Another World Trip: Journey with My Cat and an Otaku Loli Goddess Chapter 304 - Intensive Cultivation Session

A week passed before a muffled bang rang out that startled everyone awake.

It was early morning right now, and the dew had yet to disappear from the leaves of the trees and the herbs.

A crisp morning air rushed into the nostrils of those who opened their eyes in a rush.

Of course, I wasn’t one of those few since my ass has been awake for like a week. I’m not referring to my physical ass mind you. If there is one thing I have come to know, it’s that the need to go to the bathroom has been a pastime of mine that has seen less and less use the stronger I get and I have to wonder why is that a thing. It’s even more surprising that no one has ever brought it up.

Regardless, the ones who were startled awake here were everyone else apart from Xiannu Liang and me. They didn’t even need to sleep. They only dozed off because they got bored.

This wake-up call was ineffective on Pebbles since he was still lying sleepily atop the head of the dragon lady. She was the only one among them that didn’t sleep. She was covered in bruises, too. Even weirder was that she looked at them with pride.

Note to self, Dragons are masochistic existences who view their wounds as trophies. I had not reached that realm yet in the dao of masochism.

She stared intensely at the cultivating Xiannu Liang and myself who was helping her.

Her name was Long Qian, she was apparently my observer at the best of times and my stalker at the worst of times. Even though Pebbles, who was lying atop her head, was the very picture of kawaii, she didn’t dare to act up about it. As far as I was concerned, she embraced it.

After she returned, she reported to Long Zhe the circumstances under which she ‘escaped’ from the Grand Preceptor. Which was a loose variation of the word, if anything else.

Long story short, she was beaten. There were no two ways about it and it seemed that Long Zhe expected this.

After all, the Grand Preceptor was an old monster that lived for countless years. His strength was not something that Long Qian could compare to despite her being a dragon.

She told Long Zhe that after he had taken the others to escape, the Grand Preceptor flew into a rage that shook the region and incited fear into the hearts of everyone. He then descended upon her and unleashed an attack fuelled with fury with such power that space shattered and the void was torn open.

She was half dead by this point, and the void had swallowed her up. She had used the last vestiges of her strength to follow the aura Long Zhe had intentionally left behind so she could find us.

She had just managed to find us too before fainting from her injuries. Of course, she wasn’t in any life-threatening condition. After resting for a few days, she recovered fairly well. Still, it’d be quite a while before she was back at full strength.

Whoosh!

A surge of spiritual energy being sucked in by one of Xiannu Liang’s cauldrons caught our attention.

The cauldron trembled as a faint flash of emerald light went off in a dark indentation on its surface.

The spiritual qi in her body went through many revolutions as she condensed it until it turned into spiritual essence.

It took on the appearance of liquid crystal before it underwent another subtle change as per her cultivation method. It shimmered as it flowed through the channels of her meridians, but she didn’t let up on pushing it through another grand cycle.

Ordinary people would normally send the spiritual essence they formed into the indentation of the cauldron right after it reached that stage. However, I knew that the spiritual essence could be further concentrated from personal experience. My cauldrons and destiny allowed me to absorb a large amount of spiritual energy for myself.

What I found curious at the time was that when I finally got through the initial creation of spiritual essence, it ran through another meridian before I could send it into my cauldron to form its core.

As soon as it ran through this meridian, I saw and felt that the spiritual essence actually changed and further refined itself. Because of this, I knew that spiritual essence was something that could be further grounded down to its basest purest form.

Of course, this was something that most sects knew, but whether a cultivator could reach that level was another case. This was why they normally sent it to the cauldron right after condensing their spiritual essence.

Whilst that would allow for the condensation of the core pretty quickly, it also meant that the core wasn’t as pure as it could be. And if it isn’t as pure as it can be, then the element that takes up residence within would suffer from some level of impurity as well.

Luckily, I had common-sense busting cauldrons, and Xiannu Liang was, for all intents and purposes, suckling from the teat of my spiritual vein root.

Obviously, these were not common occurrences. It was because the resources or talent necessary to do such a thing were far and few in between that rendered the creation of such a super-condensed and purified spiritual essence to be rare.

As soon as this wisp of spiritual essence was condensed to the extreme, Xiannu Liang could feel it. There were no more changes that occurred even after several revolutions through the cycle.

Her spiritual essence was exceptionally pure. It was pushed to the absolute limit as far as purity was concerned.

Since I was channelling the spiritual energy of the spiritual vein root to her, I was also monitoring her cultivation. Since it couldn’t be condensed anymore, she sent it over to her third cauldron.

Don’t misunderstand, we made sure to get her first core up to par as well as the second core. We’re not gonna have mediocre around here mind you.

What made it even better was the purity of the spiritual energy spat out by the spiritual vein root. It was at such a high level that Xiannu Liang didn’t even need to worry about refining it, really. All she had to do was absorb what I gave her and run it through the Grand Cycle as many times as necessary to properly condense it.

The spiritual essence traversed through the labyrinth-like carvings that decked the cauldron like a snake meandering a maze. I saw as it underwent the miraculous change that turned it from ordinary spiritual essence to the green one that made up her first core.

Obviously, it wasn’t the first time I was seeing this happen since I observed it in full with her second cauldron. Before long, it arrived at the cauldron’s indentation.

Plop…

The wisp of emerald spiritual essence fell into the dark indentation like a drop in the ocean. Yet, here there were no ripples to speak of. Instead, once it fell inside, everything returned to stillness.

The earlier phenomenon didn’t take place either, but I knew this wasn’t anything to pay heed to. It seemed that Xiannu Liang was aware of this, as she did what she knew needed to be done. She got to work on condensing her other wisp of spiritual essence.

At this rate, it shouldn’t be much longer before we’re done.

Xiannu Liang had to keep her focus as she did this. I, on the other hand, was paying attention to something else that piqued my interest.

“So you attacked him and then he somehow gave you an ear rub and that was enough to subdue you? Pffft… cheap! And you’re supposed to be the ancestor of all cats??? Well, you ain’t the ancestor of me. How could you sell yourself so cheap? Have some pride in yourself.”

“Meow!”