Yuyue had already spent a month in the sect, every day she would leave and slay as many stone-skin voles as she could before taking their bezoars to be traded.
Still, it was difficult, considering the fact that bezoars were rare items and it was getting hard to find the Voles. In fact, Yuyue was getting the impression that they were avoiding her. Even when she approached their dens, they would abandon the dens the moment they noticed her presence.
She was not so skilled that she could hide her presence and since the voles had much better sense than she did it was impossible to stop them from running away.
Still, she had managed to accumulate around 1000 contribution points of Bezoars. Of course, she didn't immediately donate them all to the sect. It would be too suspicious if she did something like that. And since she didn't have a spatial sack, she could only hoard them in her room.
It was a rather precarious situation, but she didn't have much choice.
As a result of her repeat slaughter of stone-skin voles, the other outer disciples seemed to have given her a wide berth, especially the female disciples. Many of them would give her snide remarks as she walked back to the dorms every day covered in blood.
Yuyue didn't care that much, her cultivation was going well, and she was rich in comparison to the other outer disciples.
Shu Lin seemed to be the only person willing to talk to Yuyue. She would often chat with Yuyue about sect gossip, and sometimes they even traded cultivation pointers.
Now, Yuyue was busy looking at the item in front of her. It was a glowing rock about the size of a thumb joint.
It was a spirit stone, the first that she had ever owned. It cost her 100 of her 1,000 contribution points but she was willing to part with them. Spirits stones were a cultivation resource after all so she was not really wasting any points.
Yuyue often wondered how exactly these stones aided in cultivation, but she had never used one herself.
She knew they contained Qi, but as to how to absorb it, she was pretty ignorant.
She palmed the stone in her hand. It gave off a warm glow that seemed to nourish her body. The stone was chalky and she rolled it in her hand.
She wondered if she should ask Shu Lin how to use it. While Shu Lin was also an outer sect disciple she worked as a maid disciple for an inner sect disciple so she might have a better understanding of how the spirits stones work.
"Ah!"
Yuyue found that while she was deep in thought she had accidentally crushed the stone in her hand.
A small wisp of light entered her body. In an instant, she was awash with a feeling of a pleasant warmth that spread throughout her body.
The warmth filtered through her veins, and she felt it settle there, not moving.
The meridians she had previously cultivated through meditation, became thicker and her body felt more energetic.
"So that's how they work!" Yuyue exclaimed.
Spirit stones were stones that were filled with condensed Qi, for a new disciple, this could greatly accelerate the process of their early advancement. This must've been why disciples could choose a spirit stone as a beginning treasure from the sect.
Yuyue thought back to the stones in the Treasure Pavilion. They had been larger than the stone she just used, and their glow was much stronger. She assumed that those stones must've been higher quality than the one she just used.
She sat up from her sitting position but soon realized that in some parts of her body, a thin sheen of oil had emanated from the skin.
Running a finger along her forearm, she swiped a little bit of oil on her finger and observed. It was murky brown and had a rancid smell like burned oil.
She assumed this must be some sort of bodily impurities that had been expelled as a result of cultivation.
As the daughter of a magistrate, Yuyue lived a relatively privileged life and thought herself to be a clean person, she had bathed regularly and didn't allow such oil to build upon her skin. She didn't realize that she had ingested so many impure materials as a result of being raised as a mortal.
As she looked at the oil on her finger, she began to realize how incredibly important spirit stones were.
She thought back to Ma Luo who had bullied Fan Chu into giving him an extra spirit stone a month and she now realized why he made such a demand.
Each level of cultivation would get more difficult the higher the cultivation level of the person. For a person like Ma Luo who was a peak 4th step disciple, he would naturally need a huge amount of spirits stones to make any progress.
As Yuyue began to mentally calculate the cost of the spirits stones to accelerate her cultivation she realized it was a mind-boggling number.
And she could only buy 9 more with the contributions points she had saved up.
While she was confident with another 9 more spirits stones, she would be able to break into the first step of Qi Meridian development, she didn't know how she would move forward into the next stage.
Looking at the bezoars in her room Yuyue sighed, how many bezoars would she need to raise to the next level.
How much work would it be?
She could only steel her heart, this was her Dao, and she would follow it!