Pinklestia
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All chapters posted have finally been edited so yes this will eventually get an update once I am done with other stuff.
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RIP @Silver Swallow
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Not that kind of Thunder Cat (Xianxia)
- Thread starter Pinklestia
- Start date
All chapters posted have finally been edited so yes this will eventually get an update once I am done with other stuff.
XZR-2
Getting sticky.
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Should it be bartering?
Pinklestia
Well worn.
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Yes, bartering.
Then again this is cultivators we are talking about, if it wouldn't get you banned of the Market, there would be some bantering.
Chapter 7: Tiger Part II
Pinklestia
Well worn.
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Edited by megrisvernin https://forum.questionablequesting.com/members/megrisvernin.493/.
Besides getting sharper teeth, looking older and Li Na now liking to be read children stories, there had been another change in me.
While before my cat like eyes still worked like normal, well normal for a cultivator, after my body grew I gained good vision in darkness.
I discovered that by accident while hunting in the Spirit Cave and having my torch fire go out.
After I and Li Na had ate well, I went to the nearest city to look for someone to reforge the nonbonded sword I had acquired earlier. Since it was steel instead of an artifact, the reforging could be done by a blacksmith, but it is expensive.
I also had to get any identifying marks erased, but that was just a matter of changing the handle.
And I also brought the tainted knife, that I had buried in the Spirit Swamp, with me. I put it in a sheath on my back. If anyone stole it they would have a bad time, unless their cultivation was high enough.
I had finally tried to use the knife again and while it took less energy than before it was still too greedy for me to use regularly.
But I had an idea on how to get around that, to melt it and reforge it as part of the sword while I poured my Spirit energy into the blade. Thankfully I didn't have to be the one doing the reforging myself as it was going to be hard and distracting enough as it was.
And talk about distracting, there were a lot of people looking at me. Not due to my mount, Li Na had waited outside the city, or due to my eyes, the straw hat and the scarf still did their job in helping to hide them.
It was not that I was evidently some sort of cultivator, those are not that rare in cities.
No, it was the fact that since I now looked older certain parts of my body were now more noticeable, even while wearing chest bindings.
And while it was not to the point that people suddenly forgot offending a cultivator is a really bad idea, that didn't stop other cultivators.
Now one thing about Tamers that I have mentioned before is that how strong we are depends on our strongest Tamed Beast. But what I have not pointed out yet is that the farther we go away from our strongest Beast the weaker we become.
With Li Na outside the city I was reduced to the power of a mere Step 2 as I wandered the city looking for a good blacksmith.
And so even Step 1 cultivators dared to approach me.
Well one Step 1 Cultivator that had to be reminded that a Step higher is still a step higher by having both of his arms broken.
Then the next to approach was a Step 2, but the man just complimented my clothes and asked where I had got my scarf, and after I told him he excused himself and left.
Then... it was a Step 3... a woman that looked in her twenties.
Thankfully all she wanted was to sell me some expensive makeup. After some bartering she left with an anti wart cream I had made and I was left with a small chest of cosmetic products.
Unfortunately just when I was near a place that supposedly had a blacksmith I was ambushed by a group of men with one Step 2 and five Step 1.
"Give us your clothes and all your belongings." The man said completely ignoring we were in public and everyone could see his face and those of his followers.
Whatever happened with bandits covering their faces? It's not like it's that hard!
One minute later I was out of five steel knives and the leader looked a lot less confident with how easy his subordinates all had knives stuck in their stomachs. They were not dead, unlike these idiots I did know that even for cultivators it is not that easy to get away with murder in a city, as opposed to a remote town in the middle of nowhere.
I then showed off by making electricity dance in my hands. "No, you give me your clothes and belongings."
Without his goons' help, the leader stripped himself and the others of anything but his underwear. I then took out a box of matches and some alcohol from my backpack and set fire to a pile of all the things he had given me.
"Now, better get your friends medical attention, unless you want them to die?"
After that there were no more interruptions but as I reached where the blacksmith was supposed to be I found out he had moved... to the other side of the city! Thankfully that was near where Li Na was waiting for me.
That gave me the benefit of getting stronger as I walked there, so I probably gave the impression that I had been hiding my power or something like that.
And that also had the benefit of no more people bothering me.
Thankfully the blacksmith knew how to do the job I wanted him to do. It helped that I had already removed the sword's old handle and that he had a sick child that could use some of the regular medicine I had brought with me for trading.
In fact, since I wanted to use his services again I outright cured the child of his illness. After all while I had left most of the job to my apprentices I was still a Wise Woman.
Good thing I did too, the child had parasites in his stomach. I simply killed and removed them, then healed the wounds and damage in his body.
Unfortunately for the kid that involved vomiting and pain but it couldn't be helped. I couldn't kill the parasites with my electricity without a heavy risk of killing the child itself so I was limited to what a Wise Woman who is not a Cultivator would have used.
After that the blacksmith was more than willing to do the work I asked.
****
I stared at my new sword, the handle had a nice carving of a tiger with a lightning bolt symbol on it. Besides that it didn't look that different from a regular, yet well made, steel sword.
But it was more than just a steel sword now. It had become an actual cultivator weapon. Nothing impressive save for one thing, it only liked me. Anyone else would have a bad time if they touched it. Of course it still ate my power but now it was not constant.
I took it out of its sheath and let my spirit energy course into it, then I hit it with lightning; it made me feel really great, like I could take on the whole world and win.
Then I sheathed back the sword.
"Good work."
"It is my best work, you cured my son."
"I am still grateful anyway."
"I, Zhang Wei, am in your debt honored Cultivator."
The blacksmith just wouldn't let it go.
"My mortal name is An Xiu, I may ask you a favor in the future. But only to you and no one else. If I do, you will do your best to do it, understand?"
"Yes Lady An Xiu."
'Maybe I can get my students weapons for free? No, that would be an abuse, I will provide the materials and money, then ask for the favour to be his silence.'
****
Not too long after that my two cousins had not only turned into adults, but were getting married. Had I really lost so much track of time after becoming a Cultivator?
I only noticed when I got the invitation to the double wedding, while my mortal family was not poor, making the two weddings in the same ceremony made sense as they were marrying twin brothers, named Li Wei and Li Qiang.
So I went to the wedding, just me, Li Na my partner had to wait outside, but at least they feed her well.
Wang Fang the eldest of my cousins married Li Wei and Wang Xiu Ying the youngest married Li Qiang.
But marriage didn't mean they could drop their obligations as Wise Women, in fact if their husbands tried to take them away for too long they would win the grudge of the entire town.
Even as a Cultivator I wasn't free of those obligations, hence why I took those two as my students and never fully stopped teaching them. The reason why I was still doing the teaching was not only because of a lack of enough time to teach them every day but because I didn't want to give them the books my grandma had left me.
Still I had already taught them most of what was in those books.
My gift to them was most of my money, leaving me almost poor, good thing that by then I mostly ate spirit beasts I hunted with my partner.
After the wedding I focused on cultivation and gaining money for a year. There were no big gains in power but my skills and those of my students improved.
And for money... even with my uncle's help it was hard to sell everything we got, so I had to risk going to a different Cultivator's market. This time I took two of my male students and their beasts as bodyguards, even if their power was weaker, it helped to keep undesirables away.
One of them was a brown haired man with black eyes, son of the school teacher and the librarian in town, his name was Chen Bo. The other one was the biggest and most muscular looking of my students, a weirdo with long black hair and green eyes named Chen Da.
They were cousins but one wouldn't notice just looking at them since one's skin always looked tanned and the other's skin was maybe a bit too white. And no, it was the muscular weirdo that never tanned.
Unlike before I didn't have to blackmail cultivators to get what I needed, then again I went there just to sell things.
Or at least that was the plan.
• • • •
As I have said before, killing inside a Cultivators market is a bad idea.
So the idiot who tried to rob me wasn't killed, he wasn't even crippled or castrated.
No, he was just beaten to an inch of his life and then handed to the Market organisers so they took charge of his punishment instead.
After all no one likes a thief who steals from you and I wasn't the first one who got inconvenienced by him.
He was an Artifact cultivator, his main artifact seemed to be a bronze coin.
Of course it really wasn't, his real main artifact was something else so I had no trouble taking the bronze coin as "compensation."
What did the coin do? Hide the user, that's it.
With me, it didn't work as well, it couldn't fully hide me, but it could make me look less eye catching.
So I used it to hide my feline eyes, to disguise them as normal looking eyes. Not that that stopped me from using other types of disguises; as I said the coin didn't work very well.
With that done we headed back home.
No one got in our way.
It was a peaceful trip.
It took me some effort to stop playing with the coin to the point I had to force myself to lock it in a cage and bury it.
Yes it was useful but it was also something taken from an enemy, it was not truly mine so I could not fully trust it.
I had to attune it to me, and since I wasn't an Artifact Cultivator or had one that would help me that meant using cruder methods.
To be honest my idea was somewhat ridiculous. It was based on the same method I had tried to use to tame a Lightning Mouse.
Only since it was an Artifact, what changed is that I would starve the coin of Spirit Energy, by locking it in a metal cage and burying it in a certain place in a certain Swamp.
To starve and then feed the coin with my own Spirit Energy, to make the coin fully be mine.
I did it for a year to be sure, meanwhile I had to deal with some drama.
That drama was one of my students getting pregnant despite the fact that since I am a Wise Woman I could have given them a drug to prevent that if they had just asked.
So my time was then split in teaching, with a lot being lectures on how to prevent pregnancies, training, taming the Artifact coin and of course still doing what I could to help my hometown.
And don't forget taking care of my careless student.
Who gave birth to a dead baby despite my best efforts.
Mourning only lasted nine days, as the child died at birth it was nameless and was cremated to prevent disease. It had been a baby girl and while her death saved me from many complications I still cried.
Instead of blaming my student, I blamed myself for not being a better teacher.
Even so life moved on and I decided it was time for me and my students to grow stronger.
But first I had to finish taming the coin and go on a hunt using my new Cultivator sword.
AN: Been a while uh?
Besides getting sharper teeth, looking older and Li Na now liking to be read children stories, there had been another change in me.
While before my cat like eyes still worked like normal, well normal for a cultivator, after my body grew I gained good vision in darkness.
I discovered that by accident while hunting in the Spirit Cave and having my torch fire go out.
After I and Li Na had ate well, I went to the nearest city to look for someone to reforge the nonbonded sword I had acquired earlier. Since it was steel instead of an artifact, the reforging could be done by a blacksmith, but it is expensive.
I also had to get any identifying marks erased, but that was just a matter of changing the handle.
And I also brought the tainted knife, that I had buried in the Spirit Swamp, with me. I put it in a sheath on my back. If anyone stole it they would have a bad time, unless their cultivation was high enough.
I had finally tried to use the knife again and while it took less energy than before it was still too greedy for me to use regularly.
But I had an idea on how to get around that, to melt it and reforge it as part of the sword while I poured my Spirit energy into the blade. Thankfully I didn't have to be the one doing the reforging myself as it was going to be hard and distracting enough as it was.
And talk about distracting, there were a lot of people looking at me. Not due to my mount, Li Na had waited outside the city, or due to my eyes, the straw hat and the scarf still did their job in helping to hide them.
It was not that I was evidently some sort of cultivator, those are not that rare in cities.
No, it was the fact that since I now looked older certain parts of my body were now more noticeable, even while wearing chest bindings.
And while it was not to the point that people suddenly forgot offending a cultivator is a really bad idea, that didn't stop other cultivators.
Now one thing about Tamers that I have mentioned before is that how strong we are depends on our strongest Tamed Beast. But what I have not pointed out yet is that the farther we go away from our strongest Beast the weaker we become.
With Li Na outside the city I was reduced to the power of a mere Step 2 as I wandered the city looking for a good blacksmith.
And so even Step 1 cultivators dared to approach me.
Well one Step 1 Cultivator that had to be reminded that a Step higher is still a step higher by having both of his arms broken.
Then the next to approach was a Step 2, but the man just complimented my clothes and asked where I had got my scarf, and after I told him he excused himself and left.
Then... it was a Step 3... a woman that looked in her twenties.
Thankfully all she wanted was to sell me some expensive makeup. After some bartering she left with an anti wart cream I had made and I was left with a small chest of cosmetic products.
Unfortunately just when I was near a place that supposedly had a blacksmith I was ambushed by a group of men with one Step 2 and five Step 1.
"Give us your clothes and all your belongings." The man said completely ignoring we were in public and everyone could see his face and those of his followers.
Whatever happened with bandits covering their faces? It's not like it's that hard!
One minute later I was out of five steel knives and the leader looked a lot less confident with how easy his subordinates all had knives stuck in their stomachs. They were not dead, unlike these idiots I did know that even for cultivators it is not that easy to get away with murder in a city, as opposed to a remote town in the middle of nowhere.
I then showed off by making electricity dance in my hands. "No, you give me your clothes and belongings."
Without his goons' help, the leader stripped himself and the others of anything but his underwear. I then took out a box of matches and some alcohol from my backpack and set fire to a pile of all the things he had given me.
"Now, better get your friends medical attention, unless you want them to die?"
After that there were no more interruptions but as I reached where the blacksmith was supposed to be I found out he had moved... to the other side of the city! Thankfully that was near where Li Na was waiting for me.
That gave me the benefit of getting stronger as I walked there, so I probably gave the impression that I had been hiding my power or something like that.
And that also had the benefit of no more people bothering me.
Thankfully the blacksmith knew how to do the job I wanted him to do. It helped that I had already removed the sword's old handle and that he had a sick child that could use some of the regular medicine I had brought with me for trading.
In fact, since I wanted to use his services again I outright cured the child of his illness. After all while I had left most of the job to my apprentices I was still a Wise Woman.
Good thing I did too, the child had parasites in his stomach. I simply killed and removed them, then healed the wounds and damage in his body.
Unfortunately for the kid that involved vomiting and pain but it couldn't be helped. I couldn't kill the parasites with my electricity without a heavy risk of killing the child itself so I was limited to what a Wise Woman who is not a Cultivator would have used.
After that the blacksmith was more than willing to do the work I asked.
****
I stared at my new sword, the handle had a nice carving of a tiger with a lightning bolt symbol on it. Besides that it didn't look that different from a regular, yet well made, steel sword.
But it was more than just a steel sword now. It had become an actual cultivator weapon. Nothing impressive save for one thing, it only liked me. Anyone else would have a bad time if they touched it. Of course it still ate my power but now it was not constant.
I took it out of its sheath and let my spirit energy course into it, then I hit it with lightning; it made me feel really great, like I could take on the whole world and win.
Then I sheathed back the sword.
"Good work."
"It is my best work, you cured my son."
"I am still grateful anyway."
"I, Zhang Wei, am in your debt honored Cultivator."
The blacksmith just wouldn't let it go.
"My mortal name is An Xiu, I may ask you a favor in the future. But only to you and no one else. If I do, you will do your best to do it, understand?"
"Yes Lady An Xiu."
'Maybe I can get my students weapons for free? No, that would be an abuse, I will provide the materials and money, then ask for the favour to be his silence.'
****
Not too long after that my two cousins had not only turned into adults, but were getting married. Had I really lost so much track of time after becoming a Cultivator?
I only noticed when I got the invitation to the double wedding, while my mortal family was not poor, making the two weddings in the same ceremony made sense as they were marrying twin brothers, named Li Wei and Li Qiang.
So I went to the wedding, just me, Li Na my partner had to wait outside, but at least they feed her well.
Wang Fang the eldest of my cousins married Li Wei and Wang Xiu Ying the youngest married Li Qiang.
But marriage didn't mean they could drop their obligations as Wise Women, in fact if their husbands tried to take them away for too long they would win the grudge of the entire town.
Even as a Cultivator I wasn't free of those obligations, hence why I took those two as my students and never fully stopped teaching them. The reason why I was still doing the teaching was not only because of a lack of enough time to teach them every day but because I didn't want to give them the books my grandma had left me.
Still I had already taught them most of what was in those books.
My gift to them was most of my money, leaving me almost poor, good thing that by then I mostly ate spirit beasts I hunted with my partner.
After the wedding I focused on cultivation and gaining money for a year. There were no big gains in power but my skills and those of my students improved.
And for money... even with my uncle's help it was hard to sell everything we got, so I had to risk going to a different Cultivator's market. This time I took two of my male students and their beasts as bodyguards, even if their power was weaker, it helped to keep undesirables away.
One of them was a brown haired man with black eyes, son of the school teacher and the librarian in town, his name was Chen Bo. The other one was the biggest and most muscular looking of my students, a weirdo with long black hair and green eyes named Chen Da.
They were cousins but one wouldn't notice just looking at them since one's skin always looked tanned and the other's skin was maybe a bit too white. And no, it was the muscular weirdo that never tanned.
Unlike before I didn't have to blackmail cultivators to get what I needed, then again I went there just to sell things.
Or at least that was the plan.
• • • •
As I have said before, killing inside a Cultivators market is a bad idea.
So the idiot who tried to rob me wasn't killed, he wasn't even crippled or castrated.
No, he was just beaten to an inch of his life and then handed to the Market organisers so they took charge of his punishment instead.
After all no one likes a thief who steals from you and I wasn't the first one who got inconvenienced by him.
He was an Artifact cultivator, his main artifact seemed to be a bronze coin.
Of course it really wasn't, his real main artifact was something else so I had no trouble taking the bronze coin as "compensation."
What did the coin do? Hide the user, that's it.
With me, it didn't work as well, it couldn't fully hide me, but it could make me look less eye catching.
So I used it to hide my feline eyes, to disguise them as normal looking eyes. Not that that stopped me from using other types of disguises; as I said the coin didn't work very well.
With that done we headed back home.
No one got in our way.
It was a peaceful trip.
It took me some effort to stop playing with the coin to the point I had to force myself to lock it in a cage and bury it.
Yes it was useful but it was also something taken from an enemy, it was not truly mine so I could not fully trust it.
I had to attune it to me, and since I wasn't an Artifact Cultivator or had one that would help me that meant using cruder methods.
To be honest my idea was somewhat ridiculous. It was based on the same method I had tried to use to tame a Lightning Mouse.
Only since it was an Artifact, what changed is that I would starve the coin of Spirit Energy, by locking it in a metal cage and burying it in a certain place in a certain Swamp.
To starve and then feed the coin with my own Spirit Energy, to make the coin fully be mine.
I did it for a year to be sure, meanwhile I had to deal with some drama.
That drama was one of my students getting pregnant despite the fact that since I am a Wise Woman I could have given them a drug to prevent that if they had just asked.
So my time was then split in teaching, with a lot being lectures on how to prevent pregnancies, training, taming the Artifact coin and of course still doing what I could to help my hometown.
And don't forget taking care of my careless student.
Who gave birth to a dead baby despite my best efforts.
Mourning only lasted nine days, as the child died at birth it was nameless and was cremated to prevent disease. It had been a baby girl and while her death saved me from many complications I still cried.
Instead of blaming my student, I blamed myself for not being a better teacher.
Even so life moved on and I decided it was time for me and my students to grow stronger.
But first I had to finish taming the coin and go on a hunt using my new Cultivator sword.
AN: Been a while uh?
Last edited:
Leo_turtle
Getting out there.
- Joined
- Jan 31, 2022
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Thanks for the chapter, It's good to see the story updating again.
FourEyedAxolotl
Getting sticky.
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Holy hell, it has been a while. Great to have this back!
I'm definitely due a re-read.
And in the story it does seem that life carries on even whilst our protagonist experiences age and time with the slowness of an immortal. I'm really interested in finding more about how she's viewed in this town, as she was once a child with a kitten running around but now is distinctly inhuman in her power and has I feel not much contact with the village aside from her disciples. They still live in the same area, right?
Its a shame that the baby was a stillbirth, but I don't doubt they'll be more in the future who survive. After all, An Xiu's disciples are growing just as she is and they will eventually produce a new generation of children who've known her all their lives as the 'Sect Mistress'. Which will be pretty funny.
I'm definitely due a re-read.
And in the story it does seem that life carries on even whilst our protagonist experiences age and time with the slowness of an immortal. I'm really interested in finding more about how she's viewed in this town, as she was once a child with a kitten running around but now is distinctly inhuman in her power and has I feel not much contact with the village aside from her disciples. They still live in the same area, right?
Its a shame that the baby was a stillbirth, but I don't doubt they'll be more in the future who survive. After all, An Xiu's disciples are growing just as she is and they will eventually produce a new generation of children who've known her all their lives as the 'Sect Mistress'. Which will be pretty funny.
Perpetual Tim
Not too sore, are you?
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- 8,479
Welcome back, time to do a re-read
Pinklestia
Well worn.
- Joined
- Sep 23, 2015
- Messages
- 6,128
- Likes received
- 39,207
Eventually the protagonist lack of knowledge about certain things was gonna backfire unfortunately.
Thank you.
Yes, they still live in the village and act as their protectors hence why the MC always leaves a few of her students behind in the village unless they don't leave for long.
Thank you.