Benton had confidence that one pressing issue had been resolved. Having come to an agreement with the Lord and Protector of the mountain, a rank fourteen thunderbird, he didn’t think he’d have any problems with being attacked by anything more powerful than him.

Which meant he could focus on finding the materials that he required in order to make qi sources. In theory, such materials, being rich in qi, would stand out to his spiritual sense. And in reality, they probably did.

The problem was that, while his sense was fantastic at picking out a needle in the middle of a dessert, it wasn’t nearly so great at picking out a particular needle on a peak that was filled with the things. Everything in front of, below, and around him was steeped in qi. Every rock. Every blade of grass. Every tree. Every fallen twig. Everything.

For two days, he did everything he could think of. Flew far above the mountain trying to sense only the biggest sources. It worked to find him fantastically great treasures. Probably. But not the treasures he needed.

He tried flying really close to the ground and checking everything in detail. It took him hours to cover a couple of yards, and the mountain was simply ginormous.

Eventually, he hit on the idea of sorting for the qi elements that he needed, Shadow for example. From high above the mountain, unfortunately, even his advanced spiritual sense wasn’t good enough to detect a small speck of Shadow in the ocean of light. Moving closer to the ground yielded the same problem as before—it took forever to cover much ground. At least he could actually find sources of Shadow qi that were nearby, but none of them turned out to be what he needed. Mostly because they were too weak and a couple because the materials were contaminated with other elements.

And an additional problem reared its head—he easily could be passing up, say, an Ice treasure while fruitlessly searching for a Shadow one. And switching back and forth between all five that he was still searching for—having everything he needed for Fire either in hand or en route to the sect—slowed him down even further.

Needless to say, it was a frustrating two days, especially since he had gotten so accustomed to manipulating time. Because he was interacting with the world, sensing qi emanations from the surroundings, he couldn’t use either his Aura or his technique when far from the source of the qi. And it turned out that trying to include only part of the ground in his time bubble was possible if he got close enough, but it drained qi fast. Really fast. And even with the agreement with the thunderbird in place, he thought it would be incredibly idiotic to leave himself vulnerable by running his qi pool too low.

Basically, he spent most of those two days in real time, which made things even more irritating. Finally, though, Benton remembered something important—he was a cheating cheater who cheats.

“System,” he said internally, fearing the thunderbird might be able to hear him anywhere on the mountain, “can I make a Detect Treasure technique that fine tunes my spiritual sense to seek out only a specific thing that I tell it to?”

Host may create such a technique. At Foundation Establishment level, however, it probably will not be strong enough to filter out the strong interference from the ambient qi in Host’s current environment.

Well, that answer wasn’t a no. It just meant that the System was trying to get more points out of him. Benton could live with that outcome.

“System, what would I need to do to create a technique powerful enough to filter out the strong interference around me?”

Host should associate the Foundation Establishment level technique with a Concept specifically created to empower the technique.

Honestly, Benton should have figured that out by himself. Obviously, the technique needed to be stronger, and he had the roadmap from previous experience on how to power it up. Self-recriminations didn’t help, though. Better to focus his attention on figuring out a good Concept.

So what qi element would help with filtering out qi emanations from so many sources? Obviously, the correct qi element to use was…

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Or maybe…

How about…

Ugh. He couldn’t come up with a single thing that would help. His mind just went blank.

Benton tended to think of qi elements like they were energy types from Pokemon Go, which he’d played a bit with his grandkids. Electricity, Rock, Metal, those kinds of things. Though he knew intellectually that a qi element could be pretty much anything he could imagine, it was difficult for his old brain to break out of the mold and get creative. It seemed like the current situation might be one of those times when he would have to do just that.

“System, I would like to purchase the Concept of Treasure to Mastery. My idea for the qi element is to define a treasure as any substance, be it animal, vegetable, or mineral, that I am interested in finding at any particular time.”

And that worked. The System charged him his normal sixteen points for the Concept to go with the eight for the technique, and just like that, he had a way to detect treasures.

He really, truly did love being a cultivator. There he was floating several football fields above a mountain using his will alone to hold him aloft while cheating the heck out of the circumstances to find the treasure he needed.

Too sweet.

Yang Xiu really, truly did love being a cultivator. There she was traipsing through a valley with her brother, her best friend in the world, and a sweet but intense kid and that kid’s wolf while hunting spirit beasts and using the fights to practice her techniques. And they even had the possibility of discovering treasure. Too sweet.

Honestly, though the thought of finding valuable resources was appealing, Yang Xiu wanted for nothing. When she was hungry, she ate at the cafeteria for free. When she needed a resource to advance her cultivation, Master provided it, mostly kind of for free. She did sometimes have to pay Contribution Points, but those were nebulous at best. And her supply always outstripped her needs.

Combined with having friends she liked and could count on, her brother by her side, and being able to pursue her dream of being a cultivator, there was nothing she could possibly want. Nothing that was attainable at any rate. Not even Master could bring her parents back.

She shook off her suddenly morose thoughts and concentrated on the game trail they were following. Not much time passed before Kang Lin spoke.

“Incoming. Rank two. Yang Ru, you’re up.”

For the past two days, they’d developed a system of taking turns. With four of them, humans anyway, they alternated which one kept their spiritual sense active to detect beasts and which different person got to fight any beasts they found solo. When it was Jin LiJuan’s turn to keep watch, one of the other three surreptitiously also took an extra turn. The little girl was diligent and really tried hard, but she just wasn’t experienced enough yet.

Of course, Ganzou was better than all of them. A wild beast had yet to get close to the group without the wolf detecting it well in advance.

“You want it, Jin LiJuan?” Yang Ru said.

The little girl cupped her hands. “Gratitude, Senior Brother.”

Giving all the rank twos to her had become their practice as well. The weak creatures really did nothing for the three of them, but Jin LiJuan’s techniques needed so much work than even the small amount of challenge represented by beasts almost a full major realm below her helped a lot.

The thing was that the girl was being quite persistent in her practice. When they were at the sect, she spent more time in the pavilion working against the combat dummies than literally anyone else, often with Pan Jiang mentoring her. Still, though, her sword technique wasn’t even close to Large Success, and despite weeks of effort, she hadn’t gotten her Nature technique to Small Success yet, either.

Confused by the lack of progress, Yang Xiu had asked Kang Lin about it, obviously out of earshot of the girl or the wolf. It turns out that talent doesn’t just impact cultivation speed, but the time it takes to learn techniques as well. Not only was Jin LiJuan the least talented member of the sect, but her pathways were still really messed up. Kang Lin thought it a miracle that the girl was making any advancement at all.

That was a bit of a shame because, in all other respects, Jin LiJuan had crazy advantages. All she had to do to advance was to feed Ganzou spirit beast cores, and considering the plethora of them available given the recent tide, her way to Golden Core was clear. If Master hadn’t insisted that she take the time to shore up her techniques and obtain her own cores, the girl would have already made it to that realm.

It also appeared that she could use any technique. Any element. She could channel her qi into one of Kang Lin’s techniques and use Lightning. Pick up one of Yang Ru’s and produce Momentum. If Yang Xiu hadn’t herself felt so incredibly privileged, she would have wept at the unfairness.

Rustling sounded ahead of them, and Yang Xiu turned her attention to the approaching beast. The valley was quite lush with trees and bushes and tall grasses. If not for the group’s spiritual senses, they would have been ambushed several times already.

The approaching creature obviously didn’t rely on stealth, however. It crashed through bushes and small saplings, avoiding only large trees, and soon, it appeared on the trail a dozen yards ahead of them. A badger.

Ugh. Yang Xiu couldn’t help but recall the Shadow aspected one that gave them so much trouble during the tide. If not for Zou Tian, they might have lost a lot of people to that beast.

She didn’t expect the one in front of them to present nearly as big a challenge. To her, Kang Lin, Yang Ru, or Ganzou anyway. Jin LiJuan was another matter entirely.