A Spending Spree

Lu Yang read through the Heavy Sword Instruction every day.

He could recite its mnemonics and sword-stance diagrams from memory with his eyes closed.

But knowing them by heart was one thing; grasping the True Intention within them was another.

Every word of those mnemonics was concise, and behind each sentence lay layers of variations. He had pondered them over and over for four years, yet it was always like looking at distant mountains through a thin veil of mist.

He could make out their outlines, but their details remained stubbornly indistinct.

Now he sat cross-legged on his bed, brows tightly furrowed, fingertips unconsciously tapping his knees as his mind sank completely into the abstruse world of the Cultivation Method.

Outside the window, the sunlight slowly shifted from the foot of the bed to the base of the wall. The light in the room quietly changed its angle, but he noticed nothing.

Only when his neck grew sore and he looked up in a daze did he realize that more than two hours had passed.

"Whew..."

Lu Yang let out a long breath and immediately looked at the transparent panel deep within his sea of consciousness.

Sure enough, the daily reading task now bore a completion mark.

He took a deep breath, suppressed the flutter in his heart, and eagerly chose to submit it.

[Intelligence: 1 → 1.1]

The next moment, an extraordinarily strange, cool sensation arose from the depths of his mind. It was not intense, but rather somewhat gentle and soothing, like a wisp of exceptionally fine, soft mist enveloping his entire head.

The sensation lasted only a few breaths before quietly fading.

Then Lu Yang clearly noticed a difference.

His thoughts felt as though they had been washed in mountain spring water, becoming exceptionally clear and nimble.

The hurdles in the Cultivation Method that had exhausted his mind and defied all his efforts to understand them now unraveled and connected themselves in his head. Several crucial points that had been tied in dead knots suddenly became clear, as naturally as if inspiration had descended upon him!

"This..."

Lu Yang's heart pounded wildly, and an irrepressible light of excitement burst from his eyes.

After his intelligence increased, his comprehension had truly improved along with it!

Didn't that mean that as long as he completed his daily tasks day after day, his intelligence could keep growing like this?

At 0.1 a day, that would be an increase of over thirty points in a year!

What was more, he had a vague sense that the increase in intelligence points and the resulting improvement in comprehension did not seem to have a simple linear relationship.

A tiny increase of just 0.1 had brought an almost ice-breaking qualitative change to his understanding of the Cultivation Method. The sluggishness in his thinking had vanished, leaving his thoughts much more nimble.

He could hardly imagine what it would be like if, one day, his intelligence accumulated to dozens or even hundreds of points.

When that time came, wouldn't comprehending those Cultivation Methods and Law Techniques be as easy as studying the lines on his palm?

Lu Yang drew a sharp breath and forced himself to calm down. His gaze slowly moved down the panel and settled on the last daily task.

"Rest for eight hours..." he murmured, his gaze flickering. "I wonder if cultivation counts as rest?"

The path of cultivation nourished one's essence, Qi, and spirit to begin with. By that reckoning, didn't it count as a form of recuperation?

Thoughts raced through his mind, and he quickly made up his mind. Without another word, he drew on his newfound understanding of the Cultivation Method, closed his eyes again, turned his five centers toward the heavens, and began circulating the faint Spiritual Qi within him.

Once he immersed himself in cultivation, he forgot the time completely.

When he opened his eyes again, the room was bathed in dim yellow light.

A glint flashed through his eyes and vanished. He felt that the Spiritual Qi in his body had grown another tiny bit stronger, and rather than feeling tired, he felt full of vigor.

He had cultivated for well over eight hours.

He hurriedly checked the panel and saw that the status of the daily rest task had indeed changed to "completed."

A smile appeared on Lu Yang's face.

For cultivators, cultivation involved circulating Heaven and Earth Spiritual Qi to temper the body and nourish the spirit. It had the wondrous effects of extending life and strengthening one's foundation. Wasn't that a deeper form of rest?

Wasn't the ultimate purpose of rest to help the body and mind recover, or even become better?

That made perfect sense.

He chose to submit the task.

[Charm: 0.9 → 1]

This time, the effect was not as immediate as before.

Lu Yang only felt a slight warmth in his body, as though an invisible, gentle light had brushed through the pores and texture of his skin. Afterward, he felt nothing else out of the ordinary.

"Hmm?"

Lu Yang frowned and walked with a trace of suspicion to the room's only copper mirror, which was no bigger than his palm. By the dim yellow light pouring through the window, he carefully studied himself.

He looked left, then right.

His brows and eyes were the same, as were the contours of his features. But whether or not it was an illusion caused by the soft sunset, he felt that the person in the mirror looked more...

Pleasing to the eye.

It was an extremely subtle improvement in his overall harmony.

The spirit in his brows and eyes seemed a little clearer and brighter, and even his skin appeared somewhat finer.

"Can this charm stat make a person better-looking?" he muttered, touching his face.

His looks had already been considered handsome, and improving them further was certainly not bad. But in the cultivation world, where danger lurked everywhere and strength was paramount, a handsome face alone wouldn't put food in his mouth.

Strength was the hard currency.

Lu Yang shook his head, stopped dwelling on the slight change in his appearance, and returned his attention to the panel.

All three daily tasks were complete, and the reward for fulfilling the fourth task, 50 general experience points, lay quietly there as well.

Without a second thought, he willed all 50 points into the Spirit Root field.

[Spirit Root: middle grade (50/1000)]

Raising a middle-grade Spirit Root to high grade required 1,000 experience points.

At a rate of 50 points a day, the transformation would take only 20 days!

Once he had a high-grade Spirit Root, his cultivation would yield twice the result for half the effort, and his efficiency at absorbing Spiritual Qi would improve greatly. He was fully confident that he could break through the bottleneck in one stroke and enter the Middle Stage of Qi Refining before the sect assessment ended!

As soon as he had allocated the experience, a powerful sense of emptiness and hunger rose in Lu Yang's belly.

Cultivators in the Qi Refining Realm were still a long way from living on wind and dew and going without food through Grain Avoidance.

Sitting and cultivating diligently for so long consumed a great deal of the body's energy.

He rubbed his protesting stomach, got up, pushed open the door, and headed for the cafeteria in the central area of the disciples' residences.

The cafeteria was a simple, old-fashioned two-story wooden building, and the space in front of it was full of disciples.

As the assessment drew nearer, an invisible sense of urgency pervaded the air.

Most of the disciples coming and going were in a hurry. Some walked alone with their heads down, while others gathered in twos and threes, quietly discussing difficulties in their cultivation. Even in conversation, they deliberately kept their voices low and their steps brisk.

Clearly, even when it came to a necessity like eating, everyone wanted to save as much time as possible, unwilling to waste even a single breath.

Lu Yang's own steps were no slower as he entered the cafeteria.

The moment he stepped inside, a rich aroma of food washed over him like a wave, making his mouth water.

He headed with practiced ease toward the serving windows for ordinary meals, where a line had formed as usual.

However, as Lu Yang casually glanced around, his gaze was drawn to another window on the other side, not far away.

It was the Spirit Cuisine window.

In stark contrast to the bustle and long lines in the ordinary-meal area, only two youths stood before that window.

The two were huddled in front of it, saying something in low voices to the menial disciple serving food inside. Their faces were full of reluctance and distress at the cost, and their fingers unconsciously worried at the Storage Bags at their waists.

Lu Yang's gaze flickered, and his steps involuntarily halted.

Spirit Cuisine.

It was food cooked from precious ingredients containing Spiritual Qi!

Spirit rice, the flesh and blood of the finest parts of Demon Beasts, graded spirit medicines... These were then prepared with special techniques by a Spirit Chef skilled in the art. Different Spirit Cuisines had different supplementary effects, much like pills.

Compared with pills, Spirit Cuisine was less potent in its effects, but it had one advantage that was hard to replace.

It nourished gently, with no hidden danger of pill toxins accumulating.

For wealthy cultivators, using Spirit Cuisine to aid cultivation was an exceedingly common luxury.

Lu Yang remembered that during his first two years after joining, there had also been lines at the Spirit Cuisine window.

Back then, quite a few disciples had come from well-off families.

But by the third year, most disciples with both money and aptitude had passed the assessment and entered the outer sect, and the Spirit Cuisine window had visibly grown quiet.

Now that some people had begun gritting their teeth and lining up again this year, it was not hard to understand why.

This year's assessment was their last chance. Some disciples intended to stake the last of their resources on that final sliver of hope.

In the past, Lu Yang would not have given the Spirit Cuisine window a second glance.

The reason was simple: his purse was empty.

But now...

Lu Yang instinctively glanced at the transparent panel suspended in his consciousness.

[Wealth: 10 Spirit Stones]

With the Tycoon System, shouldn't he go on a real spending spree?

He didn't have much money yet, but surely eating some Spirit Cuisine wasn't too much?

He unconsciously licked his dry lips, his Adam's apple bobbing slightly.

That distinctive aroma, far more tempting than ordinary food, which he had smelled countless times in the cafeteria during his first two years, seemed to linger at the tip of his nose again.

In his previous life, he had been a genuine Celestial Empire foodie and had never been stingy when it came to what he ate.

Before, he had always been dirt-poor and simply hadn't had the means.

Now that he finally had a little to fall back on, he had to go and try it, no matter what!

As soon as the thought occurred to him, Lu Yang turned and strode toward the Spirit Cuisine window.

As he approached, he clearly heard the youth in blue at the window pleading humbly, "...Senior Brother, can't you really make it just a little cheaper? We're only a little short..."

Behind the window stood a stocky, muscular menial disciple with a square face and a wide mouth.

Arms folded, he looked down his nose at the youth and gave a derisive snort.

"Cheaper? Do you think this is some mortal marketplace where you can haggle? The cafeteria belongs to the sect. Prices are clearly marked, and neither children nor old folk are cheated! Can't afford it? Then turn around and eat the ordinary food over there."

He raised his chin and gestured toward the long line in the ordinary-meal area, his tone growing ever more mocking. "This Spirit Cuisine isn't for paupers like you, with barely a few Spirit Stones in your pockets."

The two youths were evidently companions. The vicious remarks made their faces turn alternately green and white, and they clenched their fists tightly. Angry but afraid to speak, they could only glare at the burly man.

The square-faced man, however, did not care in the least. He even stared back with interest, a contemptuous, half-smiling curve on his lips.

He too had come up from the ranks of the entry disciples, and he had worked at this Spirit Cuisine window for more than ten years. What sort of person hadn't he seen?

With a single glance, he could tell most of what he needed to know about the disciples before him.

These two brats were obviously dirt-poor, yet they had still forced themselves to ask about the price of Spirit Cuisine. Clearly, they knew that with their aptitude, they had no chance of passing the assessment normally, and wanted to sell their pots and iron for one last gamble.

People like that would almost certainly end up like him, rejected and reduced to menial work in the outer sect.

He was a veteran menial disciple with the lucrative grounds of the sect cafeteria behind him. Why should he fear two juniors with bleak prospects?

So what if he mocked them? What could they do to him?

"No money, yet you insist on copying those favored sons and daughters of heaven and eating Spirit Cuisine. Tsk, tsk." The burly man curled his lip and shook his head, twisting the knife again. "You're young, and I haven't seen you develop any other skills, but your skin sure has grown thick."

Seeing the two youths trembling with anger yet unable to retort, their faces livid with frustration, the square-faced man felt a perverse surge of satisfaction.

Fuck, I didn't pass the assessment back then either, and you two pieces of trash think you can be carp leaping over the dragon gate?

Just as he was immersed in his pleasure, a figure suddenly eased forward beside the two red-faced youths, neither hurried nor slow.

The square-faced man instinctively turned his gaze, and when he saw the newcomer's face, he froze.

His mind went blank for an instant, and only two words instinctively surfaced:

So handsome!

The youth before him stood tall and straight, with clear, open features. Most of all, his indescribably refined bearing seemed to cast a soft light around him.

Before the burly man could give it further thought, the handsome youth spoke in an even tone. "Senior Brother, I'd like to buy some Spirit Cuisine."

The words "Senior Brother" jolted the square-faced man back to his senses.

In a hundredth of a breath, the sharp, spiteful, gloating expression on his face melted away like ice in a spring breeze. He put on an exceedingly radiant, welcoming smile, even tinged with flattery, and his body involuntarily leaned forward.

"Oh! Calling me Senior Brother is far too much honor. I wouldn't dare accept it, wouldn't dare! H-here's our menu, Senior Brother. Please have a look and see what you'd like today."

As a shrewd operator who had spent more than a decade at the Spirit Cuisine window, he had an exceptionally sharp eye.

The handsome Senior Brother before him, with that unhurried bearing and confident gaze, was definitely someone who truly had the means to buy Spirit Cuisine!

Only... a trace of confusion crossed his mind.

By custom, the disciples' residences on this mountain were assigned to only one intake at a time, and were not emptied until after the assessment. How had a newcomer arrived so soon?

Had the sect changed the rules this year?