Giving advice

After listening to Valeria give him advice, Collin noticed a slight hint of smugness on her face, before it quickly disappeared. Today he had seen a couple different sides to his normally calm and collected mentor. After talking a bit more where she told him he still had a lot to learn about alchemy and that he could seek her out in the guild tower, they said their farewells and Collin began to walk towards the door when he stopped.

"As someone that came from a large cultivator clan, I know that some smaller clans and families tend to see female cultivators more as tools than as cultivators. And they tend to try and force them to marry and have children to increase the number of cultivators they have. 

If someone wanted to help their family but not be used as a tool, they could. If two cultivators have a child, then that child has a good chance of being born as a talent. This also includes parents that take alternative paths of cultivation. If someone had the money and the desire, they could help a dozen or so members of their family to become cultivators. They would only have to help them get to the fifth layer to ensure any children born to them would have the best chance to become cultivators.

The only thing someone would have to take note of, is that the safer the alternative path, the more expensive it is to progress. But if one didn't care about their family member's safety, they could choose a cheaper path. 

The book shops in the market street and the guild all sell alternative path cultivation methods of various kinds. They are not hard to get, even I have a nice collection.

Anyway, I hope to see you in the tower sometime."

After he spoke, he left the shop. Normally, talking about the matters of someone else's family wasn't something Collin would do, but since Valeria was his mentor, he decided to give her some advice. He didn't know if she would take it or not and had to no plans to ever ask about it. 

Collin was planning to walk back home after grabbing some snacks but decided to check out the book shops. He had placed orders for alternative path cultivation methods with the book shop owners, and while he checked once not long after the trade fair started, and he had meant to check after the final day. But he became distracted when he met his cousins and forgot. One of two things was now going to happen, first, they collected the cultivation methods, and he would pay for them, or two, they didn't find any or sold them when he didn't show up in which case he would ask for his deposit back.

The first bookshop he went to did collect a book for him, but it wasn't a cultivation method. It was a book on cosmetic transformation, it showed how a person could change the color of their eyes, hair, and skin. It also had a section on cultivation tattoos, some were for decoration, but others were similar to the tattoos of external cultivators and how to use Qi to burn them into one's flesh. While this book didn't have any use to Collin, the others might want to use it to alter their appearances. The owner of the bookshop wanted less than the deposit he had placed so he was able to get a few spirit stones back.

The other three shops each had books that fit what Collin was looking for. But they were mostly variations on the methods he already had. There were the talisman and rune methods which were variations of Inscription Cultivation, and a poison cultivation method that was a variation of the Alchemic Cultivation method Collin was using. Some of the books that were variations of the Treasure could only be used as reference because the items needed to cultivate them were extremely rare or no longer existed. But the majority of the methods were variations of the transformation cultivation method.

One of the books in the batch, was a book that Collin was interested in, it was a book on how to refine life bound treasures. During the first and most of the second era, life bound treasures could only be made by cultivator at the Core Formation realm. But towards the end of the second era someone found out how Qi Condensation and Foundation Establishment realm cultivators could make and use life bound treasures. And soon someone figured out how to make it into an alternative path cultivation method. 

Collin began reading the book as soon as he got back to the villa. The process of creating a life bound treasure wasn't that hard and only had some of the risks as the method Valter was using to cultivate. The only thing stopping him from making his own life bound treasure, it required a cultivation level of the eighth layer of Qi Condensation. The peak of the seventh layer bottleneck is the so-called boundary between being human and being more than human. Just breaking through that boundary causes a cultivators Qi and divine sense to grow several times in strength, allowing a cultivator to refine, nourish, and control a life bound treasure.

Collin had only just reached the seventh layer and would need time to reach the peak of the layer and come in contact with the boundary, let alone break through. Since he couldn't make a life bound treasure for a while, he decided to look at the types of designs and recipes to get a sense of what he could make later. There were weapon types like swords, spears, and hammers, artifact types like alchemy cauldrons, inscription brushes, talisman books, and flying tool treasures, several defensive types in the form of different kinds of shields, and types that most would consider evil. They were meant to capture souls, drain blood, and torture people or the items required to make they things like the souls and skulls of infants or the spines and blood of one-hundred virgins. 

Collin found reading about the various types of treasures fascinating. He wanted to eliminate weapon type treasures since he wasn't planning on fighting, but he didn't, because he knew just because he didn't want to fight didn't mean he wouldn't be forced to fight. In truth, an alchemy cauldron would fit his needs the best. It could be used as a weapon or as a shield and as a cauldron to practice alchemy, and as a bonus it would grow with him, and he wouldn't need to buy new alchemy cauldrons every time he reached a new realm. But the more he read about the cauldron treasures and their uses, and the ingredients necessary to create them the more they seemed to be the best option for him and the less he wanted one. 

After a while of reading, it was time for dinner. As the four of them were eating their meal, Collin brought out the book and told the three about it and suggested they look at it before handing it to Valter. Since his cultivation method was based on life bound treasure Collin figured he could use it as a reference to his cultivation. In no time, the three were standing shoulder to shoulder looking at the designs of the various treasures. It was at this time Collin decided to tell them about the t=other thing that had happened today.