"Fang Yuan!" The academy elder shouts.
I go forward, put my hand in the wooden box and take a wooden card. Fifteen. I show it to the academy elder, he nods. "Fang Yuan, fifteen! Xia Lu!"
I now simply go back to the gathered students. Today is the day that we're having that tournament to decide the order that we get to pick our second free gu. "Xia Lu, one, Mo Bei!"
The tournament is going to be held such that every student will eventually have a match with every other student. This way every student will have a fair chance to get properly ranked. "Mo Bei, sixteen. Chi Cheng!"
The tournament is going to take the entire day, as there's a lot of matches to go through. "Chi Cheng, forty!"
Chi Cheng was the last remaining student to get a card, so the tournament is going to start soon..The academy elder signals for the guards to take away the table with the box. "The tournament will now begin. The first match will be between number one, Xia Lu, and number two, Jin Ha. The second match will be number three against number four. After all students have had a match the next match will be number one against three, followed by number two against four. We will continue until everyone has fought everyone, this will take all of today and perhaps even some of tomorrow."
Can't even cultivate until the tournament is over.
—
Mo Bei and I look at eachother. I get in a combat stance. Mo Bei raises both of his hands. "I Surrender!"
I blink.
—
Because of the sheer numbers of matches that every student has to face, the tournament is also a form of endurance test, not just a test of combat capabilities. Surrendering means a loss of face, so most students don't surrender outright if they don't believe they can win.
I am the exception to the rule for them apparently. There are no chances to beat me at their current level, so there's no loss of face for them if they just surrender to keep themselves fresh for the next match.
This means that I don't even get to punch someone, I'm essentially grounded here for the duration of the tournament like an unruly child.
—
"First place is Fang Yuan!"
And without even fighting a single match…
The bad news is that it's nighttime, so there's not much else I can do today. The good news is that we're taken to choose our gu worms immediately, so the day is not a complete toss. We're led to the academy's storage area and lined up in the appropriate order. At the academy elder's signal I enter the storage room and begin looking through the available gu.
Rank 1 moonlight gu.
Rank 1 little light gu. - doubles the effect of the moonlight gu.
Rank 1 yellow beetle strength gu. - temporarily gives a significant boost to the gu masters strength.
Rank 1 Insect chitin gu. - Turns the gu masters skin into insect chitin, similar to the cockroach skin gu.
All of the gu here are rank 1. I don't find anything that jumps out as being special in any way, so I just pick the rank 1 little light gu. Boosting the moonlight gu even further is the way to go at this point.
After I exit the storage room Mo Bei proceeds to go inside. I just go back to my apartment. Shen Cui has prepared a bath, which is honestly a godsend. I didn't know I could get so agitated just from sitting motionless in one place for so long.
I sigh as Shen Cui gives me a shoulder massage. "What did you prepare for dinner today? I haven't been able to eat anything today."
We didn't even get fed during the tournament. The reason for this is probably so that no one would vomit during the fights, but for me that just means that I also didn't eat anything for the whole day as well.
Shen Cui says. "Rice and beef, young master's favorite. Is the bath to the young master's liking?"
I nod. "The bath is good. I've told you not to be so formal with me, just call me by my name"
I hear Shen Cui take a deep breath from behind me. "This one has already informed the young master that this one prefers using this manner of speech."
I lean back, grab her and pull her into the bathtub. After we're done having our fun we just go to sleep, with me using the dream wings gun to go to the dream world before doing so.
I look at the bright red apple. That is a dream realm of the Blood Sea Ancestor, the man who founded blood path. He is an infamous figure. Legends go that he was attacked by a coalition of righteous sects. He almost died but managed to escape, only to discover that he was afflicted by a slow acting poison.
He used his remaining lifespan to create an absurd amount of inheritances all over the world, practically guaranteeing that blood path will continue to exist and prosper. Another part of the legend is that a few of the inheritances are his true inheritance, prepared and hidden for his inheritor.
Blood path itself is considered extremely demonic, to the level that even demonic gu masters avoid and shun blood path gu masters. It has two main characteristics: it is extremely cheap to cultivate and very powerful.
A dream realm from the founder of such a path is more than certain to give immense benefits if solved. I touch the red apple, my vision changes.
I am surrounded by gu masters. The young blond woman in front of me begins shouting. "This is the end of the line for you, Blood Sea Ancestor! Your demonic ways are over!"
The first thing I do is immediately search for anything of use in this guys blessed lands. Rank 8 blood skull gu, rank 7 blood python gu, rank 7 blood spear gu, rank 7 blood qi shield gu, rank 7 blood step gu.
A giant sun spawns above me. I hurriedly activate the rank 7 blood step gu and leap backwards, trying to make as much space as possible between me and the blood-lusted blonde. Everything is moving way too fast for me to properly see anything now.
I feel something wet on my back, before hearing meat splattering and seeing body parts come flying from behind me. Glancing back reveals a blood barrier shielding my back. I spam the rank 7 blood step gu and start praying for my luck to work. There has to be some gu this guy has that can let me actually see things at this speed. I begin looking through his immortal gu again.
Rank 6 blood deity gu, Rank 6 viagra gu? I start looking through the rank 5 gu, giving priority to the gu that don't have copies in the millions. Rank 5- A searing pain immediately assaults me, a barrier of blood automatically closes around me, granting me some protection. The pain goes away almost as fast as I had felt it.
When the blood barrier recedes I find myself cratered on top of a mountain. Walking out of the crater immediately reveals where I am.
Qing Mao mountain.
My vision changes.
I stare at the blood red apple that is now in my hand. I don't know whether me reaching Qing Mao mountain is a coincidence, whether it's related to the dream realm solution or whether it was my luck. There's probably an inheritance of the Blood Sea Ancestor in Qing Mao mountain. Now that I think about it, It's probably also related to the blood red soil in the flower wine monks cave.
I take a bite from the apple and instantly feel pleasure beyond words. Each bite is enlightenment personified. Every single shred of attainment that I have is radiating pleasure throughout my whole body. This feels better than sex. Once the sensations go away I slowly get my breathing back in order.
I stare at my now empty hand. I'm pretty sure that without the 'transhumanist' perk I'd have gotten instantly addicted to the feeling of whatever the fuck that apple did. Is that how know it alls feel when correcting everyone around them?
I haven't gained any concrete knowledge, but instead gained attainment with blood path. I am fairly confident that I can now manipulate and use blood gu to mimic the results of other paths.
Attainment isn't measured by held knowledge or by skill. A good way to summarize what attainment is would be calling it the accumulation of experience and familiarity. For example, a cook with ordinary attainment can follow a recipe for frying an egg and have the desired result in the same manner as a cook with supreme grand master attainment. The difference between the two of them is that without any recipe the supreme grand master will probably fry an egg better than the recipe, while the ordinary cook would fail miserably.
Attainment is divided into five tiers.
Ordinary : the level of a regular gu master, most gu masters will only ever reach this level.
Master: This is the level that most rank 6 gu immortals will reach in their main path during their lives. At this point a gu master has a form of intuition regarding matters related to their respective path. Thanks to Jeremy this is the level of attainment that I hold for everything. Out of one million, perhaps five will ever reach this level.
Grand Master: This is the level corresponding with rank 7 gu masters. At this level a gu master can mimic the effects of other paths. For example, A fire path gu master could mimic the defense of an earth path gu master. This is where I am at.
Great Grand Master: This is the level corresponding with rank 8 gu masters. At this level a gu master can use the natural dao marks in the environment.
Supreme Grand Master: This is the level of a venerable, of a rank 9 gu master. Someone of rank 9 with Supreme Grand Master attainment in a path becomes a dao lord of their path, they can refine and manipulate all of the natural dao marks of said path present in the world. The entire world practically becomes their playground.
Between each level is a form of bottleneck, where you just miss that one tiny thing you need to progress. Which is coincidentally exactly the feeling that I have now regarding blood path, there's just something missing and I can't tell exactly what it is. Someone like me is called a Quasi-Great Grand Master, situated right at the entrance of Great Grand Master attainment but missing a single crucial step.
Brighter fruits giving more attainment has been proven now. Going for grey fruits is probably pointless in this case, which means that I need to explore around for brighter fruits instead. I take a look around.
There's only greyish fruits remaining around me. I'm going to need to leave the village if I want to find more good dream realms to explore.
—
My aperture walls turn from water membrane walls to stone membrane walls, signifying my break-through to rank 1 upper stage. This kind of rapid progression is only possible thanks to the combined effects of the liquor worm gu, the amplify effect gu and my growing stash of primeval stones.
The next breakthrough will take much longer however, since I will still be using peak stage primeval essence to cultivate. There is a solution to my aptitude problem that is starting to become increasingly more tempting, but right now is just not the right time for it to be feasible.
I open my eyes and give a tired yawn. It's the middle of the night, Shen Cui is peacefully sleeping next to me. I've explored the dream world and haven't been able to find a single bright fruit, so I've started to simply explore my dreams with the dream pillow gu.
Most of the resources that I get from it simply fade away in an hour, so I can't gather them to stockpile materials just yet. I pull the dream pillow gu from my aperture, place it under my pillow and go to sleep.
—
Jeremy is staring at me. His eyes begin to water and he starts crying. "I'M SO SORRRYYYY! I DIDN'T WANT T-"
I interrupt him by flicking his forehead. "Dumbass, don't guilt trip yourself. Just take care of mom and dad, alright?"
Jeremy looks at me, tears staining his cheeks. He starts crying again. "SOOORRYYYYY!!!!"
I sigh.
—
I blearily open my eyes. That was a pretty weird dream. Dream pillow gu doesn't guarantee that you'll be lucid while exploring your own dream, it only guarantees that you'll dream and be able to retrieve resources from your dreams.
I put my hand under my pillow, take the dream pillow gu and put it back in my aperture. Shen Cui is still sleeping, so I just cultivate until she wakes up. Having so many primeval stones allows me to just cultivate whenever, since I don't need to wait for my primeval essence to replenish anymore.
There's only five days until one hundred days from when I've entered the flower wine monks cave will have passed.
—
Now that I can speak and understand the language I can actually understand what the flower wine monk and Gu Yue clan leader are saying.
The video finishes playing, but instead of repeating again the bloodied and wounded face of the flower wine monk appears. Deep cuts litter the entirety of his face. "I am the Flower Wine Monk." The bald Gu Master laughed, his expression distorted with madness, "Future person, no matter who you are, to endure this video and let it play for nearly one hundred days, it proves that you have no good will towards the Gu Yue family. Very well, you shall be my successor! My entire inheritance is yours, but I have a condition. You must exterminate the Gu Yue clan for me. Murder the entire clan and leave no one alive!"
This is another weird thing about this inheritance. In the previous video the flower wine monk was relatively unwounded, in this one he is heavily wounded and on the verge of death. Something happened between the two videos, the only question is what exactly.
This video now repeats, replacing the earlier part of his battle with the Gu Yue clan leader. This is what I had been waiting for. I did not want to explore the inheritance any further out of fear that I would trigger some form of countermeasure and trigger some form of trap. I head towards the wall that the video is being projected on, activate the rock fist gu, the amplify effect gu and proceed to give the wall a good punch.
The punch goes straight through, a good kick breaks the wall and allows me to continue exploring the wine flower monk's inheritance. Breaking the wall has revealed a short hallway, blocked by a large round stone boulder located right in front of me. I place my hands on the boulder and begin pushing it.
The hallway is slightly uphill, which is something that I honestly can't even tell from how light the boulder feels. I can tell that I reached the end of the hallway when the boulder stops trying to roll downhill towards me. A small enclosure is revealed, with an entrance into a gargantuan dark cave situated to my left.
If someone not strong enough attempted to push the boulder but failed halfway they would be crushed by the boulder rolling over them.
There's a patch of yellow earth right at the entrance, I dig with my hand and reveal an earth treasure flower gu. It opens and reveals a rank 1 jade skin gu. This gu eats jade, so it's extremely expensive to feed. Thankfully there's an easy solution right to my left.
I go to the entrance of the cave and give a good look inside.
The bloody ground glows enough to provide some light, enough to tell what's inside the cave. The ceiling is littered with hollow stalagmites, inside those stalagmites are jade stone eye monkeys. The monkeys turn into dust when killed, leaving only their jade eyes. They are perfect to feed the jade skin gu.
They don't care about anything else other than staying in the stalagmites and doing nothing. They essentially neets.
I bend down, pick up a rock and throw it at a stalagmite, breaking it and making it fall to the floor, revealing seven winged, grey monkeys. The monkeys angrily rush towards me, flying at me to attack. Just to be safe I activate the jade skin gu.
Once the monkeys are forty meters away from me I begin to use the moonlight gu to attack them. The moonlight gu and the amplify effect gu stack multiplicatively, which boosts the rank 1 moonlight gu even beyond the rank 2 moonglow gu.
I stop after cutting off the head of the fourth monkey, not because the flying monkeys have reached me, but because I want to preserve some of my primeval essence in case of an emergency.
I activate the rock fist gu and rock shin gu. A straight right punch to the first monkey to reach me breaks its head and instantly kills it. A good kick kills the second and a left jab kills the final flying monkey. The dead monkeys slowly turn into dust, leaving behind only their jade eyes, the inheritance's intended food source for the rank 1 jade skin gu and the rank 2 white jade skin gu.
I know there's something I need to find here, but I have, once again, not read far enough to know exactly what I need to search for. There's still the nuclear option of just wandering randomly and getting lucky.
It's time for another luck test. I close my eyes, raise one of my feet and push myself into a spin with the raised foot. I spin for two seconds before stopping forcefully. Opening my eyes reveals that I'm currently turned towards the center of the cave.
Attainment does not apply just to paths, anything one can do can be considered to have attainment. So reading, parenting, scheming, football, martial arts, sleeping, forging and even something like love making can be measured using attainment. Thanks to the 'small dream immortal venerable' perk I have master attainment in literally everything and anything.
I crouch low to the ground and slowly crawl towards the center of the cave. In the center of the cave I find a hidden set of stairs, angled to not be visible from range, and a patch of yellow earth. Digging the patch reveals another earth treasure flower gu. Inside it is a brown gu shaped like an ear, nerve-like tendrils extend from the back of the brown ear.
I… I don't know what gu this is. Intuition tells me that I'm supposed to chop my ear off and replace it with this thing, but I'd much rather not. I don't even know what this is supposed to eat, but intuition once again gives me some information. It's probably some kind of soil.
I crawl to the stairs and slowly go down, making sure to make no noise. The further down I go the louder a peculiar noise becomes. The sound of chainsaws becomes louder and louder as I continue descending.
When I reach the bottom I find a rock archway leading into yet another cave. Inside the new cave are a ridiculous amount of centipedes. It doesn't take long for me to find out what's making the chainsaw sounds.
A man sized centipede with chainsaws for legs is thrashing everywhere, killing and eating centipedes with brutal efficiency. Each move of it cuts the surrounding centipedes into mince, even the fucking things jaw is made from fucking chainsaws.
I slowly crawl back up, making sure not to alert either the chainsawpede or the jade monkeys. Once I reach the entrance into the jade monkey cave I break three more stalagmites, collecting a total of twenty three jade monkey eyes.
When I get outside it's already dusk, so I head towards the village so that I can go and sleep. I'll need to figure something out for that chainsawpede.
—
AN: I felt kinda like frieza while writing this chapter.