Ivor sunk into thought. Huh… I guess I should have a Dao name. What should it be? Oh, I thought of a good one. If Daoist Silkpants is valid, this one should be. “I’m Daoist Endless Treasury. Nice to meet you.”

Silkpants seemed to ponder Ivor’s Dao name for a while before replying. “It seems like it could be a fine name, if your whole schtick is related to treasures. You know, I’ve always thought it was weird for cultivators to say schtick ever since I got into this whole thing, but it’s considered acceptable by the higher-ups in the sect, so it’s probably fine.”

Ivor let out a light chuckle. “Schtick is quite an amusing word. Insight into it might provide a greater insight into the Dao of societies, although I wouldn’t know. So, can I have the job?”

“Of course you can, Daoist… should I call you Daoist Endless, Daoist Treasury, or use your full Dao name?”

Ivor had been thinking that his Dao name might have been too long to use casually, but he knew what he wanted it to be when shortened. “Call me Daoist Treasury.”

Silkpants nodded. “Daoist Treasury then. Anyways, Treasury, this is a pretty difficult mission. I don’t doubt that you can handle it, but it might take a long time.”

Silkpants reached for the hunting section and pulled a job off before showing it to Ivor. “I would recommend hunting down some feralfangs, extremely aggressive peak qi attunement dogs that form packs. They have a decent cultivation, but no innate abilities. You get a pill for each body you bring back, two if it’s in mint condition, and you can take one body part from each kill. If you kill an alpha, that alone is worth three pills, a relic made with a body part of the alpha, and a contribution token, which you can spend at the contributions shop to get anything from the personal guidance of an elder to a try at the treasure trials. Although, a pass for the trials costs a full five tokens.”

Ivor’s heart had begun to beat rapidly. The treasure trials… if I try those again when I’m stronger, I can probably get way better stuff. At that point, a wave of calmness swept through him. What I need is the energy pills. Those dogs hunt in packs, but I can take them out with my poison breath. Sadly, that mission has a 2-day time limit, far shorter than the 5-day time limit of the harmonic lily gathering job. So all I need to know is… “Can I take the flower mission and the feralfang hunting mission together?”

Silkpants grinned with a gleam in his eye. “Good question. If you had taken the feralfang mission on its own, you would need to do it in two days, so attrition wouldn’t have been very effective, but now you just need to accomplish both missions within five days. Still a difficult task, but you’ll get more rewards.”

Ivor snatched the harmonic lily gathering and feralfang hunting jobs up and jogged out of the building, the district, and the city itself. What he saw was… horrific. The inside of the city was full of traditional asian buildings, mats, roads, and the like, but it was small, with only a tenth of the population center within it. The rest were in the slums outside the hastily constructed wall. Shacks made of sticks and metal sheeting lined the wall of the city, and Ivor left the city at just the right moment to see a girl of no older than eight biting the jugular of a squirrel. Ivor felt her cultivation rise a little, as the squirrel was in qi attunement, which fueled the girl’s cultivation. When she saw him, she scampered away with the squirrel.

Ivor was mortified, his emotions almost overpowering his logic. “How did this develop? Did the sect fuel this? A disciple? Who created this damned culture? I bet some of these people are cannibals. I need to report this to the sect - wait, they might already know. That could get me targeted by someone high up. I have six days until the beast tide, but five are for the mission and hopefully raising my cultivation. I’ll do all that as quickly as possible, then, before I try to fix this. Although, I guess there’s one thing I can do now.”

Ivor inhaled deeply before letting out a “HEY, YOU ALL! IF ANY ONE OF YOU IS A CANNIBAL, I’LL END YOUR LIFE AFTER THE BEAST TIDE, BUT IF YOU STOP NOW, I’LL MAKE YOUR DEATHS QUICK!”

His words reverberated through the slums, the qi he had unconsciously laced into them allowing them to reach through most of the slums, although not through the warded city walls. Most of the people around Ivor began to cower, but one man stood up. He was an 8-foot giant that smelled of urine, and he stomped towards Ivor towering over the plaza. It was a terrifying sight to most onlookers, but Ivor was unfazed.

“I guess you’re a cannibal? I really didn’t expect one to just offer themself up to me. Heck, I didn’t even know there were any, it was just a deduction! Ah well, I guess you can die.”

The giant spoke in a low-pitched drawling voice. “Yeah, I am a cannibal, and a strong one at that. You’re a sect disciple, huh? I’ve killed a few of you, the morons who tried to come out before hitting peak qi attunement. The toll to get by is an energy pill. I was going to let you off, since you look like you’ve hit peak qi attunement and I didn’t want to go to the trouble of fighting you, but now I have to, don’t I? It’ll be your greatest honor in life to be killed by Big Stain. They call me Big Stain because that’s what remains of those who oppose me.”

The cannibal, who was apparently known as Big Stain, threw a right hook at Ivor, five times faster and stronger than anything a normal boxer could throw. Unfortunately for him, Ivor was significantly more powerful than anything Big Stain could throw. Ivor leaned to the side to dodge the monstrously powerful fist and kneed Big Stain in the gut, sending him to his knees while he coughed up blood. Ivor snorted as he looked down on Big Stain. “Big Stain? Please, you’re nothing but a shitstain.”

Ivor turned to address the terrified onlookers. “Hey, you all. You shouldn’t have to eat living things to increase your cultivation, and you should never eat other cultivators. Even if you don’t have any special talents, you can become a service disciple by getting a recommendation or by reaching peak qi attunement. Work hard and cultivate the qi around here. You should be able to feel it, like the stuff that enters you when you eat animals.”

Ivor knelt down and reached into Big Stain’s pouch, crusted over in dirt just like nearly all the cloth in the slums, and pulled out two pills, which he promptly popped in his mouth. Ah, I’m finally going to be able to complete my lung meridian and move onto something else. “I just took two of these pills for myself, but there are three left. He didn’t use them because he didn’t know how to open his meridians, but you can eat them to help with your qi attunement. I’ll give a recommendation to the person with the highest cultivation when I get back. You’re lucky to get this chance - if I recommend you, you’ll be a full service disciple, not a trainee service disciple like the people who won the lottery to join the sect. You won’t just get an energy pill a week, you’ll get one every day.”

Ivor walked away from the pouch, sparing a parting glance for a young girl with long, brown hair stained by so much dirt it looked black; she was the girl Ivor saw eat a squirrel. He left three pills in the pouch and said all that to test her; she was the youngest kid he’d seen trying to cultivate by eating things alive instead of foraging for berries and remaining stagnant, like the rest of the kids and most of the adults too, so he thought she might have some potential, and decided to leave the pills to help nurture her. He had a feeling that it would work out, a powerful feeling; some would even call it a guiding feeling.