As the lower valley was currently empty, the sect's training grounds were naturally full.

Thankfully the area that made them up was much bigger than the valleys, therefore all disciples could train without bothering each other.

After the announcement the day before, everyone had left in a quest of power, be it meditation training or fighting training.

The latter was what Shin Sumi was after, too.

As she closed in on the red border, the sound of disciples fighting grew more and more distant. Shin Sumi passed close to the area where she had fought the three Affairs Pavilion disciples just a few days before.

At that time she had thought she was already past the red border but for some reason the red border extended a bit more in that direction.

"How strange, it is also the direction to the dark chasm. Although the ravine should be past the orange border too."

Shin Sumi had planned on having her training near her second home in the sect, the always dark chasm filled with poisonous snakes. She hoped that no disciple would adventure themselves near that area.

The fact was that with her green identification medallion, she had never felt the limitations as to where she could go and thus didn't know for sure where the colored borders were located.

All along the way, the little nut was more silent than usual.

"It must be because all the spirit beasts are either in hiding or fighting disciples for their lives" she thought.

The spirit beasts were indeed hiding away. Usually they would be more protective of their domain and attack every disciple that traveled a bit too close to their territory but for a reason their limited intelligence couldn't understand, the forest now swarmed with bright colored robes.

Shin Sumi made her way silently, evading every sound of battle in the direction indicated by the nut.

Her goal was to reach the other side of the dark chasm, where virtually no disciple should be present. The immense scar on the earth that was the ravine was dissuading enough with its mysterious absence of light and sound.

When she was sure that nobody was close, Shin Sumi stopped for a second. She was standing on a big rock in the shape of a skull. Scanning the dense forest with her eyes, she inhaled deeply.

The sound of birds, the writhing of insects on the ground, the drops of dew on the leaves of the canopy, she embraced it all.

"This location will be good enough" she said out loud.

A shine from her bag of holding later, the Gold Tyrant Flying piece of metal appeared in her small hand.

Although the dull blade was really heavy, Shin Sumi was not too bothered by it. Recently she had started to realize how much her body had changed from that of a mortal. She was already half a step into the cultivation world.

As much as she hated to admit it, her recent fight where she, for the first time, had killed a human being had improved her skills a lot.

At least confidence wise, now Shin Sumi knew that she could hold her own ground and that in all probability no red disciple could ever be a threat to her.

She wondered how she would compare to a spirit beast though.

With a rotating movement of the sword to give her more momentum, Shin Sumi jumped. Her leg muscles were already powerful enough to cover a few meter with one burst, but the added momentum propelled her about eight meters vertically.

Slamming down with all her might, the Gold Tyrant Flying Sword chopped down at the skull rock below.

A deafening noise rang out, followed by a high pitched hissing.

"I can't use my divine sense to track down spirit beasts yet, but I can make use of my knowledge!"

The newcomer's book served as a guideline for the recently arrived disciples, providing all sorts of information. One passage that Shin Sumi remembered well was about common spirit animals around the sect borders.

A big chunk of the skull shaped rock exploded under the impact, revealing the hollow structure inside. A rounded ball of grey spikes with purplish tips was hissing inside the rock.

"Purple Devil Hedgehog" she whispered.

Under the spiky armor, the creature was looking at her with invisible eyes. It was normally a peaceful spirit beast that relied on dissuasion to ward off potential threats. It was notorious for its carved habitat that acted as a repellent.

Shin Sumi had recognized the skull shape of the rock instantly. Although the Purple Devil Hedgehog could not be considered as a fighter beast, once it was out in the open it would give its all to get rid of any attacker.

The ball of spikes was roughly as tall as Shin Sumi's knee, and it's tips started oozing purple goo.

"Poison" thought Shin Sumi. Wielding the sword, she took on a fighting stance, preparing for combat.

The Purple Devil Hedgehog never stopped hissing, until the last moment. Rolling on the ground, its speed greatly shocked Shin Sumi who nearly failed to evade the first collision.

The dangerous ball of spikes stopped a few meters past her. A few leaves that were previously on the ground had been stabbed and were hanging from the purplish grey tips.

Shin Sumi once again leveled her weapon horizontally. Before the Purple Devil Hedgehog attacked a second time, she saw the impaled leaves darken and turn black before disintegrating completely.

That showed how potent the purple poison seeping from the beast's armor was.

The beast attacked again, never once revealing a weakness. That was its tactics. By attacking with a rolling motion, it always kept its soft belly hidden. There were only a few species that were able to deal with the attack and defense combo of the Purple Devil Hedgehog.

Unfortunately for it, human cultivators and their weapons were one such species.

The second time around, Shin Sumi met the attack with her sword. A vertical blow powered by all her strength completely crushed a dozen spikes before ripping the skin open underneath.

The hedgehog cried with a high pitched sound that resembled a whistle.

Shin Sumi's sword didn't cut, it crushed. The lower half of the beast had been turned into a bloody pulp. A mix of poison and blood started forming a dark pool under the unfurling creature.

Seeing how the meter long beast couldn't roll and hide, Shin Sumi was suddenly caught by the distress of the creature.

With a secondary blow, Shin Sumi decapitated the Purple Devil Hedgehog swiftly by crushing its neck.

The earth and leaves under its carcass were turning black and showing signs of rot by the effect of the poison.

Shin Sumi stood there, feeling her heart calm down to a normal rhythm again.

"This Purple Devil Hedgehog didn't ask for anything and yet I disturbed it to kill it."

Shin Sumi was frightened to realize that she actually didn't care that much. The mentality of cultivators was as such. Once again, the law of the strong had spoken.

The Gold Tyrant Flying Sword hummed imperceptibly for a second. Without her realizing, all the blood that covered its dull blade disappeared.

Shin Sumi put her sword away and kneeled near the dead creature. Using the dagger she had taken from the dead Chao Long, she carefully cut open the belly of the hedgehog.

A dark red crystal was there, reflecting a bloody light on her face.

"A beast core!" she gasped.

Shin Sumi knew what a beast core was thanks to what disciples had told her. She also knew it was the reason why the snakes in the dark chasm pounded on every animal that fell to their death.

It was the source of every spirit beast's strength. Comparable to a human cultivator's dantian, the beast core evolution showed how potent a spirit beast was.

With a dark red shine, Shin Sumi knew instantly that the Purple Devil Hedgehog was comparable in strength to a red robed disciple.

"It was so easy..." Shin Sumi thought. "Although I was surprised by the speed of the first attack. I have to be more careful and ready next time."

Pocketing her loot, she left, a hard look barring her face.

Training had just begun.

Deep in that part of the forest, no disciples other than Shin Sumi were present. If some had been, it would have been mindblowing for them to see a red robed young girl so far from the red border. The speed at which the young girl progressed was frightening.

After three days, Shin Sumi still hadn't rested, not even for a minute.

Relentless, she was seeking spirit beasts, slaying them with a unsurpassed efficiency every time, taking their beast cores before leaving in search for another prey.

She had found quite a few Purple Devil Hedgehogs, many Double Headed Frost Lizards but also some other kinds of creatures she didn't know the name of, like a strange species of vines with eyes on the leaves.

The vines were harder to crush than the beasts and she had almost been trapped in their entangled embrace more than once.

She had still found diamond shaped crystals with an orange tint inside their main trunk, proving that they were beasts.

In fact, the further Shin Sumi advanced in the forest, the less red beast cores she found, slowly replaced by orange ones, sometimes even bordering on yellow. These were definitely harder to fight and always took quite a toll on Shin Sumi's stamina.

But nevertheless, the more she fought, the more she found herself able to endure and keep pushing.

When her limit finally started to show, without recklessness, Shin Sumi didn't continue her way into the depth of the forest, instead opting for a temporary retreat in the dark chasm.

As soon as she arrived at her Yin type spirit plants farm, she slumped into the cold waters of the pool by the waterfall.

Exhausted, she realized that for the first time she had actually used all of her energy. The feeling wasn't uncomfortable though. For once, all of her training for the past year seemed to have paid off when she thought about how many beasts comparable to orange level disciples she had fought in a row.

In fact Shin Sumi now knew she had somehow got from being a talentless mortal to a pretty decent cultivator.

Without letting it get to her head, she knew it was all due to the mysterious grey nut that had accompanied her along the way.

The nut was currently digesting all the beast cores Shin Sumi had fed it. Shin Sumi waited for the twelve hours to pass, eating a stalk of Night Dragon Vine that she had left in the middle of her farm the last time she had harvested her crops.

"Beast cores are like spirit stones. The higher the ranking of the beast, the higher the grade. To maximize the effect, it has to be refined. Thankfully the little nut seemed excited to absorb them."

"It is the first time I fed it beast cores though. I wonder what effect the nut will have on them."

Now that she was in a calm environment and not battling spirit beasts, her mind roamed free, excited about the days of training to come.

The twelve hours weren't finished yet when an intuition hit Shin Sumi, coming from nowhere.

In one move she grabbed the nut, sending a sliver of divine sense into it to prompt it to turn into a book.

The nut disappeared in a grey vortex, the rough bark-like cover of the book now resting on Shin Sumi's fingers.

She flipped the pages distractedly. It was easy, there were only a few pages that weren't blank. Or so it should have been.

Under Shin Sumi's fingers, new information was slowly being written. With every passing second, characters appeared from the depth of the leaf pages.

"Purple Devil Hedgehog" she read. Then on another page "Double Headed Frost Lizard", then "Thousand Eyed Vines" and many others.

There was one new page for every species of beast Shin Sumi had encountered. Or more precisely for every core the little nut was digesting.

Shin Sumi was lost in contemplation. It was the first time the nut book had done something like that. When she had fed it spirit plants seeds for example, nothing of the sort had happened.

Every page was complete with a description of the species, and its level according to its age and how to recognize it.

"The first Purple Devil Hedgehog I fought was only between ten and fifteen years old..."

The most interesting thing was that every page contained the beast's weakness. Shin Sumi read it absentmindedly though.

Thinking about it, she didn't actually find it that useful.

"What good is it if I can only learn of its weakness after I already obtained its core?"

The twelve hours were coming to an end when Shin Sumi was reading the page about a kind of spirit squirrel whose tail always seemed to be on fire.

Suddenly, a picture of the beast core she had obtained from the Red Eyes Flaming Squirrel appeared on the page.

"That image... Why does it look so vivid?" Shin Sumi asked herself. The image in the book was definitely only an image. But still...

Shin Sumi unconsciously reached for it with the tips of her fingers. When they made contact with the leaf, a warm sensation left the book and coursed through her digits.

Taking her hand back, a beast core was there. She had actually taken it from the picture!

Now the picture of the core was gone. Shin Sumi observed the red gem in her hand for a while. It was definitely the same core she had actually looted from the squirell's corpse.

The only difference was that although its purity seemed about the same, the color had changed from a dark red to a red bordering on orange.

"The grade has changed! The core is now of a higher level! So the nut did refine it. It is strange though, I remember giving the nut the beast cores in a different order."

Whenever Shin Sumi had refined seeds and spirit stones thanks to the nut, they would always come out twelve hours later exactly and in the same order.

Flipping through the pages, Shin Sumi now realized what was going on.

"Every core is there, on the corresponding page!"

Shin Sumi tried taking the picture of the Purple Devil Hedgehog core. Again, the warm sensation pulled the core out of the image. The difference this time was that a different picture had taken its place.

"They are all stocked here! How does it work?"

Shin Sumi's curious nature had taken over. She had to try different things in order to understand. Turning the book back into a nut, she constated that no cores came out. Opening the book again, the cores were displayed on the pages.

Only if she sent a divine sense instruction to the nut would it give her cores in nut form.

Shin Sumi wondered if it was only possible to do that with beast cores, and why.

After she had progressively taken out all the refined cores, she found herself still full of questions but with no way of experimenting. She had to find new cores!

Calming her excited breathing, Shin Sumi forced herself to calm down first.

"Each thing in its own time. First, I need to cultivate."

Shin Sumi couldn't forget about the original purpose of her training. To get stronger. Her cultivation level was good, she already had a dozen Shinsoo passageways opened, but that was far from enough.

Using the refined beast cores as spirit stones, Shin Sumi cultivated cross-legged next to the waterfall for over a day. The nut's refining had dramatically increased the quantity of Shinsoo contained in each core, but the quality was still lacking somehow.

Shin Sumi had to use the Flowing Shinsoo breathing technique to get rid of the impurities in the cores before letting her dantian absorb it completely.

The technique having come from the evolved version of the Shinsoo Gathering Manual, it was certainly flawless.

Although it took a certain amount of time with each core to purify it, in the end Shin Sumi found herself cultivating with resources comparable to high grade spirit stones.

"I don't have many spirit stones, only enough for two, maybe three attempts at passageway openings. But with the cores, maybe I can open all sixty-four within a month!"

When she finally felt her dantian full to the brim with Shinsoo, Shin Sumi didn't hesitate for long. Tuning her breathing to the pulsing of her dantian, she once again tried to break through the blocked passageways.

This time, Shin Sumi's energy completely depleted after reaching the twentieth door.

"Two thirds of the thirty Primal Doors are down" she said gritting her teeth when she opened her eyes again, "Ten more and then I will be able to begin breaching the twenty-four Outer Doors."

She didn't stabilize her energy levels yet just after her breakthrough this time. Forcing herself for the sake of her training, Shin Sumi made her dantian pulse, pursuing her Shinsoo Gathering without remaining in a meditation posture.

Little did she know, but most disciples were unable to cultivate the slightest bit while doing something else before reaching the Liquid Realm.

Once again, Shin Sumi had unknowingly surpassed all possible expectations.

Progressively getting used to the ambient flow of Shinsoo being gathered, Shin Sumi left the tranquility of the dark ravine for the intimidating forest and its many spirit beasts and dangers.

One thing was on Shin Sumi's mind other than the beast cores and the Shinsoo openings.

"I need to achieve balance with the Gold Tyrant Flying Sword."

What she meant by that, only she knew.