Returning to the city with Lux and an unconscious cultivator slung across the massive hound’s back was a risk Airan would have normally avoided at all costs.
But leaving her to die in the wilderness invited too many loose ends.
Instead of bringing her straight to his private courtyard and exposing his residence to an unknown variable, Airan made a quiet detour through the back alleys to a grizzled apothecary he occasionally used for basic herbs.
The old apothecary squinted at the girl’s ragged wounds, poking at the deep, purplish puncture marks on her leg before letting out a dry grunt.
“Serpent-tailed hound,” the old man muttered, wiping his stained fingers on a rag.
“Rare beast, but nothing catastrophic. This one’s got a heavily diluted bloodline, probably sitting around the 6th or 7th level of Qi Condensation. The bite itself isn’t what knocked her out—it’s the tail venom.”
The apothecary grabbed a small clay jar of dark, pungent green paste, slapped it over the wound to draw out the toxin, and administered a bitter black antidote pill down the girl’s throat.
Within minutes, the violent tremors racking the cultivator’s body subsided, and her breathing steadied from ragged gasps into deep, even slumber. Visit novelping.com for the full chapter.
Leaving a pouch of low-grade spirit stones to cover the apothecary’s fees and the cost of overnight care, Airan quietly slipped out and returned to his secluded courtyard.
His rapid progress didn’t stop with his internal Dantian.
By this point, Airan had successfully pushed his body cultivation to the 4th Level as well, matching his internal Qi step for step.
Such terrifyingly fast physical progression—hardening his skin, bones, and meridians without breaking down his muscle tissue—was entirely due to his ruthless optimization.
He routinely subjected his flesh to low-grade forging fire, combining it with a specialized body-hardening and skin-tightening medicinal powder that Max secretly sourced for him.
The powder itself originated from a distant Buddhist sect’s outer teachings.
While the ingredients weren’t prohibitively rare on their own, the astronomical cost came down to logistics: the immense shipping distance, the dangerous cross-territory transport, and the strict limits on the quantity Max could smuggle into the region.
If Airan had traveled directly to a specialized beast-taming sect city to purchase the pill over the counter, it would have cost a standard baseline of 100 spirit stones.
But because Max had to orchestrate a discreet, long-distance courier run all the way from the dominant Violet Sect’s central city through guarded checkpoints, the final price tag had nearly doubled in transit fees and bribes.
In the brutal economy of the cultivation world, distance and safety always demanded a heavy toll—a toll Airan paid willingly if it meant keeping his hands clean and his identity safe.
Author’s Note: Thanks for reading Chapter 17!
Airan’s journey from a penniless herb collector to a spirit distiller starts here.