Now that he had a place of his own, Bai Sui felt as if a weight had been lifted from his heart.
After lying there quietly for a while, Bai Sui got up and busied himself again. There was no need to think too far ahead; someone was waiting for him to treat them tomorrow.
At the very least, tomorrow he couldn't use those unsterilized scraps of cloth to bandage wounds again. He needed to disinfect them somehow.
He searched through the supplies the village chief had prepared for him, looking for useful utensils. After rummaging around, he discovered that the village had really provided him with quite a lot.
Pots, bowls, and pans aside, there were all kinds of jars, stone mortars, millstones, and so on. They had thought of everything, whether it had anything to do with medicine or not. They had even filled the water bucket in the courtyard.
So Bai Sui began his great water-boiling undertaking, scalding every item that could be treated with hot water.
The only thing he hadn't found was mugwort. Otherwise, he might have fumigated the entire house. After all, some medicinal herbs smelled more like a doctor's clinic.
Bai Sui didn't actually know how advanced medicine was during this Warring States period. He could only hope that he wasn't too far behind the mainstream.
By the time he finished tidying the house, it was already dark, so Bai Sui started making dinner. The hunting squad captain, Murai Sae, came by to deliver some black boar meat. Bai Sui didn't refuse; after a brief exchange of pleasantries, he accepted it. And so, his dinner that evening became a bowl of meat porridge.
He had originally planned to go out and look for medicinal herbs, but it really was too late. He could see in the dark, but to other people, that would look rather Shocker.
So Bai Sui didn't do anything out of the ordinary. He sat down in his room and began meditating, planning to head out early the next morning.
When he entered a meditative state once more, Bai Sui noticed something different.
While fleeing earlier, he hadn't stopped, so he hadn't deliberately cultivated.
Of course, that didn't mean he hadn't cultivated at all during those three days. As mentioned before, when his heart had harmonized with heaven, he had once received cultivation passively.
During the day, he had only sensed that the pill within his dantian had grown larger and rounder. Now that he had entered a meditative state and taken a look, he discovered that his dantian had changed.
Besides the pill formed from his own essence, energy, and spirit, a thick mass of energy now surrounded it. Beneath his dantian was also a small pool of spiritual liquid made from this energy.
After sensing it carefully, he found that this energy was somewhat similar to the natural qi outside his body, only purer and more congenial.
At a thought from his Primordial Spirit, a field of golden light enveloped his entire dantian, and he immediately understood what had happened.
It turned out that this was natural qi, left behind after his own energy had tainted it when he communed with heaven and earth earlier.
When this qi first entered Bai Sui's body, it had been no different from the qi outside. But it had been carried along by the route of his own cultivation, eventually flowing into his dantian and being continuously refined. The pool of spiritual liquid had been condensed in this way.
Not only that, but the refined natural qi was also drawing in qi from the surrounding world on its own. In other words, Bai Sui now had another way to grow stronger gradually without actively cultivating.
He simply didn't have any techniques to use it with yet. Otherwise, it would be like having another bar of Dharma Power that replenished itself automatically.
And after experimenting, Bai Sui found that this natural qi could not only recover passively; he could also increase it by absorbing more on purpose.
The difference was whether or not it had been refined and infused with Bai Sui's own essence.
The qi absorbed passively had already been refined and was ready to use. The qi absorbed actively hadn't been refined yet, so it was harder to control and needed to be refined further.
Because this assimilated natural qi shared its source with the qi of heaven and earth, it could easily influence and control it.
Although Bai Sui didn't yet have any corresponding techniques, he could already use it in a crude way.
For example, if he threw it all out at once, it would attack like an energy projectile. It looked wasteful and lacked finesse, but at least it gave Bai Sui another way to attack from a distance.
If he channeled it into his body, it greatly strengthened his physical toughness and abilities, as if he were possessed by a deity.
As Bai Sui cultivated through the night, he suddenly felt a chill.
It turned out that Bai Sui had run for three days and nights. With his ability to travel five hundred li a day, even though he hadn't followed a straight route, he had run from the southeasternmost part of the Land of Fire into the Land of Fields, crossing the entire Land of Fire.
Compared with the Uzumaki Clan Territory, this place was much colder. While talking with the village chief during the day, he had also learned that this forest lay on the border between the Land of Fields and the Land of Iron.
That was why there were so few ninjas here, while samurai were relatively numerous. The samurai, Kubota Noriyuki, who guarded the village at the outpost, was said to have come from the Land of Iron.
Kubota hadn't explained the exact reason, but it didn't look like anything pleasant. The villagers hadn't pressed him for details. After all, reopening old wounds wasn't kind, and reopening a samurai's wounds was an even less wise choice.
No one was willing to put their life in the hands of those people over a little idle curiosity.
Bai Sui had now seen the power of ninjas, even if only from a limited perspective. He still hadn't seen what samurai could do, though they had been thoroughly crushed by the ninjas and forced off the stage of history.
But the history of ninjas stretched back a thousand years. If samurai had still existed after all that time, they must have had something extraordinary about them, so Bai Sui wouldn't underestimate them.
He didn't have a good opportunity or excuse yet, but after spending some time around Kubota, he thought he could learn what he wanted to know from the samurai.
Putting aside his distracting thoughts, Bai Sui spent another night cultivating.
The next morning, as Bai Sui prepared to light the fire and make breakfast, a sudden thought occurred to him. Since he could now draw the qi of heaven and earth into his body, did that mean he could be considered someone who lived on qi?
The Huainanzi said: "Those who eat meat are brave and fierce; those who eat grain are wise and clever; those who eat qi are divine and long-lived; those who eat nothing do not die, but become divine."
Bai Sui felt that he should qualify as someone who lived on qi. After all, although he hadn't yet attained human immortality, he could already live well over a hundred years.
Could he use this to stop eating altogether? He tried channeling the natural qi within his body throughout himself, using it to supply the energy that food normally provided.
After trying it out, he found that it really was possible. The qi he absorbed passively alone was enough to meet his daily energy needs.
But doing so meant that he could no longer passively increase his reserves of qi. It was a trade-off.