Cultivator’s Path to Infamy [Progression | Cultivation | Villain Lead]

Plop!

"CLUCK!"

Plop!

An turned toward the lake. By the shore, Baldi had his beak on his fishing rod, resisting and trying to pull out a fish that was equally determined to drag him into the water.

Why had the bird suddenly taken up the tool? Every day, An had been feeding him Qi Enlightenment pills, sometimes more than one at a time. Because of this, Baldi's mind had become more stable. His intelligence was now at the level of a two-year-old child, according to the little tests An ran during breaks in his routine. And because his intellect was growing, all the energy he got from fruits and fish was going toward developing his ‘brain’. That's why he hadn't changed in size, he'd even gotten a bit thinner.

"Cluck!"

With a cry from the depths of his soul, delivered through a beak full of fishing rod, Baldi finally managed to pull the fish out of the lake.

It was an ordinary Redbelly, not a spirit fish. Grabbing the fish with his wings, Baldi started dragging it across the ground toward An and the stove.

As he got closer, the fish began to hover in the air and then flew straight to the stove. With a single movement, An killed and cleaned the fish using only Qi.

Within seconds, the prepared fish pieces were already lying on the heated stones.

Baldi ran over, wiggled his rear, and settled in comfortably, stomping his feet on the ground as he waited for the fish to be ready.

Just as An decided to continue cultivating, his pocket vibrated.

Taking out his plaque, he checked it. In large letters, an official reminder appeared in his mind: he was required to report to the Outer Hall and take a mission from the Sect before the end of this month.

An wrinkled his nose slightly. Calculating the time he had spent in the Sect, he realized that the fifth month was coming to an end. Taking a deep breath, he began to pack up.

After cleaning up around himself and taking the cooked fish off the stove for Baldi, he took twenty Kavana fruits and nine Qi Enlightenment pills from his pouch and placed them next to the bird.

"I'm leaving to do the mission from the Sect. This is for you while I'm gone... Just don't eat it all in one day," He turned and walked toward the gate. "Oh, and yes! Try not to let the fish drag you underwater, it'd be a shame to lose... the fishing rod,"

"Cluck! Cluck!" The rooster exclaimed, completely ignoring his words. He practically pounced on the 'treasure pile' but managed to stop himself, replaying in his head several times what had been said to him, trying to fight the urge to tear into the treasure. Pulling his gaze away from the fruits and pills, Baldi looked toward the gate, but An was long gone. Sitting down and exhaling, the bird started eating the pieces of fish, constantly glancing at the pills and fruits and sighing sadly.

Arriving at the Outer Hall, An walked inside. Looking around, he saw a huge board with thousands of small sheets attached to it. Approaching the board, he noticed that most of the sheets already had a seal: black or red. Only a small portion had no seal.

A black seal meant the assignment had been completed but not officially turned in. That is, the disciple or group who took it had finished it but hadn't yet returned to the Sect. A red seal meant the assignment was in progress. No seal meant it was free for disciples to take.

Starting from the beginning and looking through all the free ones, An sighed when he saw that only the hardest ones were left. All the assignments related to alchemy or gathering spirit plants had already been taken.

In the end, he managed to find a relatively easy assignment: Obtain ten spirit cores from Fire Capybaras.

The ease of this assignment lay in the fact that if he could find one Capybara and memorize the uniqueness of its species through its Qi flows, he could track them down and complete the assignment very quickly.

Taking the sheet, he sent his Qi into it, and a Red Seal appeared on the paper. He checked the seal again and understood that it now carried traces of his Qi. This was done to prevent confusion or cheating when turning in the assignment.

Hanging the sheet back on the board, he turned and headed for the exit.

Walking across the entire Outer Platform, he reached the very edge, facing the staircase downward. Standing in place, he lowered his gaze.

'For the first time in six months, I'm leaving this place. Eh...' Exhaling, An activated Qi Clouds and Qi Legs and shot toward the neighboring Peak, the largest of the Seven Peaks, the Peak of Sacred Beasts.

Descending through the air from the Outer Platform, An fell like a stone in freefall, gaining speed all the way to the base of the Peak of Sacred Beasts.

This Peak also had a massive staircase stretching into the sky, disappearing into the clouds. But this mountain looked very different from Hope Peak. It was all about its unique structure.

The first section of the Peak was the Outer Grounds. This was home to wild spirit beasts up to the peak stage of the first rank. These grounds served primarily as training fields for outer disciples from all Peaks, as well as a source for taming beasts, finding a suitable spirit beast and signing a contract with it.

The second section was the Outer Platform, essentially no different from other Peaks.

The third section was the Inner Grounds for spirit beasts above the second rank.

An remembered what had been written about Fire Capybaras in the book Know Whose Tracks These Are. Approaching the massive staircase, An noticed a small information board off to the side. Walking over, he saw a map of the Outer Grounds.

"Oh, just like a zoo... Where's the fire sector... Ah, there it is!" Finding the fire sector on the map, An activated his Qi and ran up the stairs for just a few minutes before turning onto a small path leading to where the Fire Capybaras were supposed to live.

After several hours of wandering, occasionally using his techniques to hover and cut down travel time, An reached the fire sector. Normally, just walking the path would have taken nine or ten hours.

Along the way, he encountered several wooden gates with signs above them, leading to branches off the main path. One read Wood Element Dominant Sector, another Earth Element Dominant Sector.

Each time he passed these gates, he heard muffled, distant animal calls. Along the entire path, at regular intervals, there were warning signs:

'Leaving the path before passing through the gates is dangerous!'

'Enter sectors only through the gates! Remember this!'

'The path is protected by a formation. In any situation, as long as you stay on the path, you are safe.'

Reading these warnings, he suddenly thought about how these formations worked, specifically, the reverse side of them. He realized that the formation either altered the perception of the beasts within the grounds or created illusions. And he was sure of this because there were no beasts near the edge of the formation, right next to the path.

"I need to train my soul-strengthening technique every day... Damn illusions..." An sped up, realizing the danger even while staying on the path. The thought of the unknown lurking just a few steps away made him uneasy.

After another hour, spending most of his Qi reserves, he finally reached the gate marked Fire Element Dominant Sector.

Approaching, An immediately noticed the dense and even heavy flows of fire Qi beyond the gate. Exhaling and calming himself, he passed through.

High temperatures slammed into his body. The air was dry. There was a strong environmental pressure, as if his body had become 25-30% heavier.

With his nerves on edge, from the uncomfortable physical sensations and the mental strain of the unknown, An immediately began scanning and reading the Qi around him, terrified that some beast was preparing to attack.

This was the first situation like this, where danger could come from any direction. Not counting the ambush and the fight, of course, but that had been unexpected and spontaneous for An, unlike this.

Making sure he was safe for the moment, An activated his Qi and jumped onto higher branches. According to Know Whose Tracks These Are, only a handful of spirit beasts could climb trees and jump to the height An was at, due to their size and weight. Of course, there were exceptions, like flying beasts.

'Fire Capybaras usually live near the border between the Fire and Earth sectors. Because of their primary elements.' Having set his course, An set out, jumping from tree to tree.

After nearly two days of searching, An finally found what he was looking for.

Moving slowly through the trees, afraid to make the slightest noise, he sat near the top of a tree that offered a perfect view of a large open space.

"GRAA!"

"GRUNT! GRUNT!"

Two massive beasts were locked in a fight to the death.

One: a huge Brown Boar, about two meters tall at the shoulder, with black fur and red tufts over its eyes, small bright red eyes flooded with blood, massive front legs with bulging muscles, four thick tusks, thick armored plates protecting its head, and a tail with three twisted spikes.

The second: equal in size, a Fire Capybara. Its entire body was covered in 'dragon-like' scales, except for a few spots on its head where thick dark-brown fur grew. The scales were light-colored, with blood-red joints between them. Its mouth was wide open, filled with sharp, thick teeth and massive fangs. Its front legs had huge, sharp claws, and its hind legs were massive, like a rhino's, tearing up the earth with every movement. Every motion and attack from the capybara was lightning-fast, thanks to its hind legs.

"GRAAH!" Suddenly, the boar took a hit to its belly from the capybara. The capybara managed to sink its sharp front claws deep into its abdomen.

With one sharp pull, the capybara ripped open the boar's belly. Along with the blood, shredded muscles and parts of organs began bursting out through the claw holes under the pressure.

"UGUAA!"

"UWAA! ROAR!"

Piercing cries from the depths of the boar's soul tore from its mouth as the capybara planted its hind legs and shoved its massive head into the ripped-open belly with a sharp push, randomly grabbing and tearing out anything inside while the boar howled in pain and despair, begging for help in its beastly tongue.

Hidden in the branches, watching all of this, An even thought about giving up on hunting this beast. Everything he was witnessing deeply disturbed him, even frightened him. Just imagining himself in the boar's place sent shivers through his body.

"I need to control my emotions. If this can unsettle me, what will happen later on my path? If I keep giving in to my fear, I could end my cultivation journey right here and now, plain and simple... Pull yourself together! Here, a human isn’t just a hairless ape! I've cultivated for so long. I've been preparing for this!" An tried to encourage himself, fighting back the fear and shoving it deep down inside.

"I'm a cultivator now! This is nothing compared to what might await me in the future! Get it together!" An stood on the branch, closed his eyes, exhaled, opened them again, and fixed his gaze on the capybara, which was still tearing out the insides of the still-resisting boar.

Activating Qi on his legs and hands, An jumped and planted both feet at a 90-degree angle against the tree trunk. He pushed a massive flow of Qi into his legs.

The impulse sent the tree trunk exploding into splinters. An flew toward the capybara like an arrow, at a speed he had never reached before.

The beast felt it, something at tremendous speed flying straight at it. Pulling its head out of the now-downed boar's belly, it looked up at the sky.

It saw something gray, resembling a small human, hurtling straight toward it.

Before it could open its mouth, the little human had already touched its open palms to its massive nose.

The moment the palms touched its nose, the capybara felt a strong and strange pressure, so intense that the organs on the other side of the contact twisted and compressed from the force.

Unable to withstand the internal pressure, chunks of meat mixed with blood flew in all directions. Two large objects shot off in opposite directions.

One, with its massive body, flew backward and crashed into the dying boar, the impact finishing it off for good.

The second, screaming and howling, flew in the opposite direction, crashed through a tree trunk, and kept going for several dozen more meters.

"Ow! Ow! Agh!" An crawled out from under the earth he had just plowed up and sat down, his back against the wall of the dug-out crater. The moment he pushed on his hands to sit up more comfortably, he felt his fractured ribs cutting him from the inside.

The ribs he had broken from slamming into several trees while flying.

Analyzing why things had gone so strangely again, he understood the reason. He hadn't transferred enough Qi to his defenses at the moment the impulse threw him back from the beast, he had thought what was already on his external and internal membranes would be enough.

He miscalculated.

Barely standing, An counted two pairs of broken ribs.

Straightening up and spreading his arms to the sides as if stretching, his breath caught from the pain. With gritted teeth, he slowly walked toward the beasts.

"Ugh... Looks like I overdid it with the Qi... Aiya! Slowly, need to make my steps softer," An staggered forward slowly toward the two bodies.

"Who would have thought that one hit like that would be enough to kill such a massive beast... Ugh!" He already knew the beasts were dead. Even before he had been thrown back, he had felt the change in the Fire Capybara's Qi flows. Along with the scattered brain matter and bones, dark and cold Qi flows had burst out, which An had dubbed Death Qi. He had encountered these flows before, when he killed spirit fish after fishing. This Death Qi appeared every time a fish died.

Reaching the two bodies, An first examined the capybara's condition.

The front part of its head was completely blown apart. Scanning its insides, he realized that all its organs and bones had been ground to dust. In multiple places, the skin and scales were torn, and the capybara now looked more like a crumpled rug.

Continuing to scan the body, he was suddenly surprised by an unexpected find: the spirit core was still intact.

After some thought, An used Qi to pull the core out of the body and brought it to himself. Examining it and reading the Qi flows emanating from it, An understood why the core had remained intact.

The walls of the core consisted only of solidified Qi and the beast's own blood. Because solidified Qi was very tough, likely only cultivators in Qi Condensation at least two stages above would be able to destroy a spirit beast's core. In other words, a cultivator at the late stage of Qi Condensation could easily break the core of an early-stage first-rank beast. But if the beast was at the middle stage, the chances of breaking its core were already low. In the end, An was too weak with his fifth layer of Qi Condensation to destroy the spirit core of a middle-stage first-rank beast.

Carefully placing the core in his pouch, An gathered all the materials from the capybara that were still somewhat intact and that he could use in the future for his pills. In the end, he took one intact eye and the front claws.

Next was the boar. Its core was intact, as was most of its body. He took: the spirit core, tusks, eyes, heart, brain. He decided not to take anything else, just cutting off a few dozen kilograms of stringy meat without a gram of fat.

After gathering and packing everything, he climbed back onto the branches and began reading the Qi flows.

He had memorized the unique Qi signature of the capybara, and now he planned to find the remaining nine.

Over the next week, An managed to find all nine remaining Capybaras.

His plan had actually worked, thanks to the unique Qi flows, the search was much easier.

Moving from clearing to clearing, An would find weak remnants of Qi flows, meaning the beasts had been there recently, and then follow the traces to the beasts themselves.

In the end, he collected all ten spirit cores and a massive amount of ingredients: seven brains, five hearts, three stomachs. He decided not to take anything else, he didn't see much point, and there wasn't much room in his pouch. Most of the space was taken up by Kavana fruits. And he wasn't willing to replace thefruits with the capybara body parts, he didn't know if he would be able to use these parts in alchemy.

Making sure everything was in order, An moved back toward the gate leading to the main path.

After another day, he finally managed to find it.

Exiting onto the main path without incident, he headed for the exit.