Cultivation Nerd (xianxia)

Even with the beasts charging at us and the Qi disturbance around, making it impossible for arrays to be erected, it showed just how crucial it was to have my own Qi pool to create these things. This wouldn't be a problem otherwise.

I knew about a dozen arrays since learning new ones always took time. But since the Qi was above ground...

I crouched down and put my hands on the ground. This rocky terrain was best for defense arrays. However, as soon as I tried to do something... nothing happened. The Qi gurgled about and returned to normal.

“Shit,” I cursed under my breath.

Arrays were the backbone of my fighting style and allowed me to punch above my weight. I had learned at least one array for each dangerous situation most likely to happen. But, I had been learning arrays for a relatively short time compared to most, even though I had an amazing teacher.

Taking a deep breath, I stood at the front with my team beside me, ready to meet these monsters head-on. Running was not an option since they were faster than us in long marathons, even though we could likely overtake them in short bursts of speed, depending on our movement techniques.

“We fight here!” I yelled out loud enough to hopefully overshadow their fears.

But before we could continue doing anything, something crashed amid the beasts. Scorpions got crushed like bugs before I could see what had collided in their midst.

As the dust cleared, it revealed Song Song. She had a dangerous look in her eyes as she swung her arm, and like an invisible scythe, it cut through the monsters like a hot knife through butter. Blood flew about, and the smell of iron filled the air.

Before any of the remaining creatures could react, she blitzed through them, and drill-like holes the size of human heads began appearing on the monstrous beasts.

Now that I was getting a better look at this, I could think clearer without worrying about what could happen.

There was a good chance the technique she was using here was an Earth Grade Technique.

I wished she would try to be less brutal and not rip them all apart since these monstrous beasts could be some new breed. While it might not be anything groundbreaking, it was still rare.

Welp, the battle was done now, and there was nothing I could do anymore.

I plopped on the ground, took out a notebook, and started writing everything I had learned today.

I might need a new notebook to write things about arrays. Perhaps one for monstrous beasts also.

While noting down everything about this kind of monstrous beast, my mind wondered what I might do with that kind of information.

Perhaps in the future, I should make some kind of monster encyclopedia? This one would be with paintings of the monsters since no one would confuse one for the other.

It took less than a dozen minutes for Song Song to kill over a hundred monstrous beasts, and she left the corpses scattered about and covered in monstrous beast blood. She looked at me and nodded, “Take care of things for a bit. I need to recover.”

She sat down in a meditative position, took out a dozen spirit stones, held them in her hands, and took a deep breath. Immediately, the Qi I sensed inside the spirit stones started waning, and the bright crystal-like appearance of the spirit stones began dimming.

This was why spirit stones were used as currency; they helped with the recovery of Qi faster. Though I didn’t know how large Song Song’s Qi pool was, it would, on average, take a lot of time to recover normally, at least days. But with spirit stones, such a process could be expedited in much less time than that.

Additionally, they would allow someone to cultivate longer since they could recover Qi and were even used in some arrays. But I was nowhere near good enough to withdraw Qi from spirit stones.

…

I took care of everyone else while Song Song recovered, and a couple of hours later, she opened her eyes and sighed. Then she looked at her arm, where her blue sect uniform was ripped and there were three thumb-sized holes from when the male scorpion had attacked her.

The wounds looked nasty, but they would have been much worse if the attack had pierced through, and she would probably be missing an arm with how big those stingers were.

She looked around and nodded when she saw that we had cleared all the corpses and put them in a large pile. Then her gaze turned toward me, and while I didn’t expect her to thank me for the help or anything like that, she still smiled and nodded. “Why isn’t someone like you in the inner sect?”

Aha, here comes the poaching.

“Because I’m not in the Qi Gathering stage,” I said.

I didn’t want to go to the inner sect for now. Since I had too much to learn out here. I hadn’t even entered the third floor of the library.

Also, I would go from being at the top of the hierarchy to the outer sect, where no one could tangle with me. To be just another bottom-of-the-barrel inner disciple.

“There are always certain exceptions,” she refuted. “When disciples with enough talent come around, they immediately enter the inner sect. You cover my weaknesses quite well, and I can cover yours.”

“I think you’re overestimating my abilities with arrays. I have trained to shorten the chants and hand seals, and have almost fully rid of the rituals. But if you haven’t noticed, my arrays are usually laughably short in duration,” I reasoned and tried to show Song Song that I was less impressive than she thought. “Also, are you sure you don’t need medical help? I dissected some of the corpses of these monstrous beasts, and they had poison in their stingers.”

While arrays could halt the spread of poison, that was something I wouldn’t learn anytime soon, and it was way above my level. But I had some common herbs and other things in my backpack that should at least alleviate Song Song's pain.

“I took a pill when the male scorpion thing threw me away,” she said.

Oh, she had consumed a pill while covered in a dust cloud. It seemed like her moves were more calculated than what I had initially thought. Also, storage rings were such a cheat. She probably had so much useful stuff in that thing.

“Don’t worry about me. While I might not be in my best shape, I can still fight at my full power, and my strength hasn’t suffered,” Song Song narrowed her eyes and walked closer while the rest of the team acted like they weren’t seeing this and were looking around. But a smirk slowly made its way onto Song Song’s face, and she stopped when she was within arm’s length. “Now, we need to talk about you a bit more. Though your cousin recommended you, I think we can help each other. I, as the leader, and you, my second-in-command. Just think about it, nobody in the sect would ever cause you trouble, and you would have all the information and best teachers at your hand.”

What was she talking about? She was no inner elder.

Was she actually someone high up in the sect? After all, my clan members in the inner sect were looking for influence and to have the Liu Clan have a foothold within the Blazing Sun Sect.

Well, in this case, it would be better to show her than tell her what I meant.

“Can I use some arrays on you?” I asked. “It won’t be anything deadly.”

She raised a questioning brow but shrugged and nodded, “Go right ahead.”

Okay, she was trusting me a bit too much here. Just when I had started thinking that there might be more to her decisions.

Either way, none of that mattered as I chanted under my breath, the same Blinding Array that I had used on the monster, and this time went through the whole thing and used it on her while looking her in the eyes. The close distance strengthened the array, and a dark mist formed on both sides of her head, about to extend and cover her eyes like a blindfold. However, before that happened, the mist dispersed.

I wasn’t surprised by it and didn’t stop there; I continued with the Binding Array, Barriers, and many others that would restrict her in any way or stop her from moving. They broke before they could even take effect.

“As you can see, the reason why my barrier worked was that these monstrous beasts had no experience with them and never a day in their life trained in any way to sense Qi or control it,” I explained while she nodded along and surprisingly didn’t interrupt me. “If I were a betting man, I would bet that even more experienced monstrous beasts would be able to stop the arrays from taking effect.”

“Still impressive for a level one array master,” she complimented me.

“Using Qi through arrays has its advantages against Body Tempering Cultivators,” I agreed to a degree.

But I was somewhat of a special case in this since I could sense Qi and was better than the average Body Tempering Disciple at learning arrays. But while using the Qi found in nature sounded good, it was like trying to move the sea by slapping it around. As the Qi in nature would return to its natural form, earth Qi would return to the earth and not stick to whatever barrier I used it in for too long. That was why a little nudge from foreign Qi was enough to crash most of my arrays.

“How long have you been learning arrays?” She asked, and the dangerous glint in her eyes made me really not want to answer her.

While she was offering generous rewards for joining her side, I wasn’t sure how many of her promises she could keep. Also, even if she could, becoming a part of her team meant that my enemies would become hers… and her enemies would become mine.

Who knew what kind of enemies she had.

“Anyway, as a leader, you shouldn’t have charged ahead without giving it much thought, and you ended up falling into some kind of trap,” I said, and her eyes narrowed as she could clearly tell I was dodging the question.

But in the end, she shrugged and decided not to point it out. “You were here to take care of things, so I didn’t worry too much.”

By the look on her face, it was clear that she hadn’t cared at all. Despite that, she continued explaining, “My teacher has always said that I have to know how to play to my strengths and find people I can trust to cover weaknesses. I only believed in your ability to lead.”

By the look on her face, it seemed like there were some things she didn’t want to talk about either, and I didn’t press her any longer and shrugged. “Either way, we need to gather our things and the food before getting off this place. It’s only a matter of time before something else, possibly way more dangerous, is attracted by the blood.”

She nodded, and we walked toward the camp where we had killed the monstrous beasts, the only ones that Song Song had no part in absolutely massacring.

“By the way, how did your arm turn out okay?” I asked while tucking Speedy into my backpack and making sure the little guy was comfortable. “The male scorpion monstrous beast was quite strong and not the kind of attacks one could block.”

“After punching the female scorpion, I knew that I wouldn’t be able to move fast enough to dodge, so I brought my arm up and used all the Qi in my body to the exact points to where he would hit,” she declared as if what she had done was nothing impressive.

While her body couldn’t move fast enough, she had somehow moved the Qi from her attack to defending in less than an instant.

This girl had some monstrous fighting instincts.

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