With a pivot and a slash, I finished my morning practice under the oak tree in our small, peaceful courtyard.

“Sister Lin! I discovered something good!”

I shrunk my sword back down to its hairpin size and raised a brow at Little Spring, who had recently reached the peak of Qi Condensation. He had done it all on his own too, with only a Qi gathering array and this location’s increased spiritual density.

I could only blame the sect trials for encouraging him into doubling his efforts. Maybe traumatizing was the better word?

Whatever.

At least it had been boringly peaceful these past few months. If those demonic cultivators were still within the sect, then they’d hidden so well that even the Seven Shadows Pavilion couldn’t find them.

Currently, the cute kid proudly carried two oversized plates of steamed buns. Each of them looked fluffy and professionally arranged.

Since the early morning, Little Spring had been messing around in the kitchen doing whatever with the new ingredients he brought back from one of the sect’s various markets. I assumed that he’d made some half-decent meat buns, and he wanted to show them off.

That meant I had to wear my food critic hat again. When he started on his path to becoming an Immortal chef, I didn’t realize that I’d end up working so hard just to give this kid enough feedback, so he focused on improving without feeling like he would never get better.

While shoving my sword hairpin into place, I walked past the small pond to meet him at the table under our gazebo.

I used the cleaning technique to ensure every surface was spotless before I settled down on the stone bench.

Little Spring set a plate down on the table in front of me, then sat, and waited eagerly.

I took a bite. The chicken and scallion flavor was rich which complimented the slightly bland dough.

I had expected something new but... weren’t these just the same ones as yesterday?

“Your meat buns are consistent. This is one of the harder things to accomplish and takes great skill since your ingredients can vary from day to day.”

His eyes sparkled. “Thank you, Fairy Lin! But what I wanted to talk to you about wasn’t my current dish.”

Oh, thank fuck. I was no immortal chef, and I was slowly reaching my limit for helpful critiques. In fact, I’d been considering paying some contribution points to con—er, hire one of the sect’s chefs to come give advice in my stead. “If it’s not about your cooking, then what is it?”

He waved his hand at the table and brought out his thick cookbook that he’d received in that hellhole of an inheritance dimension. He quickly showed me eleven different sets of recipes. They were located throughout the tome, but they all had one thing in common.

I stood up and pressed my finger to the long title at the top of the current page. “These are recipes to increase a body cultivator’s realm... without pain!”

Frankly, I was so shocked that I had to actually read through the instructions instead of skim through them.

I half hoped that I could come up with a bath using these spiritual foods as ingredients, but after running through the list in my mind, I realized something horrifying and closed the book.

“What’s wrong?” Little Spring’s brow scrunched with worry.

I grimaced. “It’s pointless.”

He bit his lip. “But, without using these — If you keep doing body cultivation — won’t you have to go through those horribly painful baths?”

How did this brat know about those? Wait, there was only one person who knew about what I’d been through.

“Ghosty McGhostFace!” That Motherfucker!

I grabbed the necklace around Little Spring’s neck and flicked it. It trembled. Still not coming out?

I flicked it again. The middle-aged-looking man appeared as an illusion in front of us.

“You told on me!”

He shrugged. “After the trials, the kid here wanted to know what training I’d helped you with... And it wasn’t like you had me swear to keep silent.”

I glared at him.

“And I never explicitly said that you were taking painful baths to increase your cultivation!”

This fucker.

“Besides. Isn’t this a good thing? However expensive these ingredients are, it has to be better than almost dying over and over again just to gain that bit of extra strength.”

I narrowed my eyes at the specter. He huffed and floated around as if he were a master.

I wanted to throw the damn necklace, but I stopped myself since I didn’t want to throw Little Spring as well. With a sigh, I dropped the soul gem. The kid relaxed and took a long-awaited bite of his steamed bun.

Apparently, Ghosty had had enough of my glare because his image slunked down into his home while saying, “Don’t contact me for a while, I’m about to enter a delicate part of my cultivation.”

“You realize that this style of body cultivation will drain our resources and force us to push back my acquisition of supplies to make you a substitute body?”

He coughed and returned. “Fairy Lin! I’m sorry! I was wrong. You should focus on Qi Cultivation. It’s obviously the superior form of cultivation!”

I pulled out a spirit stone, and wrapped it in a particular way with my Qi that would interact with the original loyalty enchantment I placed on him. Then I threw it at him. His image wavered, which meant it was still in place… proving that he really thought telling the kid was best for me.

“That. I actually felt that!”

No shit. “Go cultivate!”

“Yes, Fairy Lin!” Ghosty skulked back into his gem, and I viciously took another bite out of the steamed bun Little Spring brought me.

“I think we can find the ingredients for the first three meals at least,” he said, with way too much optimism. “It just might take us a little longer.”

I opened the book back up and glanced at the first three marked recipes. The initial two would bring a cultivator through the Qi Condensation phase equivalent, and the third would get them through the beginning of Foundation Establishment.

What did a majority of body cultivators call those stages again? Skin and Muscle Strengthening, Bone and Marrow Refining, and Meridian Widening?

It was a completely different way of looking at cultivation compared to normal Qi cultivation or even sword Qi cultivation. In fact, each body cultivation system had its own distinct steps at each stage. Because of this, their names were often shortened to First-half Qi Condensation Equivalent and other similar naming styles.

“Even for these first two recipes, it will take a good amount of time to gather all those ingredients. And it will be stupidly expensive.”

He frowned. “If you want to reach the peak of the Qi Condensation equivalent, then you may need to hold off on your tribulation.”

Considering that this next tribulation just might finish the job my last one couldn’t, putting it off was perfectly fine if it gave me a better chance at survival. Frankly, I had no plans to attempt it until I was fully and perfectly prepared.

I sighed. “The problem here isn’t the ingredients themselves but the quantity of them. Actually, we could definitely afford the first two sets to bring us up to the peak of Qi Condensation…” that amount of money made me want to cough up blood, but we could do it, “as long as you don’t mess up when you make them.”

“I won’t!”

I narrowed my eyes at him briefly. “The problem here comes with the recipes for the next realm.”

“What’s wrong with them?”

“The ingredients are impossible to get in this quantity. Look at the First-half Foundation Establishment key ingredient.”

“Haunch of the 500-year-old Golden Feathered Fire Lizard?”

Despite its majestic name, the lizard was actually a super dumb dinosaur-looking spiritual beast. It liked bathing in areas near lava… and its feathers were flammable (this was obviously where it got its ‘Fire Lizard’ name).

The monster regrew its burnt feathers at inhuman speeds or else it would look like a bald bird half the time.

Actually, I’d heard stories about cultivators who had been searching for these monsters, only to walk right past them due to them looking like a plucked chicken.

They weren’t rare creatures... However, they were so unintelligent that they normally didn’t live very long.

“How many of these spiritual beasts do you think there are that are aged 500 years or older?”

“Well, according to the recipe, we’ll need 50 haunches.”

“And how are you going to get 50 of them?”

He pursed his lips as if he was seriously considering this problem. And the longer he took, the more I wanted to throw his tome at him. Then his eyes brightened.

“What if we could capture one alive?”

“We’d still only have a pair.”

“Then we could knock it out with a trick pill, take what we need, then — do you remember telling me about those recovery pills you can make at Foundation Establishment?”

Was this brat serious?! Did he not know how costly it was to create those pills?!

“Well, if we use your pills to help it regrow the meat we’ve taken, then we would only need to do it 25 times… and we wouldn’t even have to kill it in the end!”

Let’s see, this idea was a little horrifying to contemplate and unbelievably expensive… but would let the creature leave with its life.

I had to applaud the kid. This was absolutely something a Xianxia protagonist would come up with.

It was also very doable as long as I adjusted the formula every five or six times to compensate for the continuous loss of energy and mass. In fact, if we did it right, not only would the dumb dinosaur not feel any pain, but it could leave here stronger and healthier than when it first arrived.

But that would be if we even managed to find one. And we’d have to reach Foundation Establishment first.

“Fine. I’ll use some contribution points to start looking for one.” Because it might actually take a few years to find. “But even if we do manage to capture a Golden Feathered Fire Lizard at the right age, there’s this Yellow Emperor’s Sweet Revitalizing Kiwi here in the third recipe.”

“Isn’t it just a simple spiritual kiwi?”

I glared at the brat. “Even if we collect the Lizard, we still won’t be able to do this third recipe because of this kiwi. This is not only an immortal chef ingredient but an alchemy ingredient as well. One that helps cultivators widen their meridians so they can increase their cultivation speed.” Not that we needed that with my Unparalleled Perfection Cultivation method.

The kid blinked. “How rare is it?”

“It is not that it’s rare, it’s that everyone and their fathers desperately want to widen their meridians. It’s so special that finding one would even lead to a fight between a loving mother and her son. And according to this insane recipe, you’d need 25 in order to take just you to the Peak of Foundation Establishment.”

“So, we’ll need 50 of this one as well. A set for each of us.”

That made me want to cough up blood again! Because it was too damn costly. Frankly, I had considered only cultivating my body to the peak of Qi Condensation. But if I joined him down this path… the fortune I’d received from all the bullshit I went through during the sect trial would dry up like a river during the severest of droughts.

This was why I avoided body cultivation. It was a goddamn money sink. Worse than owning a boat in my past-past life.

“But I’m sure we can find enough of them, given time. Isn’t the reason we came to the Indomitable Will sect because it has all the good resources?”

Well. He had a point. Perhaps I was thinking too much about how little I had and how hard it was to find good materials back when I was a poor Qi Condensation Cultivator. Regardless, “Even with the sect helping us, it would still cost us two fortunes.”

“If it’s only a matter of making spirit stones, then we’ll just have to earn more. Isn’t that what you taught me?”

Ah, I see my young martial brother has learned to use my own weapons against me.