Chapter 12:
Lack of Money
OTHER THAN HIS MASTER, only Mo Tianliao and the local wildlife were permitted to enter the back mountain, so it was very quiet and peaceful. Leaves crunched underfoot as he walked along the forest path toward the stream where he often grilled food. Pawpaw liked to sleep on the round stone by the stream where the sun shone, and he could doze there for the entire day.
As he got closer, he began to hear the sound of distant barking. His heart skipped a beat. Pawpaw was a spirit beast, so ordinary stray dogs would tuck their tails between their legs and run at the sight of him. They wouldn’t bark so arrogantly. Worried, he quickened his pace.
“Arf! Arwooo…” The barks were short, but not angry. As he pushed aside the foliage, Mo Tianliao saw a gray-and-white wolf. With its gleaming spiritual glow, it was clearly a high-level spirit beast. It had a strong, muscular build, with gray fur on its back and white fur on its belly. Its tail stood stiff and unbending. There was no way it could be a dog. But on a closer inspection, something didn’t seem right.
The white cat was sunbathing lazily on the stone as the gray-and-white wolf circled it again and again. The cat ignored it, so it put its front paws up on the stone and leaned in to sniff the cat. Casting it a sidelong glance, the cat raised his paw, claws glinting, and swatted at it.
“Arwoo—” The wolf jolted back and tried to lick its scratched snout with its tongue, but unfortunately, it couldn’t reach it. It had to tilt its head and stretch its tongue as far as it could before it finally got a lick in. Satisfied at last, it spun around in circles, barked twice, and stood on the stone again, wagging its tail happily.
The corners of Mo Tianliao’s lips twitched. This was actually a feral wolfdog, right? And a silly dog at that.
Since the dog clearly wasn’t going to harm the cat, Mo Tianliao watched them play—or rather, watched the dog try to nudge the cat with its nose, only to receive endless scratches from all angles.
Eventually, the dog got impatient. It stepped back, leaped onto the stone, and opened its jaws to bite the cat.
“What do you think you’re doing?!” Mo Tianliao picked up a pebble and threw it at the dog.
Infused with spiritual energy, the stone went hurtling toward the dog’s head. The dog nimbly dodged before it could hit, but the flying pebble had startled it, and, scrambling to find purchase with all four paws, it skidded off the stone.
Mo Tianliao walked over with another pebble ready in his hand, feeling slightly tense. Even if this was just a level one spirit beast, it would be more powerful than him, a mere cultivator at the qi-refining stage. In a real fight, he wouldn’t stand a chance. But no matter how powerful an unevolved spirit beast was, it was still a wild beast driven by animal instinct.
Sure enough, the dog instinctively shrank back at the sight of the pebble. It looked at the cat on the stone, then at Mo Tianliao. Finally, it whimpered, turned tail, and scampered off.
Mo Tianliao tossed aside the pebble and ran over to the stream. “Pawpaw, are you okay?” He scooped up the little cat and stroked the damp fur on the back of its neck where the dog had nipped it.
The white cat looked up at him and lazily swatted his face with a paw. He didn’t brandish his claws, though, so Mo Tianliao got gently smacked by his toebeans. He broke out in a grin and planted a kiss on the warm paw.
“Is that dog your friend?” Mo Tianliao, still dressed in the ornate black robe he’d worn to the feast, fished out a black silk handkerchief embroidered with silver cloud patterns and wiped the drool off his cat’s fur as he walked.
The cat gave him a look. You knew it was my friend, and you still threw rocks at it?
“It’s fine to play with dogs, but don’t let them bite you. They have big mouths, and they can’t control their strength. Plus, we wouldn’t want you to get your fur all dirty,” Mo Tianliao said righteously. He wasn’t about to admit he’d been jealous of a dog.
On the way back, he suddenly realized something. The dog and Pawpaw were both spirit beasts, and they’d been openly playing on the back mountain. His master must have been aware of this. His master didn’t allow ordinary disciples onto the back mountain—perhaps that wasn’t just to protect the spiritual herbs and trees there, but also to protect these spirit beasts who had yet to sign a blood pact.
“There are quite a number of spirit beasts in the sect, but we aren’t qualified enough to see them,” Suheng explained later on, with a smile, when Mo Tianliao came to report on sect affairs. Apparently, spirit beasts were awarded to disciples who had made significant contributions or advanced to the nascent soul stage. Everyone else had to find their own spirit beast if they wanted one.
Mo Tianliao nodded. “Are the spirit beasts in the sect registered somewhere?”
“Of course,” said Suheng. “But the register is in the sanctum-masters’ hands. The average person isn’t permitted to see it.”
Mo Tianliao dismissed Suheng and petted the cat sleeping soundly in his arms. His master had given him a jade token, allowing him access to the back mountain. Wasn’t he worried Mo Tianliao might forcibly sign a blood pact with one of the spirit beasts and claim it as his own? Or maybe… Considering the rule that said personal disciples could come and go freely, did that mean personal disciples could also receive a spirit beast?
He decided to ask his master about it later, and to tell him that he wanted this cat. He snapped his fingers to light a candle. His first priority was to hurry up and raise his cultivation level, though, or he wouldn’t even be able to beat a dog in a fight.
Qingtong-zhenren was back in seclusion again. Mo Tianliao tried to meet him over and over again, but to no avail, so he resigned himself to chopping trees on the back mountain.
The spiritual energies of plants and trees could be absorbed, and the end of every chapter of his cultivation manual required him to grill some sort of food. Mo Tianliao was getting bored of it, so he’d started experimenting and practicing his control over the woodfire while he was at it. He had mastered the use of fire-element spiritual energy in his previous life, and now that he’d been gifted this otherworldly fire, he had to make good use of it and master both the flame itself and this technique.
Three months later, Mo Tianliao looked at the green flame shaped like a dragon in his hand and quirked a smile.
The fire dragon looked like a delicate, finely detailed living sculpture, its movements nimble, its long whiskers swaying in the wind with the subtle shift of spiritual energies. He sent the dragon swimming over to his cat, who was licking his paws. The cat froze for a moment, then tilted his head, contemplating this strange thing.
“I can’t make it any bigger than this for now. That’s all the woodfire I have.” Mo Tianliao scooted over to watch the fire dragon interact with the cat. It burned independently for a while before it dissipated and vanished.
The cat yawned and lay down to sleep.
It had taken Mo Tianliao a whole month to figure out how to separate the woodfire from his body. At first, all he could do was shoot out a few fireballs. But he’d been working on his control day and night, and now he could finally change the shape of the fire. And thanks to his constant tree-chopping and burning of wood, his cultivation had advanced to level six of the qi-refining stage.
With the body of a divine tree, he didn’t need to forge meridians. All he needed was to accumulate wood-element spiritual energy until he could establish his foundation. He estimated it would take him less than a year to reach that stage.
In his previous life, his aptitude had been all right, but after cultivating from his teens until he was twenty-eight, he’d only barely made it to the foundation establishment stage. And now, incredibly enough, that would only take a year. With mixed feelings, Mo Tianliao picked up the sleepy cat and carried it down the mountain.
After spending three months with this cat, Mo Tianliao had noticed a problem: The little furball slept way too much. He never spent more than four hours a day playing. An ordinary cat usually slept about fourteen hours, but this energetic spirit beast slept for twenty hours! That was abnormal.
Three hundred years ago, Pawpaw could play with him all day without getting tired. But now he’d start yawning when they’d been playing for just a little while. Mo Tianliao thought about asking an elixirist to look at Pawpaw, but the consultation fee was costly.
Mo Tianliao poured out the spiritual stones in his inventory bracelet and counted them—six medium-grade spiritual stones in total. Personal disciples had a monthly allowance of three medium-grade spiritual stones, equivalent to thirty low-grade spiritual stones, and this was already quite generous compared to ordinary disciples—they only got ten low-grade spiritual stones.
He’d used a piece of medium-grade spiritual stone when he advanced to level five of the qi-refining stage earlier, then another two to break through to level six. Hiring an elixirist to diagnose a spirit beast would require at least thirty medium-grade spiritual stones.
Mo Tianliao stroked the soundly sleeping kitty and put away his spiritual stones. Picking the kitten up in his arms, he made his way to the Blessed Sanctuary of the Crimson Flame. There were furnaces there, and he needed to forge some artifacts to earn some money.
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MINI EXTRA
Woodworker: Keeping a cat is expensive!
Sect Leader: Costs you your face too. *covers his wounds*
Xuanji: Agree +1.
Eldest Shixiong: Agree +10086.
Woodworker: Go away! My cat is only allowed to scratch me!