7 A Week of Grinding

A/N: So if you guys aren't aware, Webnovel has been 'shadowbanning' comments recently. This means that any comment that contains profanities in any form, will be automatically deleted.

So words like: Fuck, Shit, Bitch, Bastard, Cock, Bollocks are all nonos. Even words such as: Sex, Hell, and Damn are out too. Basically, if you want to comment using forms of those words, you will need to get creative.

Well, Enjoy the chapter...

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In case you are unfamiliar with the cultivation realms in ATG, I will list the nine mortal realms here.

[Elementary Profound]

[Nascent Profound]

[True Profound]

[Spirit Profound]

[Earth profound]

[Sky profound]

[Emperor Profound]

[Tyrant Profound]

[Sovereign Profound]

Now back to the Chapter

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*Snore, Snore. Cough cough. Ptui Ptui* "*Grooaan* What is that awful taste? Eh!?"

Shane woke up the next morning to a feeling of incredible hunger and a piece of hide from the pile in his mouth. Apparently, he was so hungry he was having a dream about food and chewed on something questionable by accident, anyways...

He took a moment to quickly check Shan Long's memories and then moved over to a different area of the cave where some dried jerky was wrapped up and stored. The jerky tasted amazing, it was better than any meat he had ever eaten before! and he quickly stuffed his face with a whole handful. He also noticed that he could have used Devour on the jerky to convert it to energy but the amount he would have gained was so little that it wasn't even worth the time it would take… that and it was his only food!

He wrapped up the remaining jerky and stored it again. He estimated that he had enough left for at least a week but wasn't concerned, in any case, he had been gathering food in the forest for almost a decade by now. Well, Shan Long had but they were the same guy since yesterday so it counted!

Shane was about to leave the cave to go and test his newfound strength when something on the floor caught his eye. As he took a closer look, memories immediately floated into the forefront of his mind. This was his self-made protective gear!

Yesterday, he had been so excited to explore, that he completely forgot about these and ventured out into the forest in nothing but his wolfskin shorts. Talking of the shorts, they were very strange compared to the clothing he was used to wearing on Earth but he still thought they looked really cool.

The waistband of the shorts was completely skin tight and fastened with a leather strap that was padded with inch-long white fur, the shorts themselves were a mixture of black and grey tones and came to just above the knees having jagged leg holes. They didn't look primitive despite the materials and instead, they completely gave out the handsome and wild vibe he was recently trying to cultivate.

The rest of the gear consisted of a pair of dark leather wrist guards that he frustratingly couldn't remember the name of, a dark leather, skin-tight Tunic, a pair of greaves (you guessed it… also dark leather), and a rather strange but dashing cloak that he was going to leave alone today. Put it on! Are you joking? It was incredibly hot in this forest right now!

Both the greaves and the wrist guards were made of the same tough leather that was extremely durable but also very soft and flexible, which he also knew from experience, would allow for strenuous movement. The greaves were standard-looking shin protectors that were secured with two straps at the top and around his calf and also another, thinner strap that secured around the top of his foot, heel, and achilles.

As he fitted the greaves with practiced movements he was busy cursing himself for his lack of knowledge in armor types. Obviously Shan Long didn't know what they were called either, he spent his whole life in a cave for Pete's sake. "Godsdammit why can't I remember the name of the wrist… eh!? VAMBRACES!!! AHAHAHAHAHA!"

He felt relieved and elated for a second but then the laughter died down and he touched his nose thinking 'I may actually go a bit crazy if I stay here by myself for a long time. Welp, who isn't a bit crazy nowadays anyhow, at least I'm not crazy enough to go stand under a waterfall for five months… yet' After remembering their name, he focused on the vambraces next and started putting them on swiftly too.

The vambraces covered almost his entire forearms and they too were secured with leather straps in a similar way to the greaves, except they also had small leather straps that ended in a leather loop and extended to each of his fingers. These finger straps were attached to a smooth loop made of bone that sat on the center of the back of his hand that was also firmly attached to both the front and back side of the vambraces, securing it in place.

Shane clenched his fists and heard the satisfying sound of the leather stretching. He could feel that this rather strange looking feature would enhance and support his grip strength while putting considerably less stress on his wrists and couldn't help but think. 'Real men lift with straps not hooks bro'

Lastly, was the short-sleeved and skintight leather tunic. Nothing really special there apart from the hard as steel, diamond-shaped scales that were embedded in the upper chest portion of the tunic. These same scales were also embedded on the top side of his vambraces and also vertically, point to point, along the front of the greaves. He assumed that they provided extra protection, at least that's as far as Shan Long's memories told him and [Appraisal] was giving him nothing either.

Feeling ready to face the forest again, Shane jumped up and stalked out of the cave, past the shadow curtain and towards the pool. He noticed that everything seemed to look clearer today and outside it was even more obvious that his eyesight had improved.

He moved over to the rocks and lifted the same one he started with yesterday. The 50KG rock felt like nothing! He switched it over to one hand and only felt a slight strain. He dropped the rock and dashed to the treeline before coming to a stop and dashing back.

'Holy Shit that was fast! Usain Bolt, eat your heart out ahaha! Shane felt that he had at least doubled in strength and speed after breaking through and estimated that he could kill the wolf from yesterday with a single slap!

He was now itching to get back into the forest and look for something else to hunt. The flower was his goal for now and so he needed to improve his cultivation by devouring more beast corpses.

What about sitting down to cultivate and gather profound energy? What about stabilizing his foundations? Shane didn't have the patience to sit around for months just to break through to the next small realm! What a joke! And with his cheat level profound veins, his realm would be rock solid forever. If he didn't take advantage of these facts wouldn't he be an idiot?

Shane could feel the very small amount of profound energy within his veins and it seemed to be nourishing his body just by sitting there. He tried to grab hold of some of the profound energy and found that even for the first time, he was able to manipulate it quite easily. He took that small amount of Profound energy and used it to clean the inside of his mouth… and it actually made him feel a little tired! Not physically but mentally but hey, he now had fresh breath!.

He assumed that using profound energy without any profound arts was much more difficult but he would continue to practice. If he could manage to do it as naturally as breathing, then wouldn't that mean that when he finally acquired an art, he would already have a massive head start in profound energy manipulation?

Little did he know that most arts do not work in that way and that casual Profound energy manipulation is actually something incredibly rare, even in the divine realms. That's a story for later anyway.

With his greedy thoughts set on increasing his strength, mostly so that he could rob the flower, he headed into the forest in the opposite direction of the clearing from yesterday. 'No need to push my luck or as they say over here, no need to court death by going near to the beast's territory until I am ready. Damn beast coveting my flower, hmph you should wash your neck and wait'

Clearly, Shane was getting hyped up on being in a cultivation world where people even dare to say these extremely embarrassing things out loud and nobody even bats an eye...

A week passed in a flash. During these seven days, Shane had a lot of gains and was extremely happy! He had fought a lot of Elementary Profound beasts and devoured all of them, his cultivation had broken through to the [6th Elementary Profound] and although he had started to notice the slight drawback of his cultivation method, it hardly affected his mood.

Each time Shane advanced, he found that he needed to devour more and more corpses to get to the next small realm but the good thing was that this forest was absolutely filled to the brim with dumb beasts so it wasn't costing him anything but a bit more time.

Though he sometimes grumbled to himself 'The late-game leveling curve will be such a bitch and take so much time unless I can find another solution. It might even take me a few years to reach the Sovereign Realm.'

If any of those cultivators from the Profound Sky Continent heard him complaining about only reaching [Elementary Profound 6] within a week from no cultivation whatsoever and lamenting that the later realms would cost 'A lot of time' to reach, they would spit blood in anger. 'We cultivated for a thousand years to get here you know!'

Shane only had one close call during this week and the memory of it alone was enough to dial back any of his arrogance before it was even able to truly develop. Shortly after leaving the clearing with the cave on the second day, Shane had come across another Savage Wolf. It was the same realm as the one he had killed the previous day and he was far stronger and so he became complacent and even flashed a taunting grin.

He can't really be blamed, he had never been in any dangerous battles during his comfortable life on Earth, and Power, no matter how little, can easily go to one's head. He let his guard down and focused solely on the wolf in front of him, not noticing the decidedly larger and more dangerous wolf that was sneaking around in the peripheries. At his most vulnerable moment, when he had lunged over and swiftly killed the first wolf with a palm strike to its spine and his stance was broken, the other one pounced!

By absolute luck, Shane had put too much power into his palm and ended up crouched a bit lower than intended and that was what saved his life. The larger wolf (which was at the [4th of Elementary Profound]) missed the back of his neck by mere inches but its claws still left an ugly gash on the side of it as its jaws thankfully snapped shut on thin air. The wolf sent him sprawling and backed up, wary of its failed sneak attack and it was a good thing too because Shane panicked.

He could feel the blood running down his neck and into his tunic and he scrambled backward with a hand pressed onto the wound. His back hit a tree and his eyes darted around in a frenzy as he desperately tried to think of a method to escape!

As the wolf closed in, he froze and he could feel something akin to a pounding inside his head that only grew more frantic as it Stalked towards him.

When the wolf was just a couple of meters away from him and he was literally staring into the jaws of death, there was a sound of glass breaking and the pure instinct of Shane's body took over. Shane was then treated to the backseat view of an absolutely brutal exhibition of instinctual combat. The wolf never stood a chance, it looked like a child in his hands, and had he been able to calm down, he could have beaten it too.

After that episode, Shane made an effort to use his senses and minimap together to always check his surroundings, especially in combat situations. He had also made progress with merging his body's baser instincts and hand-to-hand combat skill and had managed to tier it up to E rank.

This actually allowed him to mix profound energy into his strikes, empowering them greatly. By putting profound energy into his strikes and using them in combat, he had also improved his profound energy control overall and was now able to use it in various applications. These included reinforcing his legs when jumping or sprinting and spreading the energy along his fingers and toes to improve grip strength, grappling ability, and footing during battles.

Another thing to note is that Shane's control over profound energy also increased slightly whenever he devoured the corpse of a Profound beast above his cultivation level.

Fighting profound beasts was not the only thing he did over these seven days as he also started to fill out the map. The function had been unlocked after the promised 24hrs and it was mostly greyed out except for the areas he had traveled along.

When that first happened, Shane had not long survived his brush with death and didn't open the map straight away. If he found himself in one of the other Empires or on another continent altogether from Qingyue, he probably would have fallen to despair.

Thankfully, God… or Ancestral Goddess was on his side and he was currently within the Scarlet Dragon mountain range. Funnily enough, he was only around 200km away from the waterfall that Yun Che trained under and around 300km from Cyan Forest town which was the halfway point between New Moon City and Floating Cloud.

These distances might seem like a lot to a normal guy, but Shane could easily cover a distance of 20km through the forest in a day without getting too tired. That was as he was now and that distance was only growing as his cultivation did.

An interesting tidbit was that the map had detailed the entirety of the Blue Wind Empire but hadn't named the location of the main sects or any of the other cities that weren't visited in the novel. He could still see them on the map and could guess that the large collection of palatial looking buildings out in the snow was Frozen Cloud but the others were a mystery. Perhaps he had to go there before the map would update the names.

Shane had also found quite a few spirit herbs and profound grasses throughout the week and although they had very little energy in them, he devoured them nonetheless. What really interested him were the two very different but useful plants he managed to find growing in a decaying tree and within a small hidden clearing respectively.

In the decaying tree, after he cleared out a few low-level rat-like profound beasts, he found his first treasure and hopefully his ticket to an easy robbery and quick advance in cultivation. What he found were a few huge Fungi, that appraisal told him had paralysis spores…

So as he was happily scheming nefarious things, he swiftly used his profound energy to cut the section of the decaying tree with the Fungi and brought it back to the clearing with the cave. Giggling to himself like a child the whole way.

Profound beasts never approached the clearing or the cave of their own volition and this confused Shane at first. Then he realized it was probably due to the remaining scent or pressure from the Panther Profound Beast that used to live there with him

The next plant he found was profound tobacco, yes tobacco! He didn't realize it at first as appraisal came up blank once again but he felt the slight profound fluctuations within them and decided to approach. When he got closer he recognized the shape of the leaves and the smell from his time on Earth and the gears in his head started madly turning with all sorts of possibilities!

The Appraisal of the plant also changed before his very eyes into

[Profound Tobacco (V. Weak) - can help to clear the mind and body when smoke is inhaled] as he mused over the name in his head.

He shouted out loud and started doing a little jig when that happened. "Ayo! I'm so fucking rich! That must mean that nobody has discovered this before! Ahahahahaha!" There was a reason for his outburst as he knew that this was something that could help easily with cultivation in the early realms. If the crazy idea he had would actually work that is.

He also knew the humans on this continent would lap up anything related to cultivation and it would make him tonnes of money, he was sure of it!

'Father in law... ahem I mean Qingyue's father is also a merchant and I think he has ties to black moon merchant guild. That old guy Zi Ji or whatever would probably be interested in this too if I can manage to grow some that will affect higher realm cultivators.'

In fact, his excitement was well-founded as the name change in appraisal had actually happened before. One day, he was out hunting and saw a strange brown vine without a name so he tried to give it a one for fun. Little did he know, appraisal updated the next second… he never saw a vine like it again, but needless to say, there is now a species called LongsVine out there somewhere.

The biggest change in Shane over these days, well, other than his overall strength, was his facial expressions and the way he carried himself. He was always alert for any danger but he no longer had the stoic and melancholic expression he used to carry around on Earth. No, instead it was replaced by a huge grin that almost always played along his new handsome face! If anyone he knew back on Earth saw him now, they would find it hard to recognize him.

Shane scratched his nose and narcissistically thought. 'Well if they could recognize me in the first place with how handsome I am now'