Cultivation and Expedition

During the following days, Shen Yue treated Xiao Ninger in the forest as agreed. During each meeting, they hardly spoke more than a few words, but she seemed a bit embarrassed. But after the third day, she started to respond to his attempts to make small talk; mostly about cultivation and school.

'Right, in the story mc gave her cultivation technique of wind and lightning origin which helped her breakthrough very quick. But I can't give her one since I need many techniques before my Library can form a better or perfect technique. Maybe I should ask her.'

"Ninger, can I ask you something?"

"Yes, of course. You have helped me greatly. I feel a lot better now. What do you need?", Ninger felt glad at the opportunity to repay his favor. In her mind, Shen Yue is an arrogant young master from a major family while she is from an insignificant noble family. But after meeting for a few times, he does not display any sort of arrogance and seemed almost humble. She was even able to make comfortable small talk with him. But she doesn't want to owe him too much. Also, she isn't going to marry his brother Shen Fei even if she need to break ties with her family.

"Well, that is… I was wondering if you can bring me some of your family wind lightning techniques. Don't worry, I know it's a secret for your family. I don't need high level techniques just as many as you can get for low level ones. I only want to take a look at them, I don't even need to take them with me. I am interested in studying different techniques." 'I hope she doesn't misunderstand me'.

"Oh, …sure. If it's just low level techniques we have a lot at my family. I can bring them to you next time we meet."

Shen Yue went home after that. He tried to remember from his memory what Nie Li is going to do in the story. 'First, he should be buying purple mist grass to take advantage of the rise in price after he sent to the alchemists a formula for spirit recovery pill. But since he has no connection with Xiao Ninger, I wonder how he will get money. I am sure he has his ways. I don't need money so I shouldn't interfere with this. I must prepare for the trip to the ruins. First I will select the demon spirit for myself.'

After talking with his father, Shen Yue got a demon spirit from family's treasury. By identifying different spirits inside the treasury with his Library, he was most satisfied with the Black Tiger demon spirit. He practiced his spirit to be able to control it and to increase his fighting strength. Right now, he is at the top of silver rank. There are different levels for each rank distinguished by 1 star 2 star, etc with after 5 stars is another rank.

Using his Library of Heaven, he was able to rise to the top of Silver rank without much difficulty. He is only a step away from Gold rank. But he doesn't have enough books in his family's library for gold rank. There are about 20 or so books but he will need more than 50 books to get a perfect Heaven technique to cultivate Gold rank. He decided to use his family to look for different books on Gold rank. Since the quality is not necessary, his servants were able to gather about 30 more books necessary from other noble families in just about three days.

Shen Yue used all the books for Gold rank to form a perfect cultivation path using his Library. He then decided to skip school and cultivate the whole day in his room. Just like last time, after about a day and a half he felt his soul force rise suddenly and made another breakthrough. He used a soul stone to test and indeed he was now at pinnacle of Gold rank. His demon spirit also became much stronger. Gold rank fighters are not common in Glory city. Only noble families are able to hire them as high level guards. But gold rank fighter at his age was not something imaginable at all.

To breakthrough to Black Gold rank, his family only have about 15 books or so on it. The other noble families or the academy's library are not likely to have them. Only major families like City Lord and Divine family are likely to have those. But to assess those books would not be easy.

Shen Yue decided to increase his knowledge in the meantime by flipping through all the books in the library in different fields apart from cultivation such as inscription, alchemy, arrays, etc. There were about a thousand books in his family library so it will probably take days to flip through all of them. After that, he would be able to access those books whenever necessary. He then decided to go to the library to look through some books.

Shen Yue found Nie Li and Zi Yun sitting on a table in the library. He remembered that it was then that Nie Li advised Zi Yun on her cultivation which would be extremely helpful to her. He decided to not interfere with them and turned out to leave. He caught the gazes of both Nie Li and Zi Yun. Nie Li had a challenging gaze while Zi Yun had a blank expression. He didn't think much of it and returned home to keep flipping through books. In the original story, Shen Yue would find trouble with Nie Li for talking to Zi Yun and become his enemy. Right now, Shen Yue is trying to keep a distance from Nie Li and keep getting stronger.

The next day when he went out for his last treatment with Ninger, she brought many cultivation techniques from her family. Shen Yue looked at them and used his Library to form a semi-perfect cultivation technique with only a few faults and wrote it down while Ninger was watching him in puzzlement.

"Ninger, I got this cultivation technique from an ancient book that I thought might be suitable for you. Since the technique doesn't suit my cultivation style, I will give it to you".

Ninger took a look at what Shen Yue gave to her and found that the technique seems more complex than the ones she was familiar with. She was surprised at how Shen Yue could get this type technique which is her family specialty. She started to doubt that the resources of a Sacred Family may be higher than she expected. But she decided to not ask and accept it although she wasn't entirely sure how valuable the cultivation technique is.

"Thank you, Shen Yue. My illness is almost completely cured because of you. I can now cultivate freely. You have given me a lot of help during these few days. If there is something you need, please let me know. I will do my best to repay you the favor." She looked very serious while she said her thanks.

Shen Yue graciously accepted her thanks and went back home. The expedition is expected to set out tomorrow. He needed to prepare by bringing necessary items. He decided to bring some gold rank guards as in the story. In the story, he brought them to deal with Nie Li but now he still decided to bring them because they could help with those crazy apes and black guild members that will attack the group from what he remembered.

During the trip, Nie Li stayed beside Zi Yun and kept trying to talk to her. Shen Yue decided to follow from behind the group and mostly ignored them. Shen Yue's behavior of staying low in the last few days had surprised a lot of people around him. For them, he had always been arrogant and liked to bully the other small nobles and commoners who seemed to catch his notice. But now he mostly kept to himself without talking to people. His group of guards followed closely behind him.

As in the story, Nie Li fought with an arrogant noble who was jealous of the attention Divine Family young master Shen Lin Jain's friend Lan Rou was paying to Nie Li. Nie Li as expected destroyed and absorbed his soul system shocking everyone in the group.

When the group reached the ruins, the apes suddenly attacked. As I let my guards take care of them, Nie Li didn't have a chance to show off his shooting skills because of that and even a lot of people thanked me for bringing those Gold rank guards. Even if I didn't do the fighting myself, many students looked at me with gratitude in their eyes seeing the danger those apes could have posed to them.

Because the group didn't get separated due to apes, Nie Li didn't get to arrive at an underground cave at the north side of the square with Zi Yun and find the treasures there. The group decided to go to different directions in small groups and I managed to convince Shen Lin Jian to let me search the direction the underground cave is with my guards. Nie Li and the others went the other direction.

After some time, Shen Yue found the entrance to the underground tomb and went in with his guards. In there, he found a room full of skeleton corpses and a coffin. After enduring the burning light from the coffin, he found a page of temporal demon spirit book and an abstruse gemstone inside the coffin. He went further into the tomb and finally found the treasure trove he was looking.

Shen Yue's guards were ecstatic talking about how rich they were going to be. He let them take as much as they can since he didn't really have a choice as he couldn't carry them all by himself. He found a shining lamp among the treasures and remembered it to be the shadow lamp Nie Li came here for. He quickly grabbed it and put it in his storage ring just as his guards were busy collecting the treasure. The group of Shen Lin Jian dug out the top of cave and came through the stairs as in the story. They were all ecstatic when they found the treasures. Nie Li and the others also came with them. When Shen Lin Jian asked Nie Li to take an item, he looked around but had a disappointed expression. He then looked at Shen Yue with small suspicion in his eyes before just taking a golden sword.

'Haha, Nie Li. I took that shawdow box you really wanted. You can't really accuse me because unless you can explain how you know about the lamp. I was feeling pretty excited about the fact that I was able to get the upper hand over the mc.'