With thoughts lingering on the proverbial blue-balls he's going to suffer from in the future because of the System and how he should just focus on cultivation instead, Herman did his best to avoid participating in the conversation between the two ladies. He obviously failed due to Lan Yue's extrovert personality, but he did manage to keep his words to a minimum.

He was worried that anything that he might say would be wrongly interpreted by this Celeste chick and worsen her impression of him. Since the invitation for the bubbly and chatty girl was extended, he couldn't just kick her out all of a sudden since it would be counterproductive in more than one way, so all he could do was wait for her to get everything out of her system. Three hours later, even Celeste showed signs of becoming tired and her smile didn't look as professional as it was in the beginning.

"To think that a hefty Half-Immortal cultivator would be brought to tears by a Nascent Soul loudmouth. If I was to tell this to anyone else, they would think I turned crazy... Oh, crap!"

To his most misfortune, Celeste caught him smirking and most probably assumed that he was enjoying her suffering. Which he was... but she didn't need to find that out, or he would be a goner! But... how to get rid of the girl in a nice manner that wouldn't upset her or offend Celeste?

There was still that which he could use, wasn't it?

[To think that big sister Celeste has visited so many places! I myself haven't left Mt. Taihang once in my entire life...](Lan Yue)

"If I may interrupt for a second miss Yue. With us disappearing both for such a long while, who knows what the others back at the sect would think..."

[Not about me, but about yourself! Isn't that right, 'big brother'? They might think that you coaxed me into coming to your Dwelling and spending the night. *Giggle*](Lan Yue)

"Miss Yue... it was you who insisted on following me here, weren't you?"

[Hehe! But it's only the two of us and Miss Celeste that knows that.](Lan Yue)

"*Sigh* Fine... What do you want in exchange?"

[I want to come here often and chat with big sister! Also, I don't want to leave just yet. I haven't even seen the entire building.](Lan Yue)

"I'm going to get kicked out of the sect for sure... Fine! Miss Celeste would grant you access so that you can come and go as you please. Also, Miss Celeste, grant her special permission to bring others here as well."

[Oh! You wanted me to go bring sis Ye and big sister Xinyan? Why didn't you say so from the beginning! Can we spend the night here? Please, please, please!](Lan Yue)

Feeling a headache brewing and starting to doubt his own mental capacity for picking this weird sect as his first choice, Herman looked pleadingly at Celeste. She was gloating at his misfortune just like he was doing just some seconds ago. He was lucky that she inferred that the other two names mentioned might be able to hold this chatter-box in check and therefore, decided to give him a helping hand.

[It wouldn't be a problem to prepare three small separate rooms or young master's main bedroom if all three of you want to sleep in the same bed. I can prepare one of the secondary chambers for young master. Also, we have a hot spring behind the pavilion that can be enjoyed at night.](Celeste)

[Is that true!? Oh, wow! Big sis Xinyan would go crazy when she finds out. She and Sect Master love hot springs! I will go now and bring the other two.](Lan Yue)

"Okay! Miss Celeste, if you'd please."

[I already made the adjustments required for Miss Yue. She only needs to ask for the System to open the portal back when she's ready to return.](Celeste)

"Thank you."

[Okay, I'm going! No need to see me off. I'll be back in a couple of hours. That way you should have enough time to discuss whatever you want to, but after that, big sis Celeste is all mine for the night.](Lan Yue)

"..."

[...](Celeste)

Looking at the quickly departing figure, Herman turned around and looked at his housekeeper and expressed his condolences. He would love to help, but he might get caught in the crossfire, thing that sounded worse than having to wrestle food out of a dragon's mouth. That lass Lan Yue was also scarily diabolical. She noticed that he and Celeste needed to talk, but she made sure to annoy the shit out of her first and only then left after he extorted some more benefits from him. Women were much scarier than men! That's for certain.

And now, he still had to deal with one of the scariest.

"Now that we're all alone Miss Celeste, do you mind me asking how the hell did a Half-Immortal - or higher - became a Qi Gathering realm cultivator's housekeeper? I get the whole 'Immortal' in the name of the position, but I honestly doubt that every housekeeper is similarly strong... At least I hope so..."

[You assume correctly, 'young master'. Long story short, I played a prank on an admin friend a while back and this is his way of paying me back. Wait! Did you say 'Qi Gathering'!?](Celeste)

"*Sigh* From my knowledge, you get to see my attribute panel before agreeing to the job. You didn't even bother looking at it?"

[There were... special circumstances. This 'friend' of mine selected a random request for me and said it would be a surprise. That bastard! He knew that I needed someone at least at the Profound Immortal realm so I can at least learn something from him. No offense, but I doubt there's anything I can learn from you...](Celeste)

"I see. Don't you have like a 30-days trial with a 'take it or leave it' option? You can stick by for a month and then leave for someone else."

[...](Celeste)

Seeing her wry smile, Herman started sweating profusely. This woman couldn't have...

"You didn't waive the trial period by any chance, did you?"

[How the hell was I supposed to know that I would get stuck with someone at a lower cultivation realm than myself!? How the heck does that even make sense!? I'm at Half-Immortal X and I couldn't think of any situation in which THIS would happen!](Celeste)

"Easy there, Miss Celeste! You're going to destroy the furniture. While I do have the money to replace it, it would still be you who has to clean it up..."

[!!!](Celeste)

Seeing how there was mist coming from all around her and the piercing glare, Herman realized that his joke might've been inappropriate. But he wasn't at fault, okay!? He was expecting, at best, a Foundation realm cultivator as a housekeeper and by no chance someone that could easily destroy twenty to thirty Basic Rank sects in a day. However, when the System gives you lemons...

"From my limited knowledge, there are two ways in which you can get out of this: firstly, if I mistreat you so badly that the System deems me unfit to keep you in my services and secondly..."

[...if I sign a master-servant contract. Don't even think about it! Who knows how many millennia would I have to wait for you to ascend. Eh!? Wait! Are you one of the newbie recruits from the primordial worlds?](Celeste)

"Yup."

[And you afforded a permanent hire for the Immortal Housekeeper? Not only that but also a space-sealed Dwelling as well? I checked the Spiritual Mountain a couple of hours ago and its actual location and territory it spans over it's amazingly large. How much did you pay for it?](Celeste)

Going back to the four resources Herman gained from the System's rewards and the redeem codes, the same four could be acquired from the Spiritual Mountain in a Dwelling as well. To be more precise, Dwellings are built usually around mountains that can generate the said goods. The mountain visible from the living room they were in through the window, wasn't the actual Spiritual Mountain, but more of a 'decoration'. The real deal was back on the ground on a territory on Heavens-know which planet. In order to mine for Spirit Stone, chop wood and turn it into Wood Essence or having to mine iron and turn it into Iron Essence as well, the owner had to hire apprentices that would settle in the said mountain and harvest them on a daily basis. For Food Rations, there were more options as the apprentices could farm, fish, hunt, and gather wild fruits or vegetables, but there would still be the cost of hiring them and their monthly salaries.

Luckily, the System was the one doing the conversion of wood to Wood Essence and the other way around, as the apprentices would only turn in their quotas on a weekly basis and the System would do the rest by accepting everything gathered into its own storage. That way, a cultivator like Herman wouldn't have to use 50 logs and 100 pieces of iron in order to upgrade his Qi gathering array and instead draw it from an already prepared place. While Herman could draw the Qi essence from both wood and iron, that's A LOT of time wasted on a meritless task.

And at the moment he had other things to worry about. Like, getting out alive from this sticky situation. The best way he could think of was to impress the woman with his ridiculous amount of money -a.k.a. Spirit Jade - if he was going to get stuck with her.

"600 Spirit Jade. I think it would be best to take a look at my Attribute panel first and we can continue our conversation after. Here!"

[Understood. Let me see... Oh!? How the heck do you have so many titles!? Didn't you say you were one of the newbies? Inspector for 300 years, Censor, and Realm Oracle!? Didn't the last require territory that the System would acknowledge as being sufficient? Were you a prince or something back on your world?](Celeste)

"Just a lucky entrepreneur."

[Oh, yeah? Then what about those ridiculous attributes of yours? They easily match a late-stage Gold Core cultivator. It says that you've been cultivating for only two days as well. Are all people from your world as monstrous as you are?](Celeste)

"Nah... some are much scarier."

[You!!! *Sigh* Very well, you've made your point. What now? You can't expect me to actually clean this place, do you?](Celeste)

"Why not? With the Primordial Qi thinned everywhere in the Immortal World and this place having a concentration of about 6-7% thicker, it would be the perfect place to quietly cultivate. As for cleaning, please! You could use an avatar to do chores like that. What I need you for it would be to oversee the recruitment of apprentices and good candidates for the Equipment Room and the Alchemy furnace from time to time."

[So you want me to do what it would usually be your job? Why? What are you planning to do in the meantime?](Celeste)

"Cultivate. I entered the race for Heavens."

[Huh? And you think you have a chance?](Celeste)

"Hmm... I should be able to be among the first 100 to ascend."

[Pfft! For real? You? What's your cultivation level now? Eh!? How the f*ck are you at Qi Gathering V in just a day and a half!? The hell is wrong with you?](Celeste)

"..."

Taking his time to explain how he unknowingly entered a cultivation covenant with the woman that helped him through his first cultivation practice, even Celeste appeared to be impressed by his good luck. Obviously, Herman couldn't just tell her that he could initiate that covenant because he had plenty of experience in his past life...

[I assume your meridians are in disarray after that trick you pulled. Lucky or not, you shouldn't be able to attempt that for a while. Especially if your partner is in the Nascent Realm. You're lucky you didn't die...](Celeste)

"True. I won't be able to attempt anything like that for at least a month or two. I need to stabilize my foundations anyway, so it's not a bad thing either. Leaving that aside though, I need your opinion on something."

[Heh! Ask away, 'young master'...](Celeste)

"I have over 200.000 Spirit Stones, Wood Essence, and Iron Essence."

[The f*ck!? How!? Actually... nevermind. I guess I shouldn't be surprised anymore given how much SJ you used. They should be rewards right?](Celeste)

"Yup. Spirit Jade Tower."

[I guess that makes sense. I can see why you are confident about being among the first 100 to ascend. Did you already buy stuff from the Sutras Hall?](Celeste)

"I'm planning to do so in a bit. My question for you is actually related to that. What do you think I should do? Invest in upgrading my Qi gathering array to Level 50 first, or just get it to a point where I won't throw up because of long-range teleportation and focus on upgrading the facilities of the Spiritual Mountain?"

[I see. Investing in the facilities that would give you a passive gain instead of the one-time rewards, wouldn't be bad. However, there is something that you might not know about that would allow you to do both.](Celeste)

"Eh? What?"

[Achievements, duh! If you participate in the race for Heavens, the System adds these little things that reward you small amounts of resources. They are meant to help you grow at a quicker pace. That way you could, in theory, do both things at the same time.](Celeste)

"Right! How could I forget about the achievements! You're a genius, miss Celeste! That completely slipped my mind!"

[Wait, you knew about them? Did you ask the System questions? Crap! How much SJ did it trick you out off?](Celeste)

"Not that much. I realized how to ask the questions and inferred only some major things. For the finer details, I had to pay and did so only if I thought of it to be important."

[Uhm... Answer me honestly, how much SJ did you get when you opened your acupoints?](Celeste)

"...over 100.000."

[F*ck!](Celeste)

"...then when I came to the Immortal World yesterday, a group of twenty-something cultivators wanted to attack me. So, I betted with the System that I would win. It gave me odds of 3 to 1... I won!"

[...what realms were they at?](Celeste)

"22 at Foundation and another 2 at Gold Core. One of them was an avatar of an elder that's at Nascent Soul."

[...](Celeste)

The conversation was... going places. At least Herman thought so about it since the woman was getting more and more interested in how the hell did he get that much SJ. Her line of questioning was slightly chaotic, but he was sure that she was hooked. With someone to watch over and supervise the whole Dwelling, he could focus on cultivation only. While he exaggerated the amount of damage done to his meridian pathways after the cultivation covenant, it was true that he needed to fortify his foundations. Just jumping through levels would be akin to building a sandcastle on a beach with a low tide. When the high tide comes, your entire castle would vanish in the sea.

That's why it was important to cultivate actively as well and manually fortify areas that you think are important. For that, he needed to enter his spiritual world in a state of true nothingness and spread out the newly hardened Primordial Qi in the form of an actual globe. That way, he could enter the Foundation realm easier.

[Very well. I can watch over the recruitment of apprentices and help with the upgrades to the Spiritual Mountain facilities through my avatar, while I also cultivate. What do you want to do first?](Celeste)

"My Qi gathering array is currently at Level 10 and it says I need 303 Wood Essence and 606 Iron Essence to upgrade to the next level. I might as well take it all the way to 20 first and go from there. Once that's done, we can determine how many more levels do I want it up to and how much do we spend in the other facilities of the Spiritual Mountain."

[Then what are you waiting for? Go ahead. I will make us another pot of tea.](Celeste)

"Thank you. System, please calculate the costs for upgrading my Qi gathering array to Level 20."

Acknowledged!

For the requested upgrade, a total of 6.488 Wood Essence and 12.179 Iron Essence are required.

Would you like to proceed? Yes / No

"Yes."

The new capacity for storing Spiritual Qi after this upgrade reached 10.545 points, making him wonder if he should just go ahead with it until level 50 like he initially intended. The thing was... there was no time pressure on the resources and while the Spiritual Root upgrades would improve his attributes by a large amount, he wasn't sure if he wanted to go about it that way.

Anyway, there was another thing that he had to check on, now that one problem wasn't solved.

"System, bring up the Achievements sub-page."

Acknowledged!

Currently available rewards are the following:

1. Qi gathering array upgrades:

-Reach Level 2: reward 10 Wood Essence and 10 Iron Essence

-Reach Level 4: reward 30 Wood Essence and 30 Iron Essence

-Reach Level 6: reward 100 Wood Essence and 100 Iron Essence

-Reach Level 8: reward 1000 Wood Essence and 1000 Iron Essence

-Reach Level 16: reward 5000 Wood Essence and 5000 Iron Essence

2. Silk Casket gifts for your companions:

-Gift 2 caskets: reward 1 Silk Casket

-Gift 4 caskets: reward 2 Silk Casket

Would you like to redeem? Yes / No

"Yes. This is... weird. I already spent 7.492 Wood Essence and 14.186 Iron Essence, but I'm getting back about 6.140 of each back through the achievements handed out by the System. That's not bad actually..."

[So? How is it looking?](Celeste)

"I upgraded my Qi gathering array to Level 20 and claimed the achievement rewards."

[How much do you have left of each type of resource?](Celeste)

"I got... 283.648 Wood Essence, 248.254 Iron Essence, 138.000 Food Rations, and 217.300 Spirit Stones."

[...and here I thought that I mentally prepared myself for it. *Sigh* Anyway, you just came to the Immortal World so your Spiritual Qi didn't have much time to gather, but once you enter a proper bout of cultivation and come out months or years later, that little storage you have available will be long full. I think we should upgrade it first to around Level 64.](Celeste)

"64? Why that specific level?"

[Haven't you noticed? You got rewards for Level 4, then 6, then 8, and then 16. The next one will be Level 32, followed by level 64. The rewards should be getting better as well.](Celeste)

"Urgh... so that means that... *Sigh* My brain is not used to this much math. Haven't done this many calculations since highschool. System, calculate the resources needed to upgrade the Qi gathering array to Level 32."

Acknowledged!

Calculating...

[In the meantime, your guests are here. Would you like me to go greet them?](Celeste)

"Yes, please. I know this is not exactly what you've signed up for but we could make it work. Who knows... maybe it will work out for the best."

[*Sigh* Beggars can't be choosers and it's not like I have a choice in the matter, to begin with. What about you? Will you join us? I can prepare the master bedroom for all four of you.](Celeste)

"You... you do understand that I'm trying to convince them to sign a master-servant contract right?"

[Yup. And the fastest way to earn their trust is by bedding them.](Celeste)

"...no comment. I won't be joining you. I need to clear out my Inventory and account for all the things in it. As soon as I am done with that, I will deposit all resources that I won't use for my Qi gathering array in the Dwelling's warehouse. I will have to trouble you with entertaining the three girls for the night."

[It's fine. With all the cultivation I've done, I haven't had much time to enjoy chatting with any peers.](Celeste)

Seeing the resigned woman leave, he kept for himself the remark about peers needing to be on the same level and turned his attention to the messy Inventory. There were quite a lot of things in it and he would need to plan for each individual piece.