit with all the pain you would normally receive over a few months or years at once.¡± ¡°Is that good?¡± ¡°I''m awake.¡± Dave interjected. ¡°On one hand it is very speedy process, especially for someone who started cultivating as late as he did, but the pain must have been overwhelming.¡± ¡°Fuck, yea it was!¡± Dave said with a wince. ¡°Can you look inwards and tell me what you see?¡± Dave focused at himself in his mind''s eye and described what he saw. ¡°I see squiggly lines going from my skin to the whirlpool in my center, near my navel.¡± ¡°Congratulations, you have completed qi gathering as the fastest person in history... probably.¡± Xun raised an eyebrow. ¡°What is the next step. Please, I''m already starting to feel bloated.¡± Dave begged. ¡°Well, you have to compress the qi into a liquid in your dantian. The bloated feeling is a good thing, but normally you would have to be actively drawing in qi, not while yammering at each other like this. There are also cultivation techniques that help with this step, but us normal people do not have access to something like that.¡± ¡°Okay, so it''s a good thing, then?¡± ¡°Yes, it is very enviable. I myself am only at the sixth step of foundation establishment. You are catching up extremely quickly.¡± They sat down for some more tea, Dave wondered why Li had stored so much tea away, but he figured it might just be the difference in culture. ¡°I guess I can start repaying my dept to you two now.¡± ¡°Here, these are exhausted spiritual stones, they can be refilled, most of the time.¡± ¡°What''s with ''most of the time''?¡± ¡°Sometimes points of failure in the rock make them explode while refilling them, but do not worry, at your stage of cultivation they cannot hurt you unless you decided to hold it up to your eye.¡± ¡°Noted, how do I fill them?¡± ¡°You project a tendril of qi from your dantian to the spirit stone in your hand or other body part, then the stone should suck in as much as it can hold, on its own.¡± Xun explained. Dave sat down, crossed his legs and tried it on the first stone. It was a raw unpolished piece of rock. Once his tendril hit the stone it sucked in a lot of qi and the jagged piece of rock glowed softly. No sudden explosion or any other problem. Seeing that the stone was full, Xun said: ¡°This should more than pay for your dept with Li. His harvest would have been worth, maybe five gold. A spirit stone of low quality, such as this will sell for at least ten gold. More, if the cultivator in question wants ice qi, which is what you primarily have.¡± ¡°Your dept with me is more complicated, but I am willing to let you go if you refill three more of these stones and join my sect. Otherwise it''ll be ten spirit stones.¡± Xun said with a glint in his eyes. ¡°Before I can join your sect I want to check for a way back. Now that I no longer contaminate the entire area with ice qi, I can finally go and check where I arrived with Lydia.¡± ¡°I doubt you will find anything, travel between realms is very hard and only immortals attempt it. One of them probably plucked you up and put you down here without your knowledge. Some of them are weird like that.¡± ¡°I still wanna check, just in case.¡± ¡°Sure, I will come with you. Maybe I can learn something from this.¡± Dave petted Lydia and they set off. Halfway there he already felt bloated again and recharged a spirit stone while walking. Roughly two kilometers into their walk they ran into a wall of whipping snow. It was only a hundred meters thick, as they emerged on the other side colors of fall greeted them. With Lydia back at the house, the temperature anomaly had not followed them. It was a very surreal sight to see drifting snow to one side and a warm fall afternoon on the other. They made it back to the grass plain where they had arrived, but there was no sign of the small white flower anywhere. Xun used a technique to jump far into the air, but he did not find anything. ¡°That''s unfortunate.¡± ¡°Yes, guess you have no other choice than to join my sect now. Some immortal probably saw something in you and put you here to mix things up.¡± ¡°What do you gain from having me join your sect, you seem almost hellbent on it?¡± ¡°What, you mean besides a strong brother? Another hand to help these villagers? We are a righteous sect, every cultivator we recruit, is another cultivator that does not go to a orthodox or murderous faction.¡± ¡°Can you tell me a bit about those enemy factions?¡± ¡°They are not actually enemies, at least not the orthodox faction, they are more like a group of people that does not share our goal of protecting mortals from the actions of cultivators, which aligns with the interest of the heavens. Orthodox cultivators generally just do not care about mortals, cities in their territory have no cultivators to protect them and evil factions treat mortals like cattle, though only the worst of them use mortal deaths for cultivation, as such an act carries a heavy punishment from the heavens. They crossed the snowy expanse and returned to Li''s hut for the night. 7.0 ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡°was noon when you went to sleep it is afternoon right now. Come down and meet Da-veh he is a rouge cultivator that wishes to join the Lone Mountain sect.¡± ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° 8.0 ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation. ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡­ ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡°¡°What do you mean?¡± Dave grinned. He had to use his shirt to carry all the spirit stones Xun had returned to him. ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° 9.0 They headed to the edge of the glade, passing through a smaller gate in the wall leading to the slope of the volcano. Large igneous rocks littered the area between the trees. ¡°This doesn''t look like a training area, Xun.¡± Dave said. ¡°It is not, but this is perfect for the kind of training we will be doing.¡± ¡°Come here, look at this boulder.¡± ¡°Looks like a perfectly normal rock to me.¡± ¡°Now punch it.¡± ¡°Ya serious?¡± ¡°Yes, very.¡± ¡°Okay, here goes.¡± Dave punched the boulder, holding back a lot to not hurt himself. His fist went into the rock and broke it. It crumbled down on his arm and he reflexively shook it off like dust. ¡°You see now? This could have become a tragedy, had you tried to exert any amount of strength. At our level we do not even need to reinforce our bodies with qi to do a lot of damage to our surroundings.¡± ¡°Oh shit, you were completely right. What the fuck.¡± ¡°Body strengthening already made you a lot stronger than any mortal. Qi gathering would have allowed you to use qi to reinforce parts of your body. Foundation establishment added to that and now your entire body is passively reinforced. I will teach you how to do it consciously later.¡± Dave grabbed a piece of igneous rock and squeezed, it let out a series of gunshot-like sounds while crumbling into sand. ¡°I can understand why you wanted me to slow down in my cultivation, this could''ve ended really badly.¡± ¡°We need to get you to a level of knowledge where it becomes believable that you were a rouge cultivator. Nobody is going to believe your actual speed of cultivating.¡± Dave, having stopped listening asked: ¡°Hey, can I punch one of these trees?¡± Xun panicked and screamed: ¡°No! Stop! The crafters will skin us alive if you damage their steelwood trees.¡± Xun spent the rest of the afternoon teaching Dave how to reinforce his body with qi and to do it reflexively when attacked. The sun dipped behind the volcano and Dave asked Xun: ¡°Hey, how come that I''m not hungry? I''ve been up and about all day?¡± ¡°In the foundation establishment realm you can subsist on solely qi for a long time. As long as you do not enter a qi desert, you can live for years at a time without sustenance. At core formation you will no longer require any food at all, it can still benefit you to eat and it still gives you the pleasure of eating good food.¡± ¡°It feels like I''m becoming less and less human, for better or for worse.¡± Dave said, deep in thought. ¡°Come, we should spar a little in the training arena. Just to get your reflexes up to par. I cannot guide you forever, I have to return to my duties eventually.¡± They drilled simple punches and kicks, until evening, then they returned to the Ma clan residence for the night. The next morning morning they met in the little garden in the center of the Ma residence. ¡°What are we doing today?¡± Dave asked. ¡°I cannot teach you for much longer, you have also advanced to the third level of formation establishment tonight. I am going to teach you how to operate your flying artifact until noon and then I will show you how to cultivate manually.¡± ¡°I thought I was already cultivating?¡± ¡°No, what you have been doing is called passive cultivation and is unheard of below the core formation realm.¡± If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. ¡°How so?¡± ¡°The core formation realm allows the cultivator to generate qi passively, just like your physique does. It can be expanded into the surroundings as a domain, affecting a battlefield in a way beneficial to the cultivator. When you first arrived here, you essentially had a less concentrated version of a domain. This also means that a core formation cultivator can theoretically advance without utilizing his spirit roots to absorb qi from his surroundings.¡± ¡°Why is that important?¡± ¡°It is important, because demonic cultivators that continue using demonic techniques above core formation are perpetuating a crime against the heavens without rhyme or reason. They could simply isolate themselves and slowly advance to their next bottleneck, even without spirit roots, but for them such an approach is almost unheard of.¡± ¡°Yeah, that sounds like they really enjoy pointlessly rising up against the heavens, but isn''t that what all cultivators do? Battle against the heavens that want you to remain mortal?¡± ¡°Do not compare us to those bastards. We advance while safeguarding the mortals around us. Those pigs gorge themselves on the qi of others, with little regard for anyone else. They would wipe out mortals like flies if the punishment the heavens would meter out on them was less severe.¡± ¡°What punishment?¡± ¡°If someone cultivates using mortal vital qi, their tribulations starting at the core formation realm become impossible to overcome. Only truly desperate demonic cultivators cultivate using mortal lives, because it cuts them off from further advancing forever.¡± ¡°So anyone below core formation could get their hands dirty without any consequence from the heavens, until they advance to core formation.¡± ¡°Their karma would still be reduced, leading to unfortunate encounters which would likely kill them if they are weak.¡± ¡°So karma is actually a thing here?¡± ¡°Not proven, but there have been countless examples throughout history of demonic cultivators meeting a grizzly end.¡± ¡°Wouldn''t that just be their lifestyle of murder coming back to haunt them?¡± ¡°It could be, but the heavens certainly bless and punish. Karma seems very likely to me, based on what I have seen. Let us end this conversation and begin flying.¡± They went to the middle of the courtyard and Xun pulled out an oversized sword from his spacial ring. He stepped on top of the blade and lifted off. Hovering a few centimeters off the ground he beckoned for Dave to do the same. Dave unrolled his carpet and stepped on top of it. Then he projected some qi into it from the soles of his feet. The carpet became rigid and started hovering. ¡°There are two ways to steer a flying artifact. The first way is to steer using more or less qi in a given direction, which gives you sideways momentum or you can fly using your body to steer. A combination of both is usually the best and safest way of doing it. There is even a flying competition in our sect, but you just missed it, so next year maybe.¡± ¡°Sounds fun.¡± ¡°Let us move away from the sect, it is generally discouraged to fly above the sect, however you can leave quickly, just avoid lingering for too long, otherwise people will think you are scouting for someone or preparing a potential attack. The worst that can happen, is that you will be questioned in the presence of a truth stone and maybe a fine, if what you did was particularly egregious.¡± Dave followed closely behind Xun as they flew out of the sect, taking the shortest path to the walls, then turning north and flying for a while, practicing simple maneuvers by shifting their body weight around. The plain extended in all directions and when Dave tried to fly higher to see further Xun loudly warned him: ¡°Do not fly too high or you will lose consciousness and fall.¡± Dave, feeling like testing this society''s knowledge asked: ¡°And why is that?¡± ¡°It has to do with the heavens and how only immortals are allowed to ascend.¡± When the sun was high above, Xun flew down to the ground near a little creek, with some trees running along its length. Dave followed him down after taking a more detailed look at the surroundings. ¡°You ready to learn how a normal cultivator draws in qi?¡± Xun asked Dave. ¡°I sure am.¡± ¡°First you want to sit down and close your eyes. Rotate your qi throughout your meridians, the surrounding qi will be drawn into your body as you do so, then you take all the qi and move it to your dantian. Repeat it until you can do it faster and faster.¡± Xun explained. Dave sat down and closed his eyes. He could sense his own meridians in his spiritual body. He took a small amount of qi and moved it outwards in one of his meridians, then he drew it out of his body and into a different meridian. Qi flooded in behind the controlled qi and he drew it into his dantian. He did this process quicker and more precise, until he fell into a meditative daze. Eventually he was knocked out of his runners high by Xun knocking him on the shoulder. ¡°You should stop now, otherwise the grass will catch on fire.¡± With a wary voice, before pointing at the ground. Dave looked and saw that the grass in a small ring around him was smoldering. Xun said: ¡°I do not know what is going on here, but you should be careful when cultivating in the future.¡± ¡°I will. Should I not cultivate in front of others?¡± ¡°Not unless you really, really trust them. They might know more about your physique than we do and it might end up with you being a target. Also, as you advance in foundation establishment you will notice more and more liquid qi in your dantian, that is from compressing your qi into a liquid state. Which is what foundation establishment is all about.¡± As the sun set Xun and Dave flew back to the Lone Mountain sect. 10.0 ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement. ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° 10.5-Interlude ¡° ¡° ¡° You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author. ¡° ¡°¡°Well, at first he was surprised and happy, now he''s a bit more thoughtful. I think he''s considering the implications.¡± ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° 11.0 They were flying over the great plain, until they reached a sparse forest of low trees around noon. Soon they spotted the first Hular snacking on one of the trees. From the air it looked like a gigantic sloth. It not so much climbed trees as it simply ate them in a few bites. Very imposing creatures. ¡°We''ll engage it on the ground, you two attack it from range, so we don''t end up hurting each other. I have experience fighting alongside Wu, but I haven''t seen any of you fight.¡± Liu said in a loud voice for everyone to hear. Having taken leadership he added: ¡°If we run into a monstrous beast, retreat and regroup on me.¡± Wu and Liu advanced on their flying swords. Their swords plunged into the ground behind the Hular, taking it completely by surprise. It took several deep gashes, just in the process of turning around. Dave conjured a huge shard of ice and launched it downwards at the Hular. It moved agilely to the side an avoided the shard. Cheng waved her hands around and summoned a construct of yellow lines floating in the air. ¡°Hold it still for a second and I will set it aflame.¡± She screamed loudly. Dave launched more shards to box it in and drive it towards Liu and Wu. One second the Hular was busy fighting for its life, the next its entire pelt lit up in a large bonfire. It fell over, nearly crushing Wu and clawed at its eyes. Liu and Wu descended on it and finished it off. ¡°Can you use your ice to put out the fire?¡± Liu asked Dave. Dave used ¡°Frozen Lotus¡± at low power, without launching any shards of ice. The others shook off the ice that had formed on their clothes and broke free of the frost that had locked their feet to the ground. ¡°Could''ve warned us first. That was cold.¡± Wu complained quietly. The fire on the Sloth''s fur had been extinguished by his blast of cold. Wu began skinning the Hular, the fur had been burned, the skin was however still intact and he pulled it off in large sections. Dave had a few questions: ¡°What is the skin used for?¡± Liu answered him: ¡°It can be used for talismans instead of expensive to produce talisman-paper. Ordinarily they send someone to help harvest the Hular with us on this mission, but Wu did a short course on how to harvest their resources, when we were younger.¡± Wu was busy breaking off its teeth and stuffing them into his spacial ring, so Dave left him to it and decided to survey the area from above. He rose to a height of roughly a hundred meters and looked around. Even with his enhanced vision he failed to see another of the gigantic animals. The trees stretched on and on, forming a sparse forest that seemed to get deeper in the distance. There were few clouds in the sky and the sun was peeking through, leaving a chessboard of shadows on the ground below Dave. He took in the view while ignoring the bloody work happening below him. In the time it took for an incense stick to burn, his companions were done with their bloody task and headed up to meet him. Dave asked: ¡°How come there aren''t more Hular in the surrounding area?¡± ¡°They are fiercely territorial and are quick to attack each other, you can often see them walking around with scars from such battles.¡± Liu answered him while standing relaxed on his sword-shaped flying artifact. They continued along the area with sparse trees instead of heading deeper into the forest. ¡°Why are we staying along the edge instead of heading inside the forest?¡± Dave asked, while being a little confused. ¡°The mission is intended to keep any Hular from wandering into the great plain and getting aggressive as it slowly starves to death. Territorial disputes would otherwise drive them out into the plain, if we did not periodically purge the outer edges,¡± Liu said before continuing,¡±the Hular are what makes the northern forest so unattractive to settlers, even though there would be abundant wood for construction and heating.¡± ¡°I spotted another one. A small one.¡± Wu called out from above, as he descended past them towards the ground. Stolen story; please report. Instead of being the size of an elephant, this once was the size of a tiger. Liu and Wu flew around and approached it from the back. They rammed the flying artifacts into the ground at a shallow angle and used the additional speed from being flung off to quickly close the distance and deal a surprise attack. This time it worked less well. They stumbled over a ridge of earth that was being quickly raised by the Hular. ¡°Monstrous beast¡±, Liu called out while Wu was jumping to his feet. They tried to run back to their sword-shaped flying artifacts, however the Hular was moving speedily to cut them off. Cheng was still winding up for her attack so Dave was the only one who could do anything to prevent Liu and Wu from ending up in the claws of the beast. Dave Launched a stream of icy shards into the area where the Hular would have to enter to attack them, the shards were moving too slowly to target the creature directly, however targeting the area where it would have to go to attack was very much possible. The ice spikes froze the ground around their point of impact, making the terrain even harder to traverse for the beast. Dave wished he had brought a rifle when he arrived in this crazy world. The ¡°Frozen Lotus¡± technique was more useful when it was being applied in an unavoidable storm of ice. He should have looked for a more specific ranged technique, instead of haphazardly modifying a technique and calling it a day. While Dave had been saturating the area with ice, Liu and Wu made it back to their flying artifacts and took off. Seeing this, the sloth let out a loud gurgling roar and launched a ball of earth after them. They deftly dodged it and rose to meet Dave and Cheng. They all retreated a bit, keeping the Hular in their sights. Dave decided to lead the discussion with: ¡°I can keep peppering it from a distance, eventually it''ll get tired and you two can swoop in and finish it.¡± Cheng added: ¡°I can help with that, although I cannot do it for a long time.¡± ¡°No, we need something that kills it without damaging its leather too much. The leather of a demonic beast like this one is bound to be very valuable.¡± Liu said while nursing some of the scrapes he got. ¡°I have a more powerful attack, but I need to be alone and close to it. It''s risky for me.¡± Dave added and complained in the same breath. ¡°You''re already in the beginning stage of core formation. Getting slapped around by a monstrous beast that''s, at best, in qi gathering shouldn''t hurt you much.¡± Wu ruthlessly said. ¡°Okay, I''ll do it, but I want whatever that pelt is worth afterwards.¡± Dave descended towards the roaring Hular. When he reached the treetops he stealthily jumped from his carpet and gripped onto one of the trees. The large sloth was still roaring its unhappiness towards the sky and Dave avoided immediate detection. He slowly made his way towards where he could hear the Hular roar while staying low to the ground. Meanwhile the others had figured that distracting the beast was a good way to help Dave, so they had started flying around above the Hular, occasionally dodging a ball of earth being thrown their way. Dave stayed low to the ground and made his his way towards the back of the beast. Luckily, just like sloths on Earth, this beast had front-facing eyes despite not being a predator, so he had a chance to sneak up on it in the first place. He reached its back and blasted it with the maximum amount of qi he could press into the ¡°Frozen Lotus¡± technique before the technique would change into something different. As he activated it he closed his eyes in prayer. A sound like a freight train driving past his head erupted around him. The forest had been decimated. Trees lay pressed to the ground. Everything was covered in a layer of frost and snow. There was very little left of the Hular, just a huge reddish smear on the ground. He did not even feel tired. He had destroyed the forest in a three hundred meter radius and he did not even feel winded. Cheng made it down to him: ¡°Are you all right?¡± She asked politely. ¡°Yea, I''m fine.¡± Dave replied reservedly. ¡°Guess they weren''t joking when they told us that core formation level experts were in an entirely different league.¡± Liu interjected as he reached Cheng. ¡°Can you guys help me find my flying artifact?¡± Dave asked as he came out of his stupor. ¡°It''s funny. You asked for the Hular pelt, but now there''s nothing left of it.¡± Wu said in mild schadenfreude. ¡°Yeah, I guess there isn''t. I''ll have to make my money in a different way,¡± Dave sighed, ¡°now let''s go and search for my flying carpet.¡± Cheng ended up finding the carpet near the edge of the destroyed area, luckily undamaged albeit a little frozen here and there. The rest of the afternoon was uneventful. They hunted five ordinary Hular before they flew back. ¡°I''ll sell these skins and deliver your shares to your homes if you give me your addresses.¡± Wu said as they reached the main square with the mission board. They all gave their assent. Dave had forgotten to remember his address, so he had to describe the house to Wu, before they parted ways. Dave picked up a two-man mission for exterminating giant wasps near a village in the eastern forest. Afterwards he went home to Lydia, after having bought her a treat for being well behaved. Dave got her the front left leg of some unknown creature. At least the leg looked vaguely bovine so he hoped she would be okay. It would not be long before she joined him in core formation and would no longer have to eat. 12.0 Mo Xiuying, please just call me Mo. I will be your companion for this mission. I am in the initial stage of the foundation establishment realm, what about you?¡± ¡°Greetings, my name is Dave or Dai Fu. I''m in the initial stages of core formation.¡± Dave introduced himself. ¡°Where are you from Dai Fu, I have never seen a face like yours.¡± Mo asked in her youthful brashness. ¡°Oh, I''m from the far west, I doubt you''ve ever heard of my people before. They''re just a tribe of barbarians. I left them and travelled here. Dave said while sweating bullets. ¡°That sounds interesting, it would be nice if you told me about your life on the way to the village of Favoured Tree.¡± She said, pushing Dave into a corner. ¡° ¡° Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences. ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° 13.0 ¡°I can only use it in short bursts, or over large areas, unless I find a technique that lets me heat myself. Meaning that I need to find a heating technique that works with ice qi, somehow.¡± He thought. ¡°So my domain can either act as a deep freezer or it can be used to obscure vision. That doesn''t seem all that powerful. I must be missing something. This was supposed to be an ability that lets me slaughter an unlimited number of lower-ranked cultivators.¡± He thought to himself, while floating back down to the ground on his carpet. ¡° ¡° Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there. ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° Mo Xiuying stepped out. She gave Dave a friendly wave and left the room. Dave burst out: ¡°Wait, that was his granddaughter?¡± ¡°Yes, that was young mistress Xiuying, she often comes to visit her grandfather.¡± The secretary said. ¡°I was just surprised, since I went on a mission with her yesterday.¡± Dave said, flustered. ¡°Yes we know. The one where you started a war. Trust us, we know. There is nobody who blames you since it was long overdue, but we were all briefed on every detail of your mission.¡± The secretary said, rolling her eyes. She stood up and walked to the door of the sect masters office. ¡°Leader, Dean Wen is here to speak with you and he brought someone with him.¡± She spoke into the office. ¡° ¡° ¡°his knowledge, telling the truth. We however still have to test it. Wen said. ¡° ¡° ¡° 14.0 ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. ¡° ¡°Dai Xiuying greets the immortal.¡± The sect master was kowtowing to him. ¡°What do you mean, I''m not immortal yet?¡± Dave was extremely confused by the sect masters actions. ¡°Only a reincarnated immortal skips the nascent soul realm entirely, since their soul is not in need of further cultivation. I am very sorry for any perceived slight I or my sect may have committed.¡± The sect master was still kowtowing, so Dave walked over and pulled him up into a sitting position and said: ¡°I have no memory of ever being immortal, this is my first time cultivating.¡± Dave took a seat on one of the pillows and gestured for the sect leader to do the same. ¡°What realm am I in right now?¡± Dave asked curiously. ¡°You are two realms above me, in the wandering immortal realm. A realm where you gather enough qi until you can ascend to immortality. Supposedly you gather qi until your core implodes. Then you shatter the shackles of the heavens and the earth allowing you to ascend.¡± The sect leader explained. ¡°So it isn''t mandatory to leave this world?¡± Dave asked with intense interest. ¡°No, but why would you stay? There are no resources for immortals here. It would be far more beneficial to ascend to an immortal realm.¡± The sect master asked, confused. ¡°I have never once in my life used a resource to advance my cultivation, I don''t see a reason to start now. Also, I suspect that my physique would make me a resource instead of being able to consume resources.¡± Dave said with finality. ¡°So you are planning to stay in our sect, even if you reach immortality?¡± The sect master asked incredulously. ¡°Yes. I quite like your little sect, I see no reason to leave you to fend for yourself.¡± Dave left the sect master''s office through the back door into the garden, jumped onto his carpet and left for the crater of the volcano. He had left Lydia to watch over the disciples for almost a day and he wanted to take back over for her. His advancement had allowed him finer control over his domain, otherwise he would freeze them all solid when taking over. When he landed in front of the disciples he nudged Lydia until she awoke and they went through the song and dance of returning his domain to fill the volcano. Dave went back to cultivating, not because he needed to hurry any more, but rather because it was a pleasant way to pass the time. 15.0 ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author. ¡° ¡° ¡° 16.0 Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings. ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° 17.0 ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° Stolen novel; please report. ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° ¡° unfortunate hostilities.¡± Then he continued: ¡°Wan, can you bring us to our temporary accommodations while your sect figures out the actual state of the war?¡± 18.0 He awoke to a furious knocking on the door to the building they had been granted for their diplomatic visit. It was morning outside and there was rain falling from the sky. A youthful face greeted Dave at the door, the young boy said: ¡°The sect master is ready to receive you now.¡± Dave gathered the other remaining members of his team. He found Mo sleeping on the floor next to the table in the room with the hearth and scholar-guy was sleeping in a bedroom, with the last burly guy cultivating next to his bed. He woke them both and then he left them to figure out how to wake burly-san without disrupting his cultivation session. Meanwhile Dave drank a cold cup of tea to get the taste of sleep out of his mouth. The others all fell in behind Dave as they walked out the door. This young boy who had come to get them walked them across bridge after bridge, until they arrived back at the landing platform they had departed yesterday. A large bearded man was waiting for them and the elderly negotiator they had met with yesterday was bound and gagged, being held by a group of cultivators behind the bearded man. Seeing this, Dave prepared himself for a fight. ¡°Look what the cat dragged in! Lone Mountain weaklings, here to beg for mercy.¡± The bearded man shouted, he continued shouting at the top of his voice: ¡°They were found collaborating with this traitor. A former negotiator that went rouge. They negotiated a ceasefire with him, not knowing that he has no authority to enact such a measure.¡± ¡°We already freed your prisoners, you better uphold your end of the bargain.¡± The scholarly dude from Dave''s side shouted back. ¡°Let me show you how we treat cowardly traitors here in the Deep Verdant.¡± The bearded guy grabbed the old man and lifted his fist. Dave decided that they needed the negotiator alive and moved. Splinters flew through the air as his feet left behind craters in the carefully crafted wood. He grabbed the shoulder of the bearded man who was about to execute the old negotiator and proceeded to pummel him like a sandbag. Doing it while holding him in place, so he would not fly off and regain his wits. When the bearded guy looked sufficiently beaten up, he paused and waited for a moment. ¡°Impossible, we should both be at the initial stages of nascent soul, how are you so much stronger?¡± The bearded man got out through a split lip. Dave proceeded with his beating, while the other cultivators were too afraid to step in. ¡°You got us to release your prisoners and then you tried to go back on the deal by killing the ''traitorous'' negotiator. What the fuck were you thinking? Did you drop your brain in a blender? Nobody would have been willing to negotiate with you in the future. All so you could continue a war over an unimportant hamlet at the ass-end of nowhere.¡± Dave said while slapping the shit out of beardface. ¡°Dai Fu, I think you should stop. I think he learned his lesson.¡± Mo said from behind Dave. Dave grabbed the elderly negotiator and jumped back to his group at the edge of the platform. The bearded man dropped in a heap. Then the other cultivators swarmed him and fed him various medicinal treasures. ¡°Sect master stay with us. Don''t die.¡± One of them said. ¡°That was their sect master. Such a complete dumbfuck and he''s the sect leader. These are our neighbors?¡± Dave said exasperated. They waited a few moments until the sect leader of the Deep Verdant regained consciousness. Dave walked over to him, the disciples, or rather, elders surrounding him bristled and prepared to defend him. ¡°What do you think my realm is?¡± Dave asked the dumbass on the ground. ¡°Wandering immortal. Only someone an entire realm above me can do what you just did.¡± The sect leader instantly replied. ¡°As long as I watch over the Lone Mountain sect you will not be able to attack them. At least not without losing everyone who is attacking. I recommend that you rethink the validity of these peace-negotiations and stop pursuing this pointless war.¡± Dave said, then he grabbed the old negotiator and slung him over his shoulder, then he continued: ¡°I''ll also be taking this old man, since you appear to undervalue him and he has supposedly proclaimed his allegiance to the Lone Mountain already. At least that''s what claiming him a traitor implied to me.¡± Dave turned around, spread his arms and called out: ¡°Come my companions, there is nothing more to see here, we should leave and let them decide the validity of the peace for themselves.¡± They left on their flying swords and Dave on his carpet. Heading back to the sect, they crossed over Favored Tree and decided to survey the damage to the village. A few houses had been destroyed by fire and others had been damaged by punches. This damage likely stemmed from when the flanking force arrived in the village and had to root out the few remaining cultivators. It was unsettling to look at this damage that had not been there just a few days ago and to think about how much damage cultivators would be able to wreak upon a world filled with mortals. It oddly reminded him of Earth, where a single press of a button could set in motion a chain of events that would wipe out most humans on the planet. The difference between here and Earth, was that the thermonuclear warheads were human-shaped and could be reasoned with. Sometimes. They continued their journey back to the sect. Dave was still carrying the old man he had slung over his shoulder back in the Deep Verdant. Dave got an idea about what he could do for him. ¡°What is your name?¡± He asked the old man. ¡°This one''s name is Yao Gang, benefactor.¡± He answered, while some of his words were being stolen by the wind whipping past. Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere. ¡°Do you wish to serve as my servant, until you can prove yourself to the Lone Mountain sect?¡± Dave asked him. ¡°I would be honoured, benefactor. You have saved me from an unjust death at the hands of a failed leader.¡± Yao Gang replied, after he had taken a moment to think it over. When they reached the sect everything seemed clear, with no commotion anywhere. So they headed for the sect leader''s back yard, or at least Dave did, the others just followed him. He told Yao ¡°Wait here, I''ll be right back,¡± and knocked on the sect leader''s office door. The sect leader opened the door and the entire group except Yao hurried inside. They told the sect leader that the Deep Verdant had tried to back on their peace-negotiation and had been willing to sacrifice their negotiator to make that happen. Explaining that the Deep Verdant had essentially gambled that the forces they got back would be enough to deal with what they would have thought to be a nascent soul realm cultivator. Their sect leader itself may have also tried to hold his own against Dave to ensure a kill against him. No one was certain what the exact plan of the sect leader had been, since they were uncertain about how much knowledge the enemy had access to. If they had even known who Dave was and that they had invited him inside their sect, or if his attack on the sect leader of the Deep Verdant had come completely out of left field for them, like lightning from a clear blue sky. After briefing the sect leader, they all dispersed. Dave went home after he collected the baby-carrier from the tailor. Yao Gang had followed him the entire time and he was looking questioningly at the contraption of straps. Arriving at his home he opened the door and was left gaping at the chaos that had been wrought on the inside of his house. Lydia had in his absence busted out of the crib, crawled around and bumped everything down on the ground. ¡°Oh, I did not know that you were married my lord. Where is your wife?¡± Yao asked when he saw Lydia. ¡°I have no wife Yao, this is my beast companion Lydia.¡± Dave said, sighing. ¡°What are you talking about my lord, this is clearly a baby. A monstrous beast would never leave themselves so vulnerable by transforming into a baby.¡± Yao said while walking towards Lydia and trying to pick her up. Lydia swiftly dodged him on all fours and hid under the table. ¡°Something went wrong during her nascent soul tribulation and now she''s stuck as a baby. Growing up at normal speed, seemingly.¡± Dave reiterated. Lydia had even gotten into the tea-leaves and seemingly crushed them into a fine powder, they spent the rest of the afternoon cleaning up after her rampage. ¡°So, what is your realm Yao?¡± Dave asked him while picking up some bronze utensils. ¡°I have been stuck at the top of foundation establishment for the last 200 years.¡± Yao said while bending over and dusting off a feather-duster, that had been dropped into the soot of the hearth. ¡°Was that why the sect leader of the Deep Verdant so readily sacrificed you?¡± Dave asked him. ¡°Most likely, but he was also eyeing my great granddaughter and as his chief negotiator it would have introduced faults into our relationship had he pursued her openly with me in his cabinet.¡± Yao stated with a frown. ¡°Oh, so he would''ve tried to get rid of you regardless of how the negotiations turned out. I figured he also did it because they ended so favourably for us.¡± Dave said with an equally large frown. ¡°No, based on what we knew at the time, you had won the war in an overwhelming victory, you could have pressed for an even larger tithe and nobody would have complained. The likely reason why you did not do so, is because you are a righteous sect. Righteous sects try to prevent animosity between themselves and orthodox sects, so they are willing to help righteous sects whenever they come under attack. Of course in this case that is unlikely to happen any more.¡± Yao said in a single breath. Dave went out to purchase an additional hammock and discovered that the idea of a backpack had made its way from the tailor to the leatherworker, who had set up a stall in the square selling them for a few silver. He headed to a general store where he got a hammock for a few coppers. The next morning he put on his harness, grabbed Lydia, Told Yao to watch the house and headed for Shadowfall. Xun Ma, the man who had first helped him cultivate had not heard from him since before the harvest festival, where he had promised to show up, which he then had not. He wanted to re-establish contact and thank him for his priceless help. When he found the boarding house from the air, he headed down and called for Hong Ma, a different cultivator in the Ma clan who might know where Xun was at. ¡°Yes, what is it?¡± A sleepy voice came from a little dingy room in the boarding house''s rows of rooms. ¡°Hong, can you come out here so I can talk to you?¡± Dave asked him loudly, but politely. ¡°Sure, I will be right out there with you.¡± It came back from inside. A man came outside with sleep still in his step, he looked unlike what Dave remembered him as. He had no beard and his face had turned far more androgynous. ¡°What happened to you, you look completely different.¡± Dave exclaimed. ¡°Funny story actually. Back at our sect we have this big volcano where we can cultivate, but nobody can do it for very long since it is all fire-qi and earth-qi. When I returned to the sect a while ago, everyone was cultivating in the volcano since the fire-qi had been balanced out with ice qi by some monster who was cultivating somewhere near the front, right by the lava lake. They told us there would be changes, but not that they would be so massive. At least I no longer have to shave.¡± Hong re-told his story. It was odd for Dave to hear that people had used his caldera-nap without even understanding what was happening. ¡°Do you know where Xun is at right now?¡± Dave finally asked him the question he had come all the way there to ask. ¡°Xun headed out for an emergency call from a lone farmhouse out there. Come here so I can show you my map.¡± Hong said and gestured for Dave to come closer, as he pulled out a folded map from his pocket. His finger landed straight at the point where Dave had entered this world, half a year ago. 19.0 Dave immediately jumped on his carpet and made for his point of origin. Reaching Li¡¯s house only took him half an hour. He settled his carpet in the space before the door and flicked his carpet into his storage ring. The air was swelteringly hot. It had been clean and crisp spring weather just moments before, with a brisk wind kissing the tips of the grass on the plain. The change had happened abruptly as if he had hit a wall of dry, hot air. It was unsettling. He knocked on the door to the little cabin and someone opened it from the inside. Li said, ¡°Oh it is Dai Fu, good to see you are still alive.¡± Dave answered, ¡°Glad to be back Li, how is it going?¡± Li answered, ¡°Oh, you know another odd weather phenomenon, similar to when you first showed up, but this time it is swelteringly hot. I already called Xun Ma here so he could look at it.¡± ¡°That sounded like a good idea, what has he found until now?¡± Dave asked Li. ¡°He has been scouring the plain and scattered forest around the anomaly for the last few days, but he has yet to find what causes it,¡± Li said while scratching his head. ¡°Maybe it¡¯s another person or animal that was dragged here,¡± Dave said with slight confidence in his statement. ¡°Xun thought the same thing, which is why he has been checking every little bit of ground in the central area of the anomaly,¡± Li said with confidence in his voice. They talked a bit about the war between cultivators, but Li wasn¡¯t interested since it wouldn¡¯t affect him either way. At least initially, but then Dave reminded him of the tithe that an orthodox sect like the Deep Verdant, would claim. Then he was suddenly happy about the Lone Mountain¡¯s victory. Dave headed out towards the approximate center of the anomaly after he followed the periphery of its edge for a bit, to easier pinpoint the center. He found Xun sitting near the approximate center. Xun was sitting cross-legged as if he was cultivating, his eyes were moving around below his closed eyelids. The surrounding heat had only increased and there was very little moisture in the air. There was a strong updraft pulling bits of detritus up from the ground. Dave called out to Xun, ¡°Hello my friend how is going? Have you found anything yet?¡±, Xun was shocked out of his apparent cultivation and opened his eyes, ¡°Is that you Dai Fu? It has been so long since we last met.¡± Dave descended onto the ground, landing near Xun. Xun had changed since he had last seen him. He had lost the beard and he looked like a younger version of his old self. It was so pronounced that Dave for a moment thought he was looking at Xun¡¯s son. His face had also changed in subtle ways, making it look softer, but not so much that he started looking androgynous. ¡°Did you cultivate in the volcano?¡±, Dave asked, after noticing the drastic changes to Xun¡¯s body. Xun followed his line of sight and said, ¡°I did until I reached core formation, but regardless of the temperature in the crater it left a deep-seated cold in my dantian, something the elders had already warned us about. This place helps with the biting cold near my heart.¡± Dave asked, ¡°Have you found what¡¯s causing this anomaly, or have you just been enjoying this sunny warmth?¡±, Xun got an offended expression on his face and replied, ¡°I tracked this phenomenon to a singular squirrel. It seems to be a monstrous beast in the core formation realm. I remembered your wolf, so I have been trying to befriend it by collecting nuts and sharing them with it. The squirrel''s domain has been shrinking every day. I am uncertain why, but it might have something to do with it arriving as a core formation beast, instead of as body-strengthening cultivators as you did.¡±, Dave thought about it for a moment, and then he said, ¡°We should try to capture the squirrel, then you¡¯ll have an easier time befriending it in captivity. We can also examine it closely to figure out why its domain is shrinking.¡± Xun scoffed and said, ¡°Easy for you to say. It may just be a squirrel, but it is still solidly in the core formation realm. I had no chance of capturing it unharmed.¡±, Dave waited for Xun to finish, then he said, ¡°I¡¯m in the wandering immortal realm. If you lure the squirrel out, I can capture it without harm.¡± Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon. Xun put a hand into the folds of his robe and withdrew a handful of nuts. Hovering on his sword he flew to the middle of a thick tree and dangled a nut in front of a hole in the tree. Before Dave could react, the acorn had vanished. Dave hurried next to Xun on his carpet and his senses sharpened as he flicked the mental switch to enter battle. A little nose appeared in the hole, sniffed around, and went for the nut. Dave¡¯s hand came down like a guillotine and caught the squirrel mid-jump. It seemed to be a pine squirrel and it reminded Dave of the rowing band of squirrels that had ransacked his house so long ago, back on earth. The little guy clawed at him in protest and he could feel the air-currents that were brought on by the squirrel''s movements. It was honestly terrifying how quickly the squirrel was moving, he would have had trouble even seeing them, had he not been two realms above the squirrel. Dave forced his spiritual sense into the squirrel''s body and examined it for damage. When he was satisfied that the squirrel was unharmed he dived deeper into the squirrel¡¯s spiritual body. Something he could only do because he was in the wandering immortal realm and the squirrel had an active domain. This squirrel¡¯s spiritual body had a core, but its meridians were unfinished. Some of the thinner pathways had already connected to the outside, but most of them were radiating out from its core and had yet to finish growing to its skin. This was in the complete opposite direction of how he and Lydia had their meridians grow. Maybe it had something to do with the core creating a higher pressure on the inside and hence eating the meridians out of the spiritual body in the opposite direction of what was normal. It would also explain why the squirrel¡¯s domain was shrinking, as the squirrel gained more and more control over its qi on the outside of its body. After Dave examined the squirrel, he said, ¡°We should return to the sect and find you a suitable cage for it. So you can befriend it before it reaches the nascent soul realm.¡± In Dave¡¯s mind, there was no doubt about the fact that this squirrel had come from Earth and a similar location to him, as it was a pine squirrel, a type of squirrel that was native to the area where he had lived. It lifted his spirit because this squirrel confirmed that there was a lasting connection between Earth and this world in some way or form. To return to Earth he simply had to figure out how to travel the other way in this connection and he had all the time in the world once he reached immortality. ¡°While the squirrel¡¯s domain is hardly unpleasant, especially for people afflicted with yin energy. Would it still be wise to return to the sect with a squirrel radiating heat? Should we not wait out here until it can control its domain?¡± Xun asked him while Dave was holding the squirrel. ¡°You have no way to contain it and I have to return to Lydia soon. The sect will just have to endure a little heat. Maybe it¡¯ll save them some firewood.¡±, Dave said mercilessly. They went to say goodbye to Li and flew back towards the sect. Dave had to hold the squirrel in a way that did not harm it and in the process he had to switch hands. The squirrel took this as an opportunity to escape for a brief moment and shred the upper part of his robe. He got it back under control and returned to a stable flight path to the sect. ¡°Hey, now that you are a wandering immortal you should get yourself a better flying artifact than that old carpet. The sect should still have some in-store and after how much you helped them with creating a cultivation holy land, they should be happy to assist you in finding one that suits you.¡±, Xun said while eyeing the squirrel. Dave thought about it for a moment and said, ¡°I like this carpet a lot, but you¡¯re probably right about me needing a faster artifact.¡±, Dave interrupted himself and asked, ¡°By the way, what are you going to name this little guy?¡± ¡°I figured Zhi would be a good name since its heat is healing to me.¡±, Xun said while examining the scattered clouds above them. They reached the sect and flew straight to the artisan''s district. A woodworker offered them a fair price for a spacious ironwood cage, it was not originally intended for squirrels, but at least it was at a nice size. Dave said goodbye to Xun who headed to the Ma clan home and headed home to Lydia himself. It had been an illuminating day, he was now certain that he could return to Earth, it was just a matter of time. 20.0 Dave had learned that cultivating at his current stage was more refreshing than a night of sleep, so he sat down with his legs crossed and started cultivating. He awoke to a burning smell. He had cleaned up the area around himself before he had started his cultivation, but Lydia had jumped out of her crib again and what he was smelling were her clothes being carbonized as she came too close to him. Grabbing her, he hurried to put out the embers in her clothing and searched for new clothes to put on her. It was a recurring issue that Lydia got out of her crib. In the beginning, she had to slowly and painstakingly scale the bars of her crib, but with the assistance of her cultivation, Lydia quickly figured out how to jump in a manner that would land her on the floor. Of course, she had yet to figure out how to stick the landing. She usually just tumbled onto the ground in a heap, until she could get back up on all fours. She seemed to age more rapidly than other babies her age, growing past the age where babies could only lift their heads within a single day. Her weight was also rapidly increasing, even without any milk or other sustenance. He had tried giving her to a midwife to keep her fed, but Lydia had raised a stink and did not want to drink milk from human breasts. It was a very bizarre situation where a baby unwilling even to drink milk was growing at a rapid pace. Dave appreciated all the help he was receiving from the sect in return for boosting the collective cultivation a few stages. Dave thought it would take some encouragement to teach her how to walk. She seemed perfectly content to continue crawling on all four, maybe resulting from her being born a wolf and living as such for a long time. After he put the new clothes on Lydia, he started teaching her how to walk by grabbing her hands and lifting her into an upright position, so her feet touched the ground. Then he walked her slowly around the house while putting more and more weight onto her feet. He continued doing so while slowly talking to her. Hoping that she would remember the words so she could reuse them when she finally became aware of the intricacies of spoken language. When he finally let go of her she continued to walk on two legs for a little while after he let go, but soon she was crawling around at speeds that were impossible for any normal baby. Dave needed to figure out where he could get a mother figure for Lydia. Someone who could watch her and teach while he was out and about. The sect had something like a proto-kindergarten, but Lydia was still too young to attend. She needed to at least be old enough to walk and talk a few words. Children were raised at least to that point in the home of the parents. Only then would they be introduced to wider society. He direly needed a mother for her. Dave thought about maybe posting a mission for a babysitter that wouldn¡¯t die if Lydia decided to slap their leg, so at least someone in core formation or higher. He went outside into the heat of a certain squirrel and headed towards the mission square. There was a small administrative building with an open door adjacent to the square with roofed boards that housed the missions that were available to the different stages of cultivation. He headed inside to a counter with a secretary. ¡°Hello, I would like to post a mission on the core formation board.¡±, He said to the secretary. ¡°Sure, what will it be about?¡±, She asked him back. ¡°I need someone to babysit my wandering immortal stage spirit beast that has attained a human form. There¡¯s just one problem, the monstrous beast in question has taken the form of a baby and needs to be raised as one.¡± He said and the secretary scribbled it all down on a piece of paper. ¡°Can the sect cover the cost of this mission, since I¡¯m a grand elder, because I don¡¯t have the funds right now?¡±, He shamefully added. ¡°Sure, we can do that. We will just ask for a proportional favor at a later date. Do not worry, it will be proportional to the monetary assistance you received.¡± She said. He apologized and headed back home. A few hours later someone knocked on his door. It was Mo. She was standing at his door and looked even younger than she had before, with glossy skin and a smile on her face. Dave let her inside and she said, ¡°I heard about the mission. Everyone else thought it was fake since none of us had ever heard about a tamed spirit beast at the wandering immortal level, however, I recognized your name and figured that I could watch over your beast.¡± Dave bewildered asked, ¡°How could a mission be fake, can anyone just walk up and post a fake mission?¡± She answered with a raised eyebrow and said, ¡°No, but pranks still happened. A few years ago someone kept sending disciples to one of the elders he did not like with inane tasks. It took a few days until he was caught and reprimanded.¡± Dave shrugged and said, ¡°No matter, I¡¯m glad you came. Let me introduce you. This is Lydia.¡± He took her out of the crib that would soon be too small for her and handed her to Mo. ¡°She¡¯s so cute.¡± Mo squealed. ¡°Yeah, she sure is,¡± Dave said in agreement. ¡°She looks a little like you.¡±, Mo said, ¡°She has your eyes.¡± Dave looked a little closer and Lydia indeed had European eyes instead of the Asian ones that were so common around here. A detail he had overlooked until now. He wondered what that said about the heavenly tribulation that had put Lydia in this state. This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it. ¡°I¡¯m going out to run some errands, can you watch over her?¡± Dave said. ¡°Sure, I can do that. Anything I should know about her before you go?¡± Mo asked Dave. ¡°Yeah, please teach her how to walk and keep talking with her, she likely already understands us.¡± Dave elaborated with a shrug. Dave left the house and headed for the artisan district across the street from his house. He walked through the district and noticed some interesting shops, including one old dilapidated shop that seemingly dealt in small trinkets. Dave wondered if he could commission a small clock from them or a thermometer. The weather had gotten uncomfortably hot ever since a certain squirrel had arrived. Maybe he could visit them later, now that Mo was watching over Lydia and he no longer had to worry about coming home to a wrecked house. He walked through the district and arrived in front of the shop with various flying swords displayed in front. He walked inside and found the same female artisan at the counter from last time, he asked, ¡°Greetings, do you have a suitable flying sword for a wandering immortal?¡± ¡°There is no way we would. You are the first one in our sect¡¯s history. There might be a few artifacts in the sect treasury designed for nascent soul cultivators.¡± She answered. ¡°How would I go about obtaining one of those artifacts?¡± He asked her politely. ¡°You would have to request it directly from the sect master, as those artifacts are highly prized and sometimes even family heirlooms.¡± She answered. Dave thanked her and headed to the administrative building with the sect master¡¯s office. He asked the secretary to be let inside, but there was someone visiting the sect master already so he had to wait a few minutes. The secretary let Dave inside the sect master¡¯s office and Dave asked him, ¡°Sect master, I would like to acquire one of the nascent soul artifacts, is that possible?¡± The sect master nodded and said, ¡°We have four nascent soul artifacts that are dedicated to flying. Two of them are heirlooms and the other two are in my possession. However, before that, I have a favor to ask.¡± Dave shrugged and said, ¡°Sure, as long as I don¡¯t have to kill anyone.¡± The sect master laughed and said, ¡°No, no. I just want you to be there when I face my tribulation today. I already got my affairs in order in case I do not survive, but it would calm my nerves if you were present to act as a witness and ensure that no one interferes with my tribulation.¡± Dave did not even have to think for a second, before he answered, ¡°Sure, I¡¯ll be there, just tell me when.¡± The sect master grinned and said, ¡°Just follow me, I will ascend one rank after we get you that nascent soul blade.¡± Dave followed the sect master into an underground room, where they stored all kinds of weapons and materials. ¡°Pick one.¡± The sect master said. In front of him were two swords. One was disproportionate and very large, the size of a large surfboard, and the other small, almost the size of a normal sword. Dave had used his flying artifact to ferry Lydia and at times other people, so he naturally gravitated towards the large sword. He would however have to get a larger spacial ring to carry it. ¡°Sect master, my current ring can¡¯t carry this sword, can you get me a bigger one?¡± He shamelessly asked the sect master. The sect master nodded, walked over to a seemingly random table, and threw him a ring. ¡°This one should have a suitable size. It is an artifact that also drastically slows time, used to temporarily store herbs until they can be processed. Nowadays we have special jade boxes created that help retain the herb''s medicinal properties.¡± The sect leader said. They left the administrative building and walked out into the square where several important-looking officials were already waiting for them.