Trade ships.

After practicing his soul art Collin fell into a deep sleep and the only nasty bit of it was maybe a little drool. Learning the soul art was far easier than Collin expected, it was no wonder that clans and sects hid soul arts away, if they didn't everyone would be able to progress past the minor bottleneck with ease.

After a restful sleep and a satisfying stretch Collin began his new routine. Waking up, followed by cultivation, followed by blood cultivation, followed by body refining, followed by breakfast, followed by gardening, followed by alchemy practice, followed by dinner, followed by more gardening, followed by fire pill refining, followed by more cultivation, followed by bathing, followed by inscription practice, followed by reading, followed by soul art practice, followed by bed.

This had been Collin's routine for the last three and a half months. The only disruption to this schedule came a month into his training when one of the four days a year when restaurants don't deliver came. He decided to go to town to buy supplies and buy a large selection of snacks from the street vendors. The older woman with the long bright red hair was still in the inscription shop, and still very talkative. His meeting with Valeria was the same as last time, he showed her the pills he made, and she gave him advice on how improve his skills before he returned home and resumed his routine.

Collin was more than happy to continue his routine for a couple of more months, but for the second time in three months his breakfast had a note from the restaurant that there would be no delivery tomorrow. For the next week the city would be hosting trade ships from across the great ocean and a trade ship from the imperial city. Every year, five massive ships floating ten feet above the ocean come to Camis city to deliver goods from the other continents, turning the city into a massive trade fair.

The trade ship from the imperial city would fly high amongst the clouds before landing in the city center delivering goods from throughout the empire and collecting goods from the foreign trade ships. Raw and refined goods could be found at cheap prices throughout the city for the next week, knowledge would also be sold.

As the former young master of the territorial lord's clan, Collin's memories of this time of the year were of a fun festival. His parents and the parents of his friends would arrange for them to meet and explore the trade fair. They were the young masters of powerful clans and would strut everywhere they went and bought everything that caught their eye. They would eat at the fanciest restaurants and attend parties thrown by the rich and powerful clans of the city.

While he was no longer a young master, he was still looking forward to looking around for items and knowledge that he could use to go stronger. He was also going to look for a demon beast to buy and tame for protection. A great number of exotic demon beasts from the other continents would be for sale, if he could find one that matched his needs, he would buy it.

He was also going to use this opportunity to look for more alternative cultivation paths, while his own path was set, he was growing more curious about what other paths existed. Alternative cultivation methods like the Blood Purification cultivation method that could add to his strength would be the most helpful, but learning more about less than helpful methods would help to fill in the gaps in Collins cultivation knowledge.

Tomorrow around noon the ships would arrive, Collin was trying to decide which one he wanted to watch arrive. The ship from the imperial city looked like giant flying gold coin and when it landed it takes up most of the plaza in the city center. The ships arriving from the ocean looked like massive beans floating above the water, if the wind and waves were just right the ships would plow right through them. They would fly to the southern dock yard, then form a line side by side, before the rounded bottom of each ship split open and a ramp slide out to the ground.

Whichever one he went to watch would have an army of workers disembark and offload a massive number of crates, that would later be marched through the city streets to the either the dock or to the city center before being loaded inside the opposite ship. Whenever Collin would ask what was being transported inside the crates, he would be told that they were items that couldn't be stored in bags or rings. Every attempt to get any further information about the crates was met with "you don't need to know".

Collin was no longer interested in anything that had to do with the crates, without the protection of the city lord's clan, asking about things that he didn't need to know about would get him in trouble or dead. Security would be everywhere, anyone who broke the law would be punished severely, with some never to be seen again. Collin would prefer to avoid city security, but the benefits of this week were too good to pass up. He would avoid going where he shouldn't, avoid talking about things he shouldn't, and wear his faceless servant costume with the divine sense blocking inscription.

Collin had practiced creating the inscription for blocking divine sense hundreds of times before he tried it on his faceless mask. It was the inscription that he started practicing inscription, and when he first started, he was planning to quit after he was able to inscribe it, but over a month has passed since then and he is still practicing. He found the concentration needed to continuously flow his Qi into the inscription pen while carefully drawing the inscription pattern to be a relaxing form of meditation.

Collin would also have to visit the alchemy shop to visit with Valeria, the last time he saw her was just before he broke through to the 4th layer of Qi Condensation. He looked forward to showing her the jar of perfect grade scab pills he had made, and to show off that he had reached the 5th layer of Qi Condensation. He had broken through last week during his morning cultivation. His Qi which at the 1st layer felt like a thin fog, and then felt like a thin stream of water at the 3rd layer, now felt a small river flowing through his body.

The minor Qi gathering pills Collin had been refining for his cultivation were now all but useless for increasing the strength of his Alchemic Pill Dantian. He was already refining a stronger version of Qi gathering pill called the spirit gathering pill, but they still had a light tan tinge to them. When he could continuously make spirit gathering pills correctly, he would only have four more pills to learn before he could make all ten pills needed to take the test to join the alchemist guild.

Collin was trying not to let the sense of pride from being so close to his goal affect his progress. He knew that the only reason he made it to this point was because he shut himself in this villa and practiced alchemy as hard as he could. He didn't want to be one of those cultivators that get within eyesight of their goal and screwed up because they thought it was in the bag. For the next week his other training may not be as strict as normal, but his alchemy practice would still progress.