After an hour's rest Fen Chang was back in full health with only fading scars left over his body. The bear was still in the process of healing so he gave it another pill so they could go and start hunting quicker.
While the bear was healing, he decided to look through the information within the database on the earth mountain bear and the best ways to train it… 30 minutes later the bear was nearly healed.
Fen Chang had a bunch of weird looking fruit in his hand. It has a brown shit coloured surface with a rocky texture. These fruits are from the earth dew tree he found months ago during his search in the capital.
It has been planted in his inner world and growing for quite a while, but even so it has only given a few fruits. Because it's a grade 5 tree it would normally take around 30 years to bear fruit but because of the increased growth speed and Qi density it is now able to produce around once a month with 5 fruits per harvest.
The first batch were used to plant more trees by removing the seeds which destroyed the fruit in the process but with there being a small orchard with multiple floors in one of the buildings he now has around 20 fully matured trees that where harvested a few weeks a ago. Giving him a decent supply of these fruits.
The reason he has these fruits out is because they contain dense earth Qi and is especially good for earth element creatures and practitioners. He plans to eat one himself in order to gain the benefits the fruit gives while giving the rest to the bear in hopes it can advance to the next rank. While also stock piling some for his army.
The fruit when eaten by humans gives the consumer stronger defence. The earth Qi within the fruit gets absorbed into the skin and flesh allowing for harder skin and better defence. If the consumer has a high affinity with earth Qi they would get many more benefits but even then, the ability to increate defence makes it sort after by lots of cultivators even without the earth element affinity.
Fen Chang plans to not only get the extra defence but also hopes to absorb the earth Qi into his own Qi and then get an extra element. He hopes earth Qi although not he most useful for him with fights and cultivation, will instead do wonders to his inner world and hopefully speed up plant growth or at least add a new area rich with earth Qi.
Taking the weird fruit to his mouth he bites down on it only to chip his teeth.
'As expected of a grade 5 earth type fruit. Its outer skin is a hard as rock. Hmm, how should I eat it then? If I smash it up or open then the essence within will dissipate really quick. I am also unable to turn it into a pill due to it being a grade 5 fruit and requires minimum strength of a stage 4 peak to refine.
I should use my sword to cut it into small pieces then very quickly grab the pieces and swallow them. The longer take the more essence I am losing but it seems to be the only way with my current strength.'
Fen Chang pulls out his sword and throws the fruit into the air over a bowl. He quickly enhances his sword with Qi to be able to cut through the fruit before cutting it into small squares within a second.
He quickly goes to the floor and starts to devour the pieces of fruit looking like a starved homeless person. But he doesn't care as he needs to be quick and doesn't have time to think about appearances.
He already went into his inner world to do this as the appearance of a grade 5 fruit would attract the attention of the rank 4 beasts in the centre.
The moment the last square of the fruit was eaten Fen Changs body flopped to the ground. It was as if he just ate a mountain as his body started to sink into the floor creating an outline.
The earth Qi came surging out from the fruit within his stomach and quickly latched itself onto his skin. He looked like he was covered in a layer of flowing shit.
The layer of earth Qi started to slow down and harden quickly encapsulating him in a layer of dense rock. His skin slowly absorbed the rock layer that surrounded him.
Seeing how his body is absorbing the earth Qi into his skin he fights through the pain and uncomfortableness to capture the left-over earth Qi roaming around his body.
With the layer of rock around his body the earth Qi is unable to dissipate. This was his only chance to gather up the earth Qi as once his skin finished absorbing the stone layer the remaining earth Qi would dissipate in an instant.
With it all captured in a ball he brings it to his dantan. As if sensing a new energy, the Qi in his dantan flared up and quickly surrounded the earth Qi. The previously pure white Qi started to get a few strands of brown before gradually getting a brown hue.
By the end of the process which was only 20 minutes the stone layer around him was gone with only a human shaped crater was left. Getting out of the hole Fen Chang could feel the difference in his skin.
Although he practices his high-level body technique his skin still wasn't able to protect himself against rank 2's. His previous injuries from rank 1's where because he purposefully lowered his skins defence to train but now due to the grade 5 fruit his skin can now successfully with the addition of the body technique can defenced against even mid rank 2 beasts.
He will still keep his defence low in order to train but he is now confident that should he encounter a rank 2 he can fight back if his life depends on it.
Fen Chang got out of the hole and cleaned himself up before sitting back down to check on his Qi. He looks inside of himself and takes a look at his dantan.
What he sees is a giant pure white ball of Qi. Surrounding that ball are 2 smaller balls, one is a icy blue the other is a shit brown colour. These are his two current elements his Qi has absorbed.
Seeing that the earth Qi has successfully integrated with his Qi he smiles as it would have been hard to find another chance to get that much earth Qi in one place and already within his body.
After checking on his cultivation he finds that he has managed to advance to the barrier to level 5 and that the barrier is already mostly broken. Seeing this he takes out his Qi pills and starts to cultivate in order to breakthrough.
The breakthrough was an easy one as the grade 5 fruit already mostly broke down the barrier and he only had a little left. When he broke through to level 5 his inner world shook as the size increased again before suddenly doubling with a whole new area the size of the grass land appeared.
It was a mountainous area filled with dirt and boulders. The size of his world when he reached stage 1 was 18 football fields with 18 more added with each level up. So now he is at level 5 the size of the grass land is around 90 football fields in size.
When he got the ice Qi a new snow area was added filled with dense ice Qi. When a new area gets added it has its own land count so it started off at 54 football fields before expanding by 18 and 18 again with each level up.
Basically, with the ice area the whole world doubled in size. Now there is another new mountainous area filled with the heavy and dense earth Qi the worlds size has increased by 50%. With a whole new area consisting of 90 football fields size.
His inner world has now got 3 areas the size of 90 football fields. Fen Chang was shocked, even after seeing it happen with the ice. A whole beautiful mountainous area being added still shocked him a bit.
…
A little after an hour later he leaves his inner world after checking out some of the other features the earth Qi brought to his inner world.
What he found out was the earth Qi not only added a new area but also sped up the growth of plants. Previously before the earth Qi when he was at stage 0 there was a 1 to 100 speed up rate. When he got to stage 1 it increased to 1 to 150. Now its at 1 to 180 due to the earthy Qi.
The main advantage how ever is not the small increase in speed but QUALITY. The earth Qi allows for the crops to not only have better quality but also yield more at a time. His normal crops like rice which only take a day to harvest, now are much taller, vibrant and even though mortal crops now contain a pretty high Qi amount.
He also found that earth element or ice element herbs or materials grow faster and overall have increases. He estimates that with each new element he gets that element herbs and materials will get boosted growth, quality, etc.
When he go back to the cave the bear was already awake. But just before they set off he decided to spend an hour within the inner world with the bear to not only rank it up but also sit down with it and help it learn a few basic strategies.
Most importantly he went back to ask his maids and other people he trusts and likes for advise on a name for the bear as he doesn't want to call it bear and is terrible at names.