Not that kind of Thunder Cat (Xianxia)

[Pinklestia]

Not that kind of thundercat

Summary: Cultivation is not easy and I want to live a long life.

Why not join a sect?

Hahaha, do you have any idea what cultivation sects are like my friend?

Someone with no talent like me wouldn't be accepted and even if I was, I would barely be a servant and...

Yeah, not selling my body, thank you.

****

Chapter 1: Kitten Part I

Edited by: https://forum.questionablequesting.com/members/megrisvernin.493/

The Lightning Mouse looks just like an ordinary long tailed mouse, only its fur is of a color similar to grass and it can use electric shocks to get free of predators or kill prey.

Unlike regular mice, a Lightning Mouse can eat anything that isn't a Lightning Mouse, even people.

Their somewhat cute appearance hides how dangerous a creature it can be, only the fact Lightning mice don't hunt in packs keeps it being a low ranked Spirit Beast.

Naturally, I got one.

To trap a Lightning Mouse, a cage of iron is needed, the creature does chew through any wooden cage, but its teeth are not strong enough to break iron bars and the iron will keep any electricity in the cage.

As bait, I used a wounded bird, which meant I had to catch a bird and wound it and then tie it to the inside of the cage, but the bird's pitiful cries were like flowers to a honeybee and the Lightning Mouse was caught.

I left it in a cage for a week, after moving the cage to a safer place to avoid some other creature killing my new pet, without giving it any food and barely any water.

Then I started to feed it, but not much food, I needed to keep the Spirit Beast weak while also getting it to trust me.

After a month (I did clean the cage every few days if only to avoid disease, I just had to sedate the rodent first) I judged the Lightning Mouse was at least not hostile to me anymore.

Most people would think that would be the moment to actually tame the creature but, again, just because it is a low ranking Spirit Beast does not make it harmless.

Instead, I just started to give it more food and more water. I would have liked to move the mouse to a bigger cage, but I just didn't have one.

Without a special talent for taming, having any artifact to brute force it or being strong enough to beat the Lightning Mouse into submission, my only reliable chance to tame the beast was time. Not that using an artifact is a good idea, but I didn't know that back then.

And so another month passed, this time I feed the mouse even more food and water, letting it grow fat and lazy.

Then killed the beast and feed it to the kitten I was gifted as a birthday present.

Cruel? Yes, but it is not like I knew I was going to get a cat gifted for my eighth birthday.

I could not get rid of the feline and the cat at least seemed to tolerate me, so the Lightning Mouse had to go.

Plus as any Spirit Beast Tamer knows, you can turn regular animals into spiritual beasts, it just takes time and effort and is more expensive than just taming a Spirit Beast.

As a young child I had the time, I still had the cage I had used to trap the Lightning Mouse and it is not like feeding my cat a lot of Lightning mice would be useless.

So I did just that.

It took a whole year for my kitten to become a Spirit Beast. In that same time even a weak Tamer would have tamed over three dozen Lightning Mice and made enough money to feed a family of ten for a decade, and that's after taxes!

I feed my cat a Lightning Mouse a week; any more and she would most likely have gotten bored with the taste. Plus I still had school to go to, a social life and chores to do. You know, kids' stuff?

The transformation of my feline companion was not dramatic, I just noticed that my kitten had barely grown in the year she had been eating Electric Mice and one day she killed a regular mouse using electrified claws, that was it.

Naturally once having become a Spirit Beast herself, yes my cat is female, I set her to hunt more dangerous creatures than regular rodents.

Namely birds, not Spirit Beasts avians, just regular birds.

Was I being too cautious? Maybe, but a dead cat not only meant getting my parents angry but either going back to trying to tame a Lightning Mouse, and the beasts were avoiding me like the plague after I captured and killed so many of them, or another whole year of capturing something other than Lightning Mice to feed to a pet and... you get the idea.

Now you may be probably asking, what about cultivation?

Yes, a small girl still living with her parents was going to miraculously learn how to cultivate on her own, while keeping it a secret and not accidentally killing herself.

That's why I had gone for Spirit Beast taming as it is the only way to reliably cultivate without a manual, sect resources, pills, you name it.

You just tame a Spirit Beast, bond with it and your cultivation rises, while also being able to copy some of the beast's abilities. That's it, even if you have almost no talent. If you have zero talent then the Spirit Beast will never bond with you to start with.

Of course, such a method has downsides or everyone and their grandpa would be taming Spirit Beasts.

The first downside is that you have to tame a Spirit Beast and doing that without a Sect's resources takes a whole lot of time. It's also impossible to start by taming a strong Spirit Beast as it will never accept someone weak, even if you force it with an artifact.

The second downside is that just like Sword cultivators are tied to their bonded Sword and Artifact cultivators are tied to their bonded Artifact; Spirit Beast Tamers, or just Tamers for short, are tied to their Beasts.

All your Beasts die? You lose your cultivation and or die, same as getting your bonded Sword or Artifact broken.

The third downside, how powerful you are is dependent on how strong your bonded Beast is.

So in other words, for cultivators it is more convenient to just have a Spirit Beast as a pet or mount and just cultivate normally.

Sects do have Spirit Beast Tamers but usually just to tame Beasts the other cultivators can use as either pets or to ride or to fly on.

Then... Why not join a sect?

Hahaha, do you have any idea what cultivation sects are like my friend? Someone with no talent like me wouldn't be accepted and even if I was, I would barely be a servant and...

Yeah, not selling my body, thank you.

But you may be asking, why cultivate at all? Sooner or later people are going to notice my cat is a Spirit Beast and that, right?

Because I want to live longer.

Do you know what the average life expectancy is even for the most mediocre of cultivators? A hundred years.

Do you know how long mortals live? Fifty to sixty years and that if they are rich and can afford the life extensions pills cultivators sell mortals, otherwise is just forty years on average.

What? You may be asking, why do regular people live so little?

I don't know, maybe we don't eat well? Maybe the Heavens actually like cultivators more?

Or maybe it is because in this world what really matters is power. Power most cultivators have and use it to oppress ordinary people.

What? Cultivators are supposed to cut ties with mortals when they enter a sect? Hahaha, you think they actually can do that for real, friend?

Cultivators still eat, living only using pills or spirit energy kills you unless you are really close to ascending, they still use clothes, wood, stone and many other things they need regular mortals to get or make for them as they are too busy cultivating to do themselves or they just don't want to.

Yes, they can make better clothes or better food, but why bother? It takes time and money better expended cultivating, so it's only something the wealthiest of the sects do and more to show off than anything else.

Anything but forging a weapon or an Artifact, making a good pill forge and defenses for the sect is seen as a waste of time.

Officially Cultivators cut all their mortal ties, unofficially Cultivators who want payback just make sure to be in sects so far away from where they came from that if one day they go to, "See the world to break the roadblock they have in their cultivation." And if a whole family or village happens to die, then it doesn't get back to their sect.

Or they make it look like it was a demonic cultivator who did the deed.

After all, true Immortals may be able to leave this World but everyone else still lives in it.

Oh, but what about mortal food being impure and hurting cultivation?

There is a pill for that, or we just meditate for a few hours to remove impurities, that's it.

In my case I couldn't afford pills so meditation it is... Actually not really.

One of the benefits of being a Beast Tamer is that you can eat anything your Beast can eat without problems and the other ability my cat got from eating so many Lightning Mice is being able to eat anything but its own species with no problems.

That ability is the main reason I had originally picked a Lightning Mouse to be my first Tamed Beast as I couldn't find meditation manuals anywhere, but I did find a Guide about low ranking Spirit Beasts.

And one book about Taming Spirit Beasts, those two books had just been gathering dust in the local library for some reason. Heck, I only found them because they had been mixed in the section with books for kids.

Basically, since my feline Spirit Beast can eat anything and doesn't need to purify their body, neither do I.

I know it makes no sense to have public libraries... more so have those being paid by Sects. After all better keep mortals ignorant, right?

That's it until you figure out that most cultivators are not interested in having kids and that future members of their sects have to be recruited from somewhere. After all children are a distraction from cultivation, marriage and kids can come when you either give up on the path to immortality or you have ascended.

Same reason my small hometown actually had a decent public education system. It saves the sect's effort if they do not have to waste time teaching new students stuff not related to cultivation while also not ending with ignominious idiots who know nothing but cultivation.

Cultivators are separated from the mortal world only in the same sense the Emperor is separated from commoners. Without commoners as the base of the tower, the tower falls.

A cultivator that rises to the heavens may then be really separated from mortals but otherwise? Just a lie.

AN: My attempt is to make a smart OC instead of a SI, but this was an SI on an early version so please help fellow cultivators?

 

[Pinklestia]

Chapter 2: Kitten Part II

Edited by https://forum.questionablequesting.com/members/megrisvernin.493/

Oh, I forgot to introduce myself?

My name is An Xiu.

I am from humble origins and no Master ever took me as a personal student. I do not even have a cultivator name.

It is said that Dragons can shape the clouds while tigers can shape the wind but doesn't the wind move the clouds?

So, doesn't that mean a tiger can beat a dragon?

As my cat, named Li Na, finally was able to kill a bird many times bigger than itself; an even lower ranking Spirit Beast than the Lightning Mouse, I decided it was time to bond with the cute little ball of danger and fluff.

Even after a year and a half the kitten was still a kitten and still small, it was kind of ridiculous to have it seen kill a Poison Spitting Duck in less than a minute.

Unlike usual Li Na decided to leave the duck for me to eat and without bonding with the cat I wouldn't be able to eat the bird without dying from poisoning.

So I touched the kitten and focused on the two of us being one. Try to imagine being a person but also being a kitten with lightning powers. If you can that's basically it, only the kitten has to accept that for it to happen.

For a moment nothing happened and I meant literally, there was no sound, no light, no smells and no ground. There was a lack of everything, even air to breathe, and then... I felt electricity course all over my body, only it was like harmless static.

A Poison Spitting Duck is a Rank 12 Spirit Beast, basically just slightly better than a normal animal because it has a single ability that makes it better, in this case spitting poison.

A Lightning Mouse is a Rank 11 Spirit Beast, instead of a single ability marking it apart from animals it has two and their species also can grow bigger and stronger than a normal animal counterpart. As already mentioned several times Lightning Mice have the electric ability to zap enemies and prey and also can eat anything that's not their same species with no problems.

From the power I could feel coursing through my body Li Na was at least Rank 10.

How could I tell the difference?

I could feel Li Na had three abilities and I could copy two of them.

While the power of lightning was tempting I picked the ability to eat anything not my same species... and the ability to move without making noise.

Then I roasted the duck and shared some with my kitten, while petting her as much as she wanted.

The poison made the fowl actually quite tasty, too bad most people, even cultivators, would die from said poison.

****

Now you are probably wondering, how does a Tamer compare to another Path cultivator of the same level?

Poorly, as they depend on their tamed Beasts to fight.

We Tamers can fight on our own but as we always tend to be weaker than our most powerful tamed Spirit Beast it tends to be a bad idea.

And of course killing a tamed Beast tends to be easier than breaking a bonded sword. More so because Sword cultivators won't use their bonded sword to fight unless they have no other choice as using a different sword doesn't have the risk of losing their cultivation if said sword breaks. And artifact cultivators also don't use the artifact they bonded with to fight if they can help it. But it is hard to hide a Tamer's strongest tamed Beast.

Again, being a Spirit Beast Tamer is not something I choose due to how good it is, but due to convenience.

Not that we don't have a few advantages, as said before the fact that our cultivation is basically done by our tamed Beasts means it is the easiest path to cultivate. That it's a path open to anyone who can cultivate.

And abilities copied from Spirit Beasts can be extremely useful.

I don't ever have to worry about anything I eat that's not a person, unless I eat it alive and it starts to fight from inside me to kill me.

I can get any benefit of spirit herbs and cultivation pills without the downsides. Not that I ever eat pills unless it is to cure me when I am sick as for me it's better to eat herbs and other ingredients without refining them into pills.

As a result I did something that most cultivators could not do without dying.

Eat any creature, plant, vegetable and fruit I could find to see if it improved my cultivation.

The results... were not terrible but they were a lot worse than I expected.

By eating fruits and vegetables of all kinds I developed an interest in cooking. And so I took cooking classes with my grandma. She was harsh and punished even the slightest mistake but she was not strong in her old age and my body was much stronger than it had ever been before.

It may also have improved my health but because becoming a cultivator also did so I am not sure.

Eating any random plant I found did nothing save give me a weak danger sense for some reason, sadly because I was eating randomly I didn't know exactly what plant I had eaten.

By eating all the medicinal herbs I could find I got any of the benefits without the downsides so my health improved. That one was more noticeable than the maybe with fruits and vegetables because I got sick a lot less.

By eating the ingredients used to make cosmetic products and creams I got better skin, hair nails and surprisingly better teeth.

And by eating different Rank 12 and Rank 11 Spirit Beasts... I didn't get any new abilities. Of course it couldn't be that easy, but eating the Spirit energy infused flesh improved my health even more and made me full of energy.

Of course as I was still a young girl, doing all that got back to my parents who I had to confess about becoming a cultivator. After a medical examination by uncle Yu, my real uncle on my mother's side and the town's doctor, they saw that I actually was healthier than I have ever been before and reluctantly let me continue.

Surprisingly there was no push for me to join a sect, most likely because some people in town used to live in places that were completely destroyed by cultivators. And trust me, it was not demonic cultivators doing so.

And most likely because my grandma Bai Bao was a very scary woman. She may not have ruled the village but she was the town Wise Woman and she knew many things.

Even more surprisingly there was no hate from the town towards me, they were actually proud I had found a way to cultivate without joining a Sect or becoming a demonic cultivator.

There was also interest to see if I could teach my method, interest that mostly disappeared once I explained all the downsides of being a Tamer and how you had to start from a young age. That's because the younger you are the better the body takes to the change. That's why the sects don't take any new students past ten years old unless they already have some cultivation and they have great talent.

In the end I still got a dozen students, all kids younger two to three years than me, with newborn puppy dogs. Those were the only people young enough in the town that had at least the minimum talent to cultivate, I had somehow got the ability to sense that after bonding with Li Na and out of a whole town those were the only ones qualified.

The kids had decided, well had mostly been decided by their parents, to use the "Feed your pet Lightning Mice until it becomes a Spirit Beast" method. And they picked dogs because dogs are more loyal and easier to train.

To my frustration, the kids were allowed to travel some miles away out of town to catch Lightning Mice since the local Lightning Mice had either learned to hide really well or moved away. And their puppies became Spirit Beasts in just six months. I don't know if it was because the kids had more talent in cultivation than me or because the mixed breed pups might have got a Spirit Beast ancestor.

Although only four of the puppies got the ability to eat anything not their own species and the rest got electric powers. Apparently the dogs barely became Rank 12 Spirit Beasts and so only had a single ability.

Being smug, me? Sure you are joking friend.

Not that made the kids quit from their path, the four who could used my eat anything method while training their Spirit dogs and the other eight just trained their dogs as they couldn't really do much else.

Then those eight less fortunate kids got a meditation manual, from my grandmother no less!

l asked Grandmother if she had been a cultivator but she explained she had been interested in it but didn't even have the talent to be a Spirit Beast Tamer, much less on the other Paths.

That made me realize how lucky I was that I actually had some talent and that my bonding with Li Na had actually worked.

Then I asked her if she had any other cultivation resources but she explained meditation was the only safe manual she had as failing meditation doesn't hurt or kill you. The rest was a bunch of trash she got from a dead wandering cultivator she once found on the side of the road.

While the dead must be respected, if the Heavens wanted them to take their possessions to the afterlife then they would actually let them take them. If one is not wasteful then one will not be needy, so she took his things for herself after giving him a decent burial. Think of it as compensation, that way he would never rise as a demonic puppet.

As my only way to truly improve my strength was for Li Na to grow stronger, I finally let her hunt Rank 11 Spirit Beasts.... while I did so with her with a big club at hand. Before that I had relied on traps, sedatives and poison to soften up the prey.

By the way, painkillers do not work on us as we learned the hard way.

Just because Tamers usually let their Beasts fight for them does not mean we don't need to know how to fight. If nothing else I could be a nice distraction while my silent and small feline ambushed the Beasts.

Due to still being a kid a sword was too big for me and using a knife would be stupid. Plus my skill with a bow and arrow was legendary... in the sense it was terrible.

Before I knew it, another year had passed, the puppies had become Rank 11 Spirit Beasts and my cat had finally started to grow, while still remaining at Rank 10.

As a result of what I and my students did, no Lightning Mice could be found unless you walked by several days away from our small town.

Instead of gaining another ability from the Lightning Mice they ate so much, the dogs got an ability of their own.

The four dogs that had the eat anything not their own species got really sharp and strong teeth and the ones that had the lightning ability gained the ability to use said lightning to run faster.

Seeing as my pupil's beasts were finally strong enough, I had my students have their Spirit dogs fight each other, thankfully the beasts had become smart enough to not seriously hurt each other.

Then I had them use the dogs to hunt Rank 12 Spirit beasts, only five of us and their beasts may be able to eat Poison Spitting Ducks but there were a lot more Rank 12 beasts than that.

The dogs grew bigger and stronger and my kitten became half as big as myself yet no Beast grew in Rank. Funny enough she still looked like a kitten.

I decided to try something and had the Dog Tamers hunt a Rank 10 Spirit Beast as a pack while I and Lin Na were there either to deal the finishing blow or at least help the kids run away safely.

Thankfully the Beast I chose for them to hunt was a Huge Swamp Frog, it not only wasn't poisonous, its three abilities didn't really help it in a fight. After all the ability to hibernate without food, the ability to have very good hearing and the ability to never get dry skin are kind of useless in a fight. Not to mention all the dogs barking was probably quite distracting for the frog due to said good hearing.

And all the electric attacks and powerful bites it got actually made it go down quite fast. To the point my cat was indignant she didn't get to save them and show off how strong she is.

The dogs were allowed to devour the frog and that made them stronger, but not a single one of them got a new ability.

****

The next day, after some rest and time to play, I finally started to give lectures to my students since it didn't seem any of them were going to quit... I may have hoped to have less work to do if that happened but the Heavens rarely favor laziness. Then again as a Cultivator I defy the Heavens, right?

"There are three types of energies all cultivators have to worry about. The first is Life energy, without it you die and is the energy all living beings have. One must always remember to keep a healthy body to nurture your life energy and to not die before you can ascend.

The second is Spirit energy, it is the energy of souls and the energy that turns normal humans into immortals and animals into Spirit Beasts. This energy improves your body and makes you live longer but unless you are close to ascending to the Heavens you cannot live from this energy alone. You need to eat food and drink water or you will die. The third is Demonic energy, that energy perverts the natural order of the World and comes from Demons. This kind of energy is very dangerous and corrupts both bodies and souls. It is also the energy demonic cultivators use and why they must be killed on sight, otherwise they will eventually turn into Demons and destroy the World.

To ascend to the heavens one must take Spirit energy from the World and circulate it into yourself, improving the body and soul. If one takes in enough Spirit energy without dying, eventually the body becomes part of your soul and stops being made from flesh, blood and bones. When that happens you can leave the World and ascend to the Heavens becoming a true immortal.

For that to happen there are three aspects of yourself that must be in perfect balance. One must have a perfect body so you can live long enough to ascend; one must have a perfect soul so it doesn't break into pieces and one must have a perfect mind so one doesn't go crazy due to the hardships that happen due to cultivation."

Upon seeing none of the kids had questions, I continued.

"There are three stages before becoming a true immortal. Body Refinement, Soul Reformation, And Unification of Body and Soul.

Those three stages have twelve steps each and each step is twice as hard as the one before it.

During Body Refinement the cultivator improves their body to have a good foundation and live long enough to ascend to the heavens. If you do it badly that means you won't live as long as you could, unless you somehow ascend before your body just gives up. Even the most mediocre of cultivators can do at least the first three steps of it.

Soul Reformation is to take one soul and forge it anew, this is extremely painful and there is no way to ease the pain, but it is needed as without doing so there is no way to later fuse soul and body.

For sword cultivators, they also have to forge a sword in their soul.

For artifact cultivators they have to refine an artifact in their soul.

And for Spirit Beast Tamers, like us, they have to unify their Soul with that of their most powerful Tamed Beast.

Unification Of Body and Soul, or just Unification, can only be done if you did Body Refinement and Soul Reformation correctly. This last stage is easier the more you have perfected your body and soul but without having perfected the mind even the first step is impossible.

Sword cultivators fuse their body with their soul sword.

Artifact cultivators become one with their soul refined artifact.

And Tamers become one with the Beast they unified their soul with."

One of the kids; a redhead girl with freckles, raised her hand and asked. "What about pills? Will our cultivation be worse because we can't afford them?"

"On the contrary. It is recommended to not use pills unless you are sick, otherwise you will have problems later. That's because most Cultivation pills are badly made with only two sects in the whole World having perfected the art of pill forging. For example, a trash longevity pill only works on mortals and increases life for just ten to fifteen years. A so called true longevity pill only works on cultivators and increases life for a hundred years. And a genuine longevity pill can increase life for a thousand years and can only be taken after finishing Body Refinement. But even the two sects that have mastered pill forging have never made more than one of those each. Oh and longevity pills only work once, so if you had any of the cheaper pills then getting a more expensive one is useless."

The same girl then asked, "If we make money somehow, can't we give pills to our family and friends that can't cultivate so they live longer and are healthier?"

"First, save for the weakest pills that are made to sell to mortals, cultivation pills only work on cultivators. Second, even the trash longevity pill costs the same as a thousand Lightning Mice and before you think of trying to catch and sell those creatures anyway, we scared all of them away. And while yes Rank 10 Spirit Beasts sell for more, it took all of you to kill a weak one, capturing one alive is beyond us until we become stronger. Also just in case you want to know, Spirit Beasts hate pills. Your bonded Beasts may reluctantly accept to eat the medicinal ones if they are sick but for them and us it is better to eat the medical herbs and plants directly. Even if you don't have the ability to avoid the negative effects."

"How do you know so much about pills?" The redheaded girl asked.

"There is an old catalog in the library about pills, nothing about how to make them, only names, quality, what they do and how much they can cost. It's possible the cheapest longevity pill is now cheaper since the catalog looks really old. But even then I don't think it is wise to waste a lot of time hunting Spirit Beasts for a pill that may be actually badly made and kill whoever eats it."

Upon hearing that, I got no more questions about pills.

"How are Spirit Beasts classified?" Asked a brown-haired boy, basically the most knowledgeable kid in the town due to being the son of the school teacher and the librarian, and so being forced to study even if he didn't want to.

"Good question, I know not all of you can read very well yet, so I will explain it. Normal Beasts are those that have not taken any spirit energy in their bodies while Spirit Beasts are Beasts that have taken Spirit energy in their body and gained at least one special ability. They are ranked from Rank 12 to 1 with the lowest rank the strongest the Spirit Beast is. While it is quite rare we will ever see one here, there are also Demonic Beasts, poor Beasts and Spirit Beasts that have been corrupted by Demons and must be killed for their own good before they lose their souls. The more corrupted they are the more powerful they are, until eventually they just become a Bestial demon and lose their soul.

Then there are also Noble Beasts, those Spirit Beasts that have fully cultivated their body. Those also have twelve ranks. And finally there are Divine Beasts, Spirit Beasts that have reforged their soul completely become Divine Beasts. Most known Divine Beasts are true dragons and true phoenixes. And the ones we will never see unless we ascend are Immortal Beasts, Divine Beasts that complete Unification Of Body and Soul and become True immortals. Save some legends, no records of the existence of Immortal Beasts that ascended on their own exist."

"On their own?" Asked a quite plain looking black-haired kid.

"On the Path of a Tamer, the final step is to fuse with your most powerful Beast, that's what becoming one with it means. Two souls and two bodies become a single being and ascend to the Heavens."

After hearing that half the kids thought it was cool; a few wanted to quit and the others were in shock. I then explained that it was okay to not do it but they should at least complete Body Refinement to live longer and help protect the town.

Thankfully in the end no one decided to quit yet, those with doubts asked their friends and family and decided to at least do the first twelve steps. After that they would decide if they wanted to continue or not.

I feel a bit guilty for having waited to tell them this but if I had said that before they even started on the Path, I would most likely have lost half of my students and that would have pressured the ones that didn't leave. Plus my grandma did tell me to wait a year or two before telling them.

And yes I know I said I wanted at least some of them to quit on their own but if they had quit from something I said I would have been in trouble. Just because I was a Cultivator didn't mean I was not still a small and young girl living with her parents after all.

Oh, I also had made sure all the puppies matched the gender of their owner before I even started to train them, just in case the dogs ended up being my pupils' most powerful bonded Beasts.

Otherwise... well not that I actually thought we would all be successful on the Path even though I could do it, just... just in case my friend.

AN: Yeah "that" definitely would have been a tad awkward.
Quotes and answers in spoiler

Spoiler

Pikachu?!?!

Click to shrink...

Yes and not. Imagine a farm/wild long tail mouse that's the color of wild grass.

Only issue so far is who is she talking to? And yes I know that she is narrating the story for us, however it did feel very in character at points, especially as it was from the point of view of an older her.

Click to shrink...

Spoilers.

Hmmmm..... Interesting

Click to shrink...

Thank you.

 

[Pinklestia]

Chapter 3: Cat Part I

Edited by https://forum.questionablequesting.com/members/megrisvernin.493/

Why did I save you, friend? Why not? If cultivators can destroy a whole town out of an old grudge why can't they also save someone?

Why am I calling you a friend? We know each other's names, I saved your life and we shared food. Doesn't that make us friends?

****

Li Na at first had not seen Big Sister as a Big Sister but then she started to smell like family. And then Big Sister adopted her. Of course that was because Li Na is the best, the strongest and the cutest. That's why Big Sister hunted for her the tasty big rodents. And then when she became strong Big Sister took her to hunt on her own.

Big Sister was always near watching her hunt, she wanted to make Big Sister proud.

Big Sister even made stupid mutts her servants, she wanted to be as great as Big Sister. The mutts would one day do what she said too!

But she didn't feel like it, not after the mutts killed the frog and she couldn't show off. So Li Na went into the cupboard, curled into a ball and fell asleep.

Then she woke up and left a furball for the monkey servants to clean. Then Big Sister gave her head and back scratches.

She would show them all... later.

She wished Big Sister didn't insist on the two of them drinking the weird milk but Big Sister said it would make her stronger.

And Big Sister.... Zzz

****

The guide I had about Spirit Beasts only had information about the three lowest Ranks of them. Not a problem at the moment as my pupils could only defeat Rank 10 Spirit Beasts while working together but it would definitely be a problem later.

Thinking about it, I decided to delay the problem until either most of the dogs became Rank 10 or Li Na increased to Rank 9. By then I felt we would be all strong enough to catch a few interesting Spirit Beasts and try trading for a more advanced manual, just as long as we did so as far away from town as possible and traveled as a group for protection.

And of course, my grand ideas of my great Li Na becoming a Divine Tiger that eats dragons were just that. If she even became as strong as a Spirit Tiger that would be already good enough, right?

Oh don't be scared friend, I am not going to eat you.

Also while the cultivation of a Spirit Beast Tamer depends on their Spirit Beasts that doesn't mean I could slack off.

Not only I was on a time limit, as sooner or later some sect would find out what I was doing; even if my town is really really really far away from any sect and most cultivators don't go there due to lack of places with strong Spirit energy. But also, I had also become a teacher.

Yes, just a teacher, calling me a Master would be ridiculous.

Even after I read the book on meditation to better help my students, all my knowledge of cultivation came from a mere three books and things the people in the town had told me. Granted said other people knew a lot more things than I did but it just didn't feel the same to not have the knowledge in books. More so with the printing press a Sect invented several centuries ago making books cheaper than they used to be. Our town didn't have its own of course but there are a few in each big city.

I also have to admit my family background is nothing special... for someone in a big city, much less one of the Capitals of the seven countries. But for a small town? Having an uncle who was a Doctor and a grandma who was the local Wise Woman helped.

Even so, a mediocre Beast Tamer knew more than I did and most likely had more resources and Tamed Beasts than myself.

So I trained my body even if it would not increase my cultivation, because a healthy and strong body is the most important part of the Body Refinement stage, if my body became weak and sick then that would affect my longevity and give me less time to ascend.

Yes I know I am repeating a few things friend, sorry about that.

That was what I got after reading the trash books my grandma had "obtained" from that dead cultivator. I had to promise to not use them for cultivation and only to see if they could help my own Path and that of my students, because my elders knew best.

It's kind of funny because apparently said cultivator had died by taking a badly made pill, either due to frustration about his cultivation not advancing fast enough or because he had been stuck at the same Step for too long.

There is nothing wrong with the idea itself, and the Elders of the town approved so I made the Clean Body Sutra part of our Path of cultivation.

Spirit Beasts respect strength so keeping our bodies strong and clean of impurities helps.

Yes, I know you already knew that friend, but the storm outside the cave is still going and you are still wounded. What's wrong with just telling a story to pass the time?

As I said before, medicine and pills should only be taken if one is sick and should be avoided otherwise. That is the basics of the Clean Body Sutra of Cultivation and why I had taught my disciples to try to not use pills... well that and the things being expensive and sometimes unreliable.

Thinking about it, any one of us getting sick was going to be a problem the stronger we became. Not all of us could just eat the ingredients for medicine without getting the negative effects after all.

And the herbal remedies and medicines both Uncle Yu and Grandma Bai Bao could do with what we had near town did affect cultivators and Spirit Beasts but only those weak enough for it.

That's how I was able to sedate weak Spirit Beasts, for example.

We could solve the issue by using Spirit Beasts as part of the ingredients and by looking at rarer plants and herbs. Unfortunately, those also tend to be in more dangerous places.

The rest of what I got from those books was some general information and cultivation methods we cannot use.

One can only use a main method of cultivation, that doesn't mean one cannot integrate things from other Paths into their own but that must be done carefully. Otherwise you end up hurting your cultivation and may even die.

A cultivator's focus must always be on their Path of cultivation, be it Swords, Artifacts or Beasts. If they branch off to learn other things and waste too much time not on their Path, their cultivation will suffer and they may even die.

The reason why I know that is because more than one of the people in town had left to become a cultivator over the centuries, only to never return. So of course we got curious and found out what about it was so attractive about it and why they all cut ties with their family and friends. Turns out it's not just Sect rules but the fact that mortal lives are short and separation is a way to avoid pain. I don't see things that way, it hurts any time anyone close to my heart dies but I enjoy my friends' and family's company while they last.

The Path of the Sword is the path of a killer and/or a protector. Note that when I say "Sword" that doesn't mean they cannot use a different weapon, the term Path of the Sword is a generic term to not keep saying something different for each weapon.

The path of the Artifact is the most flexible of paths, as what you do depends on the kind of artifacts you use and refine. However, while an artifact cultivator can refine weapons, they cannot bond with them.

That's because doing so would cripple their ability to refine anything not a weapon. And if they wanted to do that they should be Sword Cultivators instead.

The path of a Tamer is also the path of their Tamed Beasts and I have already talked about it.

There used to be a path of the Body but cultivators that only used their bodies to fight tended to cultivate more slowly than any of the three other paths and were also weaker so they ended up disappearing over time. The only advantage they had was that due to not being bonded to a Spirit Beast, artifact or Weapon their Cultivation was harder to cripple. But that also helped to kill them off as the only way to cripple their Cultivation was to fully cripple their bodies and most of them did not survive that.

It's also possible that kind of cultivators actually ended up being stronger long term, probably during Unification, and that's another reason they got exterminated.

The only reason I learned about the path of the Body is due to an old Book in a kid's section of the library that painted the Body Cultivators as basically as bad as demons.

The rest I found out later.

The four students that were following my eat anything plan didn't get the same weak danger sense I did. But one of them got better night vision, something that definitely didn't come from her dog as the dog's eyesight is not very good. The other three didn't get any extra abilities but did become healthier at least.

Overall my students were not doing badly, I continued to have them hunt. I sent them after Huge Swamp Frogs, and even had Li Na hunt one with just me helping so the cat would stop being envious, but none of our bonded Beasts grew more, they just got slightly better at fighting and stronger but not very much. Before I knew it, another six months had passed and no Huge Swamp Frogs could be found in the swamp closer to town.

Our bonded Beasts Rank was still the same, which made me think that to get better results we would have to take more risks. I had my students divide into two groups of six; each group having two of the students that could eat anything not themselves and four of those with electric powers. I also realized I had been an idiot to forget something so evident and taught them to fight together with their dogs, with big clubs of course. Even if they were only at Step 1 due to their beasts being at Rank 11, they were still strong enough to use them.

Then I sent the two groups separately to hunt Rank 11 Beasts only with the objective to capture them if they had some value. Not every Rank 11 Beast is as easy to capture, or even worth doing so, and sometimes they couldn't get the Beast alive even if they wanted to. But other times they did capture the prey alive and we have our town use those we wouldn't eat.

Sure we could have tried to sell them but most Rank 11 Spirit Beasts are not really valuable and I wasn't confident in our strength yet.

That does not mean they have no use; for example the poison of a Great Poisonous Duck can be diluted in water and used to repel insects. You just have to remember to put it in pots and not on the Earth itself. It can also be used to kill weeds as it doesn't last more than a few days after the duck dies.

The most common Rank 11 Spirit Beast are the Voracious Rats because they are a plague. Unlike Lightning Mice they can actually chew through Iron and they have both the ability to use a paralyzing venom and to hibernate for three months without food or water.

More than one small town has been ruined because a big group of Voracious Rats woke up from hibernation and ate all the food, plantations, and even the weeds.

Thankfully unlike Lightning Mice Voracious Rats will never eat humans as they don't eat anything much bigger than themselves and they are actually just slightly bigger than regular rats.

Due to having scared away Lightning Mice, which tend to scare away or eat other rodents, we actually had to deal with a huge group of Voracious Rats. Thank the Heavens they didn't wake up from hibernation near town but we still had to deal with them, as otherwise no grass, plant, insect or anything not much bigger than them would survive.

Good thing that we didn't have to deal with a plague of insects as not only did the nearby Swamp still have regular frogs and toads, but Rank 12 and 11 Spirit toads and frogs became more numerous once there was no group of powerful Rank 10 frogs scaring them away.

Another good thing about the rat plague is that every bonded Beast but Li Na rose in rank. Even so, as we tested in spars, Li Na was still stronger than any of the dogs. My students had to use at least four dogs on her to have any chance of winning.

Good thing Li Na understood holding back, once I made it clear to her that not holding back meant not sharing the food with her and no more petting, or some of the dogs would have died. I still decided to stop her sparing with the dogs after a few months as she may have decided to stop holding back if they started to win more often... or just if she felt like it because cat.

The abilities the dogs got at Rank 10 were all the same, a thicker and stronger fur that helped to protect them from injury. The fact my cat was injuring them anyway... made me proud of how great she is.

It was more the fact that the pack would grow weaker and students would quit that made me have Li Na hold back. That made me worry that my mentality was changing due to my bond with Li Na.

That was a possibility I had thought I didn't have to worry about until the Soul Reforging Stage... at least it wasn't happening to my students.

They weren't acting more like dogs, they had bonded with each other, but as friends and fellow students, not as a dog pack.

Then again, maybe in my case it had happened earlier but any of my students that went past the Body Refinement stage would have to worry about it.

And my closer bond with Li Na did explain why she was much stronger at the same Rank than the dogs, besides having started her training earlier.

All twelve students had picked the Thick Fur ability after watching the Spirit Beasts spars, even the girls.

The result.. well actually it wasn't really noticeable, it's not like those students of mine suddenly grew fur over their bodies. But more like there was a thin layer of spirit energy over their bodies that gave them extra protection.

Later I found out there is a spirit skill that does something similar to the Thick Fur, but it is one most cultivators don't learn until Step 5 and my students were at Step 2. That's because a Tamer is always a Rank lower than their strongest bonded Beast.

That did explain why I had never heard of Tamers looking like their Tamed Beasts. And was also a relief because again, I didn't want any of my students to quit.

Now... in part due to my changed mentality and in part to see if I had any talent, I did spar with my students.

I tried fights one on one, without clubs, just the basic fighting moves my family had taught me for self-defense.

All my students lost in just a few moves, I then recommended to their families to teach them better. Not that they could do much more than teach them moves and correct their stances since direct sparring between cultivators and mortals ends with the mortals going into their next life.

Then I tried two against me at the same time, but I still won.

It wasn't until I had three students fighting me at the same time that I actually had a hard time winning.

Out of pride, I didn't have four fight me at the same time.

I just... found a nice spot to relax and enjoy the warmth of the sun.

Of course, Li Na joined me.

****

It was only noticeable after a few years but Cultivation had made it so we all looked younger than our real age.

At twelve years old not only was I still stuck at Step 2 and Li Na at Rank 10, but puberty had not started for me or my students yet.

That did explain why Li Na took until I was that age to no longer look like a kitten and to a lesser extent why my students' dogs took extra time to become adults.

At Step 1 a Cultivator is not that different from a normal person, just stronger, faster and usually will live about two decades longer. At Step 2 aging starts to slow down and while normal humans can kill a Step 1, a Step 2 is much harder to do so requiring either greater numbers or trickery. Do note that the slower aging starts to work earlier in Tamers but usually Step 2 is not that hard so is not that much of an advantage. Step 2 also extends the lifespan for about fifty years.

Now Step 3... is when a Cultivator can actually start being called a Cultivator. As they can finally learn basic spirit skills and a few of them together can kill a whole town of mortals on their own. Oh and at that Step you live up to a hundred years more.

To reach that our Beasts had to reach Rank 9.

How much does that affect bonded Beasts? Because a Tamer's cultivation is done by their strongest bonded Beast, bonding to additional weaker Beasts doesn't give any benefits to a Tamer besides being able to copy abilities from them.

But the weaker bonded Beasts gain protection, a stable source of food and water and someone to guide them into becoming stronger. They also become smarter due to the bond.

No, I am not calling you weak friend, you are quite strong. I am also not calling you dumb, you are smart.

Fights of just me and my cat against Rank 10 frogs and other rank 10 Beasts weren't enough for Li Na to rise in Rank.

So it was time to fight more dangerous creatures, and for that the two of us had to go quite far away from town. To a place mortals take two weeks to arrive by walking from my town, we got there in a week because of feline laziness and enjoying the view.

The Spirit Forest, one of the many places called like that but whatever.

A place that was a risk not only because it had a few Rank 9 Beasts, and my book only covered until Rank 10, but because Rank 9 Spirit Beasts are considered valuable enough for weak wandering Cultivators and for young juniors from Sects.

So I ran the risk of not only dying but being found out by a sect. Being found out by a wandering Cultivator wouldn't actually be that dangerous, as soon as they saw I am a Tamer they wouldn't risk attacking me for fear I had a stronger Beast than Li Na in reserve. After all, just because I was not bonded with it didn't mean my "Master" had not lent me a stronger Beast pet for my protection.

But to walk the Path of Cultivation is to dance with Death and this was a risk I couldn't avoid. Even the most mediocre of Cultivators can reach Step 3 and I refused to be worse than that.

So of course as soon as I arrived in the forest I saw a Spirit Tiger.

Since Spirit Tigers are at least Rank 8, I knew it belonged to a Cultivator.

The creature saw us and then ignored us while licking its paws. I put my hand over my feline companion to remind her to not move.

Then the tiger lazily walked away and left.

Fearing the big beast belonged to a sect, and also fearing the Beast itself; we went to hunt in the complete opposite direction.

I had to bribe Li Na with some salted and smoked fish snacks.

"Not yet," I told her and after eating the food she relaxed slightly.

Maybe as a test from the Heavens the next Spirit Beast we ran into was a Lightning Hamster, the bigger, stronger and more dangerous cousin of a Lightning Mouse. And that can shoot lightning from its mouth and glow in the dark.

Also a Rank 9 Spirit Beast.

Both the rational part of my mind and my instincts were screaming at me to run away. A single Rank of difference may not look like much but it really is. That's why teamwork was needed for my students to beat a Spirit Beast a Rank higher than their own, even in the case of Beasts without abilities suited for combat like the Huge Swamp Frog.

But I saw Li Na's expression and knew that if I forced her to run she would lose any respect she had for me. The part of me that is cat-like also wanted the challenge.

Plus beating Beasts at the same Rank Li Na was wouldn't work, we had tried already. This was a risk we had to take or swallow our pride and join a Sect.

I didn't know the abilities of the Lighting Hamster besides shooting lightning, glowing in the dark and that it was definitely much more dangerous than its cousin.

So we both used the Silent Movement ability to stalk it. Eventually the creature had to sleep and thankfully the wind was moving our scent away from the Hamster instead of towards it.

The stalking took a whole day, hunger started to bother us but I didn't dare to eat as our ability wouldn't stop any noise we made that wasn't walking.

The creature seemed to know something was stalking him as it seemed to be looking for a safer place to hide.

Unfortunately for it, a Giant Snake swallowed it whole. While the creature was a Rank lower than the Hamster; the rodent was tired so that's why it got eaten. But being eaten doesn't mean being digested so the snake got fried by lightning from the inside out. As soon as I saw the snake die I started to pummel it with my big club before the Hamster could chew his way out. And when the Hamster did so, not only was it injured but found out the hard way Li Na was resistant enough to lightning to be able to fight back and injure the Hamster more. Then an iron knife ended up entering the rodent's eye and finally killing it.

Despite me not wanting to, hunger made me and my companion eat the snake and the Hamster raw. The snake venom was slightly bitter but tolerable. While the Lighting Hamster meat tastes quite good, somewhat like a mix of pork and hare. We couldn't finish eating before other predators got interested but at least we were able to eat most of it and I got a comfy fur out of it. The snake skin was just too damaged to be of use so I didn't bother with it. Also the fur, unfortunately, doesn't glow in the dark with the Hamster being dead.

Then we ran and ran until we were away from the forest and near a pond.

Despite wanting nothing but to fall asleep I forced myself to clean myself and the Lighting Hamster fur. Even Li Na took a small dip in the pond, surprising me.

She was not a fan of soap but once I explained that smelling like a dead animal would get us hunted nonstop so the cat very reluctantly let me clean the grime and blood away from her.

I still had to promise Li Na we would hunt more tasty Hamsters later.

After all that was done I finally noticed Li Na had gone up to Rank 9.

Both of us had been using the Lightning Run ability; an ability most of my students' dogs had, no wonder we had actually been able to escape with our lives.

The rational part of my mind was calling me a suicidal idiot, the emotional part was both happy and slightly terrified of how close we had been to dying. And the cat in me praised Li Na and made me rest lazily near the pond while I hugged my new fur.

Li Na was still annoyed due to the soap so she rested on her own. But when I woke up from my very long nap she was actually sleeping next to me. I feel refreshed, full of energy and I noticed Li Na's black and brown fur now had black tiger-like stripes.

You may be thinking that sleeping like that was stupid and it would have been... if Lina had not just become Rank 9.

We needed to sleep not just out of tiredness but to let both of our bodies adjust to the changes. Neither my weak danger sense nor Li Na felt any danger sleeping there so we did so.

Also being at Step 3 meant I could live up to a hundred years at minimum, unless I got killed or got really sick.

Despite being useless for my cultivation, I meditated. I circulated Spirit energy slowly all over my body checking for changes. Everything felt... much better. I then checked things with my weak danger sense, it was still weak but had improved. I could feel that the area around me for about a meter was reasonably safe while before I was restricted to anything or anyone that got really close to me. My danger sense also seemed to have integrated well with my other senses as my eyes and ears were also scanning for trouble better than before. I was surprised that my sense of smell had improved too, Li Na had a strange smell that the cat in me told me meant family.

Overall, I was lucky but also I wasn't completely careless in what I did to get stronger. After a few months of training to get used to our improved bodies I decided we were going to head back to the Spirit Forest. But not before, without a good foundation your future in cultivation is harder.

****

Li Na was angry, stupid soap! Big Sister better keep her promise of hunting more tasty Hamsters. She also wanted her own comfy fur but she wouldn't beg Sister for it, Big Sister had earned it. And... and sleeping next to Big Sister was comfortable.

Li Na was also happy that she was now stronger. One day she would be even stronger and she would meet that big dumb tiger and show him that she wasn't someone to just ignore! That she wasn't a weak kitten for him to ignore her like that!

Then Big Sister took out the rest of the snacks, they didn't taste as good as the hamster but she was a growing girl and needed to eat.

The honey-milk... still didn't taste very good but Big Sister said it was good for her bones. And if Big Sister could drink it, then so could she!

****

When I headed once more to the Spirit Forest, it was both after six months of training to get used to our new bodies and after learning a weak Spirit Skill that reduced noise. How did I learn said Skill? By looking at what my body was doing when I used the Silent Movement ability and trying to copy it. Since I knew the ability I didn't injure myself trying to copy it, but copying it was the hardest thing I had done so far in my path of cultivation.

And the result wasn't the same thing, for one it was weaker and for the other it merely reduced noise instead of canceling it.

Good thing was that it reduces all noise, not just the one done by walking.

So with that plus my cat instincts I finally was almost as silent as Li Na while hunting. Combined with having snacks made from the flesh of Spirit Beasts and both of us having the Lightning Run ability, the forest just wasn't as dangerous as before.

We stalked another Lighting Hamster and this time it took only a few hours to hunt and kill it. I carefully cut the fur and saved it to give it to Li Na later. While I let Li Na eat all the rodent meat herself. After that we ran away from the forest but stayed close to its borders.

Then, because my cat is really impatient, I made a fire, took a pot out of my huge carrying sack and started to prepare everything to thread the fur and make a rug for Li Na to sleep over. Good thing the increase in Rank did make me much stronger than before because how much stuff I had to carry to do this correctly was kind of ridiculous for what was supposed to just be a quick hunting trip. And of course Li Na refused to carry anything.

Still, just because I was a cultivator didn't mean my grandma had stopped teaching me things. And a Wise Woman is supposed to know a bit about everything, not just medicines and herbs.

Not to mention that she wasn't getting any younger, she had already lived longer than her own mother did and refused to get a trash pill to live longer.

This was also a test to myself to see how good I could do the things she taught me without her watching over my shoulder.

The answer was... that we needed to kill a few more Lighting Hamsters until I finally did the darn rug correctly.

In the end we had to take a trip back to town and I had to make a few extra rugs until Li Na found one she liked. At least the rugs that weren't failures sold well in the nearest city. Not that I sold them myself, too much risk. Uncle Yu did so, even in a city people are less likely to mess with doctors.

The money from the sale went both to pay part of the cost of teaching me and to finally get that guide about stronger Spirit Beasts I was lacking. This didn't raise as many suspicions as you might think, since doctors use Spirit Beast parts to make medicine. They just usually don't hunt them themselves, just buy whatever parts they need.

Before I knew it, I was thirteen. I looked like I was nine.

All the girls my age were already dating, under the careful watch of their families, while I was not.

Then again as a cultivator I would outlive any man that married me and since my status in town had risen as high as possible for my age, anyone interested was intimidated by the mere idea.

It's one thing to date a girl that looks younger than their real age.

It's another thing to date that same girl when she is a Step 3 cultivator, a teacher of other cultivators and the leader of the unofficial town guards.

And my title was only unofficial because leaving any paperwork behind of us basically making our own Sect was incredibly stupid until we became strong enough to resist anyone who took offense to that.

Surprisingly my grandma was still alive but she no longer left town for anything. It came to me, as her student, to get any herbs, plants, fruits; Spirit Beasts and even leaves and tree bark she may ever need to do her medicines.

Fearing she didn't have much life left, I split my focus between being with her and my students. They had gotten strong enough to divide into three groups of four and still defeat Rank 10 Spirit Beasts, but their dogs had yet to rise in Rank.

I was almost sure they would have to face Rank 9 Beasts to rise in power but I didn't want to risk their lives yet.

More so when that would mean leaving Grandma Bai Bao alone for too long.

Turns out she knew she might not live long enough for me to learn everything she knew so she had written books by hand. The last two years of her life were spent finishing writing those books and teaching me.

She died at age sixty, the longest anyone not a cultivator had ever lived in the village, even if they took the trash longevity pill.

I cried for a month after her death, refusing to do anything but eat and sleep, with Li Na trying the best she could to console me.

AN: At this point I don't think it is that hard to guess who or what she is talking to, but please do not spoil... yet.

 

[Pinklestia]

Chapter 4: Cat Part II

Edited by megrisvernin https://forum.questionablequesting.com/members/megrisvernin.493/

After the month passed, I had family matters to take care of. Despite that I did not completely ignore my students, I left them instructions in writing and told their families what to do to help them.

Meanwhile, I read the books my grandma left me and I practiced the skills any Wise Woman should have.

Eventually I would have to train someone else but it was too soon and I was still too young.

A year passed, during that year I still went out to hunt and did train my students but only half the time. I helped to prepare them for their trip to the Spirit Forest as best as I could, and as the new Wise Woman what I could do was a lot. I got them wandering Cultivator robes, I got them weapons and minor talismans. Basically I did everything I could to disguise them as a group of wandering cultivators. I couldn't fake them being part of a Sect, not only did I lack the resources even with Uncle Yu selling the medicines I made and the Spirit Beast parts we all 'obtained' around several cities, but a new Sect was not something we were strong enough to form yet. In that time Li Na grew even more, becoming only slightly smaller than a Spirit Tiger.

Then after that year of duties and preparations I did my best to get stronger by having all my students fight me at the same time. I lost, lost a lot, only to heal using medicine and go at it again, and keep losing. Li Na went against the dozen dogs on her own... and also lost. This, with breaks to allow healing and mentally recover from my losses, continued for six months. I never was able to win, but I kept making it harder for them to win, the same for Li Na, who thankfully was not going for lethal attacks on the dogs.

Then I did reduce the number who attacked me to half... and while I still didn't win, it was a very close thing and all of the half that fought me got injured. Now my cat... she actually was able to beat the six dogs of the other half on her own, and without using lethal moves.

After that even with medicine we had to delay our future trip for two months so we all fully recovered.

Cruel? Maybe. But after getting my students to defeat us for so long we had to establish that we still were much stronger than them, while also leaving half of the students and dogs not injured in case something attacked the town.

Then I made sure Uncle Yu would stay in town for a while and then lead my students to the Spirit Forest.

It was time for my students to rise a Rank and become real cultivators.

The result was both a relief and a disappointment.

We didn't meet any sect Juniors and if there was any wandering cultivator he or she avoided us due to being a big group.

I had my students tag team Rank 9 Beasts two on one, since that was four on one counting their bonded Beasts, and this time I actually had information about Rank 9 Beasts, the six groups all won their fights, but not without injury.

Unfortunately there was not a single rise in Rank.

We retreated from the Forest, my students had their injuries treated and then we tried again.

And again.

And again.

After two weeks we headed back to town and I finally realized either Li Na was really special or that I had more potential than my students.

Because in those two weeks none of my students' dogs rose in Rank.

Maybe it was because it wasn't dangerous enough with me being there to help if anything went wrong. Maybe it had to be one on one, but I feared that one on one some of my students or their Spirit Beasts would not survive.

That doesn't mean there was no improvement at all, because there was.

All of them improved the Thick Fur ability, the students more than the dogs.

That was the first sign I had that training could actually improve abilities instead of them only rising in power with a rise of Rank.

So naturally the next thing we did... was take it easy for a few months. We all were tired in mind and body after all. And if sometimes I goofed off doing cat things... well a Wise Woman is supposed to be a bit weird so whatever.

Not to say the training stopped but it now consisted in taking down Rank 10 Beasts one on one while using the same ability over and over to make it improve.

Of course that was for my students, I still had my duties as Wise Woman and Uncle Yu just couldn't fully replace me, even if he didn't have to wander over several smaller towns and villages that didn't have their own doctors.

But I also couldn't leave my path as that would literally kill me.

So like before our not-so-useful group trip to the Spirit Forest, half my time was training and the other half was making medicine and resolving the townspeople's problems.

And everyone had problems.

I had not realized how busy my grandma had been, most likely due to her making me leave when she had to talk to people.

The first year people had both respected that I was new to the job and that my grandma had recently died.

That grace period was apparently over when we came back from the forest.

I had to take two of my younger cousins, both girls of course, as Wise Woman assistants just to have some play time with Li Na. That was really needed or we both would have gone crazy.

But of course I couldn't just order them around all day; I also had to teach them.

Good thing that, being Uncle Yu's daughters, the two of them already knew how to read and write really well despite only being six years old. So most of my teachings involved making them memorize things from the books Grandma had left me, as there was no way I was going to let them borrow or copy the books, and being there to supervise their practice so they didn't screw up too badly.

Doing all this and planning and preparing for the next trip took a whole year. During that time I and Li Na trained our abilities and my only skill as much as we could.

My students now looked the same age as me and all their abilities had improved.

Their dogs' looks had changed, they looked as if one of their parents had been wolves.

This time we had even better medicine, better robes and better talismans. Still far from looking like a Sect but enough to look like wandering cultivators that were not doing too bad.

We saw the same Rank 8 Spirit Tiger me and Li Na had seen before. Said tiger still looked and felt the same. Probably because the higher the Rank the harder it was to rise in power. And being Rank 8 in a place that had Ranks 9 at most means he was king of the forest.

The creature didn't ignore us but also didn't attack, and then I saw her.

Beautiful, delicate, with green robes of fine silk and woven with gold and jewels. Skin white as porcelain, long hair as black as the moonless night and lips as red as blood. She had her eyes closed so I couldn't see what color they had. Seeing using her Spirit Beast eyes perhaps? Or maybe training a sensing skill?

A sect Junior, and the tiger was hers. I could see that by how well they got with each other. And by the feline letting her climb on his back.

Also... she felt as strong as the tiger, indicating she had an even stronger bonded beast than said tiger.

"You have grown stronger Stranger," she said without looking at anyone but actually referring to me in particular.

I bowed and so did my students. My students bowed a bit lower than mine. Good manners help you to avoid death.

"This fairy thanks you for your kindness." The kindness being both the praise and not killing us.

Saying that was a way to take what she said as praise. Calling her Senior was not appropriate, not only did we just meet, we were not friends or allies, or members of the same sect.

"Oh, and whatever is the fairy's name?"

"This fairy's mortal name is An Xiu, I have not earned a Cultivator name yet." Mostly because taking one on my own was just not done and I lacked a Master to give me one.

"Fairy An Xiu, are you happy with your current path?" In other words, 'do you want to join my Sect and be my personal slave?'

"Yes." Also known as 'No, I won't join your sect and we have enough numbers to be a bother if you try to force it.'

"Very well, please leave Fairy, my sect is currently using the forest, it's not just me this time."

"As you wish, we will follow your kind advice." As in, we didn't dare to fight you and however many others you had on your side.

I even let the slight of not being told her name or the name of her sect slide. We weren't equals after all, I was inferior both in status and cultivation. Same reason she ignored my students.

So we left and headed to a backup location, one of many places called Spirit Cave.

Despite the name, the so-called cave was a very large place, more of a series of big interconnected natural tunnels than a cave, but it's not like I was the one that named the place.

The closer you were to the entrance, the weaker the spirit energy, in fact the entrance itself had almost no spirit energy at all. But the deeper you went, the stronger the spirit energy and also the stronger the Spirit Beasts would become. In fact there were rumors that if you went deep enough you would find Divine Beasts.

Not that we were stupid enough to go that deep, in fact the second we found something stronger than a Rank 9 Spirit Beast we would escape as fast as possible while using all of our talismans to slow down whatever was chasing us.

And we ended up doing just that.

A Rank 8 Raging Mole chased us. Thankfully our long time of preparations helped and while the Mole was not hurt by our pitiful talismans it at least got tired by having to use its energy to protect itself from so many talisman attacks. As they say a single ant is nothing to worry about, a whole ant hill? That's a different matter.

Even so the beast was too enraged and chased us past the entrance, the combined electric attack of eight Rank 10 wolf-like dogs barely being able to stop it and only damaging some of its fur.

Then Li Na attacked the mole's neck and when the mole tried to use its claws to kill Li Na it once more got attacked by the wolf dogs. Our weapons were not going to do anything to the Rank 8 Spirit Beast so it was up to our bonded companions.

That second attack by the canines actually made the mole cry in pain.

Then the mole showed that it wasn't an idiot and retreated back into the cave.

After that the eight dogs fainted, because they had used too much energy in that last attack.

Li Na didn't collapse out of sheer stubbornness but by our connection I knew she had less than a third of her energy left.

All of that and the mole's neck had been barely injured.

But while Li Na and I didn't become stronger, the eight dogs that had faced the mole rose in rank becoming Spirit Wolves.

Of course that left four dogs that had not.

After resting and recovering for a few days we went back to the forest, but only I (and my cat) entered.

The four students whose dogs had yet to rise in rank waited for me and Li Na to check if the sect was still there, thankfully they weren't.

So those four had to face a Rank 9 one... more than once. Good thing we had brought a lot of food because it took a whole forsaken month!

The other eight students were busy practicing with their improved bodies and with their beasts' new ability.

After that we finally returned home, and I slept for three days straight.

Only after that did I care to check the wolves' new ability.

Four of them, the ones that took longer to rise in Rank, had somehow got the ability Sharp Claws. Meaning that despite being wolves they could use claws like a feline and hurt the enemy with them. Combined with the ability of Sharp Teeth they already had, it made them good at close combat.

The other eight got Lightning Ball, the ability to throw a ball of electricity from their mouths. That and their Lightning Run made them good for attacking at distance.

There were also physical changes besides four of them having claws. The wolves that had electric powers had a white lightning bolt-shaped patch of fur in their foreheads while the ones with sharp claws and teeth had a crescent moon instead.

My second book about Spirit Beasts identified the lightning bolt symbol wolves as Lightning Wolves while the ones with the crescent moon were Clawed Wolves.

And there was no information about Li Na's current form, but my best guess was that she was going to become a Lightning Tiger at Rank 8.

The Clawed Wolves students copied the claws, that in their case showed as short blades of spirit energy in the nails of their hands. While the Lightning Wolves students actually had the Lightning Ball form in their hands instead of their mouths. Probably because using the ability in their mouths would hurt them. They had to use their two hands together for the ball to form but it was still quite impressive for someone at Step 3.

With my students' beasts finally at Rank 9 that meant all of us could be considered true cultivators.

And the most important, all of us had an extra hundred years to live, there was no real rush to get to the next Step and Rank.

Of course I had my students fight each other so they practiced with their new bodies and abilities. While I had a different objective, to get a book about Spirit Skills.

I had been either lucky or showed great potential when I copied my Silent Run into a noise reduction Skill, I didn't think my students could do the same without harm.

There was also the fact I had not taken the time to create more Skills based on abilities since the noise reduction one due to lack of time and feeling it would be kind of pointless.

Unfortunately to get said book would mean either trading with a wandering cultivator or outright killing one to get said book. There was a limit on how much information Cultivators allowed mortals to get and Skills were not on the allowed list.

Just in case I abused my power as Wise Woman and had everyone that had some free time looking for books of Cultivation all over the town, not just the library, but it was almost useless.

Why almost? Because they found a box that held a few seeds that had spirit energy in them. The one that found them was my redheaded student, Fan Dandan. Her wolf had dug the box from out behind my grandma's house.

Uncle Yu didn't know what the seeds were from so naturally I put finding what the seeds were as a test to my two assistants cousins. Not that I didn't figure it out myself first of course, it just was not something I could say out loud.

In fact I had to make my cousins swear they would not tell anyone but me if they found out what the seeds were.

It took them three months but they figured out what the seeds were. I rewarded them by allowing them to copy some things out of my Wise Woman books, of course they also could not show those copies to someone else.

I secretly planted the five seeds in five separate places in the Spirit Swamp and then went once a week to give those seeds extra spirit energy myself.

Unfortunately even if they were at the same Step as I was, and feeding those seeds my spirit energy left me really tired, I couldn't give the task to my cultivation students in order to keep the secret.

I also started to suspect that the dead wandering cultivator that my grandma obtained stuff from, had not died from a bad pill by accident.

Longevity trees are one of the things Sects are quite angry about anyone else having after all.

AN: Well, well, it seems Grandma had at least one secret that she didn't tell her.

 

[Pinklestia]

Edited by megrisvernin https://forum.questionablequesting.com/members/megrisvernin.493/.

Years passed, my two youngest cousins learned enough about being a Wise Woman that I and my students were able to leave for longer periods of time to train, but we didn't all leave at the same time.

Before I had been a bit careless because I honestly didn't think our town could face any real danger if we just left for a few weeks to a month, but then I finally remembered the time we faced the Savage Rats and wondered if something worse wouldn't appear.

Hence why half of my students would stay to guard the town during each trip. Of course I always got to go as I was their teacher.

Then for the next trip it would be the turn of the half that had stayed back on the previous trip.

Because I didn't feel like it was worth it with all our Spirit Beasts being at Rank 9 we no longer went to the Spirit Forest. Too much risk to encounter that Sect fairy again and not being able to refuse.

Instead, we trained in the Spirit Cave.

Now you may be wondering, didn't we risk facing cultivators for Sects on the cave?

Not if we weren't stupid, because unlike with the forest it was easy to tell when a Sect was using the cave. They always left their group's stronger cultivators at the entrance in case whoever they sent inside had to run from a strong Spirit Beast.

Heck even wandering cultivators did the same if they could, so our group didn't seem weird even if someone saw us.

Oh but what about the Longevity tree seeds? Simple, when I had to leave for more than five days I made sure to bury dead Spirit Beast bodies, of at least Rank 10, near the seeds. And when we returned I buried Rank 9 remains near the seeds.

The greedy gluttonous seeds devoured the bodies' leftover energy, and the bodies themselves, quite fast. I noticed the ambient Spirit energy slightly increasing over time in the Spirit Swamp the more I did this, so I started to do so when I could.

The constant effort of using my spirit energy in the seeds seemed to have made my body slightly stronger too. Even so I still didn't make my students help, as a way to keep the seeds a secret. It would take decades for the seeds to finally sprout anyway, so it is not like I was in a hurry.

Good thing the Spirit Cave was literally enormous and for some reason never seemed to run out of Spirit Beasts, or I would have eventually had to stop to let the place recover.

In fact I much later learned that the reason why the cave never ran out of Spirit Beasts was due to all the twelve major sects burying the artifacts, swords and dead beasts of those who failed the Soul Lighting tribulation there and in other places like it. Said leftovers couldn't be used as they were damaged by the Lighting Tribulation but they still emitted spirit energy as they slowly broke down to nothing so they may as well use them for something useful.

Oh, you don't know what that is? No wonder, you probably were already born quite strong so you will only have to worry about the Mind Lighting tribulation.

Whatever is a Lighting Tribulation? Is a test of the Heavens. A cultivator will face a Lighting Tribulation three times. Upon finishing refining their body, upon fully reforging their soul and after the complete unification of soul and body.

What right do the Heavens have to test us? Well my friend if the Heavens did not test those who want to ascend to the Heavens then evil cultivators and demons would be able to ascend and then the world would be destroyed.

It's also said that, even if you are not an evil cultivator or a demon, those who are truly evil will not be able to ascend. But of the truth of that I do not know for sure.

But I have an idea.

Imagine if you will Friend, that one cultivator finally reaches the end of their Path. Not getting stuck, not being unable to climb more Steps but actually reaching the end. Why? Because they became the one that's both at the top and part of everything. They became all that is, all that was and all that will be.

And then since they are everything and nothing, they find out Life itself is dying and in pain. That ascension means nothing because cultivators doomed Creation. That the whole existence is not only dying but being starved.

Why? Because of greed.

Does the one overall and part of everything give up? Does this being who rules all and nothing just accept the death of creation itself?

Of course not, this is a cultivator we are talking about.

That's why I think all three main paths give back to the World, and why I think the Heavens judge us before we can enter them. And why even a single evil cultivator or demon entering Heaven will cause the destruction of the World were it happens.

Of course my friend, I didn't think about these things back then. I was just an eager and foolish young child that wanted to live longer. Power? Power has always been a means to an end for me, not the goal itself.

I think... I think that if you give up everything to ascend, then there is no point to it. What do you think Friend?

Oh, you want us to become better friends? Why not? Just beware, Li Na will have a hard time accepting you. She is against us becoming friends. Don't take it too hard, she is just jealous.

Before I knew it, puberty finally hit me, good thing I knew how to make the right medicine for me and my female students to avoid a certain inconvenience.

That also served as a wake up call to increase my strength. Even if I was stronger than my students, as their teacher I should still be at least a Step further than them; right?

Besides, in the last few years anything that reminded Li Na of the word "tiger" made her more and more irritated and soon nothing but raising our power would help to calm her down.

So we entered the Spirit Cave alone and tried to track down the Rank 8 Raging Mole only to find ourselves running from its slightly weaker relatives.

Six Rank 9 Rage Moles, one or two we could take, maybe three, but six?

The moles chased us past the entrance and into a nearby lake, where we had laid some traps beforehand.

Basically we got one of the moles with a lot of low ranking explosive talismans, I really needed to learn how to make those myself to save money, and we got two of them to chase us into the lake.

You see the lake was a salt lake, simply not used to get salt by anyone due to being too far away.

And salt plus water plus electricity from a frustrated cat equals fried moles.

Of course the explosions and being hit by lighting had only taken out three of the six moles. And that's when my students got out from their hidden spots and attacked the moles, three moles versus a dozen wolves of the same rank as them? It was a massacre.

Just because I went to the cave alone doesn't mean I wouldn't leave some backup outside after all.

****

"Well that was a bust, at least the claws of the moles are good for making bone healing medicine."

The fur was completely destroyed, the meat eaten by the dogs. And most of the bones had no real use.

"Teacher, did we do good?" Fan Dandan, my redheaded student asked.

"Yes, yes, have some candy." I hand all my students candy as a reward.

What, I didn't mention it before? I had decided after we all had become the same rank that bribes... er rewards for good behavior was a good way to keep them under control.

That also made my students like me a lot more.

We all had finally become adolescents and with that came distractions... but I did not take part in them and none of the romances of my students lasted.

Why did I not seek companionship even for a few hours? Because it would have been a distraction from the Path, because even a casual fling with one of my students would have lost me their respect and because... I didn't want to bother.

Maybe I just had not found the right person who also happened to be a cultivator and so wouldn't die too fast?

I had also been too busy thinking about the things I have done to make myself stronger, besides my main Path, and why I did them.

Eating everything and anything I could was logically taking advantage of such a useful ability. Training my body and how to fight is part of any Path so that didn't count.

But... the seeds of the longevity tree? Constantly feeding them Spirit energy and getting slightly stronger as a result had taught me something proper cultivators most likely already know.

Constantly using Spirit energy is not only good practice but helps to make you better at controlling it and also makes the Spirit energy in your body stronger. Hence the importance of using Skills, even weak ones, as that requires using a lot of Spirit energy until one finally masters them.

So that means that my students, still at Step 3, really needed to use Skills to improve unless they wanted to be weak even compared to wandering cultivators in the same Path and Step.

I didn't dare to teach the only meager Skill I knew due to fear of doing it wrong.

So I really needed a book on basic Skills.

Even if I had to risk death to get it.

But before that, I needed for me and Li Na to grow in power once more.

Hence why I was risking myself and my companion. Not just for myself but for her, for my students and of course to better protect my town.

I heard others call things like these insights, but unlike in stories there is no sudden jump in cultivation upon having one, not even for those in the Path of Sword or Artifacts. It's like finding an answer to a problem, having the answer doesn't mean you don't still need to solve it, just that you now know how.

So insights help but they don't miraculously do the Cultivation for you.

After resting for a day and preparing more traps, I went back into the cave.

'The mole might or not be fated with me, but better to try an easier prey first,' was my thought. And since we seemed fated with those who have electric powers, those were our target.

Unfortunately there were no cousins of Lighting Mice in this particular Spirit Cave. But there were still a few other electric Beasts.

My choice was between the Lighting Bear and the Lighting Bat.

Since the Lighting Bat was less likely to kill me in a single blow the choice was evident.

That does not mean I could be careless, the bat I was hunting was still of a better Rank than Li Na after all.

What do bats hunt? Usually insects, fruit or blood.

Injuring a weaker beast to get a Lighting Bat to attack it would be a possibility if Lighting Bats didn't usually eat insects and prefer fruit.

Turns out that me feeding so much spirit energy to those seeds gave me an idea, to improve our food using spirit energy!

Green Hairy Apples were the best fruit for it, as they didn't die or mutate horribly when given too much energy but let the excess spirit energy out by glowing.

Unfortunately... they taste horrible, their main use is for their medicinal properties. Even more unfortunately due to a certain ability that I have mentioned many times, for me and for four of my students it was better to eat them raw.

That's a long-winded way to say I had a few apples on me, as they do help to heal injuries faster and are also filling and nutritious just... the horrible taste!

Good for us then that apparently Lighting Bats have a weird sense of taste, because I was able to bait a few of them with a single Green Hairy Apple, heck they even fought over it! Sure the thing was more powerful than normal due to being farmed using spirit energy but... I will say it again, it tastes horrible!

Anyway, as the bats fought over the fruit I got ready all the talismans I had in me, and then used them on a single bat, even if a few of the others were also caught in some of the effects due to being too close.

The result was one bat getting half asleep and two others getting drowsy while the other four showed they had some brains and decided to fly away.

Before the three Lightning Bats left decided to attack me together I kicked the apple in the middle of them and showed that they were ruled by their stomachs as the bats then... continued to fight over the apple?

'Bro... why? It's just an apple! It doesn't even taste good!'

Li Na saw her chance and pounced at the most injured bat, the flying creature's electric attacks hurting her but not enough to slow the cat down.

Then I stuck a Spirit reinforced steel knife into the bat's eye.

The other two bats? One had bitten off a chunk of the apple and escaped, the other was eating the Green Hairy Apple right there while making happy noises.

Thankfully the knife worked and the Lighting Bat died. Then I tied the dead body over Li Na's back and we both ran away using Lightning Run.

Some beasts chased us but the few who had not given up by the time we reached the cave entrance were scared away by exploding talismans and the howling and attacks of a dozen wolves.

Then me and Li Na stopped and devoured the bat.

The expected rise in Rank and Step did not happen.

Instead one of the abilities of my cat changed.

Electric Zap changed into Lighting Claws, losing the ability to shock enemies with electricity from any part of her body in exchange for having a more potent electric attack focused on her claws.

The black tiger stripes on her back also changed to look a bit like lightning bolts.

I switched Silent Movement for Lighting Claws, it hurt a bit since I had the other ability for so long but the pain soon faded away and I watched with interest how the ability made my nails crack with lighting. I held a simple steel knife and I figured I could use the ability to electrify the attacks I did with it as long as I held it in my hand.

Just like cultivators can reinforce their body with Spirit energy, they can do the same with any weapon or artifact they hold. But the effect disappears after a minute or two when the cultivator stops holding it.

To give a permanent effect you need to refine the weapon or artifact, something I didn't know how to do. And even then only Sword cultivators and Artifact cultivators can refine something in their souls; and that's required to make something really powerful.

There is however a workaround for Tamers, the more a weapon or artifact is like a Tamer's main Spirit Beast, the better it works for a Tamer.

I had made the handle of the knife I used to kill that Lighting Bat with some of Li Na's hairballs and old nails. Unfortunately after using it to kill the bat it got tainted with the bat Spirit energy and it wouldn't take my energy anymore.

I buried the tainted knife in the swamp, and in a few days the longevity seeds took the tainted energy away. Yet they didn't destroy the rest of the knife.

"Strange, is it because they recognize me and my companion's energy in it?"

I unburied the formerly tainted knife and looked it over, it was as good as new. Then I tried to use it with the Lighting Claws ability and had to quickly drop it or it would have sucked me dry out of Spirit energy.

Even so the knife took away a third of it.

"Dangerous!"

Thankfully I knew something like that could happen, it was in some of the stories in the library. Mostly warnings to mortals to not pick up random stuff in the ground that could be an abandoned artifact or weapon of a cultivator and kill them.

I locked the knife inside a steel box and buried it back in the swamp. I would try again after we rose in power.

Said rise in power... was not easy. After months of hard work and over a dozen killed and eaten electric bats our ability's use of electricity had improved but there was no actual increase in power.

That meant... We had to risk fighting the Lighting Bear.

So we trained and prepared for six months just to do that.

I even got a sword made out of steel to channel my lighting on it, and Li Na and I trained to fight other kinds of weaker but still dangerous Spirit Bears.

Even so, there was the fact that the Lighting Bear could kill me in a single blow and even cripple Li Na.

So we did not fight it directly, we lured it outside the cave into a trap. Half of my money earned so far went into the trap, the bear falling into a hole and being hit with so many talismans I shed a tear at how much poorer that left me. Then Li Na and I attacked the bear from behind, the steel sword breaking as we unleashed an attack on its neck combining both of our electric powers.

Even so, that wasn't enough to finish it, but the tip of the sword stuck in the beast's neck made it a lightning rod for Li Na's electric attacks and we were able to kill the bear, even if we both fainted afterwards.

We woke up days later, starved for food and water. Good thing I have loyal students who prepared a feast for us, including salted and smoked Lighting Bear meat.

After eating the meat and drinking a lot of water we both went to sleep again and woke up a day later.

At Rank 8 Li Na... not only looked like a tiger as I expected, but she had become bigger than the biggest horse.

Even bigger than that sect girl Spirit Beast tiger had been.

"Wait... what?" I screamed looking at my new eyes in the mirror, this was not supposed to happen, not until Soul Reforging at the very least! I had cat like eyes.

Then again even at the same Step I was much stronger than my students.

"Fuck there is no way I will be able to avoid a sect's attention if they see my new eyes."

Worse, outsiders would think I was actually way more powerful than I felt like, that was... Really bad.

As a way to hide my new eyes, I got a straw hat that covered them if I was looked at from far away.

Even so Step 4 made me three times stronger than Step 3, so it is not like I could whine too much.

By checking my second book on Spirit Beasts, I confirmed Li Na had become a Lighting Tiger, just a bigger than normal one and whose colors didn't entirely match.

That meant that as I finally was once more a Step further than my students, I could not delay getting the book on Spirit Skills much longer.

The problem was how to go about it.

Wandering cultivators do trade with each other, and we had the numbers. Plus my eyes did make me look stronger than I actually was.

However, there were flaws in that idea, anyone who actually was as strong as I looked would actually have at the very minimum a strong weapon and mere steel weapons were not gonna cut it.

Also anyone my supposed rank would have juniors much stronger.

And that is just for wandering cultivators, let's not even talk about clothes.

Still, waiting much more would hurt my students' cultivation and as a good and kind teacher; that I could not stand.

So I decided that once more I had to face things with just my feline companion.

And so, after getting a change of clothes, things to trade and bribing my partner with good meat, the two of us went to a Cultivator Market.

AN: Finally going to get that darn book, then again is not being paranoid if they really are after you.

 

[Pinklestia]

Edited by megrisvernin https://forum.questionablequesting.com/members/megrisvernin.493/.

Now before I continue my story there is something I want to say.

The path of a cultivator is not easy, you get power and a longer life but that power comes at a price. One has to not let the desire to live longer and be more powerful blind them to everything else, because if you do so then you become a monster, just for a bit more power, a bit more time to live. But what use is it to live for so long, if you are left alone? What does having all the power do if all you do is use it to kill, no different from a mere beast?

Think about it, don't give me your answer yet.

A Cultivator Market is a street market run for and by cultivators, no mortal can get in one unless a cultivator takes them there and even then no one will sell them anything. That's because even the weakest pill you can get at a cultivator market will kill mortals.

I simply didn't have enough money to buy anything there but that's okay because a Cultivator Market mostly works by trading and bantering, even if they do accept money. That's because even for those cultivators that have storage artifacts, the amount of money they would have to use to buy things could be quite annoying for the most expensive stuff.

What I had to trade was the bones and skull of the Lighting Bear, good for making artifacts and swords that use electricity. Bone growing medicine made by using Green Hairy Apples and claws of Raging Moles plus other things. And of course, the type of 'special medicine' male cultivators swear they don't use yet buy a lot of it anyway. To be able to affect cultivators, said medicine was reinforced with fur from a Lighting Bear pelt.

Li Na looked really bored as she walked to the market entrance while I was mounted on her back. Being able to ride her was my "reward" for getting such lovely eyes. I couldn't fully hide my new eyes but the hat and the new scarf around my neck made from a Spirit Beast Wool helped. I had gotten the scarf on the road, by trading with a wandering cultivator while I asked him where to find the nearest Cultivator Market. He got some bone growing medicine, a third of my special medicine and the last raw Hairy Apples I had on me. I got the scarf, maybe he scammed me but the scarf at least looked good and was comfortable.

When it comes to cultivators looks can be deceiving, in my case due to still looking like a young teen and my cat eyes I looked way more powerful than I really was. The fact Li Na did look slightly different than a normal Lighting Tiger also helped. While no one in the Market would confuse me with a sect cultivator, they mistakenly believed I must be from a group of wandering cultivators that had found a prodigy and dropped their best things in her.

Even so getting that book on Basic Spirit Skills took hours, mostly because no one seemed to have it when asked. I had to resort to telling several male cultivators that I would yell out loud that I wouldn't lower the price of "that" medicine just because they were regular customers and that worked like charm because I had the medicine and was female, so why else would I have the medicine on me if it wasn't to sell it? Sure they could argue I had bought it for someone else but then that would still get attention and cause them humiliation since why were they even talking to me if that was the case?

After I got the medicine, me and Li Na did our best to make a disappearing act as we had angered several male cultivators.

Any idiot who tried to chase us would run right into a field full of explosive talismans.

And one idiot did.

Because there is always at least one, right?

I then hit said idiot with a lot of lighting and then robbed him blind.

I left him alive because we were still just a few miles away from the Market and so killing someone was considered bad manners. Plus if he decided to look into me later for revenge... well I still had students that could use the practice.

What I got from him was... not much really, just a nice non bonded sword. I left him his bonded sword intact. Everything else had been damaged by the lightning or was of no value to me.

After that we took the really long road back home. As in we took four times longer than we would have taken normally in case someone was chasing us. Thankfully no one was, there were a couple of stupid bandits that had nothing of value, a wandering wolf Spirit Beast that tasted okay raw, and I got a few seeds I didn't have before.

Overall things went pretty well, just had to find someone decent to reforge the sword and erase any marks on it that could be used to identify it.

But that could wait since having obtained the book meant me and my students could reduce our deficiency in Spirit Skills.

Granted the book just had the basics of the basics, just five Spirit Skills to learn but that was still five more that I had before.

Hardening, a skill to make one harder to hurt at the cost of becoming slower and heavier.

Lightening, the contrary of Hardening, makes you lighter and faster at the cost of making it easier to get hurt.

Sight, a skill of improving one vision to see better at longer distances.

Focus, moving most of your Spirit Energy to a single part of the body, either for defense or offense, at the risk of taking more damage if you get hurt anywhere else. My guess is that it would be possible to use that and Sight together to see even better but I had no idea if I could figure out how to do that.

And finally Projection, the Skill of using spirit energy outside your body. The hardest of the five Basic Skills and one I had an insight into thanks to the Lighting Claws ability.

Before I could teach, I had to master the five Skills myself.

First I circulated my Spirit Energy closer to my skin, making it tougher and heavier, in a way it was like armor; only one that was part of me. Then I did the same with my hair and nails, with my eyes, then focused to do the same with the rest of me, but stopped before actually reinforcing my brain and my inner organs, instead I wrapped them in thick strands of spirit energy.

When I was done most of my Spirit Energy was gone. I ate a big meal while focusing on keeping the Skill going and it was hard, everything, from breathing, to moving to thinking, was harder.

I still kept going for hours, using food made from Spirit Beasts and Spirit Herbs and fruits to avoid losing too much Spirit energy. Then slowly I released the technique before going to sleep.

The next day I found that my partner Li Na had learned something from watching me and made a Lightning Armor ability for herself. And she didn't even have to lose any of the abilities she already had to do so!

I switched off almost all the abilities I had on me, save the eat anything but my own species ability, and tried the Lighting Armor.

It was not the same, while Hardening did its best to reinforce the whole body against harm, the Lightning Armor protected it with an armor made out of lightning over the user's body and that was it.

It was also slightly less draining, because it did less. If someone got past the Lightning Armor I wouldn't have any extra protection inside my body, like happens with Hardening.

Still, just using the ability gave me further insight into Projection. Not enough to dare try it before I was ready with the others, but useful anyway.

Oh, you think that you have an answer? Then tell me friend.

Might makes right? Well it doesn't surprise me that a dragon thinks that. If that is your answer then since I am stronger you have to do what I say, right?

Oh, you want to think of a better answer? Very well take your time, I can just continue the story.

I continued to practice hardening for a month, limiting it to just one hour a day because I still had to hunt Spirit Beasts and train my students. Our travels to the Spirit Cave increased in frequency as I needed more Spirit dense food to keep going. Li Na kept practicing her Lightning Armor, so she ate more too. I also didn't forget to feed the special seeds in the Spirit Swamp.

During that month Li Na grew bigger and I did too. I read the book again looking for clues but the book barely had the basics on how to do the Skills and nothing else.

Still whatever I was doing wrong or was wrong with me, it at least had made me stronger. And by copying me Li Na became stronger too.

I decided to start teaching my students the basics of Hardening and while a few of them took to the external spirit armor right away others took weeks to get it.

Because of that I expended six months just going with the spirit armor until every one of them was a master of that part of the technique while I had reduced my hardening training to just half an hour every day.

Then we had our first real conflict with "real" cultivators. A wandering male cultivator tried to steal one of my students, the most pretty of the boys.

He definitely was not expecting to have his heart be destroyed by lighting claws. It should not have happened, he was stronger than me or Li Na, but Li Na had somehow combined hardening with her Lighting Claws, making them denser and stronger at the cost of almost fainting afterwards.

We dropped his body in the Spirit Cave, leaving whatever belongings he had untouched. Even if someone found anything of him after the Spirit Beasts in the cave devoured him, they would think it was some Beast in the cave that got him.

Then again it was a Spirit Beast that had indeed killed him; just not a wild one.

Li Na needed months to recover and I found myself weakened too, somehow my partner had used Focus despite the fact none of us had trained that Skill. She also had pushed it too hard, risking both of our lives if her attack had not killed the stronger cultivator almost instantly.

Despite both of us being weaker my students didn't abandon us and instead trained harder, in rotating shifts; to be able to protect us while we recovered while also not slacking off.

Oh, you have a different answer now my friend? You want to see the world and taste delicious food? I think that's a worthy cause.

Anyway we finally recovered and once we did I looked older, and found myself having sharper teeth. My partner surprised me by pushing a book my way and basically asking me to read it for her. It was a book of old children's stories but Li Na seemed to enjoy it.

Amusingly it is in one of those children's stories that I found out what was wrong with me. Hidden between the text of the children's stories was an advanced Tamer manual and the text became visible when Li Na's spirit energy had touched the book at the same time I was holding it.

It's something called Affinity, what does that mean? That some people are born with a natural talent for a particular element and if that element resonates well with the way they cultivate they become stronger than they should be.

I have an Affinity for lightning and Li Na is a Lightning Beast.

And for Li Na herself, she works harder than my students' Beasts did and also had been at it for longer.

That's it, that's the big mystery of why my body was changing in ways it was not supposed to do yet and why Li Na is stronger than she should be.

Of course having started as a kitten and when I was a small girl probably helped a lot since unlike a dragon we weren't born strong after all.

AN: Yes, Li Na and the MC can punch over their own level... but it has a heavy risk.