Matt opened his eyes, a small boy was poking his thigh. He recognized this child as it was his nephew, he looked around noticing that he was in the back yard that belonged to his cousin. He didn’t know how he got here but the youth was holding on to a ball and he wanted to play. He could see some other family members around as he stood up from his chair. The boy smiled and started kicking the ball towards him while he just kicked it back. The boy miskicked to the side that made the ball tumble away from him, so Matt decided to go after it as it was still closer to where he was.
He bent over to pick it up, but then when he turned around there was no one around anymore. The whole place looked devoid of life, his family members nowhere to be seen. He tried calling out but no one replied, then he noticed something. The ball that he was holding had a strange texture to it, he looked down to see that he was holding on to a man’s head. The head belonged to the man that he had slain not so long ago, tears of blood were coming out of the dead looking eyes that gazed at him with disgust. He screamed out in shock waking up to find himself in the same pool that he had dozed off before.
He panted a bit while grasping his chest for air, not much time had passed since he had entered this room and no one came to bother him. He gathered his thoughts and stood up, the water running down his muscular body as he grasped a tower that was on the side. He gave out a sigh while gathering his thoughts trying to forget about what happened today.
*Uh, still not used to this shit.”
He frowned while walking back to the main bedchambers, pulling up his status screen to focus his thoughts at something else.
*Guess none of those other core formation cultivators died, only got those points for the fire lord guy…*
He didn’t manage to cripple any of the other elders in that fight, he didn’t get any spirit points for most damage done to the enemy either as you tended to get in some games. Zhang Jin had finished off the defeated cultivators, but the one that he took out at the start had gotten away, not like he really cared that much for them. He took out the ring that he got from the big baddie and scanned it with his spiritual sense, discovering quite a bit of spiritual stones in there. There were even some middle-grade ones in there, but just a handful. If he absorbed those he could probably get the next level of the crafting abode, which would let him make earth grade weapons and clothes.
There were also some beast cores in there, some cultivation manuals and a couple of weapons. He pulled out a spear and tried to examine it.
He wondered how much he would gain in his body tempering technique if he absorbed a weapon that was above the grade it was currently in. Previously it went up by 20% if he used high-grade weapons while being in the middle stage, so it should be at least that, might be more as this time around it was a weapon that was not just one small grade above but a whole realm above.
*Should I try it? But it takes a while to absorb what if someone walks in?*
He shook his head as he was still new to this place, he needed to figure out how he stood with this so-called Zhang Clan of his. He was supposed to become it’s Patriarch apparently, so he tried to remember what a Patriarch is actually supposed to do. From what he knew, they were the leaders of the Clans, some were hidden in the background and didn’t show themselves to the public while some took an active part in the Clan’s business. His grandpa told him that he shouldn’t worry too much and that he wouldn’t really need to run things.
Matt went back to fiddling with the spear, but instead of absorbing he dumped some points to level up his apprisal skill. He wanted to know if anything would show up and it was just 100 SP for the first one. Nothing seemed to change at first, but after he kept looking at it another window popped up.
*Oh, it did work. There are more stats to see now… could have figured out the attribute through the name… The rest are just question marks guess I need to invest more points to see the rest…*
The next level cost 500 and the next one 1000, he also dumped in 2000 points to get another one in.
*C-? is this school or something… though that would mean that it’s slightly below average if it goes from F to A … should I dump 5000 SP to get the next level… uh… think I’ll stop for now, I’ll see how many points I have left after I clear out those spirit stones… also Zhang Jin said that he would give me more of the spoils later… He looked stingy though, hope he doesn’t scrooge out on me. Unlocked Durability and condition as well, guess that will come in handy when buying things. Don’t want a weapon that will break after one swing even if it has high attack power.*
Matt placed the weapon back into the storage ring and started examining some other items. His Crystalline Flying Sword came out with a pristine condition with an advanced grade of A+, guess it was on the top end of high grade flying swords. He also brought up one of his skills, wondering if it would show any other statics now.
The statics were self-explanatory, the Qi Limit just meant that he had a big gas tank, guess the higher the more Qi related attacks he could do. The thing that was the most peculiar was the ‘Upgradable’ part in the brackets, he didn’t remember it being there before. He hovered his finger over that and it took him to a new menu with some more options now. But it looked like a skill tree in a game this time around, with only two options for the first branch.
He didn’t have many options, one only said Empowered Lightning Qi Cultivation art and the other said Gray Lightning Qi Cultivation art. It kind of made it seem like it was a choice between two major schools that he had to take. He hovered his fingers to see if there was another explanation and there was.
*I guess the gray one is the dark side choice… Though shooting black lightning at people would be cool… hope I won’t get pink lightning with the other choice…*
He didn’t want to go with some kind of evil cultivation art, then end up looking like a wrinkled up raisin. He also wondered if this was actually a good thing. Should he upgrade his cultivation art, or get a new one later. The system said that this would last him up to the great circle of core formation, he would have to get a new one when he wanted to get to the next level. But the prices for nascent soul cultivation manuals were quite high, plus he had to reach the great circle stage first and level up his body tempering skill too.
He looked at the skill tree from the empowered lightning qi cultivation art, he could see a skill tree leading up to the Nascent Soul. He just needed to unlock two of them to get to the Nascent soul one. There were even color options for golden, violet and azure. The colors probably meant something as the Nascent Soul would be in that color later on.
*Hm, guess I’ll decide on that later on… *
Also, he recalled the battle from today, then the dream he had and decided to look up something else in the cash shop.
He focused on the tranquil mind technique, he could really use that. He realized with the last battle that he wasn’t getting accustomed to this world fast enough, the problem was his attitude. He didn’t have that killer personality and a lot of times he froze, not knowing what to do. During this fight, he hesitated almost causing him to die in the process. He felt a bit disgruntled about killing the guy, but he knew that he was a typical murderous cultivator with a high body count. If he wanted to improve, he would have to change his mindset. He would probably have to take lives in the future, but he didn’t want to end up as a senseless murderer.
The rest of his current skills just showed the advanced grade and instead of the Qi Limit it just showed had a marker for how much spiritual energy you needed to use the skill. Like his javelin skill was quite low, while his avatar transformation was at high. He would probably be buying some stuff after he got the rest of the things those enemy cultivators had, or at least what the Zhang Clan gramps didn’t pocket himself.