Lady Cultivator

Mo Tiange first went to the spot where she usually set up her stall. As expected, she saw Daoist Huang there and greeted him, “Uncle Huang.”

Daoist Huang was very happy to see her. He said, “Xiaotian, it’s been several days since I last saw you. Why didn’t you come and set up your stall?”

Mo Tiange answered, “It’s because of the Immortals Assembly. These days, I don’t go out unless I have to.”

Daoist Huang nodded his head with understanding. “True, this is a very important matter. How are your preparations going?”

“Same as before—individual cultivators like us can never prepare enough.”

This remark made Daoist Huang sigh. “You’re right… we will never be comparable to those children from cultivation clans who can ignore other things and focus on cultivating, so spirit tools, talismans, spirit stones are indeed indispensable…”

When it came to this topic, Mo Tiange could only stay silent. If her father hadn’t had an accident and Second Uncle wasn’t forced to give up on Ye clan, she probably wouldn’t have to spend so much time doing various odd jobs.

Daoist Huang said consolingly, “Xiaotian, Uncle will give you a discount if you’re lacking talismans. It’s alright if you don’t have enough spirit stones—you can take them first and pay me back afterwards.”

Mo Tiange was quite touched by his generosity. In fact, her friendship with Uncle Huang wasn’t that deep; it was just that for the past two years, they had been opening their stalls at the same spot and often chatted with each other.

Uncle Huang himself didn’t have good spiritual roots and was only in the eighth layer of the Aura Refining realm. As he grew older, he lost hopes of advancing to the next realm and simply used most of his time to do business, hoping he could save some spirit stones for his descendants. Both of them were insignificant Aura Refining cultivators struggling in the cultivation world; neither was faring better than the other. But for Uncle Huang to be willing to help in this kind of situation was indeed a rare occasion.

“There’s no need, Uncle Huang. You’re not earning much selling your talismans, so how can I shamelessly take advantage of you? Besides, individual cultivators like us have to go through a lot. Our combat experiences are far richer than clan children’s.”

Mo Tiange said these words with a bit of a guilty conscience. Although she was also an individual cultivator, she had a Foundation Building cultivator as her elder. She really didn’t have many opportunities to fight enemies although Second Uncle often told her a lot about his fighting experiences.

Nevertheless, Daoist Huang nodded his head in agreement. “You’re right. Those clan children do get advice from their elders, but how can they understand what fighting an enemy is like just by listening to a few words of instruction?”

Mo Tiange felt even guiltier. Recalling her original purpose of coming out, she hastily shifted the topic: “Right, Uncle Huang. In the past two days I haven’t been out, has there been any news?”

“News?” Daoist Huang pondered then said, “Eh… The news you’re asking about is the Immortals Assembly, right? There’s been an increase in people passing by here today. Take a look at this street—there are a lot more young cultivators than usual. I think they’re here to participate in the Immortal Assembly.”

Mo Tiange finally noticed there were indeed more people here than two days ago. As the date of the Immortals Assembly approached, the number of people in the area also increased. Quite a few individual cultivators who failed to enter other cultivation groups would come here to try their luck. In addition, there were also cultivation clans from various regions. All in all, the number of outsiders here was a lot higher than before.

“Alas, as the number of people grows, the number of disputes also grows. Yesterday, I also heard that the Life Lantern ¹ of two younger generations from the Huang Clan and the An Clan, which are affiliated to the Yunwu Sect, went out. Both were also the younger generations who had the highest chances of succeeding in the Immortal Assembly in their respective clans. Furthermore, their clans weren’t able to find their corpses. Now those clans are accusing each other of making secret moves. Xiaotian, you have to be careful—some people might be harboring evil intentions.”

Mo Tiange was scared. Turns out the matter has been exposed! Pretending to be very surprised, she said, “Really?”

Daoist Huang didn’t notice anything amiss. He only shook his head and sighed. “This kind of matter is very normal. Every time the date of the Immortals Assembly approaches, aside from the competing cultivation clans, there are also quite a few individual cultivators who run into this kind of matter. Although we proclaim to practice Dao Heart, since we will only encounter the Inner Demon when we’re forming our Gold Core, these people don’t consider matters which aren’t immediately relevant, leading to people acting amorally all over the place.”

Mo Tiange was somewhat relieved. Everything would be fine as long as suspicion didn’t fall on her. When she saw someone stopping in front of Daoist Huang’s stall, she smiled and said, “Uncle Huang, you should get back to business. I’m going to buy a few things and make some preparations.”

“Alright, go.” Daoist Huang replied then promptly busied himself with greeting the guest. The Immortals Assembly was indeed a good time to earn money.

After Mo Tiange left the stall, her expression became grave. She cautiously went through everything in her head to confirm she hadn’t left any clues behind and that no one saw her when she left. Although she knew she was safe, she still couldn’t help but feel somewhat nervous in her heart. She finally calmed down only after she repeatedly told herself to take it easy. In the end, she still wasn’t cold-blooded enough.

Even though she originally came out to inquire about some news, she also had other matters to attend to. So, after she calmed down, she went to the largest shop on Mount Yunwu.

Yunwu Sect wasn’t a large cultivation group like Xuanqing School, but the items in its shop were quite comprehensive. Basically, it had everything she wanted to buy.

Mo Tiange didn’t dawdle and went directly to the clerk. She said, “Do you have twenty Restorative Panaceas?”

She was a regular guest of this shop and often came to buy medicinal pills. Hence, the clerk enthusiastically said, “We do. Fellow Daoist, please wait a moment.” He turned around and took a rather large jade bottle from behind the counter. He cautiously counted twenty pills from the bottle and placed them into a smaller jade bottle before passing the bottle to her. “Fellow Daoist, please take a look. Is there any problem with them?”

He had counted the pills in front of her and the quality of the pills was also pretty good, so Mo Tiange nodded, took the medicinal pills and handed some spirit stones over.

Although she didn’t obtain many spirit stones from the man and woman yesterday, they had enough for her to buy these. Honestly speaking, being a thief was indeed a good occupation. The two of them, uncle and niece, had been expending a lot of painstaking effort, yet the result was less than accidentally killing two cultivators. Of course, this was only a flashing thought in her mind; she didn’t have tunnel vision.

Having bought the medicinal pills, Mo Tiange didn’t linger and left the shop.

Regarding magic tools, she didn’t need any. As for talismans, she really didn’t have extra spirit stones to buy them although she wanted to. Hence, after pondering this for a bit, she decided that the thing she lacked most was still Restorative Panacea.

The competitions in the Immortals Assembly were fierce. If she encountered a powerful enemy, her spiritual aura would definitely be depleted. At that time, the competition would definitely turn into a competition of who had more Restorative Pills and spirit stones. Although spirit stones could also be used to replenish spiritual aura, their power couldn’t be compared to that of Restorative Panacea.

For cultivators, medicinal pills were extremely important. Most few spirit stones she and her uncle earned were spent on medicinal pills. Mo Tiange even once thought about learning to concoct medicinal pills, yet her idea was vetoed by Second Uncle.

Second Uncle said that whether it was concocting medicinal pills, refining tools, formations or talismans, she had to expend both mental and physical effort. For an Aura Refining cultivator, spending most of her time doing these things wasn’t worth it. Typically, only Foundation Building cultivators who had no prospects of breaking through to the next realm did these things. Moreover, since she was very talented in formations, she really didn’t need to learn to concoct medicinal pills. Bear in mind that nurturing a Concoctions Master was really difficult—even small cultivation clans couldn’t do that, let alone the two of them.

Honestly speaking, Mo Tiange wasn’t sure whether she had the capability to concoct medicinal pills or not. From what Second Uncle said, everyone in the Ye Clan was good at formations and only a select few were good at concoctions. Thus, she reckoned that the possibility of her being untalented in this regard was quite large and gave up the idea.

Right after she returned to their place, she headed to her uncle’s room. “Second Uncle?”

Ye Jiang, who was still recuperating, opened his eyes and asked, “How was it?”

“What ‘how’?”

Ye Jiang stared at her for a moment then shook his head. “Didn’t you go out this morning to ask around for some news?”

Mo Tiange stuck her tongue out. “Second Uncle, you can really read my mind.”

Ye Jiang threw a glance at her and snorted. “You really have no respect for your elder!”

She laughed and moved towards him, saying, “Second Uncle, Uncle Huang said the two clans found out about their deaths. However, they were blaming each other, saying that the other clan was up to something. They didn’t find anything.”

Ye Jiang nodded. “That’s good then. Even if they find out the other clan wasn’t responsible, it would be very difficult for them to peg it to you. With the Immortals Assembly approaching, all types of people are here at Mount Yunwu, so their investigation will most likely come up empty.”

This remark was the same as Uncle Huang’s—was this the so-called “old birds can’t be caught with chaff”?

Recalling yesterday’s harvest, she again spoke in high spirits, “Second Uncle, yesterday I took an inventory of their belongings. Although they didn’t have many talismans, there were five high-grade talismans in total. In the end, I made a profit after all. Also, there were quite a few medicinal pills including a bottle of Aura-Converging Pills! I also used their spirit stones to buy some Restorative Panacea today. Now, I’m actually not lacking anything.”

“Oh? This is indeed good news.” Ye Jiang thought those two people didn’t have many spirit stones and talismans, but now, it seemed those five high-grade talismans were enough to make up for the ones Mo Tiange used.

He said, “That being the case, you don’t need to trouble yourself looking for spirit stones again. I’ll teach you the modified form of Spirit-Trapping Formation; you should use the time these days to understand it. When the time comes, you’ll have a slightly better grasp of the situation.”

“En.” She nodded enthusiastically.

Ye Jiang smiled and stroked her head before passing her a Jade Slip. “This is the method to lay the formation. Go and study it. Tomorrow, tell me how much of it you managed to comprehend.”