64

The Outer Sect’s library, while not quite as elegant and grandiose as the Mess Hall or the Aspect Hall, was very large. The entire place smelled of dust, despite the fact that it was nearly immaculate as far as Feng Jiao could tell. Due to the sheer size of the place and the lack of interest in reading that most children his age displayed, the library was nearly empty, with only an outer sect disciple sitting at the front desk and a few nominials running around dusting and returning books to shelves.

Feng Jiao found himself there after Tan Sai said she had to leave for her job, one of the more preferable ways for outer sect disciples to earn merits. He’d asked where to find his friends but was quickly shot down, told that they’d all be busy working from sunrise to sunset most days and that, as a nominal disciple himself, he should do his best not to get on the radar of those taskmasters. Some of them really didn’t like the special treatment program that he was benefiting from.

Although Feng Jiao also had a job to do, growing a specific crop to a specific yield within three months, he also knew that he had a gap in his knowledge so he chose to go to the library. Growing up, he’d only read through the books contained in his parents’ studies. Although his family wasn’t a small family, his parents were still considered mortals as they had not established their foundation after having decided to try for children first after realizing their average talent. Apparently, it was much easier to have children while one was still a mortal due to reasons that Feng Jiao did not yet know.

“Excuse me, Senior Sister.” A mousy voice sounded out from a wobbling stack of books, teetering back and forth in place as it awaited Feng Jiao’s eventual vacating of the walkway it needed to utilize. Feng Jiao took three steps forward, letting the Nominal Disciple who was carrying books taller than she was by.

Five minutes later, Feng Jiao was sitting down with his first book. This one encompassed different breeds of spiritual beasts and their common mutations. This was an attempt to cover up a deficit in his knowledge, one he first acknowledged during his awakening ceremony. Each of the cultivators there seemed able to identify the origin of the martial spirits being awoken by just looking at the apparitions and sensing their faint Qi signature. If he was going to live forever, it would be good to know the difference between a snapping turtle and a shelled-dragon. Nearest he could tell, the more powerful beasts to avoid were all the descendants of so called God Beasts, such as the Glacial Dragon, Gale Tiger, Elysium Shelled-Dragon, and Vermillion Bird.

Feng Jiao spent the morning going through various beastiarys and herbariums, the latter because he realized that although he knew many plants due to his past life and childhood in the gardens, he was still very likely to miss a valuable herb if he didn’t know what to look for. For some reason, most of these books contained conflicting knowledge and did not come with any illustrations, forcing Feng Jiao to use his imagination. It wasn’t until he found an untitled book tucked behind the other books on one of the shelves that he finally felt like he was learning something solid. There were charcoal sketches of both beasts and the herbs that are frequently found near them. Prefered food, husbandry ratings, and the environment where they are likely to live. Feng Jiao made it a point to keep track of this book as he put it back.

The rest of the morning and part of the afternoon was dedicated to reading about publically available cultivation experiences, different cultivation systems, hierarchy and history of the sect, and even a couple of biographies that caught his eye. It wasn’t until the mousy girl tripped and caused an avalanche of books to pour of her never ending sky stack that Feng Jiao looked out the window and saw what time of day it was. 

He left the library shortly afterwards, only returning the untitled book so that he’d know where it was and leaving the rest on the table for the other Nominal Disciples to return. This was the life of the Nominal Librarians, only other nominal disciples would return their reading and everybody above that left it behind as their time was more valuable. If she’d known that Feng Jiao was also a Nominal Disciple and was just wearing the robes of an Outer Disciple, even the mousy girl would be cursing up a storm heavy enough to make a seasoned sailor blush.

Feng Jiao stopped by the Mission Hall and picked up his farming mission. Although he handed the girl there his Nominal Medallion, the icon given to him by Tan Sai that signified him as a Nominal Disciple of the God Tree Grove, the girl still allowed Feng Jiao to choose from a selection of jobs for both Outer and Nominal disciple. Apparently just wearing the robes entitled Feng Jiao to some of the perks of an Outer Disciple, another reason he added to the mental list of reasons he was allowing people to think he was a girl. As annoying as being called Senior and Junior Sister was, the perks outweighed the annoyance and on the journey to immortality, every benefit should be accepted. 

After accepting a basic Outer Farming mission, Feng Jiao walked toward Supply and received the seeds he’d need to grow. The difference between the Outer and Nominal missions seemed to be the quantity, quality, or application of what was grown. Nominal Disciples with wood and earth element aspirations were expected to farm large amounts of very spiritually weak ingredients for eating or feeding livestock. Outer Sect disciples could also grow food, but it would be less and due to their Qi already being aspected Wood, would grow more in a shorter amount of time, allowing for more spirituality which led to increased benefits upon consumption. They were also trusted to grow weak herbs for alchemy.

After taking the almost private teleportation formation back to Mt Tan, as Feng Jiao had decided to call it until he was told otherwise, Feng Jiao went past Tan Sai’s cabin and straight toward the peak of the mountain. Extending his spiritual sense, Feng Jiao allowed himself to sink into an almost meditative state as he mentally observed every blade of grass around him. Currently, he was conducting an experiment based on what he’d read in one of the books that day.

First and foremost, Feng Jiao finally managed to confirm that not only had he managed to awaken his spiritual sense before the Earth Realm, something that never happens without miracle medicines or specific cultivation techniques, it was far more powerful that it should be. The energy that surrounded his brain, the same energy that dislocated his wood dantian, should have been awakened only after Feng Jiao had established his foundation and even then it wouldn’t have any real applications until at least the mid-Foundation stage.  

Feng Jiao’s spiritual sense, was about as strong as a peak-Foundation stage cultivator, as near as he could tell, and he was also already capable of leveraging his Qi with it, something that took many cultivators years to master. It was through the combination of his wood Qi and spiritual sense that he was able to feel the different plants around him, their roots and leaves, their lives and deaths. This was a skill that would make many cultivators envious as by combining one’s Qi with their spiritual sense would allow one to leverage them and increase the range of their spiritual sense. An earth cultivator would be able to use his sense and Qi to ‘see’ farther so long as he was standing on land the same way Feng Jiao was able to use the grass, for example. 

Feng Jiao did not manage to find anything that explained his ability to drain the vitality of plants and absorb their Qi. Actually, Feng Jiao found many things that directly declared this ability as not only an impossibility, but as hazardous. Most of the texts said that the direct absorption of Qi was only possible through devilish techniques and came with heavy drawbacks such as heterogeneous Qi that would lead to deviation or, at the very least, heavy amounts of impurities that would build up in the meridians, impeding Qi flow and eventually leading to stagnation in advancement. The only publicly acceptable method to absorb energy from other creatures was through consumption in food, pills, and potions or the like.

Although Feng Jiao did frequently absorb heterogenous plant Qi, he never had any conflicts in his dantian and was only required to refine it the same way he would refine the essence of heaven and earth that he normally absorbed during cultivation. Most of the impurities were also expelled through his acupoints during refinement, as was normal for cultivation of essence, and most of what wasn’t was burned away when he cultivated his fire method. He was sure of one thing, though, and that was that he shouldn’t tell anyone about this ‘devilish’ ability of his unless he wanted to be experimented on.

Eventually Feng Jiao got to the pond he’d bathed in that morning and realized that the grass around that area was far more vibrant than anywhere else on the peak. Assuming that this was due to a heavy amount of natural essence, Feng Jiao decided he’d try to grow his crop there. The mission he’d accepted was to grow a decent amount of rice for a three month period. Taking a deep breath, Feng Jiao pulled all of the Qi out of the grass in the area he’d decided to plant the seeds before sprinkling them out over the now-barren area, leaving an empty area in the center for him to sit. 

Feng Jiao accepted that specific mission for a few reasons. First, the amount of spiritual energy in the rice wouldn’t need to be high for him to get credit for the mission.Second, he wanted something easy to grow that it wouldn’t be difficult to experiment with the plant growing techniques the sect had provided. Finally, he read in one of the herbariums that rice was one of the easiest plants to ‘age’.

Using the word age to describe plants had been confusing to Feng Jiao at first, but eventually he understood what it was being used as. Age was the metric used to describe the potency of plants and other spiritual objects. 5 years old only referred to how much energy a plant would contain if grown in the wild, under average conditions, for 5 years. A cultivator might be able to grow the same ‘5 year old’ plant in a year or, depending on the type of plant, it could take him 10 years. 

Since he couldn’t find any information on his ability to interact with the plants’ Qi the way that he did, Feng Jiao could only experiment with it on his own. He felt in his gut that there had to be a way to return this Qi he absorbed and refined to the plants, and if he could figure that out he would never have to worry about cultivation supplies. He spent the day practicing the growth method provided to him by the sect in his introductory manual, as well as absorbing small amounts of Qi from the grasses around the mountain, practicing his self-control and portioning. All the while, he waited for the sun to set and the moon to rise so that he could practice his cultivation method as he understood that it was best performed in the open moonlight.