Chapter 3: Cat Part I
Edited by megrisvernin
Why did I save you, friend? Why not? If cultivators can destroy a whole town out of an old grudge why can't they also save someone?
Why am I calling you a friend? We know each other's names, I saved your life and we shared food. Doesn't that make us friends?
****
Li Na at first had not seen Big Sister as a Big Sister but then she started to smell like family. And then Big Sister adopted her. Of course that was because Li Na is the best, the strongest and the cutest. That's why Big Sister hunted for her the tasty big rodents. And then when she became strong Big Sister took her to hunt on her own.
Big Sister was always near watching her hunt, she wanted to make Big Sister proud.
Big Sister even made stupid mutts her servants, she wanted to be as great as Big Sister. The mutts would one day do what she said too!
But she didn't feel like it, not after the mutts killed the frog and she couldn't show off. So Li Na went into the cupboard, curled into a ball and fell asleep.
Then she woke up and left a furball for the monkey servants to clean. Then Big Sister gave her head and back scratches.
She would show them all... later.
She wished Big Sister didn't insist on the two of them drinking the weird milk but Big Sister said it would make her stronger.
And Big Sister.... Zzz
****
The guide I had about Spirit Beasts only had information about the three lowest Ranks of them. Not a problem at the moment as my pupils could only defeat Rank 10 Spirit Beasts while working together but it would definitely be a problem later.
Thinking about it, I decided to delay the problem until either most of the dogs became Rank 10 or Li Na increased to Rank 9. By then I felt we would be all strong enough to catch a few interesting Spirit Beasts and try trading for a more advanced manual, just as long as we did so as far away from town as possible and traveled as a group for protection.
And of course, my grand ideas of my great Li Na becoming a Divine Tiger that eats dragons were just that. If she even became as strong as a Spirit Tiger that would be already good enough, right?
Oh don't be scared friend, I am not going to eat you.
Also while the cultivation of a Spirit Beast Tamer depends on their Spirit Beasts that doesn't mean I could slack off.
Not only I was on a time limit, as sooner or later some sect would find out what I was doing; even if my town is really really really far away from any sect and most cultivators don't go there due to lack of places with strong Spirit energy. But also, I had also become a teacher.
Yes, just a teacher, calling me a Master would be ridiculous.
Even after I read the book on meditation to better help my students, all my knowledge of cultivation came from a mere three books and things the people in the town had told me. Granted said other people knew a lot more things than I did but it just didn't feel the same to not have the knowledge in books. More so with the printing press a Sect invented several centuries ago making books cheaper than they used to be. Our town didn't have its own of course but there are a few in each big city.
I also have to admit my family background is nothing special... for someone in a big city, much less one of the Capitals of the seven countries. But for a small town? Having an uncle who was a Doctor and a grandma who was the local Wise Woman helped.
Even so, a mediocre Beast Tamer knew more than I did and most likely had more resources and Tamed Beasts than myself.
So I trained my body even if it would not increase my cultivation, because a healthy and strong body is the most important part of the Body Refinement stage, if my body became weak and sick then that would affect my longevity and give me less time to ascend.
Yes I know I am repeating a few things friend, sorry about that.
That was what I got after reading the trash books my grandma had "obtained" from that dead cultivator. I had to promise to not use them for cultivation and only to see if they could help my own Path and that of my students, because my elders knew best.
It's kind of funny because apparently said cultivator had died by taking a badly made pill, either due to frustration about his cultivation not advancing fast enough or because he had been stuck at the same Step for too long.
There is nothing wrong with the idea itself, and the Elders of the town approved so I made the Clean Body Sutra part of our Path of cultivation.
Spirit Beasts respect strength so keeping our bodies strong and clean of impurities helps.
Yes, I know you already knew that friend, but the storm outside the cave is still going and you are still wounded. What's wrong with just telling a story to pass the time?
As I said before, medicine and pills should only be taken if one is sick and should be avoided otherwise. That is the basics of the Clean Body Sutra of Cultivation and why I had taught my disciples to try to not use pills... well that and the things being expensive and sometimes unreliable.
Thinking about it, any one of us getting sick was going to be a problem the stronger we became. Not all of us could just eat the ingredients for medicine without getting the negative effects after all.
And the herbal remedies and medicines both Uncle Yu and Grandma Bai Bao could do with what we had near town did affect cultivators and Spirit Beasts but only those weak enough for it.
That's how I was able to sedate weak Spirit Beasts, for example.
We could solve the issue by using Spirit Beasts as part of the ingredients and by looking at rarer plants and herbs. Unfortunately, those also tend to be in more dangerous places.
The rest of what I got from those books was some general information and cultivation methods we cannot use.
One can only use a main method of cultivation, that doesn't mean one cannot integrate things from other Paths into their own but that must be done carefully. Otherwise you end up hurting your cultivation and may even die.
A cultivator's focus must always be on their Path of cultivation, be it Swords, Artifacts or Beasts. If they branch off to learn other things and waste too much time not on their Path, their cultivation will suffer and they may even die.
The reason why I know that is because more than one of the people in town had left to become a cultivator over the centuries, only to never return. So of course we got curious and found out what about it was so attractive about it and why they all cut ties with their family and friends. Turns out it's not just Sect rules but the fact that mortal lives are short and separation is a way to avoid pain. I don't see things that way, it hurts any time anyone close to my heart dies but I enjoy my friends' and family's company while they last.
The Path of the Sword is the path of a killer and/or a protector. Note that when I say "Sword" that doesn't mean they cannot use a different weapon, the term Path of the Sword is a generic term to not keep saying something different for each weapon.
The path of the Artifact is the most flexible of paths, as what you do depends on the kind of artifacts you use and refine. However, while an artifact cultivator can refine weapons, they cannot bond with them.
That's because doing so would cripple their ability to refine anything not a weapon. And if they wanted to do that they should be Sword Cultivators instead.
The path of a Tamer is also the path of their Tamed Beasts and I have already talked about it.
There used to be a path of the Body but cultivators that only used their bodies to fight tended to cultivate more slowly than any of the three other paths and were also weaker so they ended up disappearing over time. The only advantage they had was that due to not being bonded to a Spirit Beast, artifact or Weapon their Cultivation was harder to cripple. But that also helped to kill them off as the only way to cripple their Cultivation was to fully cripple their bodies and most of them did not survive that.
It's also possible that kind of cultivators actually ended up being stronger long term, probably during Unification, and that's another reason they got exterminated.
The only reason I learned about the path of the Body is due to an old Book in a kid's section of the library that painted the Body Cultivators as basically as bad as demons.
The rest I found out later.
The four students that were following my eat anything plan didn't get the same weak danger sense I did. But one of them got better night vision, something that definitely didn't come from her dog as the dog's eyesight is not very good. The other three didn't get any extra abilities but did become healthier at least.
Overall my students were not doing badly, I continued to have them hunt. I sent them after Huge Swamp Frogs, and even had Li Na hunt one with just me helping so the cat would stop being envious, but none of our bonded Beasts grew more, they just got slightly better at fighting and stronger but not very much. Before I knew it, another six months had passed and no Huge Swamp Frogs could be found in the swamp closer to town.
Our bonded Beasts Rank was still the same, which made me think that to get better results we would have to take more risks. I had my students divide into two groups of six; each group having two of the students that could eat anything not themselves and four of those with electric powers. I also realized I had been an idiot to forget something so evident and taught them to fight together with their dogs, with big clubs of course. Even if they were only at Step 1 due to their beasts being at Rank 11, they were still strong enough to use them.
Then I sent the two groups separately to hunt Rank 11 Beasts only with the objective to capture them if they had some value. Not every Rank 11 Beast is as easy to capture, or even worth doing so, and sometimes they couldn't get the Beast alive even if they wanted to. But other times they did capture the prey alive and we have our town use those we wouldn't eat.
Sure we could have tried to sell them but most Rank 11 Spirit Beasts are not really valuable and I wasn't confident in our strength yet.
That does not mean they have no use; for example the poison of a Great Poisonous Duck can be diluted in water and used to repel insects. You just have to remember to put it in pots and not on the Earth itself. It can also be used to kill weeds as it doesn't last more than a few days after the duck dies.
The most common Rank 11 Spirit Beast are the Voracious Rats because they are a plague. Unlike Lightning Mice they can actually chew through Iron and they have both the ability to use a paralyzing venom and to hibernate for three months without food or water.
More than one small town has been ruined because a big group of Voracious Rats woke up from hibernation and ate all the food, plantations, and even the weeds.
Thankfully unlike Lightning Mice Voracious Rats will never eat humans as they don't eat anything much bigger than themselves and they are actually just slightly bigger than regular rats.
Due to having scared away Lightning Mice, which tend to scare away or eat other rodents, we actually had to deal with a huge group of Voracious Rats. Thank the Heavens they didn't wake up from hibernation near town but we still had to deal with them, as otherwise no grass, plant, insect or anything not much bigger than them would survive.
Good thing that we didn't have to deal with a plague of insects as not only did the nearby Swamp still have regular frogs and toads, but Rank 12 and 11 Spirit toads and frogs became more numerous once there was no group of powerful Rank 10 frogs scaring them away.
Another good thing about the rat plague is that every bonded Beast but Li Na rose in rank. Even so, as we tested in spars, Li Na was still stronger than any of the dogs. My students had to use at least four dogs on her to have any chance of winning.
Good thing Li Na understood holding back, once I made it clear to her that not holding back meant not sharing the food with her and no more petting, or some of the dogs would have died. I still decided to stop her sparing with the dogs after a few months as she may have decided to stop holding back if they started to win more often... or just if she felt like it because cat.
The abilities the dogs got at Rank 10 were all the same, a thicker and stronger fur that helped to protect them from injury. The fact my cat was injuring them anyway... made me proud of how great she is.
It was more the fact that the pack would grow weaker and students would quit that made me have Li Na hold back. That made me worry that my mentality was changing due to my bond with Li Na.
That was a possibility I had thought I didn't have to worry about until the Soul Reforging Stage... at least it wasn't happening to my students.
They weren't acting more like dogs, they had bonded with each other, but as friends and fellow students, not as a dog pack.
Then again, maybe in my case it had happened earlier but any of my students that went past the Body Refinement stage would have to worry about it.
And my closer bond with Li Na did explain why she was much stronger at the same Rank than the dogs, besides having started her training earlier.
All twelve students had picked the Thick Fur ability after watching the Spirit Beasts spars, even the girls.
The result.. well actually it wasn't really noticeable, it's not like those students of mine suddenly grew fur over their bodies. But more like there was a thin layer of spirit energy over their bodies that gave them extra protection.
Later I found out there is a spirit skill that does something similar to the Thick Fur, but it is one most cultivators don't learn until Step 5 and my students were at Step 2. That's because a Tamer is always a Rank lower than their strongest bonded Beast.
That did explain why I had never heard of Tamers looking like their Tamed Beasts. And was also a relief because again, I didn't want any of my students to quit.
Now... in part due to my changed mentality and in part to see if I had any talent, I did spar with my students.
I tried fights one on one, without clubs, just the basic fighting moves my family had taught me for self-defense.
All my students lost in just a few moves, I then recommended to their families to teach them better. Not that they could do much more than teach them moves and correct their stances since direct sparring between cultivators and mortals ends with the mortals going into their next life.
Then I tried two against me at the same time, but I still won.
It wasn't until I had three students fighting me at the same time that I actually had a hard time winning.
Out of pride, I didn't have four fight me at the same time.
I just... found a nice spot to relax and enjoy the warmth of the sun.
Of course, Li Na joined me.
****
It was only noticeable after a few years but Cultivation had made it so we all looked younger than our real age.
At twelve years old not only was I still stuck at Step 2 and Li Na at Rank 10, but puberty had not started for me or my students yet.
That did explain why Li Na took until I was that age to no longer look like a kitten and to a lesser extent why my students' dogs took extra time to become adults.
At Step 1 a Cultivator is not that different from a normal person, just stronger, faster and usually will live about two decades longer. At Step 2 aging starts to slow down and while normal humans can kill a Step 1, a Step 2 is much harder to do so requiring either greater numbers or trickery. Do note that the slower aging starts to work earlier in Tamers but usually Step 2 is not that hard so is not that much of an advantage. Step 2 also extends the lifespan for about fifty years.
Now Step 3... is when a Cultivator can actually start being called a Cultivator. As they can finally learn basic spirit skills and a few of them together can kill a whole town of mortals on their own. Oh and at that Step you live up to a hundred years more.
To reach that our Beasts had to reach Rank 9.
How much does that affect bonded Beasts? Because a Tamer's cultivation is done by their strongest bonded Beast, bonding to additional weaker Beasts doesn't give any benefits to a Tamer besides being able to copy abilities from them.
But the weaker bonded Beasts gain protection, a stable source of food and water and someone to guide them into becoming stronger. They also become smarter due to the bond.
No, I am not calling you weak friend, you are quite strong. I am also not calling you dumb, you are smart.
Fights of just me and my cat against Rank 10 frogs and other rank 10 Beasts weren't enough for Li Na to rise in Rank.
So it was time to fight more dangerous creatures, and for that the two of us had to go quite far away from town. To a place mortals take two weeks to arrive by walking from my town, we got there in a week because of feline laziness and enjoying the view.
The Spirit Forest, one of the many places called like that but whatever.
A place that was a risk not only because it had a few Rank 9 Beasts, and my book only covered until Rank 10, but because Rank 9 Spirit Beasts are considered valuable enough for weak wandering Cultivators and for young juniors from Sects.
So I ran the risk of not only dying but being found out by a sect. Being found out by a wandering Cultivator wouldn't actually be that dangerous, as soon as they saw I am a Tamer they wouldn't risk attacking me for fear I had a stronger Beast than Li Na in reserve. After all, just because I was not bonded with it didn't mean my "Master" had not lent me a stronger Beast pet for my protection.
But to walk the Path of Cultivation is to dance with Death and this was a risk I couldn't avoid. Even the most mediocre of Cultivators can reach Step 3 and I refused to be worse than that.
So of course as soon as I arrived in the forest I saw a Spirit Tiger.
Since Spirit Tigers are at least Rank 8, I knew it belonged to a Cultivator.
The creature saw us and then ignored us while licking its paws. I put my hand over my feline companion to remind her to not move.
Then the tiger lazily walked away and left.
Fearing the big beast belonged to a sect, and also fearing the Beast itself; we went to hunt in the complete opposite direction.
I had to bribe Li Na with some salted and smoked fish snacks.
"Not yet," I told her and after eating the food she relaxed slightly.
Maybe as a test from the Heavens the next Spirit Beast we ran into was a Lightning Hamster, the bigger, stronger and more dangerous cousin of a Lightning Mouse. And that can shoot lightning from its mouth and glow in the dark.
Also a Rank 9 Spirit Beast.
Both the rational part of my mind and my instincts were screaming at me to run away. A single Rank of difference may not look like much but it really is. That's why teamwork was needed for my students to beat a Spirit Beast a Rank higher than their own, even in the case of Beasts without abilities suited for combat like the Huge Swamp Frog.
But I saw Li Na's expression and knew that if I forced her to run she would lose any respect she had for me. The part of me that is cat-like also wanted the challenge.
Plus beating Beasts at the same Rank Li Na was wouldn't work, we had tried already. This was a risk we had to take or swallow our pride and join a Sect.
I didn't know the abilities of the Lighting Hamster besides shooting lightning, glowing in the dark and that it was definitely much more dangerous than its cousin.
So we both used the Silent Movement ability to stalk it. Eventually the creature had to sleep and thankfully the wind was moving our scent away from the Hamster instead of towards it.
The stalking took a whole day, hunger started to bother us but I didn't dare to eat as our ability wouldn't stop any noise we made that wasn't walking.
The creature seemed to know something was stalking him as it seemed to be looking for a safer place to hide.
Unfortunately for it, a Giant Snake swallowed it whole. While the creature was a Rank lower than the Hamster; the rodent was tired so that's why it got eaten. But being eaten doesn't mean being digested so the snake got fried by lightning from the inside out. As soon as I saw the snake die I started to pummel it with my big club before the Hamster could chew his way out. And when the Hamster did so, not only was it injured but found out the hard way Li Na was resistant enough to lightning to be able to fight back and injure the Hamster more. Then an iron knife ended up entering the rodent's eye and finally killing it.
Despite me not wanting to, hunger made me and my companion eat the snake and the Hamster raw. The snake venom was slightly bitter but tolerable. While the Lighting Hamster meat tastes quite good, somewhat like a mix of pork and hare. We couldn't finish eating before other predators got interested but at least we were able to eat most of it and I got a comfy fur out of it. The snake skin was just too damaged to be of use so I didn't bother with it. Also the fur, unfortunately, doesn't glow in the dark with the Hamster being dead.
Then we ran and ran until we were away from the forest and near a pond.
Despite wanting nothing but to fall asleep I forced myself to clean myself and the Lighting Hamster fur. Even Li Na took a small dip in the pond, surprising me.
She was not a fan of soap but once I explained that smelling like a dead animal would get us hunted nonstop so the cat very reluctantly let me clean the grime and blood away from her.
I still had to promise Li Na we would hunt more tasty Hamsters later.
After all that was done I finally noticed Li Na had gone up to Rank 9.
Both of us had been using the Lightning Run ability; an ability most of my students' dogs had, no wonder we had actually been able to escape with our lives.
The rational part of my mind was calling me a suicidal idiot, the emotional part was both happy and slightly terrified of how close we had been to dying. And the cat in me praised Li Na and made me rest lazily near the pond while I hugged my new fur.
Li Na was still annoyed due to the soap so she rested on her own. But when I woke up from my very long nap she was actually sleeping next to me. I feel refreshed, full of energy and I noticed Li Na's black and brown fur now had black tiger-like stripes.
You may be thinking that sleeping like that was stupid and it would have been... if Lina had not just become Rank 9.
We needed to sleep not just out of tiredness but to let both of our bodies adjust to the changes. Neither my weak danger sense nor Li Na felt any danger sleeping there so we did so.
Also being at Step 3 meant I could live up to a hundred years at minimum, unless I got killed or got really sick.
Despite being useless for my cultivation, I meditated. I circulated Spirit energy slowly all over my body checking for changes. Everything felt... much better. I then checked things with my weak danger sense, it was still weak but had improved. I could feel that the area around me for about a meter was reasonably safe while before I was restricted to anything or anyone that got really close to me. My danger sense also seemed to have integrated well with my other senses as my eyes and ears were also scanning for trouble better than before. I was surprised that my sense of smell had improved too, Li Na had a strange smell that the cat in me told me meant family.
Overall, I was lucky but also I wasn't completely careless in what I did to get stronger. After a few months of training to get used to our improved bodies I decided we were going to head back to the Spirit Forest. But not before, without a good foundation your future in cultivation is harder.
****
Li Na was angry, stupid soap! Big Sister better keep her promise of hunting more tasty Hamsters. She also wanted her own comfy fur but she wouldn't beg Sister for it, Big Sister had earned it. And... and sleeping next to Big Sister was comfortable.
Li Na was also happy that she was now stronger. One day she would be even stronger and she would meet that big dumb tiger and show him that she wasn't someone to just ignore! That she wasn't a weak kitten for him to ignore her like that!
Then Big Sister took out the rest of the snacks, they didn't taste as good as the hamster but she was a growing girl and needed to eat.
The honey-milk... still didn't taste very good but Big Sister said it was good for her bones. And if Big Sister could drink it, then so could she!
****
When I headed once more to the Spirit Forest, it was both after six months of training to get used to our new bodies and after learning a weak Spirit Skill that reduced noise. How did I learn said Skill? By looking at what my body was doing when I used the Silent Movement ability and trying to copy it. Since I knew the ability I didn't injure myself trying to copy it, but copying it was the hardest thing I had done so far in my path of cultivation.
And the result wasn't the same thing, for one it was weaker and for the other it merely reduced noise instead of canceling it.
Good thing was that it reduces all noise, not just the one done by walking.
So with that plus my cat instincts I finally was almost as silent as Li Na while hunting. Combined with having snacks made from the flesh of Spirit Beasts and both of us having the Lightning Run ability, the forest just wasn't as dangerous as before.
We stalked another Lighting Hamster and this time it took only a few hours to hunt and kill it. I carefully cut the fur and saved it to give it to Li Na later. While I let Li Na eat all the rodent meat herself. After that we ran away from the forest but stayed close to its borders.
Then, because my cat is really impatient, I made a fire, took a pot out of my huge carrying sack and started to prepare everything to thread the fur and make a rug for Li Na to sleep over. Good thing the increase in Rank did make me much stronger than before because how much stuff I had to carry to do this correctly was kind of ridiculous for what was supposed to just be a quick hunting trip. And of course Li Na refused to carry anything.
Still, just because I was a cultivator didn't mean my grandma had stopped teaching me things. And a Wise Woman is supposed to know a bit about everything, not just medicines and herbs.
Not to mention that she wasn't getting any younger, she had already lived longer than her own mother did and refused to get a trash pill to live longer.
This was also a test to myself to see how good I could do the things she taught me without her watching over my shoulder.
The answer was... that we needed to kill a few more Lighting Hamsters until I finally did the darn rug correctly.
In the end we had to take a trip back to town and I had to make a few extra rugs until Li Na found one she liked. At least the rugs that weren't failures sold well in the nearest city. Not that I sold them myself, too much risk. Uncle Yu did so, even in a city people are less likely to mess with doctors.
The money from the sale went both to pay part of the cost of teaching me and to finally get that guide about stronger Spirit Beasts I was lacking. This didn't raise as many suspicions as you might think, since doctors use Spirit Beast parts to make medicine. They just usually don't hunt them themselves, just buy whatever parts they need.
Before I knew it, I was thirteen. I looked like I was nine.
All the girls my age were already dating, under the careful watch of their families, while I was not.
Then again as a cultivator I would outlive any man that married me and since my status in town had risen as high as possible for my age, anyone interested was intimidated by the mere idea.
It's one thing to date a girl that looks younger than their real age.
It's another thing to date that same girl when she is a Step 3 cultivator, a teacher of other cultivators and the leader of the unofficial town guards.
And my title was only unofficial because leaving any paperwork behind of us basically making our own Sect was incredibly stupid until we became strong enough to resist anyone who took offense to that.
Surprisingly my grandma was still alive but she no longer left town for anything. It came to me, as her student, to get any herbs, plants, fruits; Spirit Beasts and even leaves and tree bark she may ever need to do her medicines.
Fearing she didn't have much life left, I split my focus between being with her and my students. They had gotten strong enough to divide into three groups of four and still defeat Rank 10 Spirit Beasts, but their dogs had yet to rise in Rank.
I was almost sure they would have to face Rank 9 Beasts to rise in power but I didn't want to risk their lives yet.
More so when that would mean leaving Grandma Bai Bao alone for too long.
Turns out she knew she might not live long enough for me to learn everything she knew so she had written books by hand. The last two years of her life were spent finishing writing those books and teaching me.
She died at age sixty, the longest anyone not a cultivator had ever lived in the village, even if they took the trash longevity pill.
I cried for a month after her death, refusing to do anything but eat and sleep, with Li Na trying the best she could to console me.
AN: At this point I don't think it is that hard to guess who or what she is talking to, but please do not spoil... yet.
