Zhang Liu wasn’t sure what was going on, he got yanked around by the small yet busty girl through the city. They visited various places and he found himself holding a pile of robes while the pink-haired young lass was trying them on. He had a hard time seeing anything past them, by the number of clothes he was holding the shop clerks was even giving him looks of concern.
He wanted to tour the city, but this wasn’t the way he imagined it. Every time he tried to speak up the girl butted in and pulled him to another location as if she was in some kind of rush. They visited places like restaurants, tea shops even went over to the area close to the big lake, the view was quite nice but he couldn’t even take it in before he was yanked by the ball of energy that was this young lady.
‘I don’t even know her name…’
In time the young man could see that the sun was setting, this was the time that he was supposed to go back to his hotel. He even received some messages on his communication jade, asking about if he was okay as he just vanished from the arena.
“I think I should go back…”
He looked at the strange girl, that was holding various shopping bags, he himself was carrying quite the mountain of them. He did have a spatial ring of his own, but its size was limited. His mother forced him to cram it full of clothes and food, he had barely any space left for his weapons and pills in there.
When the youth spoke out, the girl looked back at the young male that she was with a big smile on her face.
“Back? we still need to walk around the beach… and go to a hot spring… then you would peek…, tee-hee.”
She chuckled to herself as if she had some kind of dubious plan thought out. Though her companion was slowly getting fed up with it, luckily he wouldn’t need to put up with the girl’s antics for long as a certain old looking grandma that he was familiar with decided to show up.
“There you are, I’ve been looking all over the city for you!”
The person was an old elderly looking lady that looked like a baked potato that was out in the sun for too long, this was Feng Maling a member of the elder generation of the Feng Clan.
“W-what, h-how did you find me, granny!?”
The pink-haired girl’s face sunk, she looked like she was afraid of this old lady that was slowly moving towards her with a cane in her hand. The moment she got closer she delivered a smack with that same cane of hers to the short girl’s head, making her drop some of the shopping bags she was holding.
“Stop causing trouble for the clan and the Matriarch, we will be returning this instant!”
Zhang Liu looked from the side, as the old lady grabbed the short yet busty girl by the collar of her robe and started dragging her out. While the two were passing by the bewildered youth, the old woman stopped and looked at him.
“Those robes…Zhang Clan?… if I remember correctly…”
Zhang Liu shook out of his stupor and cupped his fists, giving the old woman a friendly bow, thus dropping all of the clothes and bought goods to the floor. The elder lady rubbed her chin a bit while the pink-haired oddball was squirming on the ground.
“Ah! You’re the Zhang Patriarch’s disciple, is he in the city perhaps?”
Zhang Liu smiled a bit as he was recognized and when his Master was mentioned, but then sighed out inwardly after the question was asked.
“Regrettably my Master had something important to attend to, so he won’t be coming to the festival this year. In his stead my Gran… Grand Elder Jin will be attending…”
The old lady’s eyebrows twitched quite a bit when she heard the name Zhang Jin, but she didn’t comment on it. She just nodded and said her goodbyes.
“Is that so… the Matriarch will be disappointed if she hears that… Don’t worry I’ll take this troublemaker with me, send my regards to your Patriarch and…. never mind…”
She broke off the sentence and pulled the girl with the twin-tails along the floor, the girl was adamant about leaving.
“No granny, I’m just following the ancient text of the ancestors… I’m just following the ancestor’s wishes!”
The granny’s face showed a grimace while she kept yanking on her robe.
“Did you forget what the Matriarch decided on Nuana? You aren’t supposed to follow the texts literally, now come you need to get punished!”
“What? I didn’t do anything wrong, big sis is the one that’s wrong!”
The squirming shorty replied while not being able to resist the core formation elder’s might.
“That’s Matriarch to you, now come along!”
The two finally vanished into another street leaving Zhang Liu with a bunch of female clothing in his possession. He rubbed his neck slightly and then used the communication jade to call for some people to help him carry all of these possessions.
“What was that?”
He spoke out loud while waiting for a clan member with an empty spatial ring to arrive, he was meaning to return these trinkets that the girl bought when he saw her next time.
Back at Spirit Spring City.
Zhang Dong was looking at his system screen, there he saw the system timer that showed him what time it was. It was only five more minutes until midnight, he was sitting in a lotus position far away from the buildings that were in this small pocket dimension. He was looking at the clock, the seconds ticking down as it was time for the points to arrive.
“Finally… I managed to craft some new pills while waiting for this day to be over…”
He spoke out while sitting down, he was ready to push through to the Nascent Soul realm. Though, by pushing through, he meant pushing the ‘yes’ button on the upgrade cultivation tree and just letting the magic happen.
‘Ah, it sure is nice having a system like this, supposedly it’s very difficult to reach the nascent soul level. If you follow the instructions badly or aren’t fully at 100% with your cultivation your core might just explode without creating a soul instead.’
The plan was easy, upgrade to the nascent soul then create an item in the heaven grade so that he could absorb it and get his body refining technique to the next level as well. He didn’t feel like there should be any problems with it in any way, the place he was in would block his aura from seeping out.No one should notice when he reaches the new realm of power, leaving him secured from his enemies.
‘That Dao Festival thing should be over by the time I’m finished here. I told grandpa to invite the other clans for a visit when it ends. I’ll tell them my plan, it should work…’
He glanced at his clan building part of the system, the points were there but it had some other uses besides just gathering passive points for his system. This other use was something he was banking on and that would allow him to beat the wall that was the Dark Palm sect.
‘I just need some time and soon we’ll have Nascent Soul cultivators in the truckloads!’
He grinned, wondering how those overbearing sects would react to a sudden reveal of multiple nascent soul elders.
‘They’d probably pee their robes…’
How would he achieve this? The system somehow decided on the area’s that he was the ‘owner’ off. He could put buildings and raise its level for more points, that was just one of the functions. The other one concerned his clan that was in the faction tab.
If he brought up his faction, he could see the whole structure with a little icon of him right at the top. The whole thing looked a bit like a pyramid with him at the top, then the clan members going into the lower parts. He could even click parts of this pyramid to get more in-depth. If a faction member had enough trust in him, he could read their stats without needing to use his analyzing skill or touching them.
This was quite handy, as he was able to tell if someone was shady by just the amount of trust they had in him. Still, they could just not like him without any ulterior motives. The other good part was, that similar to his disciples he could spend his system points on his faction members.
He could actually directly increase their cultivation level with a click of a button. This was the option that was most important, pushing through to the nascent soul level was immensely taxing on the practitioner. The cultivation techniques in this world were also of low quality bringing a lot of random chance into the mix. Matt had figured out, that anything below the immortal grade brought huge risks. Even heaven grade skills weren’t all that good and brought risks with them.
‘Well, my cultivation method is in the immortal grade so it should be safe even without the systems help, and after I level it up I’ll be able to combine it with some other cultivation manuals.’
He was hoping on boosting the other cultivation manuals like the ones the Zhang Clan practitioners used with his new Nascent Soul one. If the combination worked, he could be able to get a cultivation manual at the immortal grade as his own was already in the higher grading of the immortal grade.
‘Hm, wonder if it’s compatible though… lightning and water? Maybe some kind of Storm Nascent Soul… or would that be more in the wind Dao area…’
‘Mixing lower and higher grades mostly produces something just slightly better than the technique that was worse though…’
‘I could also try coming up with something myself…’
This was also something the system rewarded him for, he could try to create his own techniques. If it was something that wasn’t in his library, the system would give him some crafting points. He had created some variations in his skills like that, mostly weaker ones. He was knowledgeable enough, about his own cultivation method that he could come up with those. The foundation establishment techniques his disciples were using were created by him, without the use of the system.
‘It’s harder to do it myself, but if I do it my progress in the skill is much faster… but also could be incomplete…’
There were no guidelines that let him move through the proficiency in the technique he created himself. He’d need to test it out by himself and see how good it was before the system gave him a rating.
‘But anyway, I should focus on the task at hand, midnight is here!’
He heard a little ding sound, the system could be set up as an alarm clock. His points moved past ten million and he was ready to finally go beyond the threshold. He was stuck at the Great Circle for two years, he wasn’t able to get a nascent soul item to push his body refining a stage further either, but now he was going to do both at once and no one could stop him!
He quickly started sliding his finger on his system window, going to his skill tree and clicking on his Divine Golden Lightning Core cultivation method.
His finger hovered above the ‘Yes’ button as he gulped, he looked around the area he made it sure to be on the edge of the floating island in space as he didn’t know if this level up would be an explosive one.
‘Here we go!’
He pushed it and saw as his points dropped down to a couple of thousand. He could feel the knowledge of his new skill flowing into his mind, the ways of creating a perfect Divine Golden Lightning Soul lay bare to him. He tossed his head back, his eyes shining with a gold hue as lightning power gathered all around him.
“Here it comes!”
He clenched his fists, energy surging all around him as… nothing happened… absolutely nothing. Matt blinked a bit stupified, he had clearly got the information for the Nascent Soul cultivation method. It got injected into his brain, like it always did when he got new techniques or knowledge. The problem was that the system didn’t push him through the threshold.
“Wait… do I need to do it on my own? Or maybe spend more system points…ffffffffffffffffffuuuuuuu….”