While Lord Kitty stepped and stepped on him, Mo Tianliao fell asleep. When he woke up, the Starfall Stone was not yet refined. His back was warm and he could hear snoring, he tried very hard to turn around and look. He saw the white furball sleeping soundly on his waist, his front paws stretched out comfortably, the twine ball had already fallen to the ground.
He reached out his hand to bring the ball over and looked at it, it had already been made fuzzy from the clawing. Mo Tianliao smiled and stretched out his hand to lift the kitten. Given the way he was positioned, he inevitably woke him up.
“Mew?” Qingtong opened his eyes and looked at him dreamily.
“Go back to sleep.” Mo Tianliao sat in a lotus position and put the cat on his leg.
The kitten yawned, stretched, found a comfortable position, lay on his stomach and went back to sleep.
Mo Tianliao made a seal with his hands and began to meditate to restore his depleted spiritual power. The pig-killing knife at his feet flickered and flashed, trying with all its strength to remind its master to finish refining it first. Only to find that its meditating Master could not see it, but the cat, catnapping with his eyes closed, could.
The white furry head tilted, then he exhaled toward the pig-killing knife. Craaack. A stream of white mist rushed to the knife, instantly freezing it into an ice cube. No matter how much it flashed now, it couldn’t be seen. Qingtong felt satisfied, he lay on his back, turning his belly toward Mo Tianliao, quietly watching the man’s stubbled chin and slowly licking his paws.
Mo Xiaozhao really liked to accompany Mo Tianliao while he was crafting. One reason was that it was warm in the forge room, making it perfect for sleeping. The other reason was because Mo Tianliao often had no time to shave and his prickly chin felt just right when rubbing against his head. The pale Liuli eyes slowly looked away and Qingtong bit the tip of his claw. He was Master now, how could he do something so childish?
After circulating his qi for two weeks Mo Tianliao finally made up his losses and continued from where he had been previously interrupted by internal demons.
He discarded all else and absorbed only wood qi alone, his meridians were quickly saturated with rich wood qi, circulating back and forth. His childhood memories gradually faded, replaced by the people and things he had met after stepping on the immortal path. The old bastard who picked him up in the wilderness, the hypocrisy he had been able to see through in the righteous path, the law of the jungle he had faced in the demonic path. His Way of cultivation was not ruthlessness. He had lived two lives; he had always had a heart. From the time he saw the small white cat fishing at the edge of a mountain stream, that small figure was destined to monopolize all his tenderness.
Light coloured Liuli eyes embedded in a fluffy face, so cute and lovely, which later turned into a delicate and flawlessly handsome face. Something splintered inside his mind and he was suddenly enlightened. The qi in his whole body suddenly flowed like a river into the sea. A small whirlpool formed in his dantian, a sign he had progressed to the advanced stage of Foundation Establishment.
Mo Tianliao slowly opened his eyes and felt something fluffy against his chin. He lowered his head and saw the white kitten standing on his shoulder, gripping the front of his clothes and rubbing his head against his chin. He couldn’t help smirking, he bowed his head and kissed the furry head.
The happily rubbing kitten was startled, his front paws slipped and it was about to fall off when Mo Tianliao firmly held it in the palm of his hand. His belly was pointing to the sky, they looked at each other. The little furball hurriedly rolled over and raised his paws to beat him.
“Xiaozhao, I…” Mo Tianliao stared at the snow-white furball in his hand, he always felt like something had changed. He stretched out his legs, preparing to put the cat between them to have a good talk when he suddenly kicked the pig knife at his feet. “Huh?”
Taishi, the divine weapon, was covered all over with a layer of frost, it sparkled translucently.
“Meow! Growl!” The kitten struggled and jumped.
“Master…” Before he could speak, the kitten had already squeezed through the gap in the stone.
Scratching his head, Mo Tianliao felt resignation. Since he had come back to life, Mo Xiaozhao refused to kiss him and he would lose his temper as soon as he tried it. But come to think of it, Xiaozhao had already grown up and become Master… Mo Tianliao suddenly froze while rising, he finally realized what the problem was.
Previously, he always felt that after his cat had become Master, he was still his Mo Xiaozhao, but he had never thought that even if he became a furball, he was still his coldly beautiful Master. He…It seemed that he had been wronging his teacher and destroying his ancestors all this time.
Touching his nose, Mo Tianliao did not only not feel ashamed of himself, on the contrary, he was strangely very happy.
The Starfall Stone had finished refining. Mo Tianliao moved the melted fist-sized Starfall Stone closer, took the thin blade previously crafted using Xuanyuan Iron, dipped his finger in the Starfall Stone, calmed his heart and regulated his breathing, then began to rapidly draw the arrays. Starfall Stone would solidify immediately after leaving its protective qi bubble. The drawing must be completed at the exact moment of condensation, there could be no alterations, drawing something else afterwards was impossible.
The array drawing could not be interrupted, and only 80% could be finished with the stored spiritual force of someone in the early stage of Foundation Establishment. Therefore, he had first raised his cultivation to the middle stage of Foundation Establishment, he could finish the whole drawing in one go by completely exhausting all his qi. Every time he drew an array, he could stop for three breaths, Mo Tianliao would thus quickly replenish all his qi with those three breaths. When the qi in the air became insufficient. Mo Tianliao simply dug two holes in the lingshi floor and put his legs inside.
After drawing thirty-six arrays, he had drawn enough to deserve a rest of around one stick of incense. Mo Tianliao collapsed, gasping for air, the meridians all over his body throbbed with pain with every lungful. This was caused by the constant cycle of depletion and fullness.
The kitten had left the stone room and wandered around the Mo Palace.
The forge room was located near a spiritual mine, the surrounding trees grew luxuriantly because of the rich ambient qi. The stone chamber had been surrounded by layer upon layer of barriers. Fearing that others would come disturb Mo Tianliao’s crafting or that Mo Tianliao would run away, Shi Di had set them up himself. However, when the big lion came to Mo Xiaozhao to play a few days ago, he threatened him into handing over a talisman that could be used for passing through barriers.
He quickly climbed a tall Wutong tree and gazed into the distance, from here, he could look over the whole Mo Palace. His pair of Liuli eyes narrowed slightly and he sent out his divine sense, looking for something. A moment later he jumped down from the tree and ran into the woods.
After drawing 72 arrays, Mo Tianliao was thoroughly out of strength, he lay on the ground like a dead dog and gazed, satisfied, at the finished pattern, which looked like something to be used in an exorcism. The Starfall Stone had condensed into strangely-shaped lines, like stone branches, on the blade of the knife. They were connected but did not cross each other. Later, he just needed to fill that empty space with material and mould it.
By the time the brand-new pig-killing knife was cast, Mo Tianliao’s own spiritual power had reached peak accumulation, but he ended up spewing a mouthful of blood.
The method of forcefully milking the meridians was indeed a fast way to cultivate, but it could also damage the meridians, it was not good to use it multiple times. Mo Tianliao set pig-killing number 2 aside to cool down, touched the blood on the corners of his mouth, sat with his legs crossed and his palms together and began to repair his damaged meridians by using the endless vitality of the Everlasting Tree.
Mount Yanhuo lay to the south, it started burning every April, a tree stood amidst a sea of flames, it was everlasting and could not be burned down.
The endless vitality of the Everlasting Tree accompanied by the endless burning of the flames. His meridians were repaired with the force of life, at the same time fire qi poured into his dantian. The damaged meridians were like the broken blue-green bark of the Everlasting Tree, the ideal fuel for his woodfire. Shortly, his woodfire used his damaged meridians as kindling and everywhere inside his body burst into flames.
“Ngh…” The feeling of having one’s meridians on fire was not very nice. Mo Tianliao gritted his teeth and led all the woodfire to his dantian.
The faint cyan embers already in his dantian kept devouring the gathering flames, they began to spin swiftly, like a snowball, growing bigger and bigger with each spin. The wood qi was also attracted by the whirlpool, it revolved around the fireball. When the fireball reached its maximum size, it suddenly contracted and, after a moment of silence, it exploded with a deafening bang.
Dark clouds gathered over Shi Di’s Mo Palace, small whirlpools swirling and rising among them, golden lightning sparked back and forth amidst them and suddenly came crashing down. It was accompanied by ear-splitting thunder; a hole was torn in the barrier around the refining chamber.
“Pfft!” Shi Di, who had been drinking, spat out his wine.
“Milord!” The subordinate who was kneeling on the ground about to give a report got a fright.
“Did the barrier break?” Shi Di slapped his thigh and rushed out like a gust of wind. He reached the top of the refining chamber in a split second, what he saw was the gradually dispersing black clouds and a small strip of woods that had been charred into charcoal. He immediately boomed, “Dear boy!”
It was just Core Formation yet the astronomical phenomena seemed like a tribulation. It was like it went against the Way of Heaven.
The main purpose of Core Formation was to condense a Golden Core and at the same time to condense a divine soul. Forming a divine soul was to truly embark on the road of immortality, rebelling against Heaven, breaking away from the ranks of mortal men and abandoning the possibility of reincarnation.
The stronger the divine soul was, the greater the astronomical phenomena that would be caused. Mo Tianliao’s divine soul was already that of a Half-Immortal and he had some Beast soul added on top, such a powerful divine soul would naturally arouse a warning from the Way of Heaven as if on cue. If Shi Di, a Half-Immortal cultivator, had not set the barriers himself the craftsman would have been cleaved in two.
Mo Tianliao wiped his sweat, raised his head and looked around; he saw a white furball peeking from the small hole, soon, a snow-coloured kitten emerged. However, there was something off about the kitten, it had grown a fluffy fox tail!
Rubbing his eyes, Mo Tianliao walked over and finally saw that his kitten didn’t have a fox’s tail, it was just the white fox sticking to his side. The fox walked with some difficulty and had a limp.
When the fox saw Mo Tianliao, he was so scared that he lowered his ears and stuck even closer to the kitten.
Mo Tianliao, who had seen the furball’s eyes shine at that moment, was suddenly unhappy. He picked up the kitten and looked at the fox, which lost its support and stumbled. “What’s going on?”
The kitten pawed at him twice, jumped to the ground, and in an instant turned into an icy beauty, he picked up the fox. “I think his fur seems pretty good; I’ll bring him with me to use as a pillow.”
Pillow… Mo Tianliao remembered da-shixiong, who served as a rug all year round, and immediately understood. “However, he is not a cat, shouldn’t we give him to Sect Leader?”
Qingtong raised his eyebrows. “You are also not a cat.”
Mo Tianliao smiled and drew close. “I am a tree, only a cat can climb me.”
Qingtong elbowed him aside and was about to say something when he heard Shi Di outside the door, shouting at the top of his voice, “My worthy nephew, is it finished?”
“Three more days!” Mo Tianliao’s clear voice replied.
Shi Di rubbed his hands, less than two months had passed and this boy had formed a Golden Core, it had to be the divine weapon’s enlightenment, there was no other answer. This divine weapon training could advance someone from Foundation Establishment into the Golden Core stage. Then, if he used his heart’s blood to become its master, won’t he ascend at once? He couldn’t help grinning from ear to ear. Shi Di quickly put up another barrier and squatted, keeping guard outside.
Mo Tianliao looked at the pig-killing knife in his hand. What he had said to Shi Di had been the truth, Primordial Stone had really been necessary to craft Taishi, but this counterfeit did not need it. However, Shi Di was at least a Half-Immortal, thousands of years of cultivation were not in vain, he could not hide from him the materials used in a spiritual weapon.
“What are you planning to do?” Qingtong casually picked up the real divine weapon, which was still on the ground encased in ice, and flicked it.
“You want to know?” Mo Tianliao conjured an evil smile. “Let me… touch your fluffy belly and I’ll tell you.”
Slap! Unsurprisingly, Mo Tianliao was slapped. He crouched down with his head in his arms, then, like a good boy, he took out the Primordial Stone. He cut off a nail-sized piece, burned it with his woodfire for a moment, nonchalantly removing some impurities, then he carved it into a flame shape with a carving knife and embedded it into the knife’s hilt, “Look, the Primordial Stone has been used.”
“…” This was just too much!
Unedited, please point out any mistakes
So all that shamelessness by MTL had been unintentional, now it’s time for some intentional flirting
MTL: Climb me like the tree that I am, baby 😏
Second extra chapter, one more left. Thank you so much for the ko-fi, Nate!