Gaius left the Exchange after purchasing some food for Nakama and another set of raw materials, the Stellar Core hidden under his clothes. Although his purchase of the Engine wouldn’t be secret for long, Gaius wasn’t keen on flaunting anything that had profound improvements on his ability to survive.

No one had noticed him leaving from the interior of the Exchange, since the outer area of the Exchange was filled with Harvesters dumping gems inside the chutes, while exchanging random bits of information.

But it seemed that the purchase of the Stellar Core had not gone unnoticed. Whispers and murmurs about its sudden disappearance had permeated the general exchange area, and many people were beginning to make plans to flush out the buyer. The young lecturer could understand why these people were so desperate.

At the Exchange, before he left the interior, the old man had explained the reason to him. No one, ever since the founding of the Heritage Basestation, had ever managed to stockpile over sixty thousand points before, due to the ongoing need for supplies, resources and artefacts. And yet, someone had just brought the Stellar Core, valued at over a hundred thousand.

People wanted to know how someone managed to earn that much. It wasn’t so much of jealousy, but rather, a matter of life and death. Resources, supplies and artefacts were instrumental to staying alive in Heritage. Gaius’ feat of killing hundreds of snowpyres wasn’t something that anyone could replicate, and indeed, snowpyres were generally avoided by the average Harvester.

Gaius could only reflect on how fortunate he was to attract the attention of the old man inside as he plodded through the snow. Nodding at the sentries he passed by, Gaius soon made his way to his tent. He smiled at the snow sculptures that dotted the surroundings of his tent, and then pushed open the flap.

As expected, Nakama wasn’t inside. She was undergoing treatment by a combined team of other lecturers, to remove the seal on her beast trait. A pang of loneliness jolted Gaius.

While in Heritage, he had sometimes worried about the little girl. Was she eating well? Did she manage to sleep? Were the sentries going to bully her?

Questions like this would plague Gaius whenever he was pulling his knife out of a snowpyre corpse. It couldn’t be helped, and it was also a weakness that Gaius didn’t mind having so much. After all, his mind was no longer as staid as his previous one had been, even if he had experiences from a past life.

He welcomed those interruptions. It was, after all, something that made him feel distinctively more alive.

Gaius poked at the Stellar Core on his neck. From what he could tell of it, it was an item uniquely suitable to him. The other Engines were more offensively aligned; one of them allowed the user to breathe out fire, for instance.

But Gaius wanted to survive, first and foremost. The Stellar Core granted him mobility, evasiveness and most importantly, a degree of adaptability towards hostile environments. In fact, the wintry chill that affected everyone in Heritage Basestation was no longer felt by him. It felt like autumn to him, where the sun was blocked by a bunch of puffy clouds. Gaius just needed to close his eyes and make some chirping sounds for him to imagine that it was autumn.

And finally, the most important part about any Engine was that it could amplify the power of Qi and other mystical energies like ether, when used by the user. The level of amplification varied across Engines, but the Stellar Cores was in a tier of its own.

But Gaius didn’t really find that impressive. He’d killed the snowpyres by relying on his body, combat technique and combat sense.

He sat down on his bed, which had been neatly folded by undoubtedly Nakama, and then tore one of the medicinal packages open to reveal some brown and green sludge. A pungent smell entered his nostrils, but without any hesitation, Gaius swallowed the slime.

Heat ran down his throat, and within a matter of seconds, what felt like red ants biting him all over assailed his nerves. Gaius blotted out the pain and looked at the package.

The trip to the Exchange, other than the Stellar Core, had been rather fruitful. Gaius had brought over thirty different types of body-strengthening medicine, targeted that improving the durability of his body and his stamina.

Of course, Gaius was buying them based on a near-blind faith in the quality of Heritage Basestation’s products. It wasn’t as though as he could use those Exchange points elsewhere, so even if he had doubts about their effectiveness, these doubts had no way of materialising into action, short of Gaius beating up the person selling these medicines.

Fortunately, the first of these medicines were effective on him. There were just twenty-nine to go, which he would take every hour. After checking through his body again, Gaius took a deep breath and begun cultivating.

He hadn’t had a chance to do so for half a week.

As ether from the surroundings rushed into his lungs, his inwards heated up, and the energy rushing through his windpipe scattered into Gaius’ body, diving into nearby tissue to strengthen them.

This…Gaius was perplexed. He breathed in again, only for the same result to occur. What’s going on?

The mantra ran through his mind once more. Flood the throat with the energies of the heavens; temper the guts with a searing flame. Shatter the blockage of the heart with a decisive blow; soar to the skies with a single step.

A searing flame…Gaius frowned. Did it refer to the sudden rise in temperature when he breathed in? Was there not supposed to be some phenomenon that occurred if he was indeed ready to proceed on to the next step of the mantra?

He rubbed his nose, feeling rather helpless. The way that the other Harvesters cultivated was using the mantra incrementally; instead of forcing the refined ether back to the throat, they would channel it to their stomach and eventually the digestive system.

Something had gone wrong somewhere.

Very wrong.

Gaius decided to check if there were other mantras for cultivation the next time he had points, and to subtly check with the other lecturers. For now, he would just try to cultivate by breathing in as much ether as possible.

It was fortunate that his flawed way still had some meagre effect on his body, at least.