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Daily Credit: 64

Sacrifice Credit: 60

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Progress was slower than expected on the cultivation front. Based on no information other than his gut feeling, Ashlock had estimated it would take another few weeks to form his soul core—there was just a slight issue. Ashlock had no idea what a soul core even looked like, let alone how to develop one.

Did he need to unlock another technique? Something like {Soul Core Creation}? Days had turned into weeks which had then turned into months—two months, to be exact.

Cultivation was going fine. The dense ambient Qi had yet to dissipate much, and surprisingly Diana was generous in the snack department. She had opted to shoot down passing birds for food—since he was refusing to grow any more fruit.

She stripped the corpses of edible meat and gave him the rest of the carcass and any leftover organs. Due to the meat being removed, the sacrificial credits gained from each bird were negligible, but she hunted around two a day, so they added up over time.

"Here is another one, you glutton." Diana dumped a bird\'s skeleton that had been stripped clean beside the bench, which she practically collapsed on in exhaustion. Her shirt was stained with sweat, and she breathed heavily while a training sword lay against her leg.

Ashlock didn\'t know if Diana was a training freak or a workaholic, but he swore she cultivated in her sleep and then practiced techniques from sun up until sundown. Not a single moment was wasted—something he could respect, as it motivated him to... do something? It was hard to be a slothful tree when someone right next to you was working until they almost passed out every day.

Never one to say no to a free meal, Ashlock cast {Devour}, and black vines shot out from the ground and crushed the corpse into smithereens before absorbing the nutrients—if there was any left—and some lingering Qi.

Due to the lack of meat and his new cultivation technique being so powerful, Ashlock barely even noticed the bird\'s Qi drip into his inner lake.

[+1 SC]

But the extra credits were always welcomed. Unlike Stella, Diana seemed to show only the slightest interest in him, only speaking every once in a while, never opening up about anything particularly interesting.

It was a shame, they had spent two months together, and Ashlock was just starting to tolerate her existence. She did odd things, like eating these awful-looking rocks that reeked of slightly wrong Qi—it was hard to describe what was exactly wrong with it, but it just felt contaminated.

Maybe it was some kind of cultivator drug. In novels, the protagonists often referred to cultivators as junkies with how many drugs they took to empower their bodies. The ironic thing is that drugs make you live longer here rather than serving as a quick path to financial and physical death.

With his meal consumed and his thoughts wandering, Ashlock decided to observe Diana again. She often used the central courtyard to train, likely because it was the collection point for all the ambient Qi.

"Day fifty of trying to work out how the hell to form a soul core," Ashlock muttered to nobody but himself as he intently watched Diana.

With no teacher, Ashlock just hoped to gain even the slightest slither of insight from his observations. He had overfilled his lake and expanded it many times. It was now around twice as large as it had been when Ashlock formed it two months ago—but that was still not enough. He had tried to compress it into a ball shape, but that had been a futile endeavor as the Qi simply dissipated rather than condensed.

Diana raised her sword, summoning her dark blue flame that flickered across the blade. She then slashed at the air—keeping her eyes set on the horizon. The arc her sword drew was beautiful, and her footwork was fluid like a dancer as she performed a flurry of attacks.

That is one thing Ashlock had noticed. Stella and Diana applied cultivation in different ways. If he had to describe Diana in a single word, it would be fluid, like water. Whereas Stella was instantaneous, like lightning.

How the two compared, or who would win in a fight, was undecided—but Ashlock feared he may soon find out. Diana showed no signs of leaving, and Ashlock doubted Stella would be thrilled to find a squatter in her pavilion when she returned.

The afternoon went lazily by. Ashlock gave up watching Diana after a while and scratched his head over the soul-core issue until a shout startled him.

"Stella Crestfallen! We are representatives of the Winterwrath family, and we have come to make a deal!" A deep masculine voice thundered from the entrance to the pavilion.

Ashlock cursed as he quickly activated his {Eye of the Tree God} skill. "How did I not feel him coming? I should find a solution to that." In the past, Ashlock had awoken naturally when a powerful cultivator appeared—why had that changed? Was it because he was already awake? Or was the dense ambient Qi messing with his senses?

For now, that didn\'t matter. Two men dressed in sleeveless white robes stood at the closed and bolted doors. If Ashlock had to describe their look, it would be albino Vikings. Their short hair and eyebrows were chalky white, and their eyes were a deep red. If not for their muscular appearance, like bodybuilders, and the fact they stood under the sun, Ashlock would believe they were vampires.

Were there vampires and other mystical races in this world? So far, he had only seen humans and heard rumors of a beast tide which didn\'t sound like it included elves and dwarfs.

"Stella Crestfallen, you are under protection from the patriarch. We won\'t lay a hand on you!" The man closest to the door cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted.

"Hey. You didn\'t tell me Stella Crestfallen lived here!" The one who stood further back hissed just loud enough for his accomplice to hear, "They said she had some weird artifact that let her kill everyone she faced in a tournament a while ago."

The man turned from shouting at the door and placed a hand on his friend\'s tense shoulder. "Relax, Eric—the artifact only allows her to incapacitate one person at a time. So you just need to hold her stare for a second while I deal with her."

Eric practically rolled his eyes, "Are you stupid? Please tell me you are joking." Then, seeing his friend\'s unfaltering smile, Eric threw his hands up. "And who told you this secret fact I have never heard of? Hmmm? Is someone trying to set your muscle brain up?"

"Elenor would never do such a thing." The man looked very offended, and even Ashlock was rolling his nonexistent eyes. "She has a heart of gold that could melt even my—"

"Shush." Eric held his lips shut. "Not another word out of you, lover boy. We are leaving."

The man smacked Eric\'s hand away and huffed, "If I get this Stella bitch to come with me, Elenor said she would dual cultivate with me..."

There was a long silence—which was broken by Eric laughing his lungs out. "That is the dumbest thing I have ever heard! You and the ice queen Elenor dual cultivating? Not even a pig would want to fuck your dumb ass."

Eric was practically wiping tears from his eyes, "What does the cold-hearted beauty need with Stella, though?"

"Pill furnace." The man said flatly.

Eric stopped mid-laugh and instantly scowled. "Now, that is something I can\'t agree with, and you know that. Turning a person into a pill furnace is vile, Mike. Even for a demonic cultivator, that is a new low."

"Elenor hit a bottleneck." Mike shrugged. "And you know how hard it is to find human pill furnaces these days. The Grand Elders took them all a long time ago." Mike\'s face then darkened. "Do you even know why Stella Crestfallen is so favored by the patriarch? It\'s because he needs a pill—"

Ashlock\'s jaw would have dropped if he still had one, and his hatred for cultivators increased tenfold. The patriarch had seemed like a reasonable fellow who was honoring Stella\'s dead relatives that sacrificed themselves for him to survive in the past... but really, he just saw Stella\'s value as a pill furnace.

Eric covered his ears and shouted nonsense to himself, "Can\'t hear you! I know nothing! Oh, would you look at the setting sun! Crazy how time flies—gotta go!" Eric practically shot down the mountain as a ball of white flames.

Mike scoffed, watched his friend leave, and turned back to the still-shut pavilion doors with clenched fists.

He seemed hesitant to enter, but considering how Eric reacted to the information, the guy likely had little choice but to complete the mission if he wanted to stay alive.

Knowing the secrets of someone powerful enough to rule over this many savage cultivators was likely not a man the small-time Winterwrath cultivator could escape from.

Ashlock pivoted his view and saw Diana hiding behind his trunk. Was she scared of this guy? Why was she hiding like that? "Oi woman, don\'t use me as a shield! Go fight this dude."

Mike cracked his neck to the side and rolled his shoulders as white flames materialized around his fists. Punching the air was enough to send the doors flying off their hinges.

Strolling in like he owned the place, Mike glanced around the desolate courtyard. With Stella leaving and Diana having little interest in keeping the place tidy, nature had run its course. The turbulent winds one would experience at the peak of a high mountain had battered the walls. The red vines that grew everywhere that gave the Red Vine peak its name had become overgrown to the point that some of the white pavilion walls were buried under a blanket of red.

Dust caked everything, and the place almost looked haunted. Mike stepped forward with noticeable reluctance, looking left and right down the corridor. On the far side of the welcome hall was an opening to the central courtyard.

Mike could only see the base of a tree surrounded by a massive runic formation which seemed to confuse him. Summoning a short sword to his left hand and a shield covered in engraved runes like an art piece to his right. His breathing slowed as he entered the central courtyard.

From high above, Ashlock could see Diana start to move from behind his trunk... but to Ashlock\'s godlike eyesight, she seemed to shimmer in the light—as if her skin had turned to liquid.

Mike noticed Diana emerge from behind the tree. "You aren\'t Stella—" The words were caught in his throat as a second Diana appeared from one of the doors a few meters away that led to the training courtyard causing Mike to stumble back.

And then a third from behind a supporting pillar, and a fourth from the herbal garden entrance...