Chapter 22 | Herb Gardens

The herb gardens were next in the list of places to clean up.

Calid kept the column a few hundred yards from the warehouses and sent only Foundation Establishment cultivators to collect the spiritual herbs under his precise direction, relayed through Lin Mei, who relayed through Feng Jun, who relayed through a chain of increasingly confused disciples until the instructions arrived at the collection point in a form that bore only a passing resemblance to their original content.

Communication devices were far more complex than what most people thought and would require extensive work to make functional. Especially in a world without any foundational structures designed to facilitate said distance communication in any form at all.

It was another thing he would need to figure out for the sect.

The herbs were gathered regardless and in the meantime, Calid entered the warehouses alone.

The spirit beasts inside were exactly as Shao Wen’s memories had described.

Non-sapient creatures that were caged in formation arrays.

Said arrays were degrading at variable rates depending on the beast’s size, cultivation level, element, and personal investment in the project of escaping. A shadow lynx paced its cage in a circle that it had worn down from endlessly repeating the same steps over and over again. A pair of iron-scaled serpents lay coiled in their containment, their eyes tracking Calid’s movement with a flat, patient regard.

Calid moved from cage to cage, opening them.

One by one, methodically, starting with the smallest and working upward. Calid had placed a few deflection matrices near the outsides of the warehouses to direct the spirit beasts away from the disciples and toward safer areas without human presence.

The shadow lynx bolted through the warehouse door the second he opened its cage and vanished into the undergrowth before the cage door had finished swinging open. The pair of iron-scaled serpents uncoiled, tasted the air, regarded Calid with what might have been confusion, and slithered out through a crack in the warehouse wall that they widened considerably in the process.

A ridge-backed boar the size of a small horse required more encouragement. It stood in its open cage, snorted at Calid and at the concept of freedom in general, and then charged through the warehouse wall rather than use the perfectly serviceable exit that was six feet to the left.

The wall, which had been load-bearing, groaned dangerously and caused dust to pick up in the area.

Calid finished quickly, and then left that particular warehouse at a pace that was dignified but brisk and moved on to the others.

The spirit beasts would take time to disperse. Hours, possibly days, depending on how long it took each creature to process the novel experience of not being in a cage and to develop a plan for what to do next. In the meantime, the column was few hundred yards away, the herbs were collected, and the warehouses were no longer his problem.

Calid made sure to leave some food out for the beasts too just in case.

After the herb gardens, Calid and the disciples moved toward the Qi stone repository.

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Said repository was underground and accessed through a concealed entrance in a ravine that Shao Wen’s memories located quickly.

The concealment was, in fairness, excellent.

It was hidden behind a waterfall that was itself hidden behind a rock formation that was itself hidden behind a stand of bamboo so dense that finding the rock formation required either detailed prior knowledge or the kind of luck that the universe reserved for people it was setting up for something unpleasant… or protagonists of certain power fantasy stories that had spread before his unintended departure from that entire universe and dimension.

Calid had detailed prior knowledge.

The Qi stones sat in carved niches along the repository walls, ranging in grade from low to mid, with a few high-grade specimens in a locked cabinet that Calid opened with a matrix that convinced the lock’s formation to believe it had already been opened by an authorised user, which was technically true if you accepted that the current occupant of Shao Wen’s body counted as Shao Wen, which the lock apparently did.

He loaded the system inventory until it was full to the absolute brim, which left a few dozen Qi stones of low grade. He intended to give each disciple their own Qi stone to use for the time being. Shao Wen’s memories were clear that they helped cultivating tremendously, but were not to be overused.

Risking creating paper tigers if they were.