Chapter 14 - Risky Gamble
Chapter 14 – Risky Gamble
As she continued to watch, she spotted the cause of this fight. The Earth Tortoise had been defending a small medicinal garden. Thunder Roc must have wanted to take it for its own.
When she examined the garden, she noticed a flower that looked just like the Jade Dew Flower. It was near the edge of the garden and somewhat close to her. She began thinking about her chances of getting it, planning her next course of action. Who knew when she would find another one in the mountains. It could take days or weeks just to find another one and she decided to try and obtain the flower.
"I probably have a 10 percent chance of getting it but if I wait for these two to get serious injuries. I have about a 40 percent chance of getting it", she thought.
With her final decision made, she slowly moved around the edge of the battle, towards the garden as the fight intensified. With every second passing, more and more injuries appeared over their bodies but their attacks were increasingly ferocious.
Then the Thunder Roc flew down heading straight for the tortoise, launching continuous streams of lightning onto the tortoise. However, despite the constant attacks, the tortoise did not budge, Its body remained unmovable. The Roc had flew too close to it giving the Tortoise a oppurtunity. The Earth Tortoise immediately attacked biting one of the Roc's wings and tore it off with great strength. It left a bloody stump,
The Roc screeched in extreme pain and attacked in retaliation, scratching the tortoise's head with its claw, managing to cut the tortoise's eye.
Without its wing, the roc's fighting ability had been halved and it tried to escape. However, the tortoise would not let it go and chased after it.
Knowing that this was her chance, Ming Yue rushed for the garden and harvested the Jade Dew Flower as well as some other plants. Furthermore, she went to the area where the Thunder Roc's arm was and harvested what she could get.
Many of these things were useful to her as the Thunder Roc's body had both lightning and wind elements contained in its body. Consuming these items would aid in her cultivation greatly and even allow her compatibility with wind and lightning to increase. Soon her spatial ring was filled to the brim with bottles of blood and medicinal plants
She was almost done harvesting when the Earth Tortoise came back and noticed that much of the garden was gone. Then it saw Ming Yue and roared in anger. A puny human had stolen from under its nose. It moved towards her rapidly.
Ming Yue ran as fast as she could and the Tortoise chased after her. Being a rank 5 beast, It had a great amount of strength as well as some intelligence although it could not speak. Furthermore, even thought it was a tortoise, it was in no way slower than her and was getting closer by the second. She tried multiple methods to shake the tortoise off but it would always find her. After an hour of chasing, she noticed a group of rank 3 True Fire Lions and immediately ran towards them. After she passed them , the tortoise followed, stomping on their territory with no regard.
The True Fire Lions were angry and attacked the Earth Tortoise, slowing it down. With no other choice, it let Ming Yue escape and fought against the lions. As for Ming Yue, she did not stay to see the result and immediately ran away. After she made sure that she was not being chased, Ming Yue found a small cave and rested in it. She also took this time to reorganize her things.
She had her sword on her and a small bag containing some rations and money. In her spatial ring were several bottles of thunder roc blood, the snow ape's head, the Jade Dew Flower, some rank 2, 100 year plants, and even a rank 2, 1000 year old Fire Lotus. The lotus was a deep red and exuded a bit of heat. She planned on using the Fire Lotus as well as the thunder roc blood to increase her cultivation. After all, cultivating in the Human Realm required one to strengthen their entire body from the organs to the skin. As for the rest excluding the mission items, she would sell it as it was of little use to her.
After organizing, she went into a cultivation state to recover and to think about the fight between the earth tortoise and the thunder roc. She began formulating moves based on the Thunder Roc. while it had mostly fought using lightning, it also launched wind blades and other wind attacks. Unfortunately, she could not make anything substantial and only had some basic ideas in mind. There was nothing usable as of yet but that was expected, she wasn't a genius after all. She could only progress step by step.
After recovering, she went straight to Luan City to complete her missions. This journey was about a month long but she had gained a lot and planned to breakthrough to Human Realm Third Rank. When she reached the Jade Dragon Pavilion, she greeted the receptionist and completed the missions, gaining 500 contribution points and 175 gold coins. This was more than the mission detailed but the receptionist soon explained.
"The Jade Dew Flower that you gave was of better quality than needed, thus we rewarded you with a bit more", she said.
Ming Yue understood and after taking her gold, she went to the exchange hall. It was an equally large area compared to the main hall with 3 people at the counter. Chairs and tables filled the room and people were seen looking through a book. When Ming Yue went up to the counter, she was also given the same book, which turned out to be a catalog showing all items that were exchangeable and how much contribution points they were worth.
There were hundreds of items and soon she took a seat and began looking through each page. There were multiple sections:Pills, plants, weapons, armor, skills, cultivation manuals, even beast materials, and pet eggs. There were also services that could be exchanged like appraisals, healing, examinations, you could even exchange for a chance to spar with an expert and learn something from them. She did not know what to get but did make note of some things such as appraisal and sparring but she decided to save her points and went back to the brothel.
The brothel, especially the boss welcomed her back. They didn't have an issue having her stay in one of their rooms. There was space and Ming Yue would often help the brothel whenever scuffles between the customers happened.
In any case, this was her home here and it was nice. Later that night she prepared a bath and poured in the thunder roc blood. Afterwards, she had the blood lotus on hand and ingested it before taking off her clothes and dipping into the bath. When cultivating in the Human Realm, one had to strengthen their entire body from the organs to the skin. Soon, fiery heat came from within while the lightning and wind essence tempered her body from the surface. This way she would have a higher chance of breaking through as the pressure from these items would push her body's limit. It was more dangerous as if one lost consciousness the energy and pain could kill them or at least cripple them. However, surviving would offer great strength, something that she lacked.
Thus Ming Yue had begun her attempt at breaking through.