Chapter 48 - Family Dinner

‘Did this demonstration bore you by chance?’

While the third elder was answering the inner member’s questions, suddenly, a mental message came to Hei's mind.

It was the first time that someone else besides his mother or his sisters spoke to him in that way, and so he was slightly surprised that someone else's voice was ringing in his head, but he quickly recomposed himself.

The voice in question wasn’t entirely unfamiliar; it was the third elder’s voice who was continuing to provide answers as if nothing strange was happening. From this, Hei understood that the man in front of him had a remarkable ability to divide his attention into several things. He wasn't missing anything of what was happening in his surroundings.

Without further delaying thinking about why the third elder was contacting him, Hei replied calmly.

‘It doesn’t bore me at all. Instead, I was amazed, and I am curious to see the next pill’s procedure. It's just that I have no pertinent questions to ask at the moment. It is the first time I come into contact with the alchemical creation process. Having no experience, I don't know what questions to ask. However, I was able to follow everything described in your explanation, and in any case, I noted every single step and words.’

To this answer, the third elder’s eyes moved briefly to Hei and noticed that indeed the small snake in his arms was filling page after page of the notebook. It was a very curious scene, but at the time, he had no time to examine that curious creature, nor did he intend to. He had already been warned by the sect leader not to investigate the boy's identity and oddities.

'All right. The sect leader herself asked me to come and teach a lesson for you today, the same goes for the fifth elder for the formation class. If you had chosen blacksmithing, you would have found the fourth elder. It is a privilege that is granted to you only this time because of your potential. Whether you or your partner can take advantage of this opportunity depends only on you.’ The third elder explained calmly.

‘Can I ask the reason for this action? I am grateful to the sect leader and the elders for this opportunity, but I am interested in the reason.’

‘The reason is simple - we need you to get stronger as quickly as possible, that's all. More details will be given to you later. There is no reason why you should worry about it now. As you know, the sect leader has no bad intentions. She just wants you to be able to help with her business as soon as possible. For this reason, if you have decided to pursue secondary activities, we have decided to give you and Lian a taste of what a master is so that you can improve your skills more quickly. ’

Ending the conversation here, the third elder clapped his hands to indicate that the questions time was over and that the present inner members had to return to their seats for the continuation of the lesson. It caused a little discontent in them because they wanted to continue impressing the third elder, but they quickly recovered to the fact that the lesson wouldn’t be ended there.

Hei followed his other companions and decided not to continue to question beyond the man; after all, nothing would have changed if he had known the sect leader’s plans in detail right from the start. His goal wouldn’t have changed at all - he simply had to become stronger and overcome every challenge thrown at him.

The third elder then went on to explain the second-stage pill following the same explanation procedure he had used before for the first-stage pill. When he had finished explaining it and answering the following questions, it was time to end the lesson while the sunset was approaching outside.

The inner members in the classroom greeted the third elder by bowing their heads in respect and waited for him to leave before starting to talk to each other about the incredible occasion of that day.

Hei took advantage of this to sneak out of the classroom unseen. Fortunately, the general attention had settled on the third elder, and he was quickly forgotten by his fellow students, which was, on the contrary, a very welcomed thing to him since he didn’t like to have other people’s eyes on him.

With quick steps, he went to the classroom where Xing and Lian were, and after making sure they were alright, he took Lian by hand as Xing returned to his body and brought everyone out of the inner sect to the spiderweb house.

They arrived at their destination when the sunset was in the middle of its path. Outside the spiderweb house, waiting for them, was Bao Bei. She had been waiting outside for their arrival for some time by now.

In reality, Bao Bei, while trying to make an effort to fulfill her son's request, had woken up several times tormented during her afternoon nap. She had been wondering if she should have gone to sneak into the inner sect and ascertain her cubs' safety. But she managed to hold back her impulses and was able to resist until the end of the day.

When she saw Hei, Ye, Xing, and Lian returning unharmed and happy, the anxiety that was gripping her heart melted like snow in the sun, and an irrepressible joy enveloped her. Quickly, after increasing her size, she reached them and hugged them one by one, including Lian.

The four let her do it; they also were very happy about this show of affection. Although she wasn’t her daughter, Lian also didn’t mind that affectionate gesture. It had been a long time since she had been so warmly squeezed. She let herself enjoy the feeling that she was living, regardless of whether a big spider was hugging her instead of a human being.

After freeing them from her embrace, Bao Bei took them all to eat. Hei thanked Shui, the buffaloes, and the bees for guarding his mother. For the occasion, Hei proposed, therefore, to have dinner outdoors, and everyone went to work for the preparations.

In a short time, they took the wood necessary for a bonfire as well as fruits and flowers from the nearby forest that was once the beehive's home. Ye and Xing also managed to capture one rabbit each, and Hei showed off his skills as a butcher by removing the skin from the meat evenly, and with his mother, they began to prepare soup by dipping the rabbit meat together.

When it was finally ready, it was already evening, and under the stars’ radiance, humans, animals, and spirit beasts sat together to eat together as equals.

From the outside, it would undoubtedly have been considered as an absurd scene. After all, it was difficult for people to imagine eating surrounded by a herd of buffaloes and an entire hive while there were also snakes and spiders.

No one would want such disturbing and dangerous animals near them during such a vulnerable time as during meals. But for Hei, it wasn't strange at all. It was such an ordinary scene that it couldn't be more ordinary. Even Lian, who wasn’t born in the same circumstances as Hei, showed no aversion to being surrounded by all those living beings. She simply ate her soup calmly without showing any reaction.

"Thank you for agreeing to my request, mother, and sorry again."

At a certain point, Hei came out with those words as he shifted his attention to the nocturnal sky. Even though he had received his mother's consent, he couldn’t help feeling guilty, since he knew that this choice would make her worry. But it was a more bearable consequence than to make her tire and damage her health.

Bao Bei, who sensed that he must still be a bit down for what he had said before, answered to calm him down.

‘Don't worry, I've already told you it's okay. It's true that I didn't have a peaceful sleep this afternoon, but I trust you. Today, everything went well, and you all came back safe and sound; you just have to keep doing this. That’s all, okay? So don't worry about that anymore.’

Once she succeeded in calming her son, Bao Bei later made her cubs tell the details of the day since they were separated. Xing and Lian had received the fifth elder’s lesson. They had examined two formations - one for temperature control and one for regulating the intensity of the sun's rays, creating a kind of productive screen from excessive heat.

When Hei heard this, he was impressed. He didn’t know what formations there were or what types were usually the first to be taught, but it was certainly no coincidence that the fifth elder had explained such formations - those were indeed coveted formations for a plant grower.

Although he had a spirit vein, with rare flowers and plants, he had to pay more attention and care to the smallest details. If Xing and Lian learned these formations, he would have fewer worries in the future while planting flowers inside the greenhouse.

After Xing's story ended, Ye went on to talk about her day with Hei. Even though she had found it a bit boring at first, she wasn’t so disappointed in the end. The only thing was that she didn't like to have to memorize the name of each plant and other materials and their properties; fortunately, however, she could always ask her big brother.

When a few hours had passed, Bao Bei sent everyone to sleep as to rest in order to resume their activities the next day. For the occasion, however, she decided that they would all sleep outdoors as the temperature was pleasant enough. Just in case, she quickly created a large silk blanket with which she covered her children and Lian, and lay on the ground next to them with the buffaloes and bees that positioned themselves around them.

Since their alchemy and formation lessons didn’t happen every day, Hei didn’t return to the inner sect the next day. Having all his territory available, he could train there without having to go to the inner sect’s training grounds designed for the younger generation. Moreover, at the moment, his priority was to move to the third stage as soon as possible. Only then, he would be able to learn new techniques.

Not having to learn new techniques, he concentrated on improving what he already knew and on cultivating assiduously even with the help of the pills he had bought from the exchange center that increased his and Lian’s cultivation speed.

In about a month, he was able to move from the middle second stage to the beginning third stage. Thus, he passed from the stage of muscles to that of the organs. His speed could only be described as monstrous for the Rainbow Island's martial artists. But Hei was a reserved type and didn’t go to show off his new reached stage. The same went for Lian, who reached the third stage immediately like him.

In fact, besides going for alchemy and formations classes, they avoided going to the inner sect, preferring to stay at their home. In the eyes of the whole sect, especially the outer sect that desired that opportunity, their behavior was unbelievable. Still, by now, they had begun to cope with those couple’s weirdness.

During this month, in addition to increasing his strength, Hei also focused on his greenhouse project. At his mother's suggestion, Hei divided the greenhouse into two parts - in one, he would put rare but harmless flowers while in the other, he would plant poisonous flower seeds.

This decision was made because Bao Bei was laying the foundations for when Hei would reach the sixth stage. With the opening of the meridians and the discovery of their element, one had to convert their neutral spirit power into their innate element until it created in the martial artist’s body what was called an elemental seed.

Usually, it would have been almost impossible to know for sure one's future element. However, Hei had a bloodline, and therefore, he could maneuver two elements of which one was certainly poison that was the element of his bloodline.

During the elemental conversion process, the martial artist would gradually increase the percentage of the process’s completion. Once he reached eighty percent, he could try to break through to the next rank, the spirit soldier one.

Of course, the higher the amount of conversion percentage, the greater the chances of breaking into the next rank, and it would be less difficult learning one's element law. Unfortunately, the closer one got to the one hundred percent elemental conversion, the more difficult the conversion process would become.

In order to overcome this problem, various experiments were done throughout history, and it was discovered that by taking pills containing elemental properties of the specific element that one possessed, it was possible to accelerate and facilitate this process. Later, they also discovered other more effective methods, but since they represented more significant risks, taking pills remained the most common and safe one.

Thus, by crossing generations of poisonous flowers to increase their toxicity, Hei would later have to create a pill containing strong poisonous power. But if he wanted to absorb such a quantity of poison without deadly consequences, he had to improve his poison resistance. It was the reason why he had focused on reaching the third stage as soon as possible.

The organ stage strengthened the internal organs of a martial artist, endowing it with resistance to poisons and other common toxic substances. However, the poison of organisms containing spirit power couldn’t be neutralized by simply reaching the third stage, and one had to be subjected to a special and barbaric training to increase their resistance.

And it was precisely this brutal training that Hei would have to do after reaching the third stage - increasing his resistance to poison by taking on larger and larger quantities of poison.

‘You have reached the third stage, but you will need to train yourself to increase your poison resistance capacity. It isn’t only indispensable for when you reach the meridian stage, but also to learn the two detection techniques - spider hair and snake tongue.’ Bao Bei explained seriously.

As her son’s reached higher stages, the training he had to undergo would increase in intensity and brutality. Constantly absorbing poison was a painful process for a being not endowed with poison like humans. She hated having to hurt her son, but it was the only way to make him stronger as quickly as possible.

Hei had no resentment towards his mother, and even if the following training sessions were harder than the previous ones, he certainly wouldn't blame his mother for it. It was his decision to accept doing such training, and if he was to blame anyone, they were none other than himself.