Ivor left the slums behind, boldly striding out into the forest while pondering what meridian to open next. I should probably open the large intestine meridian, since it’s paired with the lung meridian. I guess I just have to… you know what, I’m just going to stop thinking about that until I have to actually do it.

Before Ivor knew it, a few minutes had passed. He found that intentionally not thinking about something could be quite difficult. At this point, Ivor detected a signal on his treasure radar significantly stronger than the sensation being emitted from the trees around him.

Ivor began to head towards the sensation, walking into a clearing with a large metal boulder in it. The boulder was made of black iron, a kind that seemed to suck in the viewer’s mind, not letting any light escape. Ivor was mesmerized, not paying attention to anything else in his surroundings, before he made one of the luckiest mistakes in his life - he stubbed his toe on a steel protrusion from the ground. The pain was nearly nonexistent, but it jogged Ivor out of his moronic stupor and let him see something below the rock: an outline of a mouth. All that was visible was a green rim, but it reminded Ivor of the giant venus fly traps that ate large swathes of people when they were teleported there; it was similar to those, but larger.

Ivor realized that he had been walking towards this thing. He was absolutely shocked, and realized his folly: lack of patience. It must have moved here to use this natural treasure while hunting. I almost walked right into it. I might have been able to escape, but there’s a good chance I would have died if I didn’t stub my toe. I have to be more careful in the future, or I’ll die to an ambush like this, or some other sort of foul play, being attacked while I’m defenseless. It would be a tragedy to die while breaking through to the peak of cultivation. Well, I guess I should think of a way to kill this plant now. Well, it seems immobile, and it seems like even if it could move, it would take a while, due to its current situation. Eh, I guess I’ll just poison it to death.

Ivor breathed out his poison, which was red this time. He thought it had something to do with the gas he breathed in. It didn’t exhaust him this time, which was curious, probably a result of filling his lung meridian. Ivor leaned on a tree and began to wait. Thirty minutes later, shrieks could be heard emitting from below the ground, before they suddenly came to a halt. The creature’s death throes were over. Ivor knelt down beside the creature, resisting the tug of the metal boulder on his mind that resumed when he approached it.

Small holes in the creature’s barely visible rim poking up above the ground were letting out a sort of white ichor. The creature had suffered from something like the plant version of internal hemorrhage. Ivor knew that normal plants didn’t suffer from ailments like that, but these were magic cultivator plants and he wasn’t in much of a mood to check his facts over an idle musing.

Ivor slowly tilted his head up until the rock was in his peripheral vision, not wanting to risk looking at it directly. “Now what could this be? It feels valuable, but I don’t think getting sucked into it would be very… oh fuck.”

Ivor realized that his field of vision had shrunk to include only the strange rock too late. That was when he heard a voice in his head. “Hello… child. I… am… Ilbarin, and I was a cultivator from eras past. This rock… contains… my inheritance, if you would like… to attempt its trial. Say yes within a minute if you want to attempt it. This isn’t my soul, merely a message I left, so that’s all I’ll… recognize.”

Ivor’s eyes opened just a little bit wider, although he didn’t lose his composure or anything severe like that. “Well shit. It’s an inheritance. Well, I’m just going to take a bit of a wild guess and assume that there was a preexisting civilization on this planet. I wonder if they’re like humans. The Hobo looked like that, but he might have transformed himself to avoid putting us off - no, I think he could literally tell most humans from Earth to like him if he wanted to, so maybe it’s his true form. Anyways, looking at this inheritance, it seems kind of… I don’t know, suspicious? I mean, it’s literally a strange rock that makes you want to look at it, not a rune or anything like that. I’m guessing that the cultivator who made this inheritance could affect space or if I say ye-oops. Or if I say that word, I’ll get my soul stolen. Wait, I have an idea.”

Ivor pulled his knife out of its sheath and struck the rock, trying to chip a piece off. Shards of the knife went flying, but the rock remained intact. After a short period of time, Ivor chipped a tiny fleck of metal off before hearing the voice from earlier resound in his head. “FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, STO-oh. I see what you did there. Very clever. You know what, I give up. A junior with a body to snatch finally comes along after a million years, and I can’t snatch their body. I mean seriously, why couldn’t I stimulate your greed? You know what, fuck you. I give up. Just… please don’t tell anyone else about this. I can’t actually do anything to you for some reason. I mean, I should be able to perfectly control anyone below the Earth Great Realm. Were you blessed by an Immortal of the Dao of Emotions or something?”

Ivor grinned shamelessly while thinking of the Hobo. “Yes. Yes I was. Oh, about not telling anybody about this… this rock seems like a pretty nice natural treasure. I swear to the heavens I won’t speak to anybody about this-”

“No writing either. And no intentionally trying to get a message across about me.”

“I won’t tell anybody about this for the next decade if you don’t act against me and give me an ingot made of this rock.”

Ivor felt a force wrap around his mind, and felt the distinct sensation that breaking his oath would be… less than pleasant. “Oh shit, that actually works? The more you know.”

The voice in Ivor’s head sounded disgruntled, but a tiny ingot of the strange black metal shot out of the boulder and into Ivor’s hands. “I can’t believe that I’m being extorted by a junior. If my colleagues knew about this I’d be a laughing stock. By the way, the rock is a strange item. I’m only telling you about this because it’s dangerous and not telling you could count as acting against you. It functions like a magnet for the atmosphere of a room. It draws focus without being given spiritual energy, and repels it when it’s full. Don’t fill it up unless you have it secured or you might lose it, and don’t leave it empty in dangerous situations.”

It was at this point that Ivor asked a ridiculous question to Ilbaring. “What’s your opinion on scentless magic attention-repelling magnet fart? That’s a rhetorical question, of course you love it, it’s the greatest idea I’ve ever had.”

After a rather unpleasant five minutes and three bouts of impurity-filled diarrhea, Ivor had his large intestine meridian opened and a thought that wouldn’t leave his memory until the day he died: I should’ve had an enema.