As Shmidt was recovering from the memories I had left in the jade, he let me use the Talismonger jade first. This time I used all of the knowledge I had to read every level possible within the text. Some of the concepts were still too complex for me to fully understand them, but I now had a far better grasp on what they meant, reaching eight layers of understanding deep in some parts, and knowing that another three existed in others. When I eventually finished I noticed that Shmidt was meditating on a cushion in the corner and the librarian was helping a recruit, coaching him on how to read the Chef cultivation book with the memory transfer technique. He likely hadn’t used it before, and seemed too low of a level to use the memory jade to learn directly.
While the teenager was carefully reading the first level of the jade’s knowledge, the librarian came over to me. “Shmidt decided to meditate on the memories. You were reading the jade for an hour and a half.”
I was surprised and nodded. “I apologize. I thought I was only taking a few minutes. Apparently, I went into a bit too much detail with reading the technique.” The Librarian nodded. “In that case, I’ll leave the Talismonger jade for Shmidt to read when he finishes his meditation and go to the tannery myself. I will try to get in a bit of practice before he gets there, but he’s welcome to come by whenever he is ready.”
I left and a few minutes later I was outside the wall. About three minutes after that I had to suppress my sense of smell to overcome the astringent odor and enter the tannery store front. He was likely using either the lye or ash and urine methods to cure the hide, though I would guess that this damaged the qi storage ability of the materials and therefore their levels. I introduced myself, including the fact that I was a friend of Randy and Mike, and asked if I could use the equipment here to try and make talisman leather.
The Tanner nodded. “Sure. I have an extra set of equipment, in case I found an apprentice who was interested, but no luck so far. He showed me a closet that was full of drying racks and bone blades for scraping hides. I set one of the drying racks up pulled the lowest level Vrooshkin from my bag. When it landed on the ground I looped a robe around its hind legs and hung it as high as I could, the beast’s front legs almost touching the ground. I grabbed a bucket from nearby and put it underneath, then slit its throat. The blood had thickened a bit, so I let it hang there and drain as I slowly cut the skin loose. By the time I was done doing so the blood had mostly drained, so I cut open its chest and removed a milky white stone about the size of a small marble. “You know, we have a separate butchering area where you can have the disciples do all this for you.” the tanner said.
“Can’t trust them not to screw it up.” I said. The tanner looked offended, so I quickly qualified my statement. “I’m not saying that they are incompetent, but I need to make sure that the hide, blood, and core all come from the same demon beast. They also can’t be contaminated by the material of another beast, spirit beast, or demon beast, or it will at least lower the quality of the materials. If there is any mix up in that area, the infusion will fail and I’ll be out of a considerable amount of material. So, for now, I want to do it all by myself so that I can know that I’m not making a mistake and that I’m responsible for any mistakes that do occur.”
He nodded, and showed me how to hang hides to dry. I didn’t want it to dry, however. I crushed the core in my hands, still having to put in considerable effort despite being more than a level higher than the core, then put the dust into the bucket of blood. The blood steamed a bit and thickened to the consistency of syrup. Not seeing a paint brush of any kind around the shop, I simply grabbed a handful of blood syrup and smeared it on the hide, continuing until both sides had a layer of the material on it. I then did the hand signs again and used the proper infusion technique on the hide. The blood quickly dried out and the skin started to grow more firm, so I wiped off the worst of it with my non-bloody hand, added another level with the bloody one, and repeated the process for the next hour, until I was out of material.
I washed my hands in a bucket nearby, then used some of the water to wash the dried blood off of the hide. All of the hair had long fallen out of the hide, and it now resembled a dark red tanned hide, but without the need for chemical baths. I could feel a good bit of qi coming from the material. “Early level one.” I said, and nodded. The beast had been middle level one, but this was still a good result considering it was my first attempt, my only similar experience being watching my sword and seal get upgraded and the three jade slips.
I cut it into one hundred and seventeen rectangles, with only a small amount of scrap being left over. I gave the scrap to the tanner and he was surprised that I could cure a hide in only an hour. “You should go to the library and ask to read the Leatherworker’s jade. I doubt anyone else is using it, but it most likely includes a similar technique for making high quality spirit leather.” He nodded and I pulled out a second Vrooshkin, this one a late level one. I tried to hang it up the same way I had the first, but it was too large to do so.
Just as I was taking the body down, Dr. Shmidt walked up. “About to get started without me?” He asked and I shook my head. “I actually already did one hide without you.” I said, then pulled out one of the pieces of leather. It felt about like the goat hide gloves you could buy at home improvement stores, but was dark red from the blood instead of light gray or white. “I can sense the qi in this material.” he said, looking at it.
“I didn’t entirely succeed with the infusion, so it ended up Early first level instead of middle first level, but it is good enough to be used it talisman crafting.” I responded. I pulled fifty nine pieces from the stack in my bag and laid them on the table beside us, the half I agreed with Randy to give the sect. “Here, I owe Randy half of them, as he killed most of these, so you can take them for now. You are the one who will use most of them, after all.”
The Tanner heard us talking and picked up one of them. “This is actually really good material.” he said. “The aura is a bit strong, almost like I can feel the killing intent, but the material is extremely strong. How did you cut it, anyway?”
I pulled out my sword. “Early level three blade. Steel is even stronger than bone or stone, so it wasn’t that difficult to cut through. If you have a blade, though, I can try and enhance it for you.”
He nodded and got a middle level two bone fillet knife from the shelf. “This is what I normally use by I had to saw at the scraps you gave me to cut them with it.” he said, handing me the blade.
It didn’t look like it was poorly constructed, but the edge was much thicker than I would have expected. Apparently bone wasn’t as good at holding an edge as steel. I nodded, stored my sword, then got a clean bucket, pouring warm water in the one I first used so that I could clean it. I then pulled out one of the spirit wolves Ben’s group had killed and hung it up, draining it into a bucket like I had the others. “Now, I can’t guarantee this will work. I assume this is made from the bone of a spirit beast?”
“Yeah, femur of a half-blood fire fox.” he responded, and I nodded.
“Good. I know that the hides of one spirit beast can be mixed with the blood of another to combine the effects of the two beasts, in case you are making relics, but I’m not sure if the blood of one can mix with the bone of another. Still, I have no reason to think it won’t.”
The tanner looked at Shmidt for confirmation and Shmidt shrugged. “The talismonger book isn’t concerned with the bones of the beasts. That would be in the Artifact Crafter or Smith books. But I doubt mixing them will cause any serious issues. I can see if we have any fire fox blood, though. That is less likely to cause issues.”
The tanner sighed and shook his head. “No, this should be fine. If he ruins it, I’ll just make him give me the wolf skeleton in exchange. Then I can have new tools made.”
I shrugged. “Honestly, if you are willing to help me turn spirit beast hides into talisman leather I’ll teach you the technique and give you the skeletons at half price. I don’t need them, after all. The money will just be used to pay disciples to bring me back the bodies of the spirit beasts and demons they killed.”
He nodded. “I’ve never used Demon leather, as the killing intent within it can make people who wear the leather irritable. but I do offer one stone for two level one hides, one stone for a level two, and five for a level three. Ben and a few of the others occasionally bring them in, though he’s the only disciple that can solo one at that level. I can’t ever get the full quality out of a material, though, so I’ve never succeeded at making level three leather. Hopefully I can figure out how after I read that jade.”
I nodded, then checked the dead wolf. All of the blood was drained, so I sat the bucket on the table and dropped the knife into it. This time I wasn’t sure if the Talisman variant or the Smith version of the technique would work better, but since I was working with organic materials I decided on the talisman version. At first, as I infused qi into the blade the blood started to thicken, then it dried out on top. Over the next hour the blood tried out throughout the bucket and eventually I could feel that no qi was left in the blood. I dumped the dried, porous block of blood on the ground, then poked at it with a stick until only a bone dagger covered in dried blood remained. I washed the dried blood off of the blade, then handed it to the tanner. “Well, it is late level two now, but I got the feeling that I’m approaching the limit of what can be done with level two blood. That issue might be the result of the low quality of the blood or might be the low quality of the bone. You’ll have to look it up in the Leatherworker’s or Tailor’s jades.”
He nodded. “Well, it should cut better now, at least.”
“It should hold a better edge now, too. As it’s only for cutting hides and not actual combat, you should be able to get the smith to thin the edge on the knife.”
He nodded. “Sure, I’ll see if he can do that.” he said, then pointed to where the wolf was hanging before, but wasn’t now. “While you were working on the knife, though, I pulled the hide off of that wolf, then stored the rest. Shmidt started practicing with the hide.”
I nodded. “Any success?”
He pointed to the other side of the tannery, where I saw Shmidt using the technique to cure another spirit beast hide. “Well, he ruined about half of the hide, but was able to get the full potential out of the other half. Not sure what I’ll do with half the hide of a thunder wolf. Maybe make some boots?”
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I shrugged. “If you want to practice, I’ll give you one of the others. They killed about two dozen of them, so my bags are packed.” While Earth had made a lot of progress with the strength of their storage bags, increasing the maximum shrink ratio of the items inside, and I had improved my own ability to shrink them, each bag only had the effective capacity of a cargo van. I had condensed my supplies into one of them, and even placed the level three Vrooshkin and level two Thunder wolf in there, but the other two bags were still full of bodies.
“If you are willing to do so, I wouldn’t mind.”
I nodded and pulled out another wolf. “This technique should be able to let you make far better materials, maybe even good enough clothes and other leather items that you can sell them in High River. Plus, if you are willing to learn how to make it, I’m sure Dr. Shmidt wouldn’t mind someone else making the talisman paper for him so that he can focus on making talismans or his other duties.”
He nodded. “Sure, I can learn that variation of the technique as well. It shouldn’t be that hard to learn once I’m good with the other technique.”
While the blood drained from the other wolf, I walked him through the technique with a spirit beast hide he had lying around, likely one from one of the ranches here. He failed completely with the first hide, but was able to correct his mistakes fast enough with the second one that it came out almost at full quality. As he cured those two hides Shmidt practiced on two others. We took a break to swallow a satiation pill and drink some spirit water from one of the sect’s wells, as we were too involved in the work to take time off to visit the mess hall. When we were finished I gave Shmidt a wolf corpse, skinned the wolf that was already drained, and showed the tanner how to apply enough blood for the infusion to work without putting so much that it was wasted.
Once he had gotten the hang of it I started using wolves as well, and by the time the sun had finished setting we had over two thousand pieces of talisman leather available. I gave half to Shmidt, so that he could make talismans for the sect, and stored the rest in my main bag. The tanner was paid with what was left of the wolves, which he would remove the bones from and sell to the smiths or use to barter for a new set of tools. While the wolves were smaller than the Vrooshkin, they were far more numerous, so I had managed to clear out one of the bags. “That was quite a productive day.” I said.
“Yes.” agreed Shmidt. “With over a thousand pieces of paper I won’t have to buy from the city for at least two months.”
The Tanner, Joseph Perry, agreed. “The one thing I don’t get, though, is that even with the blood and all of the qi we put into it, it usually only went up a minor grade. From what Shmidt told me, though, you were able to bring a jade slip from initial level one to middle level two with only a few drops of your own blood. So doesn’t that mean that doing so with the hides is far less efficient?”
I shook my head. “Not necessarily. First, my blood is peak level two, which means that a few drops of it might contain more qi than the entire bucket of level one wolf blood. Also, when I improved the jade I only wanted to improve the quality, so I slightly modified the technique to maximize that. With the hides, though, we didn’t just want to improve the level, we wanted to improve its ability to store qi. A talisman needs to store some of the energy it uses in the paper if you want people lower level than the creator to be able to use it. Try draining the qi from one of the talisman papers. It should work much like a spirit stone, letting you add or remove qi.
Joseph tried it with one of Shmidt’s papers and nodded. “Not quite as easy to move the qi, but there is definitely enough there for a descent level one spell.”
I nodded and we sat there, trying to think if we had anything else to discuss while we rested from the day’s work. “I am really tired, so I think I’ll skip going to the mess hall and just go home to meditate and rest.” I said after five minutes of silence.
“Yeah, I’m tired too. I do want some kind of meat, though, so I’ll go home after eating.” Shmidt agreed with him and the two of them got up to leave as well after Joseph locked up.
“I’m surprised you could keep up.” said Shmidt. “The two of us are Early level three and we are almost exhausted, but you somehow made just as many papers as we did.”
I had gotten so caught up in the work that I forgot that they were higher level than me and therefore should have more qi capacity. I likely had at least as much as an initial level three cultivator, however, due to my true meridians and soul sea holding several times as much as my body. “Well, I was trying to be as efficient as I could.” I said, quickly making up and excuse. “Plus, I was drinking spirit water all day, which was restoring a bit. Still, my reserves are basically on empty, while you two are probably at around five or ten percent.”
Shmidt nodded. “True. So, you said you still have a level two wolf and those Vrooshkin?” I nodded. “In that case, if Joseph doesn’t mind, we can meet up at the butcher’s tomorrow, where they have much taller, purpose built blood draining areas, and continue this.” Both of us were okay with the idea, so we agreed to meet there after breakfast.
When I got back to my room I put up my barrier then turned on the gathering array, concentrating the qi from their spirit mine to just below the point where it would liquefy. I then sat down at the densest part of the formation and started meditating. First, I spent a minute restoring my own reserves. Normally this would take a good bit longer, but thanks to the much greater density of qi and my true meridians allowing me to move qi more quickly, I was able to expedite the process. I then spent an hour using the Mental rest technique to recover from the day’s exhaustion.
Once I was finished recovering I used all that I had learn today from both the texts and the practice to improve the seeds in my brain and meridians. The largest area to improve would definitely be my concentration, though the memory came in a close second due to all of the learning. I finished by building seeds in thee rest of my brain to the best of my ability, then did another hour of Mental Rest so that I wouldn’t be exhausted from a lack of sleep the next morning.
When I finished I looked outside, letting light into the barrier temporarily, and noticed that it was likely around three in the morning. I considered using tribulation lightning to improve myself, but wasn’t sure if I would have enough time to do so, as this one would be quite large, and so might take more than the three hours I had left. I did, however, have enough time to make talismans.
I pulled out the lowest grade paper I had and drew a lightning bolt on it. This time I focused on the tribulation lightning gathering technique. Once finished I picked it up and supplied enough qi to activate it, but only attracted enough qi to feel like static shock, even if anyone else at my level would be in far more pain. While the effect could be absorbed by me, restoring the qi I used to make the talisman and slightly loosening my false meridians, it would be a trap to anyone else. I would need to think of something different, something that was either difficult to use or which others would want, to make it worth mass producing.
After thinking for a minute I realized that I didn’t need to pick a different technique, just modify this one. If everyone else had an issue with getting hit by the lightning, then why not just use the lightning as an attack? The Chasing tribulation sect had a method for doing so, one which essentially purged all qi from within a few centimeters of where the attack hit, so after rereading that section I tried to learn the technique. Producing a bolt of qi which would do something only after hitting a target was a bit difficult, but it only took me about half an hour to successfully use it on the barrier, and another thirty learning to use it well enough to use it in battle.
When I was done, having about an hour left before sunrise, I made a Talisman and threw it at the barrier. A bolt of lightning the size of a walking stick formed and almost too quick to see, hit the barrier where the talisman landed filling the room with a loud boom. Thankfully my ears were refined enough that I didn’t go deaf from the sound. While it was loud, it also did several times the damage of a more traditional attack which used the same amount of qi. With the paper providing 60% of the qi needed as well, I could last far longer in battle and do far more damage if I used this.
I spent the next hour mass producing Targeted Tribulation talismans using early and middle grade level one talisman paper. When the sun came over the horizon I got up, quickly used a cleaning technique on my robe and myself, and collected the flags, deactivating the barrier. This time Ben wasn’t outside waiting for me, so I went to the mess hall on my own, got my food, and sat down at the Elder table.
This morning I met Greg. He was originally the leader of their group, but because tradition demanded that someone of at least level four be the sect master, Mike ended up becoming the official sect master and Greg became the Assistant sect master. Randy notified me that he and Mike had briefed Greg on my real identity, but that he had agreed to keep it a secret. Randy also informed me that Greg was a geologist with an MBA, so he had been more happy using his business degree to oversee the sect supplies and finances than the more prestigious Sect Master position. If Mike was away or happened to get injured, he would take over as elder, as he was now initial level four, but for now he was happy with the position.
Ben told us how well the wall building had gone now that he had an actual carpenter on the crew, and even thought that at the current rate the wall might be finished before the estimated time of completion.
After breakfast I met Shmidt and Perry at the butchers, where he let us set up in an apprentice area on the grounds that we thoroughly clean everything before leaving. He didn’t want to risk the demon virus infecting people because he let us butcher demons here, even though Shmidt assured him that Vrooshkin merely inherited the demon genes and didn’t actually have the living virus in their bodies. This didn’t reassure him, so we promised and got to work. Grinding the cores and mixing it with the blood was more work than just using the blood from yesterday, so each hide took longer, but we had fewer hides to treat and they were larger, so by sunset we had almost as many Vrooshkin talisman papers as Wolf ones from yesterday. I took my one thousand Vrooshkin papers, including seventy middle level three papers and thirty two level two Wolf papers, then called it a night.
Once I was home I turned on the gathering array and incorporated what I had learned today into my brain seeds, then turned it off and went to the mess hall. After supper I intended to com back and spend all night getting struck by tribulation lightning.
When I got to the mess hall, though, the elders were acting more seriously than normal. “Is something wrong?” I asked.
Mike shrugged. “Something has come up. One of our teams just returned from a hunting area about one thousand li to the west. They reported that a Hidden Realm is opening, so we need to put together a group of disciples to go to it. There is an issue though. This one only allows people below level three to enter it. The last one allowed people up to level three, so Randy took the role of team leader as he was peak level three at the time, but this time we don’t have any high level two disciples that are part of the sect’s combat specialists. The best are people like the librarian, and he’s not suited for expedition leader.”
Randy nodded, then spoke up. “I think the answer to our problem just sat down at our table.” he said.
“You mean sending Kev in as leader?” asked Greg. “but he isn’t even a sect member. I don’t mind letting him go in with us, but I think the leader should be from our sect.”
“I actually agree with Greg.” I said. “While I don’t see anything wrong with hiring an independent cultivator for security, and I’m sure other sects and cultivation families will do that, if I act as leader the other sects will think that you are so weak you had to turn over command to an outsider, someone not from a much larger sect, but an independent, a group that is generally seen as inferior. If you hired an inferior to act as leader, what does that say about you?”
“You aren’t inferior, though.” said Mike. “You’re probably more skilled in combat than most of our level two disciples, and maybe even some of the level threes. In fact, if you want to prove yourself, I’m sure Ben will spar with you.” Ben nodded to this.
“Even if I’m not, it’s about the image of your sect.” I responded. They discussed the situation some more, and settled on Greg’s disciple Chu Van, a late level two cultivator with a pureblood Purple cloud viper as a companion, acting as leader while I act to protect the group from dangers. Inside these gates there were usually threats from the environment as well as the other cultivators, and they couldn’t afford to lose anyone, so they were being especially careful.
