Lady Cultivator

Chapter 44: Livelihood

Translator: Cenniwdyl Editor: Caron_

Once she returned from Ten Thousand Laws Pavilion, Mo Tiange began her Closed Door Meditation.

On one hand, she managed to find the purpose of the seeds Murong Yan gave her from inside the Jade Slip called “Complete Example of Spiritual Plants” and realized that quite a few of those seeds were extremely useful, so she wanted to do a Closed Door Meditation to find the most suitable way to use them. On the other hand, in addition to being idle for quite a while, she still had a bottle of Aura-Converging Pills, so it was time for her to proceed with her cultivation.

Naturally, Closed Door Meditation for Aura Refining cultivators like her wasn’t the same for high-level cultivators who stayed in their cultivating rooms for long periods of time without leaving. Aura Refining cultivators still needed to eat, move their bodies and take baths. Therefore, the so-called Closed Door Meditation for Mo Tiange just meant that aside from doing those things, all her time would be used for cultivating and she would no longer go out, wandering around.

Inside the pouches of seeds Murong Yan gave her, there were seeds of a plant called Bewitching Flower. It was one of the materials for Bewitching Powder. Mo Tiange spent several days thoroughly studying the spiritual aura inside the seeds before she could make it bloom in an instant. Sure enough, the scent produced by this flower had psychotic effects.

In addition to this, there were also seeds of a plant called Fire Thorn. They were far more useful than the ordinary thorny vines she had in her possession. They innately had fire element spiritual aura, so people who weren’t careful and touched them could get burned.

When she finally managed to manipulate these two types of seeds proficiently and stabilized her cultivation realm, she took a temporary break from her Closed Door Meditation.

At this moment, she came across her biggest problem—money.

Having no money in the secular world was equivalent to be unable to do anything; in the cultivation world, one wouldn’t fare any better. The only difference was that in the cultivation world, money was neither gold nor silver—it was spirit stones.

Mo Tiange examined the things inside her Qiankun Bag. Aside from spirit stones she kept aside for laying formations and a bottle of Aura-Converging Pills she hadn’t used, there were only a few things she could sell. She already used up the spirit stones that belonged to the deceased man from An Clan to buy medicinal pills. Furthermore, their spirit tools couldn’t be sold in Mount Yunwu’s market square or she might get into trouble. All that remained were only some spiritual plants, materials to refine tools, and a bead as large as a wine cup.

After consulting Second Uncle, Mo Tiange sold all of them. As for the bead, because even Second Uncle didn’t know what it was for, she couldn’t sell it.

However, because the two people who died back then were just Aura Refining cultivators, their possessions weren’t really good and Mo Tiange didn’t get much from selling them. Before long, the money she got was completely spent and she was once again at a loss over her livelihood.

Because her spiritual roots were lacking, she had to eat medicinal pills and use Spirit-Gathering Formation, but both of these required spirit stones. If she stuck to the sect’s rations of three Aura-Nourishing Pills and five spirit stones a month, she would have to spend an infinite amount of time just to advance to the tenth layer. Nevertheless, she wasn’t good at anything except for formations, and the money she gained from selling formations was only enough to support Second Uncle’s recuperation.

When they attended a sermon, Xu Jingzhi saw that Mo Tiange was sighing incessantly and asked her what happened. After finding out the reason, he asked her in astonishment, “Junior Martial Brother Ye, why don’t you go and do some errands? They’re much more profitable than the method you came up with.”

“Huh?” Mo Tiange was stunned.

Xu Jingzhi sighed. He earnestly instructed her, “Why did we try so hard to enter the sect? Isn’t it because the sect has abundant resources? Apart from the rations we get each month, there are many rewarding errands we can run in this sect. Take a look at me. Before, I didn’t cultivate for three months and ran everywhere to do some errands; I made quite a lot of spirit stones which enabled me to enter Closed Door Meditation for half a year without any problems.”

Mo Tiange was suddenly enlightened by his story. She smacked her head a few times; she actually forgot that being a disciple of the sect gave her certain benefits and she didn’t need to worry about making money outside!

Thus, Mo Tiange stopped cultivating for the time being and started running errands.

The so-called errands were assignments given by the sect to the disciples. Some errands which were unsuitable to be carried out by part-time disciples were given to formal disciples to be completed.

Mo Tiange went to the steward’s hall. When she entered the main hall in the courtyard, it was the second time she saw Martial Uncle Yu.

Just like before, Martial Uncle Yu was cultivating, but there was also an Aura Refining disciple who was sorting some things by the side. When he saw her walking into the hall, this extremely ordinary-looking male disciple asked, “Did you come to deliver or pickup?”

Mo Tiange pondered for a moment before answering, “Sorry to trouble Senior Martial Brother, I’ve come to pick up an errand.”

He extended his hand towards her. “Identity tablet.”

Mo Tiange took out her identity tablet and passed it over.

After inspecting her identity tablet for a moment and confirming there weren’t any problems with it, he tossed her a Jade Slip. “The white ones are available as long as you meet the requirements.”

Mo Tiange inserted a strand of her divine sense into the Jade Slip and all kinds of errands instantly appeared inside her mind.

Basically, these errands could be categorized into several types. The first one included miscellaneous tasks inside the sect such as guarding, transmitting and so on. The second one was searching for certain things outside the sect. The third one was guarding the spirit stone mines, running stores and the like.

The first kind was quite popular. From the attitude of the disciple who guarded the Ten Thousand Laws Pavilion back then, it could be seen that the payment was pretty good. Furthermore, the errands were performed inside the sect. For the second kind of errand, the payment was generous, but they were relatively harder and needed some luck. As for the third kind, they took a long time and required disciples to be away from the sect. Mo Tiange didn’t want to do this kind of errand. If she was outside the sect for a long time, although she could have most of her time to cultivate, the outside environment definitely wouldn’t be as good as the spirit veins inside the sect.

Thus, she could only choose the first kind.

Mo Tiange looked up and said with a smile, “Senior Martial Brother, I’d like to do the gathering heavenly dew one.”

“Oh?” The disciple tossed a few more glances at her. This errand was very complicated and the payment wasn’t much, so very few people were willing to do this. Naturally, he wouldn’t have any objections about her choosing this errand.

He fetched a jade tablet and recorded something before handing it to her. He said, “That’ll do. Go to the North Peak and look for Martial Uncle Wang Qiao at Zhengyang Hall. He’ll tell you what to do.”

Mo Tiange took the jade tablet, said her thanks and went straight to the North Peak.

In fact, she wanted to do better errands than this. Nevertheless, after looking for a while, she found that all the good errands had been claimed by others. As for this one, although it was a bit troublesome to do, it was located in the North Peak. The spiritual aura in the North Peak was rich, so cultivate there might be far more effective than cultivating in the South Peak.

Since she had the jade tablet with her, her route to the North Peak was unimpeded. The South Peak and the North Peak of Mount Yunwu were several thousand feet apart with a gaping chasm between the two peaks. Aura Refining disciples weren’t allowed to fly in the sky; besides, even if they used Light Body Technique to travel to the North Peak from the South Peak, they probably had to expend more than half a day’s effort. Fortunately, an expert senior built a suspended iron bridge which made coming and going very easy for the disciples. With this bridge, the disciples only needed a short while to travel to the North Peak.

Right after she arrived in the North Peak, Mo Tiange could already feel that the spiritual aura there was much richer than in the South Peak. It made her wonder how much more effective cultivating in this kind of place would be.

Nevertheless, the North Peak was tightly guarded. Not only did it have Foundation Building cultivators patrolling around, but there was also an extremely formidable formation placed on it. With her current knowledge in formations, she could only see that this formation was the same type as the great mountain-protecting formation of Mount Yunwu. To put it simply, this was a formation within a formation. According to common sense, the inner formation ought to be powerful enough to cut the mountain and split the sea; it ought to be the last desperate move to destroy everything.

After she found Zhengyang Hall and explained to the disciple guarding the hall that she was looking for Martial Uncle Wang Qiao, the disciple pointed towards a side room. Mo Tiange walked to the room. She looked around and couldn’t help but feel baffled; there was only a tenth layer Aura Refining disciple inside.

This disciple was a female cultivator who seemed to be about twenty years old and looked pretty. In fact, most female cultivators weren’t unbearably ugly. As cultivators, they naturally had some methods to improve their appearance that were different from the methods used in the secular world. Moreover, their corporeal bodies possessed spiritual aura, so their skin was naturally clear and bright.

When this female disciple turned around and saw her, she asked, “Who are you? Do you need something?”

Mo Tiange hastily said her greeting and said, “Senior Martial Sister, I’m looking for Martial Uncle Wang. I have to gather heavenly dew as an errand.”

“Oh… Come inside, I’m his disciple, so telling me will do.” Hearing her reply, Mo Tiange passed her the jade tablet she received before.

After examining and verifying the jade tablet, the disciple finally smiled and said, “Turns out you’re Junior Martial Brother Ye. My name is Wang Qianyi. In the future, you just need to follow my instructions for this errand.” Her surname was also Wang. From her tone, she seemed to be very close to that Martial Uncle Wang.

Mo Tiange answered, “Yes. Could Senior Martial Sister please tell me how I should do the task?”

Wang Qianyi took several jade bottles and gave them to her. She said, “Heavenly dew is the dew in the early morning that contains spiritual aura. Every day, in the hour of the tiger and the rabbit 1 , you have to go into the woods to collect dew. After you finish, deliver the dew here. Bear in mind that you have to take dew on top of clean spiritual plants, other dew won’t do.”

“Got it.” Mo Tiange took the jade bottles then asked again, “How many bottles of dew should I collect each day?”

Wang Qianyi smiled and said, “No need to mention several bottles; it’s already good if you can collect a single bottle of dew in a day. Just go, don’t worry about it. No matter how much you manage to collect, give them to me in the hour of the rabbit every day.”