22 months was simply too long to wait.
Airan could not afford to waste nearly 2 years of his youth sitting on his hands, eating rock-hard spirit rice, and praying his landlord did not raise the rent.
He needed those 10 remaining spirit stones now.
And in the cultivation world, getting more money meant taking more risks.
Airan’s main livelihood came from his mandatory quota as an official gatherer: 50 spiritual herbs every month.
If he fell short by even 1 single stalk, his employer deducted his pay using drained spirit stones.
Instead of a fresh, 100% full-potency stone, he would receive stones depleted to 99%, 98%, or worse—losing 1% of power for every 1 missing herb.
For someone balancing on the thin edge between eating dinner and paying rent, a depleted spirit stone was a disaster that threatened his food, his shelter, and his long-term dream of becoming strong.
Meeting that quota was already a struggle.
The city housed billions of people, meaning 10,000s of rogue cultivators poured onto the mountain slopes every single day.
Finding 50 intact herbs near the base of the mountains was like searching for copper coins in a trampled ditch.
Furthermore, strict rules governed the trade: cultivators could not just yank up herbs by the root and leave the soil barren.
You were required to re-plant the seeds back into the earth to preserve the ecosystem.
To guarantee his 50 herbs, Airan used to play it entirely safe.
He would stick to the foot of the mountain, carefully gathering his quota, and head back toward the city well before dusk.
The walk from the city to the mountain base was roughly 15 to 20 km—a trivial distance for a cultivator, but one that still ate up precious hours of daylight.
More importantly, when night fell, Tier-1 demon beasts—possessing strength equal to a cultivator at Qi Condensation Stage 1 through Stage 3—descended from the upper peaks to hunt.
Mid-rank Tier-2 beasts, equal to Qi Condensation Stage 3 through Stage 4, also roamed nearby.
Airan had no desire to end up as a midnight snack for an overgrown wild boar.
Now, he abandoned his caution.
To earn extra cash, Airan began pushing deeper into the mountain forests, long past the crowded foot slopes where 1000s of rogue gatherers picked the land bare.
Even among basic Tier-1 spiritual herbs, there were 5 distinct qualities: Low, Mid, Good, Perfect, and Extraordinary.
The deeper you went, the better the herb quality—and the higher the price a shopkeeper would pay for your surplus.
After completing his mandatory 50-herb quota, Airan stayed late into the evening, braving the darkness to collect 20 to 30 extra high-quality herbs to sell on the side.
It was a dangerous gamble.
Airan had 0 defensive treasures, 0 offensive weapons, and possessed exactly 1 spell: Fire Control.
Fire Control was the lone utility technique included in his basic cultivation manual, the Burning Fire Technique—a bare-bones guide that could, at best, carry a cultivator up to Stage 9 of the Qi Condensation realm before they would need a completely new technique to even dream of reaching Foundation Building at Stage 11.
Basic Fire Control was intended for spark-igniting a campfire or lighting a quiet pipe.
It had 0 combat lethality; hitting a Tier-1 demon beast with it was equivalent to waving a warm candle in its face.
However, after 9 years of practice, Airan had perfected his control over it.
He could not blast a fireball, but he could compress the flame until it burned with an intense, blinding white glow.
It became an ultra-bright torch, illuminating dark stone crevices and underground caves where the richest, untouched herbs grew undisturbed by daylight gatherers.
5 months of nerve-wracking night hunts passed since he turned 26.
5 months of dodging Tier-1 beasts in pitch-black caverns, relying entirely on a glorified lantern spell and quick instincts.
Sitting in his cramped room, Airan emptied his space pouch onto the low wooden table.
35 spirit stones clinked softly against the dark wood.
Airan wiped the sweat from his brow, a dry, tired smirk tugging at his lips.
“5 months of almost being eaten by cave rats… but I’m down to the final 5 stones.”
He picked up 1 single stone, turning it in the dim light.
Only 5 more.
5 more spirit stones, and the blueprints in his head would finally become solid copper.
Author’s Note: Thanks for reading Chapter 3!
Airan’s journey from a penniless herb collector to a spirit distiller starts here.