"HRRRRR!"

  The exaent Baiyun stepped into the clearing, the beetle charged once more! Loud bangs and horrifying sound of splintering wood shook the very forest as the very ground trembled.

  Baiyun hurriedly luo the side as the giant shot past, saving a use of his ring; it was only possible because of how much the beetle had slowed.

  His eyes widened as he realised the beetle was charging straight towards the hut. Had he gotten a random hermit involved in this mess?

  But two eyes revealed themselves from the dark entrance of the hut as a massive hand cloaked in thick bck fur grasped the side of the doorway. A human head would look as small as an e between its fingers.

  "GRAAAAAAAAAHH!"

  A roar shook the forest as the dweller revealed itself, a massive goril draped in long curtain-like strands of hair that swayed in the winds it stirred. Its nostrils fred as it huffed deeply, its amber eyes narrowed in fury!

  It raised its arms and charged towards the inile, opening its palms wide and leaning forward with beo brapact. It tilted its head to the side as the horn shot past its ear, its hands g around the head of the giant i.

  The firm grouh its feet began to crumble but it held on even as the impact forced it knee-deep into the ground, leaving deep grooves of crushed earth in its wake. Had the goril been pushed a metre further, its hut would have beeroyed by the frontation.

  It let out another roar as it puhe beetle's , the impact sending the front of its body into the air.

  Baiyun decided it was time for him to make himself scard quickly took off. He had achieved his goal of getting a dangerous spirit beast to distract the beetle!

  When he saw the hut earlier, he thought for a moment a strange person might have been living there, but given the crude stru, he should have realised it was a beast's dwellings.

  Qi permeated the ground. Trees shook as their very roots were disturbed. The earth trembled.

  Behind him, fists of stoed from the ground like steam from geysers, striking the beetle and sending it flying higher into the air!

  Baiyun suddenly felt a pierg gaze on his bad couldn't help but turn with widened eyes. He found the goril staring at him with narrowed eyes as it raised a finger and flicked.

  !

  A bst of qi shot towards him a down on his ring!

  Baiyun's vision suddenly bcked out as a resonant thunk echoed. He felt himself s through the air and crashing into a opy. The sphere of light tumbled down the sea branches in an odd dizzying manner before hitting the ground and releasing him.

  He held back the urge to vomit as his insides spun. How ironic that the first attack the barrier successfully mao shield was the ohat left him in the worst dition. He could almost ugh.

  BOOM!

  Somewhere off in the distahe beetle hit the ground painfully a a crater.

  Baiyun wheezed as he got on his feet and forced himself to run, reag into his bag and ing the tipede scarves around his neck again.

  To think a mere Core-Shapi would gaze with him like that...

  He gnashed his teeth. What would be such paltry insignifit ants to the past him had given him plenty of trouble in this life, but he took it in stride. But the way the goril stared at him with the same disdain... it was infuriating!

  Baiyun ched his fists as he ran and ran.

  The agony from his wounded feet soon faded with numbaking its pces. Without the sensation of touch, they felt more like lumps of dead meat attached to his ahat was not a good sign.

  But at st, he made it out of the forest.

  His feet were in no dition to run, but he didn't know if his pursuers could still find him. So Baiyu himself fall to the ground and examihe state of his feet.

  Bloody mud entwined in tangles of root and grass caked them. At some point, they had started to serve as pseudo shoes that stauhe flow of blood and prevented further injury. The same lubrit he used on the beetle had backfired on him ily by f him to discard his shoes.

  Baiyun ed his arms and legs in thick cloth and ed several old robes around himself. If he couldn't run, he would simply crawl.

  He made his way back toward the bull's trampled path and pushed his way through the grass. From there, the crawl back to town was much easier.

  With each time he grasped the earth and pulled himself forward, his body grew muddier and muddier. He could not help but think what a miserable and unsightly state it was and curse.

  6 hours passed as he crawled. It was agonisingly slow, but it lenty of time for his soul to mend his wounds.

  Baiyun's arms were numb by the time the town came to sight. He stopped by the river ected to the town's al, propping himself up and plunging his legs into it.

  A stinging pain struck him as muddied red seeped into the river and flowed downstream. He pulled and tugged at the tangled vegetation and finally freed his feet from their prison.

  He could only sigh at the sorry sight. He had done what he could to mend his wounds with soul, but there was little skin that remained.

  Baiyun took some time to wash himself, his clothing and the bckhorn roots. He dried the bloodied water off his feet and ed them in thin cloth carefully, before putting on a spare set of shoes and ging into a fresh set of robes.

  It was still dark, about 4 in the m.

  He walked back to town slowly and to the inn, pushing its doors open.

  The desk was empty at this hour with no personnel in sight. Such x security, the innkeeper not even sparing the effort to lock the doors at him. But he wasn't pining about the hassle it saved.

  Baiyun trudged up to the sed floor when he suddenly paused before his door.

  There were fingerprints on the doors that weren't his! He was certain it wasn't left by the staff either, for there was only a single person in charge of room service; whose thumbprints he had already noted when food was brought to him.

  He sent divihread into his closed room and found a fn object. A cage was now in its midst, with a mole pawing at a pile of pillows inside.

  This...

  Baiyun walked to Mohei's door and checked, finding matg fingerprints. Ah. So it was his.

  While he wasn't usually oo care about such miails, with divihread and his subsemory, it was easy for him to sense even subtle ges.

  It was as if a drawing he previously saw suddenly had scribbles all over it. Even without perfect memory of what the inal image looked like, it was easy to tell something was wrong.

  Fingerprints were far from the only minor detail divine sense recorded. The position of every hair, the arra of veih his skin. Every crack within a rock, the exact texture of its gritty surfad the mixture of minerals within. Every single bde of grass in a field, their tiny pores taking in the air. And much more.

  Divine sense owerful.

  But remembering such detail would drive most to insanity, so this was mostly a subscious feeling. Fiails would usually only be noticed when the user put their mind to it, such as when Baiyun wao sehe essences in herbs.

  Baiyun opehe door quietly and limped in, looking around at the walls and furniture with a slight frown. Somethi a little different about his room that he couldn't quite pce his finger on, but he figured it was because Mohei had entered.

  "Krrr?"

  The mole raised its head and sniffed. Its eyes lit up as it suddenly spotted the bckhorn roots around Baiyun's ned it began to squeak and cw at the cage excitedly.

  "Settle down." Baiyun mumbled.

  He walked to the table where Mohei had pced a note under a key.

  "Sorry for breaking in. Your mole is very noisy so I 't sleep, I had no choice! The key to the cage is here ->"

  A small arrow drawn oe poio the key that weighed it down. Baiyun chuckled to himself silently as he picked it up.

  With a quick twist and a small click, the doors of the cage swung open and the mole scrambled out! It wasted no time running to Baiyun and trying to paw at the roots dangling around his neck.

  "Okay. I give you a piece. But do it. Uand?"

  Baiyun tried his best to unicate his iions with soulsense as he passed it a small segment. The mole bit the root between its mouth and rushed back to its cage. It pulled out the herb pouch hidden beloillow and stuffed the root in.

  Hah...

  What an presumptuous creature to so casually decre the pouch as its own so fidently. For a moment, he wondered if he should try to make it clear who owhat pouch. but he decided not to antago.

  One he showed the mole the wonders of alchemy, he was certain it would happily pass the herbs to him on its own accord!

  With the adrenaline wearing off, the fatigue was starting to set in. Baiyun stashed his shoes and cloth bindings away before plopping onto bed and lying ft. His soul was fihout sleep but the same could not be said for his mortal body.

  But the mole suddenly let out a shrill squeak. It cwed at the side of the bed and cmoured on, tapping at Baiyun's leg wounds as if asking what happened.

  This mole... Baiyun was taken aback.

  It hesitated for a moment.

  "Krr..."

  Then it reached into the herb poud pulled out a small red ginseng, an immature twin of the rge red ginseng it previously hugged.

  After what he did to it, even if the mole knew not of how he was the cause of its miseries, it was still willing to forsake a precious herb for his sake?

  Baiyu a straion he could not describe and he ched his fists for a moment before sighing. Hah... some creatures were too pure and i for this world.

  He reached out a hand to ruffle the fur on the mole's head as it squirmed, g at his hand in protest. He would have to repay this favour a hundred-fold one day.

  Baiyun reached for the small ginseng. As much as it would be responsible to reject it, without the aid of precious herbs, it would take weeks for wounds of this severity to recover. He was far tmatic to allow that.

  "Kr."

  ...

  He pulled on the ginseng, but the mole's grip was like iron. It held on tightly for a full minute before finally relutly letting go.

  Baiyun veyed his gratitude with soulseo it but he didn't know if it uood su abstract cept. The mole slumped sadly.

  He turned his attention to the herb in hand. From the uidebook which he had learnt the names of local herbs with, he k was Crimson Blood Ginseng.

  The herb brimmed with such potent vital essehat he could feel them brimming out even without diviouch. A strange illusion that it was beating in his hand like a livi could be felt despite how motionless it was.

  It was a true natural treasure!

  Most essences in herbs didn't do mu their own, but the most precious of herbs innately had plimentary essences. It would have incredibly restorative effects even if used raw; one could even say it was a natural elixir, a pseudo elixir borne from the hands of nature!

  Baiyun already knerecious herbs the mole had in the pouch, but holding one in his hands set something abze in his heart. That light could be seen in his eyes as he walked to the table iement.

  The mole let out a squeak of horror as it saw the giant walk on raw exposed flesh, but Baiyun was too distracted to eve.

  Now that he thought of it, was this not an opportunity?

  He had been stubbornly thinking he had to make a medie that could help the mole in its breakthrough to vi of alchemy's wonders. But that teically wasn't part of the agreement.

  As long as the mole was vinced alchemy worked, it would be enough to establish the tract. And if he showed it an elixir could recover wounds far better than the raw ginseng, perhaps that would be enough persuasion!

  Baiyun smiled, being for the fused mole to look.

  He reached into his bag and pulled out various alchemic tools and a khen he sshed the ginseng into small ks with quick sshes of his knife and the pieces fell into the stone mortar waitih.

  "Kr! Krrrr!"

  The mole squeaked in fury. It had given him a precious herb it raised with blood and sweat but the giant was destroying it?

  Baiyun huffed. Bah. It would uand when he showed it the final product!

  Tws of Purple Grass, a Blueflower and a small snip of Golden Thread Fern; from Guan Qiang's mountain and stolen from Yingtao's bull respectively. He tossed those into the mortar as well.

  With one hand he kept the enraged mole at bay, and with the other hand, he obliterated the herbs into paste with quick thumps from his pestle.

  Baiyuly flicked his fio parry each of the mole's strikes. He poured the paste from the mortar into a filter, pressing down on it with his pestle to force out as much liquid as he could into the gss tainer beh.

  A striking red liquid more crimson than blood dripped filled the beaker. Uhe dark skies of the early m, it was like a splotch of red ink in a bd white photo, Baiyun's refle in it was slightly uling.

  He stared at it for a moment and paused. The mole was too tired to interrupt.

  ...

  Back to work. Baiyun uned the filter and revealed a clump of crushed and bed fibres. 36% of the essence was still left uracted.

  He opened his mouth wide and swallowed it whole like a python.

  "Krr?!" the mole was baffled.

  Soulsense!

  Much like how he crushed the Undying Basalt into powder in the prisoacked the tough herb fibres. They began to tremble and press as liquid oozed out. Eadividual fibre began to fray and break into smaller and smaller strands until only powder remained.

  Baiyun grimaced as unpleasant vibrations permeated his abdominal ans.

  He had sustained signifit injury from a simir act ba the prison, but this time he was unharmed. Pnt fibres that could be crushed by a pestle was nothing pared to the absurd durability of the basalt and his cultivation had improved slightly sihen.

  Wisps of qi flowed into his dantain and brought him a small step closer to the level. While Crimson Blood Ginseng was rgely medial, it was still ultimately a spirit herb. It otent as eating the herb discards the sect had fed him for about 900 days! But truthfully, that said more about how pathetic the qi tents of servant food was than it did about the qi tents of the ginseng.

  Baiyun g the crude red liquid within the gss tainer and saw that small bck dots had begun to form on its surface.

  Good. That meant it was reag the way he wanted. He didn't teically need visual cues because of diviouch but he still liked to see signs.

  "Look."

  Baiyun poked the mole and poi the pathetic liquid that could barely be sidered an elixir.

  "O sits for a few hours, it will be far more potent than the herb could ever be. Maybe you'll be a little more vinced of alchemy's prowess then?"

  He khe mole couldn't uand a word he said, but if he spoke to it enough, he hoped it would at least pick up a few words over time.

  At the same time, he veyed a vision of how the elixir would restore the skin on his feet to the mole.

  "Km!"

  The mole crossed its cws, unvinced.

  Whatever.

  After the small rush of making a somewhat funal elixir, Baiyu a little too antsy to let his body just lie still oill m came.

  He went to the bookshelf and looked through the books, when an unassuming fairytale book caught his eye. This book... had it always been there?

  ...what nonsense was he thinking? Baiyun shook his head as he recalled an old memory of when he first ehe room. It had always been there.

  He sat on bed and flipped through it slowly. Diviouch let him read books with far more ease, but he still found it the most satisfying to read them directly. It didn't occur to him how odd it was that it was this unassuming book that drew his attention instead of the newly acquired alchemy books from Qinghe.

  The mole climbed up his leg to take a look. It tilted its head in fusion, not why the giant was staring at lines and scrawlings os of light brown.

  Baiyun could already feel faint tingles from his wounds as they began to subtly recover; even merely from ing the crushed pulp.