Chapter 197: Chapter 195 – The Price of Shortcuts

Since I’ll be traveling with this guy for a bit, I asked his name. It appears it is Ao Jin. Because of what I’ve done for him, he insisted on Jin.

Of course, I gave him my name, as well.

 Overall, he seems like a pretty serious but casual guy. But it was a lot more relaxed before all this happened, though.

 While I would like to ask more about his wife and child, it’s clearly a subject that can’t be easily broached. I think I may be able to help with it, but that involves dealing with nobles in all the different aspects that come along with that.

 Though now that I think about it, it might be much harder than I’ve been thinking. Nobels won’t move without significant amounts of leverage.

 Somewhat silently, we head through the jungle, cutting and pushing our way through the brush below to grab rare materials and, sometimes, kill and collect the raw materials from rare beasts.

 As a form of paying me back, he agreed to move around the jungle with me to defend me and help me collect these things. He didn’t believe it was a fair compensation, but to be frank, based on the little I heard from him and could gather, he couldn’t afford what the market price for such a healing would be.

 Not that I was planning on having him pay, anyway. I’m still trying to stick to keeping things as open as possible.

 Being a foundation establishment cultivator, he easily can take out most creatures. Especially in this area. Seems that it was only because he was weakened from his battles with the demonic creatures from deeper within the jungle that he couldn’t handle the snake spirit beast.

 He literally tears some of these apart when fighting, while keeping me behind him. Having him nearby and, as an ally, is pretty amazing.

Maybe I should start doing this more with stronger people? It makes things significantly easier overall.

 He does get a bit suspicious about how we find all these plants an animal so quickly, but I convinced him with the different indicators that could find them.  

Eventually, my bag gets filled to the brim, and I am forced to make another one from the skin of another animal using some alchemical techniques.

 Because I’m now traveling with someone, I keep my combat scan on a little more than I had before. Just because the guy seems nice doesn’t mean that I’ll trust him fully.

 The rest of the scans are at a higher level, but certainly not as high as before, as I just can’t sustain it.

If we travel at this pace, we won’t be able to make it in time for me to return. I think it’s time that I show him my Hulk jumping and come up with an excuse about how we can keep it safe.

 I quickly explained to him what I was using before to move so quickly. That I give to him is that there are certain traits for the emergent trees that you have to look for in order to correctly and safely move between them.

 Some of the different things involve looking for webs or gaps between branches. Others are as simple as just watching the skies for any birds and where their landing. Depending on many of these factors and more, it could mean that a creature is living there that would be disturbed by us jumping into the tree. For any that I’m not able to explain, I removed those from the path.

 Now, despite the fact that I went over 30 minutes of explanations quickly and with dense information, he picked it up immediately started implementing what I was talking about. In some ways, he was even better than it than I with the scan.

 Once you reach the higher levels of cultivation, it’s not just your body that gets strengthened.

  Your mind, your will, emotions. All of these things grow in addition to that. It can be for good or bad, but generally, it’s a positive change. However, most cultivation methods neglect these aspects or emphasize some negative aspects, as a trade-off or because of being of lower quality.

 For the emphasizing of negative aspects, that typically is for the realm of demonic cultivation. Key marks of it are abandoning unnecessary things to help you progress faster in your cultivation, while committing horrible deeds that will let you make shortcuts on the normal path. Like stealing others cultivation.

   It’s not just demonic cultivation that does this. A large number of righteous methods will do so in order to strengthen another aspect further. Compounded with the growth of the body, control of your emotions can be a tough thing. It’s part of the reason the world of cultivation is such a brutal and unstable place, the higher you go.

 In order to go further, there are more incentives to abandon certain things to move higher.

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But regarding Ao Jin, his method strengthened all the aspects somewhat, so he had a practically photographic mind.

 With this, we can finally move significantly quicker through the jungle. Not only that, were you able to get access to a wider variety of creatures and plants that grow only in these upper layers.

 He’s easily able to keep up with me, likely able to move faster than I can. Despite his exiled status, he was a young master of a clan, so he received body conditioning and it’s above the average for most people of his cultivation level. Not a genius, but above average.

 With this being the case, we had some leniency to take some detours and spend some time grabbing other things.

 When needed or seen, we hopped down to the middle areas to grab the treasures that might be in that area as well.

 It is during some of these forays that I finally saw my rival yet again. The midnight Black Panther.

 If I hadn’t had increased my scanning distance, I wouldn’t have been able to catch them.

They don’t seem to do much, just watching from afar and bounding from tree to tree to stay within viewing distance.

 Based on his reactions, it doesn’t appear that Ao Jin could see it.

 That’s a bit strange, as he’s a foundation establishment cultivator.

 But it could be because of the Panthers' natural qualities. In all technicality, I wasn’t able to view them either, except when using the scan. They seem to have a few different abilities centered on staying hidden and ambushing.

 It appears even in the daylight this is still active, as for the few times I’m able to catch sight of it in person, I can’t actually see it or sense it using my normal senses.

 Well…  that would be the case if it wasn’t purposefully showing itself to me.

 It seems to occasionally stand in the open where I can see it, but only when my new jumping companion isn’t watching or doesn’t seem to be aware of it.

 If I didn’t fight it myself, I’d be wondering if I’m just hallucinating.

  But despite all of this, it keeps its distance and occasionally runs off for hours on end.

This pattern continued all the way until we finally reached the tree house I had made when I had gotten into this jungle. Ultimately, it bounds away out of sight as we get closer to where I started.

Because of the good construction of both the treehouse and the storage materials (if I may say so myself), the items within were still doing fine.

 I seem to be continuously impressing Ao Jin, as he looks and comments upon the solidity of the structure. He also is curious about the large chunks carved out of one side, but holds it in.

Since there is a bit more time, he agrees to help me for a few more days to collect things and then head back.

For now, though, we rest.

It’s been a long day.

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