Ch17 A Hard Lesson

Days begin to pass by, and the tension between me and this new neighbor only grows worse.

I chop more wood than usual, stacking up my metal bin to overflow, almost 50% more wood in total than days before.

It only takes me an extra half an hour, and it isn’t physically taxing. However, it’s the principle behind it.

Xu Hong, the loudmouth, chops wood day and night. She works her way up to over 3.5 times the amount we’re told to chop.

Every day when Zhou Kang comes by our huts, the purple-haired rat points to me and tells our steward that I’m slacking. He praises her and has made it part of his daily ritual to beat me.

I make it a point not to fight back. With my dagger, copper bell, and ability to make lethal arrows, I’m certain I could handle this old man. Yet, there are witnesses, and there are superiors above him in this sect whose true strengths I do not yet understand.

I only get a single spirit fragment back for my increased efforts and humiliating beatings.

I’ve been using upgrade cards every day to form a spirit stone to cultivate with.

These glowing hot white rocks worth 1,000 spirit fragments do not carry the same weight they did before I broke through to the first level of qi refinement.

I’m able to absorb all of the energy in these stones within 2 hours of focused cultivation. That is the length of a single long session, before they turn to worthless grey dust.

Even the qi that flows into my dantian and spirit roots is rather lackluster.

There was a certain depth and sharpness to the serpent’s plum that these spirit stones can’t replicate. In fact, the widened state of my meridians starts to revert back to normal.

The stimulation of my meridians was only a temporary side effect of the plum, most likely an evolved natural trait used by serpents to break through bottlenecks. It makes sense that once the fruit is used up, my meridians would shrink back to their natural state.

Cultivating with spirit stones now feels lackluster. In fact, I don’t feel any progress at all…

Most of the raw qi is flowing back into my body and waiting to be used for chopping wood. My dantian feels hot and slightly uncomfortable even when I go to sleep at night, like there is a casing around it made of extremely hard glass.

The meager amount of qi I absorb every day is nowhere near enough to exert pressure to break it.

I need another boost. Another fruit would be ideal, but that would be entirely up to luck. The most guaranteed option I have is to present Zhou Kang with a spirit stone once again and ask for a pill, or possibly more than one.

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Considering he steals them from the Alchemy Peak, any stones I give him would be pure profit.

The only problem is his growing anger and temper toward me.

I glance over at my purple-haired neighbor chopping wood and decide that two can play her game.

Instead of stopping at a single overflowing bin today, I make a full pile next to it before stopping.

It’s nowhere near her three and a half piles, but I’m here to play the long game. I want to make things believable.

“Senior Zhou, I’m telling you, I worked the hardest I could today to chop this wood for you!” I plead with clasped hands to the steward when he arrives today. I even cover my face and hands with sweat and dirt.

He grunts with a satisfied smile while taking my wood, still only throwing a single spirit fragment before walking away. “Good. So you can do two bins’ worth. I want to see you keep this up.”

I use the upgrade card on my fragment to turn it into a spirit stone, but put it away in my storage instead of cultivating with it today. Then, make my way over to my neighbor’s hut with a smug grin.

“Hey! You! Xu Hong! I’ll give you one chance for a truce!”

Her vacant eyes wander around the forest before settling on me, the noise calling her.