Chapter 111 – Three Loans and a Cat

  Fang Zhao broke out of the water, kicking hard against the bottom of the stream.

  He swam to the shore.

  Mistress Miao watched from atop a mossy boulder stuck between two trees that grew twisted around it. Her two tails swayed without any apparent pattern. From time to time, her wings would flutter, mostly to keep the insects away.

  “I have them,” Fang Zhao said.

  He did not like the cat. Yet his logical mind told him that his apparent crippling was outside the cat’s control.

  “Are you sure?” Mistress Miao asked.

  “Do not question my competence,” Fang Zhao replied.

  “Are you sure?”

  “I said I know what I am doing.”

  “Are you—”

  “Yes,” Fang Zhao groaned. “I have a thousand Writher corpses. I counted three times.”

  The cat was silent.

  “Are—”

  “You got betrayed because you are annoying,” Fang Zhao said. “I can’t conceive of any other reason.”

  “Do you speak from experience?” the cat asked. In the last week of getting to know her, Fang Zhao realised it was a genuine question. She wasn’t being sarcastic.

  It made it worse.

  He gritted his teeth.

  He laid out the corpses one by one on the shore. Most of the writhers were monsters, with a few primals. Their levels were all either 1 or 2.

  He had run into one level 3. He had to run. Even with his newfound power to cultivate and proficiency with seven martial arts, he could not beat it one-on-one underwater.

  He realised what a big difference teamwork made, even with a team of rookies.

  Monsters and Primals had more power and Qi at the same level. Humans had more intellect. Usually, intellect won against low level monsters.

  But the Level 3 Writher he’d come across was a Primal. It had the instincts of a beast, not the kamikaze mindset of a monster.

  “These won’t work,” Mistress Miao pointed a few specimens out. He would have to hunt more to make the numbers up.

  This stream led to a large lake located about a day's trek from the Viridian Glade Gateway Village. It was infested with all manners of monsters. The stream originated from a cave; they said there was a ruin if one followed it to the subterranean layers.

  The stream carried hordes of Gotto Writhers, Brackish Constrictor Writhers, Blue Ink Writhers, Reef-Lurker Writhers, and Corpse-Kelp Writhers to the lake every day. They would war with the indigenous monsters that spawned in the lake, perhaps in mad monster glee or for some twisted version of glory.

  Fang Zhao dived again after storing the corpses.

  He held his breath and reached the bottom. The water was clear. Objects swam past. Leaves, fish, shells, and sand.

  Within seconds, he spotted a Corpse-Kelp Writher on the stream floor making its way to the lake.

  The beast draped itself in dead seaweed. It resembled a floating mass of detritus to those who did not pay attention. A scavenger, not particularly aggressive by beast standards. Unless, of course, it was a monster and sensed spirituality.

  Thank heavens for the spirituality shrouding charm.

  Fang Zhao struck with Bronze Crane Leg. It had a stance of stomping. His feet went through the kelp and struck the main body of the octopus.

  The beast writhed, a faint wail reaching him. It wasn’t a sound that was produced by a vocal cord.

  It tried to grab his leg with a long tentacle, but Fang Zhao moved away with Feather Scale Step. The movement art was not meant for underwater scuffles, but it worked for minute evasive movements.

  Fang Zhao crouched. His hand struck out seven times in quick succession. Of all the Arts he knew, the Sevenfold Strikes of the Waves packed the highest offence in water. It used the flow of water around his attacks as additional sources of damage. It was as if the creator had designed it to be used as such.

  It was the first offensive martial art he had learnt. Steady Bull Steps was fine, but Sevenfold Strikes of the Waves had a special place in his heart.

  After the barrage, the squishy body of the Writher thudded to the ground. The kelp came loose, and what was left was an ugly corpse with tentacles.

  Fang Zhao put it in his storage ring and surfaced. After a deep breath, he went back down.

  Hours passed. He gathered enough.

  “I have never heard of this method,” Fang Zhao said, drying himself with a towel. “Are you sure it will help Brother Yu and Sister Huang achieve a second bloodline awakening?”

  The duo made their way towards the Second-to-Last Bog. Their destination was the cenote, which they named the Bloodpool Hollow. They could have called it the Redgrass Cenote but didn’t want others to deduce the location. He would have to remind his friends not to share the location with others when he went back.

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  “It is a prehistoric method, and it worked for you,” Mistress Miao said. She jumped from one branch to another in the canopy, on the lookout for beasts. “Maybe prehistoric isn’t that old. Do you know how old the oldest sect, clan, and tribe in this world is?”

  The red-eyed boy shook his head. He hid behind a tree and waited for a lone deer to pass. He didn’t know the name of the beast, but its size and metallic antlers were a good deterrent.

  Fang Zhao had no problem dealing with levels 1 and 2. At level 3, he couldn’t win the fight without injuries. Even if he could, he’d be held up too long. Level 4s were at the level of the ghoul boss. He could win if he went all out, but he would no doubt take grievous damage.

  “So much that you don’t know,” the cat said. “This sect has failed in education. You want to remain here. Fascinating. You say the sect master is Nascent Soul? Troublesome. Nothing is more troubling than a mildly strong yet illiterate buffoon.”

  “Why is it fascinating that I want to remain here?” Fang Zhao asked.

  “Why is it not?”

  “I am a man of my word,” Fang Zhao said. “I have a debt to repay.”

  “And I help you repay it,” the cat said. “You claim to be a man of your word. Your bone age is 17. You can be a boy of your words, but not a man according to my sect’s laws.”

  “This is exactly why your husband stabbed you in the back,” Fang Zhao said. He was being mean and petty. But the cat was being unintentionally cruel.

  Mistress Miao hissed. She clawed a tree and threw a branch into a bush. A multicoloured snake flew out from it at Fang Zhao.

  “Bitch—”

  “I am a female human with a celestial tiger bloodline,” Mistress Miao said. “Not a female dog—you got bitten. Why did you not dodge? It was so slow.”

  Fang Zhao gritted his teeth as he put the corpse of the snake in his storage. It had glowed. It would be useful. He retrieved an elite-grade poison-curing pill and took it.

  They reached the Bloodpool Hollow.

  Fang Zhao avoided the redgrass beasts. Their numbers were still down.

  They were much stronger compared to the last time he fought them. Fang Zhao knew it was because of the Redgrass beasts’ ritual. They had sacrificed a drop of their True Blood into the pool to nurture the Lesser Nurturing Bloodferns. That had effectively debuffed them of multiple origin points.

  “Maybe if you let yourself be followed again, your sect will find out about this pool of Corroding Corpse Stone Marrow Wine,” Mistress Miao said. “They can steal your achievements. You’ll see how corrupt this sect is and we can leave.”

  Fang Zhao reached the bottom of the dryish pool. There were tiny holes, from which transparent yet slightly milky liquid poured up. Once in contact with the dead, it would melt anything but the bone and blood into goo. It smelled faintly of wine and would preserve the potency of the lifeforce in the blood.

  A rare earthly treasure. The sect would no doubt claim the area if they learnt of its existence.

  “So we take this Corroding Corpse Stone Marrow Wine, put it in a large pool or tub with all the Writhers, and boil Brother Yu in it?”

  “Correct. We take this Corroding Corpse Stone Marrow Wine, put it in a large pool with all the Writhers, and boil the fat kid in it.”

  “Same for Sister Huang but with wisps?”

  “Same for the wisp girl but with wisps.”

  It felt too simple to Fang Zhao. But if this gave Brother Yu and Sister Huang their second Bloodline Art, that should be more than enough to pay off the debt of all those lanterns, potions, and elixirs.

  Fang Zhao had gained his second bloodline art in the same way according to Mistress Miao. The Jade Sanguine Asuras, or rather, Sanguine Asuras were hybrid asuras that lived off blood. They would appear in places where the blood of hundreds, if not thousands of different beasts, including humans, had fallen. The remnant aspects of the unnatural deaths would interact with the local spiritual energy, the celestial cycles, fire, the flora and the fauna, the ley lines, the earth and infinite other factors for untold centuries and millennia, and it would give birth to the beast.

  Sanguine Asuras could be either a primal, demon, or ppirit.

  Mistress Miao had only seen one in her lifetime.

  The Cinnabar Sand Sanguine Asura.

  It was considered the calamity of the ages of the local life. The demon had plunged the continent into a chaotic reign of death and blood.

  When Fang Zhao was boiled in a pool of blood taken from hundreds of beasts by the locals over who knows how long, he had achieved his second bloodline awakening. That, combined with the duration of his refinement, the Rot-Negating body Tempering Elixirs, the lanterns, the potions, his Cyclic Lifeblood Conversion, and the intrinsic yet unawakened Trait of the Fang clan, evolved the Red Fiend Ancestry to a more potent form.

  According to Mistress Miao, there was a chance to reawaken one’s bloodline once every realm. That meant once during level 0, which she called the root opening realm. The next chance during levels 1-10 in the qi gathering realm, and so forth.

  Root opening was a made up term if Fang Zhao had heard any, but she countered by calling numerical levels a concept invented by stewards with too much time.

  They had a polite conversation involving punches and scratches, and what Fang Zhao took away from it was that a bloodline awakening was different from levelling up a bloodline, or even grading up or evolving it. Levelling up would improve the base qualities of the bloodline, enhancing the existing quantitative effects, or so the cat claimed. Grading up might bring that quantitative change to a height where the related bloodline arts would change qualitatively. Evolving would do that too and had the chance to upgrade the existing bloodline arts further into a better forms. Sometimes, grading up and evolution would grant additional bloodline arts too, but it was not a guarantee.

  While these would all enhance, in one way or another, the parts of the bloodline that were already awake, they wouldn’t necessarily awaken additional, slumbering parts.

  The bloodline in humans was most often too diluted. Too mixed in with other bloodlines, a hybrid so flexible it was often deemed useless.

  For most, the effects of all the ancestors, supernatural and mundane included, would negate each other. Even the talent orb could not induce a zeroth bloodline awakening.

  For others, perhaps one or two parts among a million more would stand out, ever so slightly. They could have mortal or elite-grade bloodline traits.

  Having an additional bloodline awakening was not an easy process. A bad awakening would activate parts of the mixed bloodline that would negate the existing one. A devolution so to speak. It could also activate a part that had no complementary effects. This would also grant a bloodline art, but the synergy would be non-existent.

  Mistress Miao’s primitive method would apparently force the existing part of the bloodline to cannibalise the unawakened parts, extending its own effects. If Brother Yu decided to go through with it, that is.

  This was knowledge even the Trueforge Fang clan did not have.

  Wait, no—they must possess this knowledge. Perhaps the methods of awakening differ in the details, but it had to be an advanced variation of the same principle. How else could the clans target specific traits during a member’s awakening? Without that precision, they wouldn't be able to align a disciple's innate potential with the specific bloodline arts required for the Trueforge method.

  There had to be a way to target and awaken specific traits. Although all bloodlines were traits, not all traits were bloodlines. Not even close. But the clan knew how to awaken non-bloodline type traits too.

  Mistress Miao boasted that at her strongest, she could beat up anyone in his puny empire. Fang Zhao gave her the benefit of the doubt and put her a few tiers below than the strongest person he had met, the venerable sect master of the August Light Celestial Sword sect’s.

  If her sect was as strong, it did indeed tempt Fang Zhao to join. He was pretty sure that it wasn’t on this continent, though. He could rule out the demon continent. That left the one run by spirits.

  She was a cat. Despite her claims, he wasn’t convinced she wasn’t a sapient calico.

  He would need to consider carefully how to pay off his debt to Brother Li. For the foreseeable future, he would cultivate in the Stormy Reef sect. He would help Brother Yu out as much as he could with the courtyard, too.

  The words echoed in his ears. Stability. Meaning. Progress. Brother Yu was right. He was sick and tired of being pushed around by circumstances. Of having his life turned upside down but forces beyond his control, Mistress Miao included.

  He wanted place to belong to. A place to call home.

  Later on, when he was strong enough, he wouldn’t mind travelling out of the sect.

  After all, he couldn’t beat the crap out of Zirong Peihou unless the bastard came here.

  The way how a human sees the world and how a cat (or a human with celestial tiger bloodline) sees the world are so different. Maybe it's a problem that can be solved if everyone awoke cat bloodlines????? Wanna see what happens 25 chapters ahead? Try my ->