Anticipation

The Pig Room started exactly like the Snake Room had, with a door controlled by a talent measuring device. The puzzle, however, turned out quite a bit more interesting than the last. I had to search what looked like a well furnished living room and find the correct key to the door to the next stair among several fakes, by sensing faint spiritual energy from the real one. There was no real technique to doing so, rather it was an ability known as Aura Sense that cultivators naturally gained when they reached the 7th Earth Realm where their Aura started properly developing. Still, I got the impression that not every 7th Realm novice would be able to sense the energy from the key.

In the room above, I had a straight fight against five boar-type magical beasts. This was an enemy I favored much more than scarabs or snakes—tough but relatively slow and plausible to kite. Their numbers made it a bit tricky, but though it took quite some time, I won without a scratch.

Above that was the Ascended Beast—a much larger boar with glowing red eyes and coal-black tusks. It was faster than its Magical Beast version, but it didn't corner very well. I took a methodical approach, gradually creating chances to shoot it until it better resembled a porcupine than a boar by the time it finally dropped.

"You're the last one to finish their second Zodiac Room, so we're just waiting on Jong and the Rooster Room now. You coming to join us?"

"Yeah I don't think I'll take long to deal with the boss. Its tusks seem like valuable enough to take to a real sect, I don't want to worry about the rest. Anyway, I haven't actually opened the treasure, I'll see you over there."

"Yeah I know—the Pig symbol on the door hasn't started glowing yet. I'm pretty sure it's opening the treasure boxes at the end that triggers it."

I was about to begin sawing the boar's black tusks from its body, when I realized I sensed strong spiritual energy inside it. "No. Way." I cut it open at the belly, and after several gross minutes, sure enough, I pulled out a larger core than any I'd yet seen. Okay, not telling Jue Zhu—or any of them—about this one, I think. I'd need to prepare thoroughly to absorb an Ascended core, since even with my high talent at absorbing cores it could readily overwhelm me to just try doing it straight out. I'd had a couple lessons on Ascended cores which had covered enough for me to know that this was now the most valuable item I owned.

Actually, I might not absorb the core at all. According to the Inventory, it was of the 6th Stage in the 7th Realm, while I was already in the 7th Stage. The Ascended Core held about 800 billion Qi, but even that wouldn't currently break me through to the 8th Stage. If it could be made into a pill though, it would likely sell for quite a lot of money since in that case, a newer cultivator would be able to use it to skip roughly the entire 6th Realm. Rich families often stockpiled such items to get members or talented affiliates a jump-start not long after they started cultivating, and it wasn't common for such a jump-start to reach all the way to Aura Formation Realm.

After storing away the Ascended Core, curiosity overcame me about the contents of the Pig Room's treasure box. Like what I'd gotten from the Snake Room, it too was a Cultivating Treasure, though it didn't really fit the theme of the Zodiac animal. Probably, they'd run out of ideas or the capacity to fit the themes by the time they picked the treasure for this room: A "Spirit Jade" piece containing 5 trillion Qi. The Topaz was undoubtedly the better prize, since according to the Inventory instead of improving my cultivation, cultivating with it would raise my Comprehension, Resolve and Reaction directly. Still, that was more than enough to get me from the 9th Stage to Aura Strengthening Realm, the 8th Earth Realm, directly and I fancied using it for exactly that.

Then, I went back to sawing out the tusks of the now-named from my Inventory Darkfang Boar, which took about an hour per tusk. I let Jue Zhu know I was on my way, and made it as far as entering the Ox section of the labyrinth by dusk. I stuck close to the wall on the side of each turn I needed to make and went less hastily then, spotting the campire Jue Zhu, Quan, and Shokoya were sitting at after about 6 hours.

They were cultivating when I got there. Jue Zhu only interrupted for a moment to acknowledge me, but instead of joining them, I'd been feeling hungry for a while after the battle. I made a separate fire so as not to bother them, but as soon as my rations were cooked enough to smell they apparently decided they could use some food too.

I spotted Kunlun Jong coming up the long straightaway a couple hours after dawn. He nodded to each of us, then said to Jue Zhu, "I'm ready when you are. Let's go get that medallion."

I noticed Jue Zhu tense for just a moment. "Actually…let's hold off for one day. Just until tomorrow. You know, take one lazy day and make extra certain we're all at 100%."

Several looks passed between all four of us, but all of them carried the same message: this would, barring some mischief from the heavens, be the last time all five of us would fight together. It wasn't a bad idea at all to take one day off before starting.

"Man, now I'm thinking it's inconvenient that Jue Zhu only brought one board game." A few hours had gone by and I was waiting for my next turn using his board.

"You like board games then, Z?" Shokoya and I had talked a lot, since we were planning to be teammates at the 10,000 Scrolls Library like Jue Zhu and Jong wanted to be at the Azure Flame Abbey. I'd started calling him Shoko, and he'd started calling me Z.

"Not particularly…honestly I like card games more. A simple deck of playing cards would have taken up a lot less space in an Inventory than an entire board game, so I don't even have that as an excuse. I just failed to think of it, straight up."

"Wanna see if the TA has one to sell?"

"Guess it can't hurt."

He did, but the others voted to play Cheater, a game that I didn't care for. Shokoya did terribly though and stopped after a few rounds. "You know what? You're right Z, this game sucks. Let's go back to Xiangqi."

The rest of the day and following night was a strange but pleasant experience. Just having fun hanging out with people wasn't an experience I was used to having. I shouldn't get used to it, either. There's basically no chance I'll ever be this chummy with people at the Library. Even Shokoya might turn on me one day, if he ever gets jealous enough about the gap in our comprehension talents. That's how the Cultivation world is…even someone like Jue Zhu can't change that.

That's why I picked this over the two other choices, isn't it? It's not like I can stop being alone, so I picked the environment where the strength of one person alone matters the most. Trying to follow someone like Jue Zhu, getting comfortable in his shadow, would have only brought me more pain.