Time was melting away as Hao cultivated. He had yet to touch the cauldron, rainwater filling it in the afternoons, steaming day and night. The cave was becoming homely. It took two days of waiting, sitting at the cave’s edge for the smell of the feline demonic beast left behind to float away. The savory smell of the same beast’s bones swirled with the sweet scent of the Noon-Bright Grass’s flower teasing Hao’s nose.

  Hao was growing impatient. The only reason he could hold back was the fading strength of the storms in the past two days. The coming end of the storm season would be the last days of hunting for great treasures.

  It was far from the end of summer. The first moon would not come for a while, but the Treasure herbs would seed if it was their time. Still valuable, but less so.

  More important than anything else, the Day-Night Amethysts would reach their full maturity. Their most pure point. Unable to grow any more potent.

  Hao thought the Season of Storms passing was a slight shame. He was growing fond of it. Once, during his childhood on the Islands, the storms were a source of many nightmares. Ice storms shattered branch structures. The rain kept fish that was curing raw and wet for rot to set in. Waves made fishing hard. Food would become scarce and the mud flats more dangerous, becoming a baited trap, holding anything that would wash ashore for those hungry enough to eat it.

  Hao let the lightning dissolve in his body as he reminisced. Breaktide would take place every fifth year after the Season of Storms, on the day when the great waves pounded against the island. A test for boys to become young men. An initiation and an embarrassing incident, a memory long abandoned. Those were far away the moment he stepped on the boat that took him to land. The mines put chains around them.

  Now, he reveled in the Storms, watching dragons of light streaking across the sky. Hao was seeking out bolts that struck the ground traveling through the earth to him. The lightning rejecting him did little harm. Only making him seek out the next bolt, tempting any to be larger than the last.

  Hao knew his chances of success in learning the way of lightning were minimal, and that was a hopeful assessment. In truth, it was none. Still, he tried watching other things just outside the cave.

  The Noon-Bright Grass was reaching the peak of potency, becoming mature early. The Vital Crystal bolstered its constitution. It took two days for the flower to reach this state with the powder form of the vital crystals. It took the berry bush seconds to come back to life and fruit the first time I used it. A difference in rank between plants?

  The individual grasses split, maturing in two different manners. A group of shorter yellow blades folding in, swelling into a tiny dull brown seed. It lost a few seeds every time the wind blew.

  Hao was not shy in taking a few, holding them up to the sun. It’s hard to believe this pebble turns into a flower that cultivators would, I am willing to kill for.

  The other group did the opposite, stretching upward to join the flower’s petals, folding forward. A pod was forming. More sap than the stem or roots of the Yellow flower and its grasses could handle. There was a glow coming from the pod and the Flower’s tip. Heat gathered as the sap did, which made Hao collect a few more seeds for good measure.

  At the end of the process, more than a day passing in the wait. An egg-sized pod was making the stem bend. A violent pulse of World Energy, similar to that of people beyond the Reclamation Stage.

  Spiritual Energy? But this smell. This could become a problem, Hao thought. He was being pulled from the entrance, enticed by the fragrance. The sweet aroma of the grass grew multitudes richer.

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  There was another smell, too. The least valuable bones of the feline demonic beast were bubbling in fresh broth.

  The rain was suppressing the sweet, savory, salty smell before it reached the trees. Any other time, which was most of the day and night, it would roll from the cave’s mouth and flower to the area surrounding. What little wisdom Hao had was warning him: It was a good idea to move quickly. Finish everything he wished to do before the whole forest came to investigate.

  It’s going to be a long night… Hao thought, looking down at the half-full colossal cauldron of bone stew. His work began once he was done playing with the storm, the rain freezing.

  Hao down bowl after bowl of broth until his stomach bloated. Just like the feline demonic beast meat before, it felt like the broth was chilled, even though steam was rising off it. His stomach was cramping from the cold, hot liquid. The taste isn’t bad.

  He sat to cultivate, letting the cold flow through his body, his stomach going back to flat. Then he drank more and repeated until midnight came. More cold to cultivate in. He grew frozen inside and out, learning to shiver again.

  “Haha, not bad,” Hao said, after every other bowl. Icicle hanging from his eyebrows.

  Hao’s bowl was hitting the beast’s skull at the bottom of the pot not long after midnight. He was practically sitting on the fire to get warm as he got a knife and the beast out of the Spirit-Holding bag. He was cutting a line along its stomach to collect its belly fat the moment the enormous body struck the stones.

  The bones seemed scarce in the pot compared to the first hand full of fat. The beast was not engorged, but he had a lot more to work with. Fat was the least valuable part of a beast during the Contribution Point exchange. The belly was a lot easier to get to than most of the bones, too.

  He noticed the instant change in the smell. It was much worse, or better than the scent of broth. Many times stronger. It was nearly pleasant enough to make Hao hungry again; After hours of forcefully drinking bone soup.

  That didn’t stop him, only making him work fast, putting more wood on the fire. The fat was already bubbling, bones floating, a toothless tiger-like skull watching as he threw in more cream color fat. It was only in the last few handfuls he felt some hesitation. It was not his worries but a curiosity. His hand pressed against something hard that was not generally there on an animal, but not entirely uncommon in a demonic beast climbing the ladder of strength.

  He had to reach in deep, fishing around inside the abdomen of the beast. After a few seconds, he found a stone. Round and smooth, almost slippery, it was so slick. It shone like a pearl. Blue, blue as a dream of the sky. Mist and vapor formed around it, steam turning to droplets on its surface, it was cold in his hand, even in the night.

  Hao let out a long laugh, holding the pearl in the air. “A Core? Haha. Hahaha. Yes, I found a core! One for myself. Good, tomorrow you and I will harvest the flower just before the first lightning strike, and at night we will cultivate.”

  *

  Hao stood from his cultivation. He did it right under the noon sun, a step from the Noon-Bright flower. Not ten seconds after noon ended, Hao plucked the pod from the flower’s stem. He was careful about it. The sap inside would evaporate if it was removed from the plant and the petals broke.

  His slow, deliberate movements gave the plants a chance to singe his fingers from fingertip to knuckle. He went in again to dig the ground, leaving a Vital Crystal in the ground for the plant next year.

  With the pod gone, the Yellow-Yellow Grass, or Noon-Bright Grass, finished its summer life cycle, the last of its hundred seeds floating into the air. Most likely to never sprout or see the sun.

  As for the bones in the cauldron, with care not to make too much of a mess, Hao removed them, letting them cool and rest in the clean spot he could find. They were barely soft after the long boil. It was easy to guess they weren’t bones from a mortal creature. Only the surface layer had any give.

  Hao left the fat in the cauldron, cooling it by throwing handfuls of water on the surface of the hot metal. The sound of the iron creaking and cracking mattered little. He had to stop the overwhelmingly pleasant smell that was a beacon for anything or anyone hungry.

  After the day’s storm fell, everything was cooled and stored. The bones and cauldron in his bag, near the rest of the beast and its core. The seeds of the Noon-Bright grass got swiftly planted.

  The sap bulb he kept tight in his hand when not cultivating. Time was no longer slipping away on purpose, but it was getting away from Hao. He would have to go forward, deeper into the Realm. Yet there was still much to do. There was still plenty of time, but not for the Summer Treasures, the reason he was here.

  All he obtained from the Secret Realm so far he would use tonight, in his last attempt to the Sixth layer of Reclamation before entering the Mountain region.