At 2 am, Ning reached the Beast Feeding hall and met Soria.
"Hello sister Soria," he said as he walked inside.
"Oh, is it your turn today?" she asked.
"Yeah," he said.
"Weird, I don't remember seeing you here this morning," she said.
"Oh, brother Rekiel told me to meet him directly at the beast grounds, so I didn't come here. Now I need to food to go feed the beasts, so I'm here," he said.
"Oh, I see. Go find him then, he should be inside," Soria said.
Ning nodded and went in to find Rekiel. "Brother Rekiel, I'm here," he said as he found him. Rekiel was in his own thoughts about something when he heard his name being called.
"Huh? Oh, brother Ning, you're here. Is it time already?" Rekiel asked.
"Ah yes, so I came to get the food for the beasts," Ning said.
"Here you go," Rekiel said as he handed Ning a small bag.
'A beast pouch? No, a storage bag,' Ning thought in shock. This was the first time he was seeing one. "How much can this bag hold?" he asked.
"About 500 Kilograms," Rekiel said.
"I see," Ning said. 'How much is that in terms of my energy? 250 million? That's not as much as I thought it would be,' Ning said. He left the Beast feeding hall and went to the beast grounds.
The same as he did today morning, he fed the beasts in enclosures. It didn't even take him longer than 30 minutes to finish feeding all the beasts. Without Rekiel to explain to him about everything, the process was cut down by at least a third of the time.
Once he was done, he went back to his room and cultivated once more. During the evening, he once again went to feed the beasts before returning back.
The next day too, he did the same thing. Morning, noon, and evening, he fed the beasts all 3 times.
"Alright, Brother Ning, you don't have to do any work for at least 10 more days," Rekiel said.
"10 days? I was expecting to do this twice a week. I'm surprised it's 10 long days," Ning said.
"Haha, we have 6 people working, so we changed it to 2 days per person. It rotates every 12 days. Here you go, 30 coins," Rekiel said as he handed Ning 30 coins.
"This is… why so early?" Ning asked.
"Oh, you need to only do this for 2 more times, so you already get a third of your pay now. You probably need it too," Rekiel said.
"Yes, I do. But, what if I don't come the other 2 times, isn't my pay supposed to go down by 10 coins per feeding time I miss?" he asked.
"Oh, I forgot to mention. If you lose more than what you were to be paid, you don't get to work here anymore. Now, you wouldn't do anything as stupid, would you?" Rekiel asked with a knowing smile.
Ning returned back to his room and started to think. 'Do I really just stay in my room for the next 10 days?' he thought. Cultivating was fine, but he was on the first phase of it once more, so it would take a while for him to even reach a time for a breakthrough.
'Wait for a second,' he thought as he hurriedly took out the rulebook from his storage and turned to a certain page.
- Sect wide beast tournament takes place every month at the end of the month-
'That's …' he hurriedly counted the days and thought,' in 4 days.' He finally saw some hope of not being bored the next 4 days. 'It's a beast tournament, so I need to train Night,' he thought.
"I should go visit the techniques hall," he thought.
Early next morning, Ning woke up from his cultivation and gathered heat energy once more. Right now he had about 250 million. That was far from enough.
Night had returned by then, so after finishing his body cultivation and training, he went to the technique halls.
The techniques hall, along with all the other halls were on the base of the hill, so it didn't take him long to go there. He was allowed entry by just showing his identification card.
However, being an outer sect disciple, he could only stay in the hall for 2 hours. 'I wonder how long the inner sect and core disciples get," he thought.
The hall was separated into two separate sections. One was for beast-related techniques, the other was for human-related techniques.
'The claw technique, along with my cultivation base is enough for me right now. Besides, the tournament only uses beasts, so I should find some techniques for Night. Hopefully, he can learn it in 4 days,' Ning thought.
He went into the bird section of the beast techniques and started to look for anything that resembled a good technique. Beaks, feathers, wings, talons, eyes, tails. Numerous techniques, even for just birds, laid around the room in the hall.
Ning looked through the wings and talons section. The night was pretty good at flying and had a great vision since he was a predator. Also, his beak was bent at the front like all eagles and his feathers weren't really meant for attacking, so Ning didn't see the point of getting them and to the other 2.
Soon, he found 2 techniques that he really liked and could afford.
The first one was called Blinding Gusts. It made the wings flap very fast, producing large amounts of winds with their qi, that pricked the enemy's eyes, blinding them temporarily in the process.
The next one was called the Mutli-Scratch technique. It made the birds able to scratch the enemies with their talons multiple times in a single scratch. One scratch would be done by them, while the others would be done by the Qi released while using the technique.
Together, they cost Ning around 16 gold coins, which was quite a lot, but he thought it was worth it.