CHAPTER 7: MIND REALM [PART 1]

"Did you think I ran away?" he asked with a smile.

"Of course not," she said, though she didn’t meet his gaze.

Yu Tian placed the boar down and walked into the cave. He then approached her.

"You... what are you doing?" she asked as he picked her up in a princess carry.

"It’s hard to walk with your injuries, right? I’ll help you," he said.

"Thank you," she said, looking to the side.

As they left the cave, she looked at the boar on the ground, then looked at Yu Tian’s arms.

She estimated the animal was about eighty kilograms, yet he carried it so easily and probably even ran with it. Looking at him, he didn’t seem to be sweating or out of breath, so he probably hadn’t exerted much effort.

It could also be that he was close by, but if that was the case, she would’ve sensed him with her spiritual sense.

"What are you doing?" Yu Tian asked, glancing at Lady Su in his arms who was squeezing his biceps.

"What’s your body refining level?" she asked.

Yu Tian paused for a moment. He hadn’t thought of this. When he was recounting his story, he had said that he was merely at the third layer of body refining and it had been so for a few years now. Even if something happened, how could he have broken through more than three times in a single day when he had been stuck in the third layer for years?

"Lady Su... actually... after being left there, I had been really injured and couldn’t have made it," he began. "I ate all sorts of herbs to try to recover. I seemed to have taken a strange herb, that’s how I ended up breaking through multiple times up to the seventh layer," he said.

He thought to himself that if he said the actual truth about the Starfall Blossom, it would lead to more problems about having to explain how he was able to survive it as a body refining cultivator and even form a core.

It would be impossible to convince her of this without revealing his ability.

After hearing this, she nodded her head. "I see, so that’s how it is," she said.

She thought to herself that everyone had their own secrets. He didn’t seem like a bad person, so there was no need to force it out of him and antagonize him.

"So... are you going to keep holding me?" she asked.

"Oh, sorry about that," Yu Tian said, letting her down on some leaves. He then walked over to the boar and began preparing it.

Xueling watched him as he worked, scanning and analyzing every movement he made. "Hmm, no matter how I look at it, it’s really weird," she thought.

Yu Tian was giving off the same feeling as a monster.

Before, after he had introduced himself, she had thought it was just a remnant aura from a beast encounter, but now when she looked at it closely, it was definitely coming from him. She didn’t think he was a monster, but she didn’t understand where this aura came from.

"Is it some strange training method?" she wondered.

"Yu Tian," she called.

Yu Tian turned to face her. "Do you need anything, Lady Su?" he asked.

"After we eat, I want to see you practice. Is that okay?" she asked.

...

"Sure, no problem," Yu Tian said.

He wondered if she was suspecting he was some demonic cultivator?

But the number showed three percent. He sighed. Well, it didn’t really matter. There wasn’t anything strange with the way he practiced. Maybe showing her would clear any worries she had.

A few minutes later, the two of them were eating together as they talked. Yu Tian had also gotten a container from the lady’s spatial bag and used it to fetch some drinking water from a nearby river.

After they were done eating, Xueling stretched her upper body and then turned her gaze to Yu Tian who was clearing the scene - burning the leftovers and using strange plants he had collected when fetching water to get rid of the remnant scent so the beasts wouldn’t smell this place.

"You’re really good at cooking," she said with a smile.

He turned to her, having completed what he was doing. "I worked in the cooking department for a year, so I learned a few tricks," he said.

"Should we start now?" he asked.

"Sure, go ahead," she said.

Yu Tian walked over and settled into a meditative position a few feet before her. He then began circulating his energy using the Path to Heaven method.

As he began practicing, Lady Su’s eyes analyzed him deeply.

She thought to herself that there was nothing unusual. Although the method he used was unknown, it wasn’t an evil method. It also didn’t look that complicated.

The way energy circulation methods work is through systematic patterns that are made by experts who have high understanding of the human body, but the way Yu Tian did it, it seemed all over the place and more random if anything.

It was probably a self-taught method, she thought.

She sighed. She couldn’t find the source of the monster-like aura.

Apart from having an unusually high amount of internal energy for a seventh layer body refining cultivator, there didn’t seem to be anything unusual.

If she searched him with her spiritual sense, she would probably figure out the source, but doing that would be disrespectful. She decided to let the matter go as he didn’t seem like a threat at the moment. She thought to herself that the aura was probably coming from a treasure he had picked up in the forest.

As she was about to tell him that he could stop now, she suddenly noticed something she had missed before. "No way... that’s..." her eyes widened.

Hearing her shocked voice, Yu Tian opened his eyes. "Lady Su, is something wrong with my cultivation method?" he asked.

She shook her head, calming her emotions. "Yu Tian, have you ever heard of the mind realm?" she asked.

Yu Tian shook his head. "The mind realm? What’s that?" he asked.

She smiled. "It seems you’ve entered the mind realm unknowingly," she replied.