บท 13: Benefits.
Okay, that worked out perfectly," I thought to myself as I flipped the token that the kid Zaifeng gave me like a coin.
"This should come in handy later, but for now, it's best I don't use it unless I need to."
I moved to the boar king's carcass and placed my hand on it. Once again there was that green energy coursing around the carcass of the boar. It came rushing through my arm, climbing and penetrating deep within the skin. It bore through and made its way to my meridians, then the energy began spiraling in controlled spins, aiding my cultivation.
Some of the soreness of my body disappeared. The pain on my leg had completely dispersed. And now I was able to walk with utter ease. My back no longer pained me, and for the first time in eighty years, I was able to walk in a straight manner.
Old age gave me a slightly hunched back, but now it was gone. Still, the disgusting tumors and pustules on my body were still on, and to get rid of them I'll need to harvest more of this green energy.
I continued walking randomly, as I thought about my next course of action.
I can't join a sect right now even if I miraculously find a way to do so. Simply because I am not strong enough nor weak enough.
An old man such as myself would be a strange presence in a sect, especially with my low cultivation level. Yet, if I don't join one, I will be unable to understand how this world of cultivation fully works. I'll need a method to join a sect and not draw great attention to myself.
Secondly, I needed to open those bags, desperately. There could be great treasures there that could help boost my cultivation level or martial currency that could be exchanged for items and pills. Poison pills that is.
So, first things first, I needed to increase my cultivation level enough to be able to open the pouches. And to do that, I need to find more resources, plants, bugs, or poisons. Which I'm more than certain that I will find in abundance once I go deeper into this forest.
Coupled with the aid of the book's internal knowledge of materials and flora, I could understand and know the value of such plants and even if I had no prior knowledge of them.
I continued traveling, the need for sleep and food was a great bonus, as I didn't have to think about sustaining myself, the poison energy within me was enough to satiate me for an extremely long period.
Days of travel went by, and in them, I gained a good harvest.
I encountered a couple more leopards and another boar king. They were easy to deal with, as long as they underestimated me, thinking of me as weak prey, I could easily spew out a poison breath on them and they would die.
I harvested the cores and the green energy which reduced a bit of the swelling on my body, but not completely. If I had a hundred pustules, I had currently lost a couple. I still had a long way to get rid of all of these disgusting things off my skin.
One day, as I randomly walked without any goal or objective in mind but to gain better strength, I managed to exit the forest, or so I thought.
Right in front of me was a mountain so high that its peak was covered in clouds. And around its base was a clearing, that appeared to be separating the forest from the mountain.
My whole body was urging me to leave this area, but a light soothing feeling came from the book inside my chest, comforting me and encouraging me to keep moving.
The Poison God's Manual was telling me that it needed me to go forward.
I disregarded the urge to leave and against my better judgment moved toward the mountain. Danger and opportunity always walked hand in hand. If there is danger here, then there would definitely be a reward.
I steeled my resolve and walked up the mountain.
The steepness of this mountain made it troublesome to climb, especially with this old battered body of mine. I had to change direction several times before I found a path that I could walk up without fearing the fall to my death.
The climb took me days, and thankfully there were no creatures or demonic beasts that threatened my life as I made my way up the mountain. My only issue was the coldness of the mountain that increased the further I went up, and the dangerous looming sense of death that increased with every step.
It felt like a suffocating pressure that was pressing against me, urging me to go down, but the more I kept going up, the more I felt that I needed to be up there.
At one point the pressure became too much that I lost my grip and almost fell to my death, yet with a desperate flail of my hand, I managed to grab onto a small ledge and pulled my battered body up.
I rested for a few hours, rotated some of the energy within me, and then continued climbing.
Two days later of the constant climb, I managed to reach the source of the danger. A cave entrance that looked like it was punched in by a giant.
Bone piercing cold threatened to turn me into an ice sculpture. Something from within the cave was sending chilling energy that coursed my body and made my old bones rattle. If I were to move forward, I was certain I would turn into an iced corpse.
I sat down and began rotating my cultivation base. The poison energy that spiraled within me and through my meridians began fighting against the cold. It was a strange sensation as if I had grown a tolerable fever that heated my body enough to withstand the cold.
I stood up and took several more steps. The cold was still painful, but it was much more tolerable. but the further I went, the harder it became. Even breathing turned suffocating, as I coughed up blood. Ice had definitely materialized in my lungs and caused some internal damage.
I walked back and sat down, rotating the energy a few times more until my condition stabilized.
Spiraling the poison Qi helped me in gaining heat, but once I stood up and stopped cultivating, that heat soon dissipated against the cold. The only way for me to move forward was obvious. I needed to maintain a cultivation status while moving. A feat quite difficult, but it was the only option I had if I wanted to investigate the source of this cave's coldness and the beckoning of the book.
I stood up, and entered a cultivation state, slowly my body heated up, and then I took the first step. I immediately lost focus and my cultivation stopped.
I desperately tried again, and again, and again.
Several hours went by with minimal progress. Rotating the poison qi within me while walking took a great deal of concentration, but with hard work and dumb stubbornness, I was able to move ten steps while I still rotated my energy.
If I continued like this, I was bound to achieve a breakthrough as my energy seemed on the verge of reaching the Medium Lower level of Qi condensation.
And only five steps more I did it, and the energy that my body released was enough to cause steam to burst out of my body.
Reaching the medium lower level of Qi condensation caused my body to shudder and a new page of the Poison God's heritage book was unlocked.
***********
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