“Put those inside your space.” I pointed to my beautiful sticks then grabbed a few hundred for myself. Once I purchased the right silk and paint I would prepare proper flags.

Since we made such a large disturbance earlier, I decided to be safe and moved our camp a few miles south before settling down inside the space.

We had a nice dinner of Grain Liberation Pills. Little Spring was not happy but I didn’t know how to cook, so whatever. Also, eating mortal food would just undo the work the Spiritual Spring Water did, in purifying our body. Of course, when I mentioned that he glared harder and may have pointed to the very obvious large lake filled with spiritual spring water that was free for us to use. I didn’t acknowledge its existence.

And why waste time eating when there were plans to make and Little Spring’s cultivation method to develop? Preferably in a direction that wasn’t just a mirrored version of my own.

Since dinner, lunch, and breakfast for the next few days had been easily taken care of, it was time for bed. Our young and mostly mortal bodies still suffered from exhaustion and we hadn’t actually set up a sleeping area yet.

We entered the small building and trudged through the previous unexplored back door. There, we found several bedrooms (all thanks to folded space), as well as a Forging room, an Alchemy room, and an Herb Drying room. There may have been more but these were the rooms I cared about so I didn’t bother looking through the rest.

Seriously, this little main character had the best gold finger ever.

The kid thought we should continue to share a room. I complied. I mean, he was still grieving his mother, and he was only a little seven or eight-year-old. I wasn’t a total asshole. And it was also less work since we would have to clean the rooms up enough first before we could stay in them. While they appeared clean, I didn’t trust sleeping quarters that hadn’t had people in them for hundreds of years.

I also didn’t trust Ghosty McGhostface, even with the enchantment I placed on him. I set up a simple formation around the room and began my nightly routine of slowly cultivating (while not destroying the space itself) and then passing out on the bed we stole from my house.

***

It took us three more days of difficult travel before we reached the outskirts of Jade Lake City. I would have gone closer, but, when I saw it from above, I froze. My lips twitched. I kind of wanted to cry.

Back in the future, this city was a huge metropolis where cultivators would come to buy or sell items. It had a fair amount of tourism because of the closeness of the beautiful snow-covered mountains, the pretty verdant lake filled with delicious spirit-fish, and a lantern festival that all the lady cultivators interested in romance cooed about.

But this point in time was at least 100 years before it had turned into that sprawling mass. Right now, it was barely a tiny city, closer to a large town, not even a tenth the size it would become.

Right. I would need to buy a map. Relying on my memory of 1000 years ago was a bad idea.

A mile out from the future city, I dropped us to the road where we started the last trek of our journey.

We stopped in our tracks a few streets in, as two cultivators started fighting in the middle of the road. I had no clue what they were arguing about but I pulled Little Spring back to a place where we’d be safe and could still watch. This would be an excellent learning opportunity for him.

One fighter, who looked around 25, had broad shoulders and thick arm muscles as if he were a body cultivator even though he wasn't one. He wore slightly shabby dark blue robes.

The other fighter appeared to be 14 or 15. His well-kept seafoam green robes, fit his small build perfectly.

Both cultivators were at the 6th layer of Qi Condensation.

Blue and Seafoam exchanged blows from the handful of the lame-ass techniques they’d picked up from somewhere. I sighed.

“Okay, Little Spring, you see these guys?”

He nodded.

“They’re both really awful.”

He tilted his head in confusion.

“You see how that guy in blue is putting all his physical strength into each punch infused with spiritual energy?” As I pointed, the 25-year-old bodybuilder punched forward sending a blast towards Seafoam. He’d put so much physical strength into his punch that he moved forward an inch. “He’s a fucking dumbass.”

The blue guy tripped and fell face-first into Seafoam’s spiritual palm attack. He flew backward several yards but managed to steady himself. Then he coughed up a mouthful of blood. Since the original novel had been a typical Xianxia, one mouthful was considered minor internal damage. And frankly, it was the grossest way to determine damage.

“If the guy really wanted to hurt little Seafoam over there, instead of focusing on increasing his physical strength, he should be focusing on the momentum of the Qi in his body. The faster it goes internally, the stronger his attack will be. All this fucking around with bodybuilding is fine if he plans to become a body cultivator, but doing it now, while he’s obviously not practicing a body cultivation art is a pointless waste of time that could be spent increasing his realm.”

Blue’s cheeks turned bright red. Seafoam smirked and sent another spiritual palm at his opponent. Blue counteracted the palm with his fist, still making the same dumbass mistake.

“And this Seafoam wearing fucker.” Seafoam’s smirk froze. “He’s even worse than Blue. Blue’s technique is at least a decent technique with very few flaws for something at their realm. Well, it would be if he wasn’t shit at practicing it. Seafoam’s, on the other hand, is a palm attack. Which is fine if you’re going non-lethal or feel like wasting Qi to bludgeon your opponent to death.”

Seafoam sent someone near me a glare and received a spiritual fist to his face for his mistake. He then spat out a tooth and a half-mouthful of blood. Yeah, when I first arrived in this world, it took me a while to figure out how much blood constituted what, but I did it eventually.

“Eh, hitting his face is fine, but if I were Blue, I’d be trying to hit him on his weak points as he’s casting that flaw filled palm of his.”

“Techniques like this have weak points?” Little Spring asked.

“Absolutely! Pretty much all low-level techniques like these do. For example, Blue’s weak point…” Blue paled for some reason; maybe it was because of Seafoam’s fierce-looking grin. “Is on his waist, which is why you see him so carefully guarding it, while he’s performing the technique. If Seafoam wanted to do some major damage to him, he could easily do so by sending a strong strike right there.”

Seafoam ran through several simple hand seals and sent a powerful spiritual finger attack at Blue. This was definitely a better technique than his palm, but it used too much spiritual energy. He’d aimed it at the weak point that he’d finally noticed. It was good that he had since the dumb fucker was about to run dry. Blue also formed several hand seals and blocked the huge spiritual finger from crashing down onto him by building three spiritual barriers. Which was a foolish thing to do as it also used up too much energy. By the time the attack fizzled out, Blue was also running low.

“Well, it looks like the fight is almost over in a tie. But I think Blue could win if he manages to strike him on either his Touwei, Jimen or Shaochong acupoints. That palm attack is a really bad technique.”

“Wait, what are those?”

Right, I hadn’t taught him about anatomy and acupuncture points yet, so I super oversimplified it. “His head, thigh, or tip of his little finger. But, now that I think about it, he seems to be protecting his right armpit a little. It might be that that’s one of his cultivation techniques hidden weaknesses. So if…”

Seafoam sent another glare in our direction and bolted while Blue, looking exhausted, sighed in relief.

Wait a second. Seafoam was definitely glaring at me this time. Had... Had I spoken too loud and been overheard?

Damn it! I fucking miss this world’s version of telepathy. This wouldn’t have happened if I had it, but it was a higher leveled technique. Wait, wasn’t there a simple sound transmission technique I could have used? Shit. Well, it wasn’t like I could remember all of the crappy low-level skills that became obsolete at higher levels.

Since the fight was over and I didn’t want to get into trouble for interfering in a duel, I grabbed Little Spring’s hand and ran in the opposite direction of Seafoam.

During our sprint, I discovered a traveler's store and entered it. No one seemed to follow us, which was good since I really wanted to keep a low profile, and beating two 6th layer Qi Condensation cultivators as a 3rd Layer was just, way too eye-catching.

Since we were in the traveler’s store, we picked up some supplies for our journey, including a semi-detailed map of the continent with some of the few spirit stones I had left. Before we left, I asked for directions to the formation store since this city was too small to have a full guild.

The Formation store was in a small yet elegant building. As soon as we stepped through the door, I could feel the environmental control formation cooling down the room to a comfortable temperature. It was a simple level 1 formation, but it had been set up to near perfection.

A female employee stood off to the side. She took one look at us and sighed loudly.

I stepped up to her and smiled. “I’d like to see your supply supervisor.”

She glared at me. “And why is that, little girl?”

Little girl? Was she seriously disrespecting me right now?

I put my hands on my hips. “Because I am selling high-quality formation flagsticks and he’ll regret it if he doesn’t buy me out.”

She sneered and heaved her large bosom that was very much a staple for this world. Our dear oversimplistic fuck-brained author must have described the women in this weird-ass world as being, ”jade beauties possessing twin peaks with no equal.” And he did that for all of them. Every. Single. Fucking. One. As if the concept of back pain didn't exist.

“You’ll have to come back another time, ” she said, flipping a strand of wavy hair over her shoulder. ”Our Formation Supply Appraiser is out at the moment.”

Well, since we were here, it would be nice to go get something to eat so that Little Spring could stop bugging me... wait a second. I narrowed my eyes at her. “And when will he be back?”

”I don’t know. Come back another day.”

“No. I think I’d like to see him now.”

After rolling her eyes, she said, “Throw these kids out.”

A man at the peak of Foundation Establishment walked over. Shit! I didn’t realize there were such high leveled practitioners here aside from the leader of the city. Someone of this level could definitely kill my poor little self, even with all of my past life’s knowledge.

Little Spring stepped in front of me and bowed while showing a pained smile.

“Please forgive my older sister, she’s... well. You can guess.” He pulled out a handful of my sticks and held them up to her. “My formation master gave us these to sell for him since he’s far too busy to come here himself. He’s a very-very powerful practitioner and if we don’t sell them and get back to him in a couple of hours he’ll come here asking questions.”

The employee sighed with heavy-handed exasperation. “Why didn’t you just lead with that?”

He bowed again. “I’m sorry.”

“Follow me. Our appraiser will be back shortly.”

She brought us into a back room and left us. As soon as she turned the corner, I hugged Little Spring and patted his hair. “Good job.”

He blushed, and I let him go.

It looked like he was learning from me and using his brain. Especially since I totally would have thought to bring in a fictional master if he hadn’t gotten there first.