Khan finally blinked the mist from his sleepy eyes and looked up.
"Huh? Oh, hey Hui."
Hui woke up some time ago, but Khan didn't even notice as she stood in front of him whilst crying because she thought he had gone braindead. Well, he was talking to himself from her perspective whilst totally blanking her, as if he couldn't see her at all…she even worried that she might have turned invisible!
"Master, you can see me, I'm so relieved!"
"Uh, right." Khan accepted her hug despite being somewhat confused. He could tell that she was genuinely worried about him though.
"I thought you'd never wake up master!" Hui pulled back and wiped the tears from her face as she smiled.
"Oh? How long was I asleep?"
"Six days!" Hui exclaimed an amazement.
"Wow, that's a personal record." Khan blinked. "Makes sense that I feel so hungry…and thirsty…and hor-"
"Do not finish that sentence!" The spirit screamed as loud as she possibly could inside Khan's mind, disrupting him rudely.
"Is there a way to put you on silent?" He frowned.
"I-I'm sorry master, I won't talk from now on…"
"No, not you Hui. I'm talking to the treasure spirit of the shitty pill that the fatty found." He patted her head to pacify her.
"You revealed my existence so easily?!" The spirit was so shocked that she even ignored the fact that he referred to her as a 'shitty pill'. She went on to say:
"Whenever others have bound me in the past, they have always done their upmost to keep my existence a secret at all costs! I have always been their ace, their secret treasure, their-"
"Yeah well, that was when you had a body and could actually be useful." Khan interrupted her bullshit and rolled his eyes.
"Useless you say? You think that my nine primordial eras of experience is useless?"
"…"
"…A primordial era is a very long period of time."
"Yeah, I guessed. So basically, you're saying that you're finally willing to compensate me?"
"Compen- no, like hell I think you deserve compensation! But…the only hope I have of finding my body is if you can improve your Soul Realm to a sufficient degree."
"Oh?" Khan raised an eyebrow, finally interested in what she had to say now.
Just as Khan said this, the Fu sisters, Fu Bian and Fu Rian, walked in. They had been visiting every day or two to see if Khan had woken up, even though neither of them could explain why they even cared. It's not like they were close or anything…were they?
"Khan!" Fu Rian's eyes lit up when she saw him and she called out excitedly.
"Shh, master is discussing his compensation for getting robbed. Or was it for having his time wasted? Ah, I think maybe he was robbed of his time…" Hui put a finger to her lips as she spoke quietly.
Fu Rian was bewildered by Hui's words and even more confused when she saw Khan sitting there, having a half of a conversation with himself.
"Did his brain go bad? Worse than it already was I mean." Fu Bian asked Hui with a raised eyebrow.
"Nuh uh, he's talking to the treasure spirit of the Void Blood Pill!" Hui said excitedly. Having a treasure spirit meant that the treasure was definitely at a high level, which was definitely good news for her master!
"What, do you think I'm made of money? Where am I supposed to find 12 tonnes of origin jades?" Khan's increasingly irritated voice rang out through the room as the girls watched him weirdly.
"So what sort of resources do you have access to then?" The spirit asked exasperatedly. She was accustomed to people becoming entranced when she described any sort of high level pill and its effect. They would become motivated and go on a long quest to obtain each of the ingredients one by one! The final pill was of course incredible, but sometimes the journey itself provided them with an excellent experience too.
"That sounds like way too much work, I'm not travelling the damn world just to make one pill. Give me something I can work with now, something cheap, as cheap as you can think of." Khan rolled his eyes.
Her attempts at persuading him of the joys of adventure only further dissuaded Khan. Every single example of an 'adventure' that she gave was just a situation where she tricked some poor fellow into risking his life, and he only survived through sheer dumb luck. Calling it 'fate' only made Khan feel even more dubious, that just sounded like a sugar coated term for luck!
The spirit sighed in exasperation. She had many memories of many different things, and her experience told her that consuming Body Tempering pills was the most tried and true method for Body Tempering cultivation. Well, at least it was the last time she checked, though she had supposedly been asleep for around a fifth of a primordial era until she was awoken by Khan recently.
"How about this formation, is there anything like this, but faster?" Khan looked towards the formation drawn on the floor as he spoke. Since the spirit was in his soul, she could access his five senses. He didn't really like that, but there was nothing he could do about it. For the most part, it seemed that she didn't really want to watch over Khan's senses anyway.
She glanced up through his soul, then saw the image of the formation on the floor as she saw through his eyes.
"This is the formation you were using before, the one that you keep saying I wasted your time on?"
"Right." Khan nodded.
"But I mean, this entire formation is a waste of time…" She spoke bluntly, but she truly couldn't understand why he was using this formation. When she asked, she should have expected the answer though…
"Cause it's cheap. I don't know where you're from or the places you're used to, but around here, nobody can afford Body Tempering resources. Even basic pills are extremely expensive, and humans don't even process them very well."
"Well your race isn't suited to Blood Energy cultivation at all, your body is way too small, it makes everything more difficult."
"Yeah well…at least I've got a body."
Khan could swear that he heard her cry for a moment after he said that. Maybe he went too far…yeah, hopefully he did. He was still annoyed with this spirit, he didn't give a damn about her feelings.
"Hmm, wait a moment, this formation seems familiar somehow." The spirit suddenly perked up and payed closer attention. Khan started getting impatient after she went silent for five full minutes.
"AH!"
"Stop screaming in my mind or I swear that I will collapse my soul again and force you to ruin yourself even further!"
"Sorry…" She hated him, but she was also genuinely terrified that he was being serious. "Ahem, as I thought, I recognise this formation…or at least a very similar formation. This is a massively skewered version with hundreds of faults."
"So can you improve it, or is the original formation you know stupidly expensive?"
"No, it uses even fewer materials than this formation. I don't know why it's been changed so much though…oh, perhaps it was to make it more tolerable."
Khan blinked. Oh, so her formation was more painful…well, at least it sounded like he would be able to afford it.
"Mm, this version is much safer for beings like yourself who aren't innately born with Blood Energy, now that I think about it. I suppose formations like this would also make beings like you suffer from terrible agony, though the original will still produce far more pain than this child's toy anyway."
"I get it, you grew up in a tough area. Just tell me how to make this formation be good."
Impatient to begin, Khan immediately started receiving instructions from the spirit, then relaying them to Hui. She hurriedly took notes onto multiple formation diagrams of this formation. After copying out everything that Khan relayed from the spirit and asking enough questions to leave the spirit feeling like a school teacher, Hui wanted to spend some time studying everything before attempting to create this new formation.
"Khan, are you going to enter the inner sect entrance exam this year?" Fu Rian approached him and asked.
"Oh, I nearly forgot about that. When is it again?"
"20 days from now."
"So soon? Well I'm still going to enter though."
"Ah, ok…me too."
Fu Bian glared at Khan as he spoke with her sister, but she couldn't fault him right at this moment. He was acting more reasonably than usual…probably because he was taking everything out on the spirit right now.
Time passed by and the Fu sisters went on their way. Khan wasn't really sure why they kept visiting him, but he didn't mind it or anything. He was still holding onto the hope that one day, he would be able to taste both sisters together.
"Phew, master, I'm done! At least, I think I did it right…this formation is really weird. It only uses spirit ink and spirit stones, it's like a practise formation with how cheap it is, but the runes are extremely intricate." Hui explained.
Khan stared at the formation and nodded. It definitely gave off a different vibe…for one, it was emitting a blood red light. Seeing this, his eyes lit up instantly.
"Is that Blood Energy?"
"No, but it's much closer than the thing you were using before. I'm surprised anyone gets anywhere, cultivating with such inefficient 'formations'." The spirit replied.
"Well, they don't. Nobody really follows the Body Tempering Path, they all favour Qi Refining."
"Qi Refining? What is that?"
"Seriously? I thought you said you had vast experience? Qi Refining is the most popular cultivation path. Everything else is considered subsidiary by most cultivators."
"What a strange realm this is…" The spirit muttered, but she showed a look of confusion and doubt.