Hao didn’t kill the beast with one slap. The battle delayed him longer than it should have. It was stronger than the first Feline Demonic Beast he ran into in the Secret Realm, but was simpler in mind. The first one seemed to think and react. This one just growled in the mouth and stomach.

  It turned into a battle of attrition. The first to bleed lost. It was Hao’s second time facing the same kind of beast, along with the fact that he had the agility advantage in the forest.

  Strike one, agitate it, wait for it to slow. Strike again, dance around the tree, climb if he had to, and strike, repeat. Hao walked away without injury.

  The Morning had fully arrived by the time it joined the other beasts in the Spirit-Holding bag. Rough, white striped fur. Ugly compared to the other beast of the same bloodline.

  Its value was still good. The greater the cultivation, the more likely a core will form. Hao didn’t butcher it. He staunched any wounds the beast already had to keep the red gold from being devoured by the Drinking-Stone inside the Space of the Spirit-Holding bag.

  Any of the pungent blood that had already drained, Hao let the Drinking-Stone have for the first time after such a long time. It was viscous and slippery. It vanished the moment Hao touched it and evaporated once inside the bag.

  Turned to a thick red mist that made the Drinking-Stone crackle with such fervor that Hao could feel it.

  Hao let some float out. It had been a long time since he breathed the Pure, white, cloud-like World Energy from the Drinking-Stone. It made the normal world energy feel like soup on his skin.

  That presented another problem to his plans. The beast’s body and the amount of World Energy its puddles of blood produced instantly made the Spirit-Holding bag feel heavier.

  Not enough to slow him down. There was a little more weight to his step, not useful for sneaking around, which was a dent in his plan to follow Bangcai’s group until the eventual battle began.

  There were still other sources of World Energy around. Even if there wasn’t, the plants inside the bag naturally produced more on their own. The weight would only climb until he released it.

  Hao decided to change his original plan. It won’t be long, a few days until the conflict starts. It should be hard to find them when it starts. Bangcai isn’t a quiet person, nor is Hongyu.

  The sounds of blustering wind and creaking trees made the cleaning process relaxing. He went around the campsite.

  First, he tried to wrap the arm of the pourer that was bitten clean off. He tore the man’s robe up. Hao shredded the cloth and wrapped it around the open wound like a bandage after applying a little spare medicine. One good deed, this random man did not need to die in Hao’s eyes. He didn’t deserve it. But if he lived, after such simple treatment was a test of his luck and will. He took the blood he lost as payment. He did the same with the corpses of the two men he killed. Their impressive Cultivation made the Drinking-Stone glow as it drank them until they became nearly mummified.

  Hao had to wash himself too, not just the campsite. There were a variety of colors on him, mostly red. On his face, sour jam. The rest of him was a red liquid, a sour-smelling blood that was coagulated to a porridge or dried crisp. He recolored his hair, of course. This time, a different color. He used tree bark to give himself a calm mahogany color; he had seen gray enough times already.

  I could make myself a cultivation cave in one of the mountains. Hao stretched a sealed-off place to release the World Energy in the bag and channel it. He went to the opposite mountain from which he came. The people there didn’t know his face, and there wouldn’t be anyone like Fa who would be interested in speaking to him.

  *

  The days at the mountain passed like a peaceful dream. When it rained, Hao could go inside the mountain and search for any Amethysts left behind. He found it strange. To mine again after what seemed a long time.

  Hao found a few himself, mostly small and dim. One or two were fair-sized. All of them were of considerable value.

  Amethysts smaller than a pearl were thrown away by others who winced as the gemstone hit the ground. They were pained to lose it. And glad when they found one larger. People with normal holding bags or rucksacks didn’t bother with a small stone if they found one that was larger. The lesser was abandoned for the more.

  Hao didn’t have the same storage problem as they did; what they left behind by others, he added to his count. But not once had he found one larger than a thumb abandoned.

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  The situation around the mountain wasn’t just mining for stones. There was an entire camp. It presented both challenges and opportunities in unequal amounts.

  Far more opportunity than challenge.

  The harshest challenge was getting clean. Hao bathed whenever he left the mine; the sensation of cave dust made rest difficult. Not long ago, he would sleep in it. It didn’t bother his meditations, but it made every meal taste sour. It will pass in time, he told himself — once all that was left was to reapply the tree bark paste to hide his hair.

  “Junior Brother Li, coming back from your alone time again.” An old man who introduced himself as Qin Shiyin called to Hao as he wandered back from one such moment.

  “Alone time?” Hao or Li Jiling, what he called himself when he was asked, was coming back from one such wash after he spent all morning and afternoon mining away. And secretly making a Cultivation Chamber. “Senior Brother Qin, you’re acting like I spent all day alone.”

  The older man, with fewer wrinkles than his voice and his laugh suggested he should have, waved the sleeve of his white cloak. “When you aren’t at the fire, you are alone. I don’t want to know what you are doing. With that pretty face, you are probably taking girls far away to trick them into cooking vegetables for you. Now, come sit and play dice with this old uncle. If you lose, you owe me a meal.”

  Hao tilted his head as he approached the firepit that was too big for the little evening fire that was burning at its center. “Do you have anything to give me if I win this time?”

  “You underestimate this old uncle!” Qin Shiyin seemed indignant, but it was just his favorite way to act. “I have old corn wine and a dirty handmade bowl… My heart, too, of course—no woman has captured it in this lifetime.”

  Hao threw back the indignation with a mirth-filled smirk of condescension. “The last thing I say is a withered pig’s heart.” Hao plopped down on a wet stone and picked up the dice and cup. He found he was as bad at this game as he was at cooking.

  This had become a regular thing on nice evenings. A few people didn’t mine for amethyst at all, instead they played around and gambled in the pseudo peace created by the threat of the guards.

  When it was dry, a reminder that it was close to winter, Hao joined them and sat around the campfire. He grew to have a few acquaintances. The main reason he joined was to listen for any news of significance. The people were enjoyable too, in a fashion.

  Hao took up a cup made from a horn and shook it. He slammed the cup down on a stone and five handmade cubes called dice. Individually colored for each of the mortal elements. The cube shape gave them six sides.

  “Pick the numbers you want to keep.” That rickety old voice, like a coop door that was taken loose, spoke through a smile. “You aren’t much for gambling, calm, smart, but…” He was trying to get under Hao’s skin.

  The rules of this one were simple: The bigger total number at the end wins. Five, Five, two, one, two. Hao tapped the two fives and got a chance to re-roll the ones he didn’t keep; he did. His second round yielded four, one, one.

  “A total of sixteen, not a bad number, larger than the number of hairs on your face.”

  Hao looked up at Qin Shiyin, his wrinkled lips pulled up like a drawn bow. “Just your damn dice…” Hao told him, using a piece of charcoal to write Sixteen on the flat stone.

  Shiyin slammed the cup down, five, four, four, two, two. Seventeen, beaten by one, of course, Qin acted like a lucky roll that got him a free meal, a win by a single digit, wasn’t humble about it. He never was. “I don’t even need my second round. Does Junior brother want to do another match? We can play something else?”

  Hao shook his head. “No, just tell me what I missed while I was outside camp, and we can skip all those.”

  Qin Shiyin never held back on words; he was as eager to talk as he was to get someone to play the next game.

  It was guesswork when the Secret Realm would close. The only guaranteed answer was Sometime soon. No matter how big or small the rumor, Hao would listen to it and check for himself. He was waiting to hear one thing. Mo Bangcai is on the move.

  Every rumor had to be taken with a grain of salt; the kinds varied, conflicts, roaming beats, treasure that had been unseen by humanity for centuries, that fell from the sky. Hao found most of them utter nonsense. On occasion, when a small beast was spotted. Groups would race to hunt them. Alone, Hao could move faster than these groups and took advantage of that.

  Sneaking away was easy. The colder the night, the fewer people paid attention to anything but the fire and the revelry.

  Qin Shiyin was the only one who asked him a question, anyway. He had a few fans around the camp, not really fans, but customers who came up to buy a slice of the meat, like the piece Shiyin won in the bet.

  Hao never gave up a single herb, berry, or vegetable. Only the abundance of meat he ended up gathering.

  It was easier to make a connection with food than to saunter up and start a conversation. Shiyin was the easy one. Not everyone was as comfortable as him when it came to speaking nonstop until nightfall.

  In that dark, Hao would go off towards the latest and most interesting tale spun up by the people. That is how he got more meat than he was willing to trade for.

  Hao ignored most of the beasts if they were not aggressive. The weight of the Spirit-Holding bag multiplied whenever he caught one. Anything particularly aggressive that smelled like human blood would seek him in his lonesome, on their own, when he was looking for them. They would get stored for food and World Energy.

  When it was morning again, Hao would already be in the mine. A fact known to those who had seen him move around. It was a decent cover. But more and more, Hao spent his time in the mountain hall while others left. Small conflicts would usually avoid him, meaning he filled his hands with Day-Night Amethysts that had that purple—gold luster and flow.