Chapter 130 – Cute is Justice!

When faced with the teary and astonishingly cuddly culprit, to his great shame, Ren hesitated. He couldn’t help it! He had expected a rat or a hare of some kind; a swift and elusive pest had wreaked havoc in his garden, not this bundle of fluff, begging for its life with just its exceptionally persuasive eyes!

Ren clenched his teeth as he thought, ‘Must…not…hesitate!’

“You think that’ll work on me?” he shouted, mostly to force himself into action.

But the wily red panda had already taken advantage of the split second his heart had wavered and bolted away. Or at least it tried to. Fortunately, unlike Ren, his arrays were immune to its charms and held it back long enough for Ren to corner the thief and begin applying layer after layer of sealing arrays.

It was with no small satisfaction that Ren faced the utterly immobilized spirit beast. It was no longer able to evade his senses, and its status as a peak foundation establishment realm spirit beast was finally revealed to him. That discovery further stung Ren’s pride, causing him to gnash his teeth.

“All these months, I couldn’t even detect you with my divine sense, much less lay eyes on you! You sauntered past all my trap formations with ease, coming and going as you pleased. Argh! The only two things I thought I was naturally talented at, the things I actually took pride in, my arrays and my sensing abilities, and this one beast has defied them both! I might have understood if it were a core formation beast, but to be in nearly the same stage and to have my skills be evaded so completely, I have no face left!” Ren wrung his hands in frustration.

The red panda was curled in on itself, its bushy tail quivering as it let out piteous whines. Watching that scene, Ren could only let out a long sigh.

"Alas, I can only blame my own incompetence. It is no fault of yours that you could counter me so thoroughly. But now a more important question arises. What am I to do with you?”

He refused to forgive the pest that had intruded on his home for so long, nearly destroying his batch of Mutating Bamboo Sword plants. If he set it free, it was intelligent enough that it would never again let itself be tricked and caught in this manner. He could sell it, but that would require a trip to the outer sect, and he currently only had enough for a one-way trip. He did intend to go sometime, but only after he had accumulated more resources to sell.

‘Bah! How come killing it and harvesting its beast core isn’t even an option I am considering? By the heavens! Am I such a paper tiger, to act so fierce but ultimately prove harmless?’

Ren’s peculiar pride also wanted a satisfactory answer, and it left only one path open to him. Coexistence. This way he could observe it closely and figure out how it did what it did and thus improve his own skills. A challenge to himself. His tattered pride would accept no less.

“Little Red, I don’t know how much you can understand, but I’m going to say it anyway.” Ren addressed the whimpering red panda, which had fat tears rolling down its furry face. He bared his qi completely, hoping it could pick up on his intentions. “I’m not going to kill you. This place may have been your home before it was mine, so it would not be honorable. But if we are to live together, then you must accept my conditions.”

The small spirit beast stilled and cocked its head curiously. Ren idly wondered just how much of its pitiful display was an act to tug at his heartstrings. But it appeared to understand something, so he continued.

“I will greatly expand my crop of the bamboo plants that you are so fond of, though I have little use for it. In return you must promise not to ruin my other plants and wait until the bamboo has grown sufficiently. No eating the tender shoots just yet! And you must not harm the roots either, so the plants can eventually recover.” He wagged a stern finger at the beast that had titled its head the other way.

Ren only kept the spirit plant to grow spare swords for his sword array. But he had plenty of unrefined spares already, so it was true that he didn’t need it right away. He was willing to raise the bamboo as fodder if it allowed him to learn from his opponent.

‘And who’s to say we couldn’t be friends someday like Yu Ran and I? The Harmonious Bond manual that I used to bond with Yu Ran as a hatchling does work better if I can feed the prospective bond food infused with my qi. All this extra work will definitely be worth it. After all, it’s just so cute!’ Ren was secure enough to admit to himself he might have an ulterior motive.

The little beast was clearly wavering, its eyes darting toward the bamboo near them. To nudge it over the edge, Ren walked over, snapped off a small twig, and offered it to the wary panda. He slowly released his sealing and trap arrays and waited.

It approached gradually, watching for any quick movement from Ren. Then in a flash of red, the twig was gone. He caught one final glimpse of that bushy tail out of the corner of its eye. He couldn’t be sure, but he thought he saw it give a small nod before eating the bamboo twig he had offered. When it was done, it scampered off into the night.

Ren danced a lot in the month that followed, but he fulfilled his promise of raising a large number of the Mutating Bamboo Sword plants. Both the Nurturing Rain and the Enriched Soil sutras helped anchor the small chopped-up segments of bamboo he had planted all around the Edge. Some shoots were eaten by the wild goats and yaks. Others were absorbed by the two big overbearing plants competing for resources, but enough of them took root. Mostly along the borders and on the lower slopes of the 2nd mountain.

The red panda upheld its side of the bargain and didn’t dig up the young shoots. It wouldn’t have to wait much longer, as the spirit plants would soon grow big and strong. It could then eat all the bamboo it wished. After a few days to ensure it was keeping its word, he used the opportunity to begin planting the seeds Subo had gifted him. The environment on the edge was finally at a stage where even plants not aligned with the two ubiquitous qi types could flourish. Most were useful food plants, but there were also some very interesting spirit plants mixed in.

But that wasn’t all Ren had been busy with during that time. With most of the spirit herbs on the Edge no longer needing his constant care, he found himself with a lot of spare time. Time that he put into two big projects.

The first was the forge. He had barely forged anything since their arrival at the Azure Mountains, and he was beginning to worry that his skills had dulled. More than that, he just missed it. With the yin fire mostly recovered, fed by all the bones Bao Hua had given him, there wasn’t anything holding him back.

But Ren wasn’t interested in building the same level of forge he had before. If the Edge was to be his home for many years to come, he needed to change his perspective to match it. Though he hadn’t focused on it, he was aware that the Hall of Learning had a lot of knowledge to offer on the subject of building a forge. Designs, arrays, customized to certain ingredients, and more. Ren only knew that his past design for the forge could only be called a crude, childish attempt in comparison. If he wanted to build a forge that lasted, he needed to study more.

In the meantime, he prepared the most durable construction material he could access. The difficult-to-mine but extremely durable Dark Bastion Moonstone. It was even a death and yin attribute stone to match the Ossiferous Yin Flame. He had begun to mine it by hand since he lacked the key items for his other solution to rapidly extract the stone, with the thinking that it was better to get a head start while he had time. Its durability made it difficult to dig out, taking almost a full day for a single block.

The other, more entertaining project was the habitats he had designed for his tortoises. Now that the qi on the Edge had stabilized, he could introduce the arrays he had made for them. While he had been searching for the answer to the problem posed by the Edge, he had used his break time to look up arrays to amuse and engage his pets. He even tried to match the habitats and obstacle courses to their preferred qi attributes wherever he could.

The simplest one was a Five Elements Array, which could convert ambient qi to the five common elements. It had an atrocious conversion rate, but Ren couldn’t object, as he had obtained it for free. Since he had two tortoises of each of the five elements, he wanted to give them a place to relax and play with their broken bell toy. But first, he began to modify it. He mimicked the wuxing cycle of elements and enhanced each of the array eyes with the extra material he had bought for cheap. There was a cozy bed of Everburning Coal, which burned low and long. There were also some qi rich earth and metal rods. The water node was just the small stream that trickled past his cave, pooling briefly. The wood node was one of Subo’s gifted seeds, a Jewel Berry Bush, a wood attributed plant. The tortoises had taken an immediate liking to the array and quickly moved in.

The yin-water and yin-earth tortoises already had preferred spots, so Ren only built a secure path to those spots. They could sit on some stone plates, which shuttled them back and forth between the mountain peak and the gardens, which converted a portion of the death attribute qi into yin qi. The sight of them zooming away on their plates never failed to elicit a smile from Ren.

The pure yin and yang attribute tortoises needed no special habitat, as the entirety of the Edge suited them. For them, Ren carved a handful of small pebbles to act as array flags. He had noticed their interest in arrays when he had been sowing his plant arrays around the qi wells. Without any instruction, they would work as a pair to move around the pebbles according to some instinct known only to them. Ren couldn’t spot any working arrays or formations, but he left them to it.

For Ang Jun, the draconic qi warrior, he gave it the battle it craved. Ren designed very basic puppets with limited moves for it to hone its skills. Rather than imbue complex commands, Ren focused on making them durable because the little tortoise could be rather vicious at times. Combined with the bounty of draconic beast cores Bao Hua had bequeathed it, it had all it needed.

As for Wu Meng, the yang-wood attribute tortoise, Ren unfortunately couldn’t find anything suitable. The affable little tortoise didn’t seem to mind as it chose to walk through his small fields carrying the still slumbering Yu Ran on its back. The red and black snake no longer fit as comfortably on its back but instead coiled around Wu Meng’s entire body a few times. It would just have to wait until he visited the Sacred Ground.

Finally, the wind and lightning tortoises. All three mountains of the Edge had grown ever since Ren had initiated the taijitu array, but the second mountain’s peak now extended above the clouds. The mountains had finally slowed to a crawl, and he wasn’t sure what kind of consequences it would bring down on him, but Ren couldn’t deny the beauty of the sea of clouds stretching below him. And it was in those clouds that he built the last array.

The wind tortoise got an array that blew an extremely strong and constant gale of wind. To ensure the thrill-seeking tortoise wouldn’t get blown away, Ren had planted some Cloud Climbing Creeper, which loved growing that environment, to act as a tether to cling to. Now it didn’t need to wait for rides on his flying sword to entertain itself.

Using the draft caused by that array, Ren created a storm array, which provided heat and moisture to create a localized lightning storm. There he planted his last seed of the Seven Sparks Orchids, which served to focus the small but frequent lightning strikes while also nourishing the useful spirit herb. The lightning attribute tortoise stayed there almost all day long.

Ren had a great time setting up all these arrays, indulging his pets and his own creativity. As much as the tortoises liked his gifts, he enjoyed the similarities to his past efforts as ‘The Challenger’. It roused in him a burning desire to begin creating those challenges once more. To once again start leaving tests for those wishing to prove themselves. To leave legacies worth admiring. It was incredibly frustrating that he needed to show restraint and stifle himself until the right moment.

That desire wasn't the only result of the arrays he brought about. Lately, all the Myriad Path Tortoises had started to show signs of actually wielding the qi of their elements. Ren thought that they might be undergoing another bloodline refinement as they had as hatchlings.

He was proved only partially right when the tortoises underwent a second refinement and then started to break through to the foundation realm.