38 The Traveler's Compass

By the time Xuan and Zhi Ruo returned to their respective rooms, Grandmaster Dun and several other alchemists had already moved Grandmaster Zong's body out and buried it. Zhi Ruo was going to sleep to get some rest, but Xuan had other plans in mind—namely, practicing the technique he obtained from the city lord.

Perhaps someone else would've been unable to keep a clear mind after what happened, but Xuan was different. He'd seen countless people die before his eyes in the past, and Grandmaster Zong was just another fish in the sea. Xuan wasn't heartless—just apathetic, unless the matter concerned those truly close to him.

Sitting down in his bed in a lotus-position, Xuan opened his inventory and took out the scroll that City Lord Yun Liao had given him earlier. When he spread it out to read its contents, a System message appeared in front of the paper, offering an easier-to-read translation of what was actually written on the scroll.

This happened whenever a player tried to learn a technique—its purpose was language compatibility, since while on Earth there were many different races and languages, in the world of Xianxia Online, there was only one. It also served to make it easier to understand how to use a technique, since sometimes, the archaic writing on some ancient scrolls and scriptures were hard to comprehend for a person used to the modern world.

Xuan found this somewhat odd, since Nirvana could've easily made the techniques to be written in a simple format to begin with and save the hassle of implementing a whole auto-translation feature, but he supposed it was to add realism to the game… or something like that.

Deciding not to dwell on it too much, Xuan instead focused on what was written in front of him:

'A tremendous amount of practice?' Xuan lifted an eyebrow. 'Is that so…'

Commanding the World Qi around him, Xuan took out a normal sword from his inventory—not Black Mamba—and levitated it in the air in front of him. Then, without even blinking, he thought the words 'Stray Cloud Path' in his head, and commanded the sword to fly through him.

SWOOSH.

Like his body was made of air, the blade cut straight through him without damaging anything, and struck the wooden wall behind.

'… Seems rather easy to me, does it not?'

With a snort, Xuan retrieved the sword, stashing it back in his inventory once more, and adjusted his clothing. In his past life, he had possessed a Ninth-Level understanding of the Law of Space—this allowed his body to essentially do the same thing as what Stray Cloud Path did, except it worked against Soul techniques as well. As such, Xuan didn't need to force himself to believe that his body was intangible—he was already used to it being that way.

Next up—items and techniques. Now that he had advanced a stage, it was natural to check both of these things in his System to see if there was anything new worth seeing. Hence, he opened up the System Shop—and sure enough, there were plenty of new merchandise in there recommended, now that he had somewhat established his cultivation identity.

The Bloodthirster's Path: Grants the wearer stacking vigor in battle. The more they kill, the stronger they become. — Type: Chest Armor.

Blood Energy Sword: This sword's Qi can be imbued with the user's blood to make it more deadly. — Type: Sword.

Bloodbend: Control the blood flow within someone's body to dictate their movements. (Requires a higher Soul Strength stat than enemy Soul Defense to use). — Type: Soul. (Blood attribute)

And so on.

As expected, most of the items listed here had to do with the blood attribute. Xuan had, after all, learned three blood techniques in a row a while back—which was also why he refused to learn any more of it until he obtained some other techniques first. He didn't want to make the same mistake he'd made in his past life—go so deep in one path that it becomes impossible for him to learn a different attribute.

And so, he scrolled past all of these things without too much interest, until he reached the very bottom. There, a tiny golden compass caught his eye, so much so that they widened a bit. It was a small, clean artifact that had nothing to do with blood—or even fighting in general, for that matter:

The Traveler's Compass: Points towards high-grade treasure. Range scales with the user's Soul Strength. (100,000 = 1 meter). — Type: Artifact (Saint-Grade).

"Oho… now this is interesting…"

No matter how one looked at it, this conversion rate was a complete scam. 100,000 Soul Strength was equivalent to only 1 meter of detection range?! Simply absurd. Not to mention the cost was 70,000 Credits, which was almost all of what Xuan currently had! If he purchased this, he'd only be left with 3,598 Credits—when he could've spent those 70,000 Credits on something else, like a powerful Saint-Grade technique. It didn't matter who was asked—they would never spent 70,000 Credits on something like this.

But Xuan was different.

With a Soul Strength stat of 16,476,407,178 and a little bit of math, he could tell that if he used this item, he would be able to sense treasures within a radius of 164,764 meters around him. Convert that to an easier to comprehend unit… that's roughly 165 kilometers around him—bigger than this entire region.

Granted, these parts were isolated and quite small in comparison to the bigger provinces in Xianxia Continent, but still, 165 kilometers was no small number. Finding high-grade treasures was one thing—but the real reason he was buying this item was so he could locate his own stashes around the world.

Of course, he had a rough idea of where each one was—e.g. the region they were in—but because there were so many, with each one only containing one or two treasures, he couldn't remember their exact locations. Using this compass, however, he'd be able to find his old things again with great ease.

And so, without a sliver of hesitation, Xuan spent the 70,000 Credits and purchased the item, before immediately equipping it.

No hits. That was fine. These were beginner parts anyway—it would be more odd if there had been a hit.

With a smile, he closed his eyes and began normally cultivating, absorbing the World Qi around him. Now that he'd broken through to the Core Formation stage, however, just doing this wouldn't be enough—he also needed Beast Cores to help further condense his Core. After all, even though he'd already formed and established it, he still needed to refine and reinforce it.

Luckily, though, after the Public Event just now, he had plenty of those on hand.

*****

- The Next Morning -

"Whew…"

Through several continuous hours of cultivation, Xuan had reached the Fifth Layer of the Core Formation stage by the time morning came. With the monstrous capabilities of the Chaos Scripture's Gathering Qi innate trait combined with the various Core Condensing Pills he had on hand from the Breakthrough Quest completion, this cultivation speed was quite simple for Xuan. If he kept this up for another few hours, he'd reach the Ninth Layer pretty quickly—he already had enough Beast Cores to do so thanks to the Hunting Party, after all.

Unfortunately, since he'd made a promise with a certain someone yesterday, he couldn't afford to keep cultivating now, and slowly opened his eyes.

After exiting his room, he found that Zhi Ruo's door was still closed—she'd probably gone to the cemetery where Grandmaster Zong had been buried. Then, he headed downstairs, said good morning to any working alchemists who approached him, and opened the front door to the guild.

Sitting outside with slouched shoulders and messy white hair was none other than the huntress, in some very questionable clothing. It was literally looked more like a brown rag than clothes—she'd been wearing this last night, too, but Xuan didn't really get the chance to comment about it with everyone that was going on. Now, though…

"Hmph, finally awake?"

Frowning as she heard the doors open, the huntress turned around and faced Xuan with that question.

"Were you waiting here all night?"

"Of course. Where else would I go?"

"… Do you not have an inn to stay at?"

"No. You paying?"

Xuan sighed. This girl was… very, very uncivil, and needed education on how to properly live in a city immediately. He didn't even want to ask where she stayed for the past few days, since the answer would probably be something along the lines of 'in the streets' or 'on someone's rooftop'.

"Come in," he said, turning around. "Your first lesson starts now."

The huntress frowned. "Wait, what? We're fighting in here?"

"No, you twit," Xuan said, pausing. "I'm teaching you how this world works."

*****

"… So, you understand now?"

"Wait, wait wait. So like, there's four major cultivation phases, and each one has several 'stages' or 'realms'? Then, each stage or realm has several minor layers in them?"

Xuan nodded. "Correct. Now, recite the four phases' names."

"Uh… Mortal Transfiguration… Original Compression… Heaven Assassination… and Godhood?"

He rubbed the area between his eyebrows.

"… It's Mortal Transformation, Origin Comprehension, Heaven Ascension, and Godhood. At least you got the last one right."

"Ughhh! It's too complicated!" The girl yelled in irritation, scratching her head with anger. "How do you even know all of this, anyway?! When you told me to add you as a 'friend' earlier, I saw your cultivation! It's only one stage above me!"

Xuan shrugged. "I'm just reading off what I memorized from the game's wiki."

Of course, he could've responded with 'I'm a past player', but that would lead to the question 'really? What stage were you?', which Xuan didn't want to talk to her about just yet. Not enough trust had been built.

Naturally, though, every action had a consequence, and Xuan's for saying something as boring as that was the huntress's reply.

"… Wow. Incredibly lame answer." The girl stared at Xuan with deadpan eyes for a few seconds, then gave up and clutched her head again. "Grr… why can't they just make it like… I don't know… three levels or something?!"

At this, Xuan sighed. "Listen. If you want to get stronger in this world, you need to first understand how the power system works. This is the way things are, and you cannot change it. Now—as a player, you have a System to help you keep track of how you're doing in your cultivation. Remember that?"

"Er… yes… and we have these… 'stat' things or whatever…"

"Yes. In the Mortal Transformation phase, each breakthrough in a minor layer will award you 150 stat points scaling up to 500 by the time you reach the ninth layer, resetting with every major stage along with the Qi requirements per layer. Beyond that, in the other phases, every major stage only has three minor layers, so you gain 500, 1,000, and 1,500 per minor breakthrough instead."

"And in the major stages… um…"

"Every major stage breakthrough awards 1,000, 10,000, 100,000, or 1,000,000 depending on which phase you're in," Xuan finished in her stead. "For example, the Mortal Transformation phase gives 1,000 to all stats per major breakthrough, while Origin Comprehension gives 10,000."

"… And the only exception to that rule is the Body Tempering stage, which gives only 100 when initially breaking through to it."

"Oh, you remembered that part." Xuan said, as emotionlessly as possible. "Good job."

"Can you not compliment me with such a bored and uncaring face?!"

"Got it. I will not compliment you in the future."

"That's not what I meant!"

"Relax, I know. Just some sarcasm."

"Wuwu…"

The girl frowned and drooped her head low, hugging her legs tightly as she sat on the floor and leaned against the frame of the bed that Xuan was on. Her eyes looked like they were on the verge of tears—she was good at fighting and all, but when it came to studying and remembering knowledge, she was about as talented as a mole rat with dementia.

It was kind of cute, actually—the way she reacted to being bad at doing something. She probably thought she was the best all her life and only ever bothered learning physical stuff, so when it came to something like this, she was completely stumped and at a loss for what to do. Xuan felt like he was raising a daughter, almost. It wasn't a bad feeling.

"Well, you'll learn with time," Xuan said, standing up from the bed. "For now, though… it seems we have some visitors."

"Huh?"

Suddenly, the girl looked up, blinking in confusion.

Xuan smirked. "Just follow me."

Next chapter