“Unnnhhh”

Bao Gang let out a moan as he became conscious once again.

“About time, you’ve been sleeping for 4 days since I arrived.”

The cultivator which had previously been so dirty had become clean, showing the cultivator to be a woman with a long, narrow, pockmarked face, with a slightly chubby midsection.

“About 7 days ago, while healing some injuries inflicted by a strong demonic beast, I realized that the spiritual energy on the planet had dropped drastically, so using a special tool, I measured the direction toward which the spiritual energy flowed, and saw an encirclement of demonic beasts. Sadly, they saw me as well, and I was chased away. I can’t believe that I ran for 24 hours straight in order to find a treasure, and in the end, demonic beasts had gotten to it first. I was chased away and buried myself in a mound of dirt in order to stay hidden. I had to hold my breath for 20 minutes at a time, only coming up to the surface of the mound for a breath when I needed to to stay conscious, because I didn’t want to alert any beasts of my presence. I had to stay like that for 2 days until my injuries healed!”

The woman started off talking softly, but by the end was out of breath and speaking in a loud voice. The cultivator must have harbored some grudges against the demonic beasts for making her hide in a mound of mud for 2 days. After all, women have a strong urge to keep themself clean.

“How about you? Your injuries looked to have been pretty serious, judging from the scars which I saw when I arrived.”

Bao Gang, after finding out she had been looking for the treasure which attracted spiritual energy, did not want to tell her that he had been the one absorbing all the spiritual energy.

“Yeah, I was in the same situation as you.”

“You also have a device to detect the movement of spiritual energy? How come I didn’t see it on you. Do you have a spatial ring?”

All of a sudden, the greed once again flared up in her eyes. The seemingly innocent questions is a thorny net of traps at a closer look.

“Lady, I don’t have such a tool, but what’s a spatial ring? I was just walking and saw the encirclement and decided to take a look”

He put on his most innocent, confused smile. This made the woman think twice, “But if he had a spatial ring, I would have felt it on him when I searched him”

Seeing that the woman’s suspicions had dropped, Bao Gang quickly changed the topic. Pointing at the tiger corpse, he asked,

“I’m injured, so I can’t move, but could you cook the tiger for me? I’m very hungry!”

As if to support him, his stomach let out a growl.

Laughing, the woman looked cautiously at Xiao Gou Shi who was sitting nearby, watching the two of them carefully. Well, watching the woman carefully.

The lizard gave a nod of consent. To explain this weird glance the woman said,

“Your contracted pet didn’t allow me to touch the tiger at all. I had to hunt for my own food for these past few days. All he allowed me to do is feed you medicinal pills.”

Feeling too hungry to ask about contracted beasts and medicinal pills, he just concentrated on his hungry stomach.

Xiao Gou Shi crawled over to Bao Gang, crawling up his head until he reached his forehead, then pressed his snout to the space between Bao Gang’s brows repeatedly.

Realizing that Xiao Gou Shi wanted him to look at something in his soul sea, he remembered that he had not yet taken a look at the second cultivation jade slip.

He quickly began to skim it, noticing the bold name of the cultivation method, “Digesting Heaven and Earth.” This cultivation slip is a body cultivation slip. As he read through it, Bao Gang became more and more impressed with the author of this cultivation method. It detailed a method through which a cultivator could cultivate their body through consuming other cultivators. It would use the spiritual energy and laws stored in the body in order to cultivate the body of the consumer. This would continue almost infinitely, only limited by the cultivation of the animal being consumed and the amount of it!

While this seemed like a heaven-defying method to grow strong at a quick pace, Bao Gang pledged to himself not to eat humanoid cultivators. Just the thought of it made him queasy beyond compare.

Now he understood why the woman was not allowed to eat the tiger. If she did so, Bao Gang would be losing cultivation resources! For her, it would just be a meal with minimal benefits, as she did not know how to completely digest the animal, but for Bao Gang, it would raise his body cultivation to the same stage as the animal’s!

As the woman cut meat off the tiger, she cracked open a bone on accident. Golden marrow poured out onto her hand, and she felt jealousy towards Bao Gang. The marrow would turn the meal from a tasty one, to a mouthwateringly savory dish. Additionally, the beast core of a golden marrow stage beast could sell for a large sum of money back at her sect. This gave rise to thought.

“Hey little buddy, how did you kill this animal, it is a golden marrow stage cultivator, while you are only at the peak of strengthened muscle?”

The woman cultivator could kill such beasts herself, but she had not seen any at the golden marrow stage recently, which is why she was jealous of Bao Gang. She had felt his tendons while tending to him, so she knew he had not yet reached the realm of steel tendons. Having frayed tendons is a common consequence of overusing your muscles but not having steel tendons yet.

Of course, Bao Gang could not say he killed it, and seeing the way she looked at Xiao Gou Shi, did not want to alert her to their true abilities. She could not cover up her greedy look whenever she saw the lizard, and Bao Gang had noticed that she looked at the lizard differently even during an innocent interaction like her asking for permission to cut the tiger.

“We saw it had already been killed and beast core removed. We just wanted to eat a good meal, so we took it, and were chased away by beasts in the process.”

The woman once again lowered her guard, not believing such a young child would be skilled at scheming. Little did she know that the seemingly young child was an old beast who had lived thousands of times longer than her! Of course, she knew that low-level cultivators would find immense benefits from eating the corpse of a high ranking cultivator, even breaking through a stage would not be considered a stretch. Humans could not completely digest beasts, but would be able to digest them slightly. However, the benefits from this type of action would decrease as cultivation level became more profound, and would lead to a buildup of demonic qi which would cause later bottlenecks and qi deviation, which would threaten to drive the cultivator to insanity. For this reason, eating unrefined demonic beasts was seen as the action of the poor, and refining a demonic beast to remove demonic qi and impurities would only be done at big sects for their genius disciples, as it would be very costly. While she knew this, she did not yet know how much of benefit it would give Bao Gang who could completely devour the cultivation of a cultivator, leaving no demonic qi as a danger to future cultivation.

After roasting the tiger, the woman made a stew with it and some assorted vegetables, and gave Bao Gang a bowl of it to eat. When she tried to eat it however, she was once again met with a hiss from Xiao Gou Shi.

While not poor, she also wanted to eat the demonic beast as it might further her cultivation, plus as long as she did not eat it too often , it would not endanger her, as she had little to no hope of reaching the xiantian realm

While taking a spoonful of the rich, aromatic stew, Bao Gang began to cultivate according to the cultivation method, and once the stew slipped down his throat, he felt his dantian emit a pull towards the food.

Suddenly, a black cauldron floated out of his dantian into his stomach area, swallowing up the stew, and releasing a mysterious energy which began to temper his body. Apparently, the attraction came from the cauldron, instead of his dantian as he had thought. Feeling the obvious benefits to cultivating with this method, Bao Gang began to take gigantic spoonfuls of stew, almost inhaling it. The cauldron kept swallowing it up, and he began to feel himself enter the realm of steel tendons.

As the woman watched in amazement, the boy ate the entire stew himself, and even began to eat the extra tiger meat(after roasting it) and leftover golden marrow which she had planned to save for the next meal.

“Where does the food even go?” she thought secretly. With the volume of food he had eaten, his stomach should have been bulging obscenely!

The noise he made while breaking into a new realm was camouflaged by the sound of him eating and utensils clattering, as the sound of popping and cracking would not be very loud to begin with.

At the end of the meal, Bao Gang had firmly reached the peak of the steel tendons realm. With an added measure of protection he slept soundly. Not worried about a sneak attack as she had ample opportunity to do so while he was still unconscious, and without anxiety about the future. After all, even though she had not mentioned her cultivation realm, it would not be higher than upgraded brain, as she would have been able to use her spiritual sense to tell that it was him in the middle of the encirclement of demonic beasts. As long as he was given a few minutes of secrecy, he would also be able to break through to fight her at equal footing, at least concerning cultivation realm.