Lilith didn’t stand from her sitting position for the attacking rats, and Seph just stopped mining for a minute as he dealt with them.

  He made his gourd fly and hit one of them in the head; the rat screamed as its head bled, but Seph didn’t let up as he followed with two more slams with the gourd, ending its life.

  The second rat became angered by what happened to its ilk, and it rushed Seph, but he struck it with two palm strikes to the head, ending its life after they heard an audible crunch.

  Seph asked, “How do I prove to Windsor that I killed two of them?”

  Lilith said nonchalantly, “Just rip out their upper incisors and stash them in your ring for now.”

  Seph did just that with ease; all the strength points he had gained made him powerful. A normal human wouldn’t be able to rip those incisors out barehanded like that.

  Lilith wasn’t impressed, though, as she had even more strength points than Seph.

  Seph opened the top of his gourd and made it suck both rats inside, and got two phantom rat bones in return.

  Only this time the gourd acted weirdly after releasing the phantom rat bones, as it shook wildly and tried to suck the bones back in but to no avail.

  Seph wondered, What could this mean? It had never done this before. Is it going to break or something?!

  Lilith cut his thoughts and said, “I think your gourd was trying to tell you that among the material it needs for reaching the next power level are those rat bones, but it must need a specific number first and that’s why it couldn’t consume these.”

  Seph said, “That’s amazing; I was wondering when I’ll get the first hint to upgrade this weapon.”

  Lilith said with a smile, “You are actually pretty lucky; some people live and die without getting a single hint. Luckily, there are certain people who can give you hints on such things. They are just rare, and they don’t tell anyone about their talents, out of fear of being kidnapped to serve an established sect against their will.”

  Seph said, “Shit, that’s crazy people would do that?”

  Lilith looked at him seriously and said, “Seph, people would do anything for power.”

  Seph realized how na?ve he was in thinking that was something unusual and resolved to keep his powers a secret from now on, and that he would only share them with Lilith.

  Judging by the progress of his Eye powers, he could eventually tell what materials he needed to make his gourd and other growth weapons and items evolve.

  The young cultivator got back to mining, and after hitting the vein for a while, got a gold nugget; he looked at it appreciatively before he stored it in his ring.

  Seph then asked her as he continued working, “I was wondering what intelligence and wisdom stats do? I was going to ask someone from the sect, completely forgetting that you can answer most of my questions.”

  Lilith said, “Well, other than the obvious; as in becoming smarter and wiser. The Intelligence stat affects your magical strength, so you hit harder with magic; it affects all elements that are categorized as magical, even holy magic and spirit magic.”

  Seph nodded excitedly as his palm attacks were spirit magic, and thought, I must invest in intelligence points then; I can’t imagine how much more powerful these attacks could become.

  Lilith continued, “As for wisdom, it affects your magical defense. The more points you have, the more impervious you are to these attacks, to where you could completely cancel their effect.”

  Seph said, “I am not sure I am going to invest points into Wisdom then; I’ll try to get my defensive capabilities from my armor instead.”

  Lilith said, “Most people do that except for the juggernauts.”

  Seph raised an eyebrow. “Juggernauts?”

  Lilith said, “Yes, cultivators or even mundane warriors who focus their entire growth in defense — they basically tank only, and their offense is very weak, people are more likely to die against them from sheer exhaustion than being hurt from their hits.”

  Seph nodded as he wondered, I wonder if my pestilence would make quick work of them, or at the very least make fighting these kinds of cultivators much faster than if they fought someone who lacks my abilities.

  The young cultivator then thought to speak of a lighter subject and said, “Can I ask you a question without you calling me a perv?”

  Lilith rolled her eyes and said, “Perv!”

  Seph shouted dramatically, “Come on!”

  Lilith giggled as she said, “Haha, just kidding, ask away.”

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  Seph looked a little hesitant but then he said, “I was wondering why you always wear very short designs with your dragon scale armor?”

  Lilith raised an eyebrow, but asked him a question of her own. “Why do you ask? You don’t like it?”

  Seph said hastily, “No, I like it, I mean... I think you look good and all, but it’s just a thought that I had!”

  Lilith answered, “Relax, but to answer your question, my skill level is too low; I don’t have enough scales to cover everything. Actually, in dangerous fights, I will even concentrate my scales on a single vital part of my body to avoid certain death if I need to.”

  Seph gulped, and then shook his head to not think of the imagery that followed, and concentrated on his mining.

  Luckily for him, three rats appeared in the opening and a fight ensued that kept Seph busy enough not to think of Lilith’s words.

  Employing a mix of gourd slams and palm strikes, Seph made quick work of them and sucked them into his gourd once more.

  When he got back to mining, he found another gold nugget immediately.

  In the end Seph spent three hours mining and got eight gold nuggets, one copper nugget, and one piece of quartz, and he ended up killing ten rats, he tried to feed the ten phantom bones together to his gourd, but it didn’t accept them.

  Lilith said as they were leaving, “What are you going to do for the rest of the day?”

  Seph answered, “After I hand in both bounties, I’ll continue training my martial art in my cultivation tomb, and maybe read a little before sleeping.”

  Lilith said, “You like reading, huh?”

  Seph answered excitedly, “Yes, I was studying to be a scholar before all of this, but I actually enjoyed the reading materials, and now that I don’t have to study anymore, I find the new books on cultivation that I have very entertaining, or the books about the history of this world!”

  Lilith smiled sweetly and said, “I am glad you have that and enjoy it. I never got to experience book knowledge, because I had excellent teachers to teach me everything, but I enjoyed the history lessons very much.”

  Seph smiled and said, “We have that in common then! I’ll share my history books with you later; who knows, maybe you’ll end up liking to read about history too.”

  Lilith said, “I’ll take you up on that offer then; I just hope Baby doesn’t turn the book into ash because I don’t pay her attention while reading.”

  Baby was still chewing her metal piece, but she looked cutely at Lilith when she mentioned her name, and Lilith rewarded her with rubbing her bony head.

  After a while they made it out, and they went straight to the blacksmith, where Seph dropped the mining haul. Master Gong welcomed him by saying, “I see you are already active and doing bounties, Seph.”

  Seph said, “Yes, I need sect contribution to get a manual I want for my combat repertoire.”

  Master Gong said, “Ah, yes, those are important. If you need any tips; ask Master Fu; he will never lead you astray.”

  Lilith perked up and said, “Yes, he is an excellent trainer; he even taught me new tricks!”

  Seph felt jealous since he didn’t get invited to the small group training session but said, “I will make use of his knowledge, thank you.”

  Master Gong asked him, “Remember I repair all kinds of weapons, even your gourd; doesn’t it need repairing by now? You use it in fights, right?”

  Seph said, “Yes, I do, but for some weird reason it never needed repairs; I don’t know why.”

  Master Gong rubbed his chin with his right hand as he circled Seph and inspected the gourd from many angles. “Hmm, yes, that’s a worthy mystery to solve, but usually it’s very simple. Tell me, Seph, does your gourd consume something?”

  Seph answered, “Yes, it consumes the bodies of monsters I kill.”

  Master Gong said, “Aha, that must be it then; it uses the bones of these monsters to repair its framework. You might never need to repair it at this rate; just keep in mind that if it’s a growth weapon, it will need a new material to upgrade its framework at each stage.”

  Seph thought, Hmm, I wonder if this is the reason it needs the phantom bones of the rats, but that’s highly unlikely; rat bones don’t feel like an upgrade in hardness to me.

  Seph thanked Master Gong and then looked behind him to find Tian Lin working on his armor, she was cutting the fur into different sized pieces, he raised his voice a little and asked cheerfully, “How is my armor going Tian?” but he got no reply.

  Master Gong answered him, “Everything is going smoothly; she is so engrossed in her work and won’t hear you at all right now. If you really want to talk to her; move closer, and touch her shoulder and speak to her; only then will she notice you.”

  Seph liked her obsession with her work and said, “No, it’s okay, I should leave her to her work. I’ll wait word when she finishes.”

  Master Gong said, “As for the haul you brought in, I could grant you 110 sect contribution points if you would relinquish any monetary gain; how does this sound to you?”

  “That sounds perfect, thank you. I’ll take the contribution; I need it more than spirit stones.”

  Master Gong gave Seph one copper coin, which had the number 100 engraved on its surface, and another metal coin with the number 10 engraved on its surface.

  Seph took them and bowed and turned to leave. Lilith did the same and followed him.

  They both headed to the gatekeeper’s office; Seph had memorized most of these routes already, but there were still places he didn’t visit in the sect yet.

  Once they entered Windsor’s office, Seph dropped the twenty top incisors of the rats on his desk.

  Windsor raised an eyebrow and said, “What is this?”

  Seph said, “Those are the teeth of ten dead rats. I didn’t want to bring anything that would make your office messy and smelly.”

  Windsor’s mouth turned to an O as he said, “That’s good, thank you for bringing this to me, as per the elder’s orders, I will reward you with 50 spirit stones, and 100 sect contribution as well. Please don’t hesitate to go back in there and kill more of these rats, so that we could get this infestation under control.”

  Windsor handed Seph the spirit stones and a single copper coin; Seph took them and said, “Thank you; I’ll kill more of them when I can. I don’t think it’s avoidable if anyone wants to do the mining bounty, anyway.”

  Windsor said, “Oh, that’s why you were in there? Nobody actually does these bounties; most of the disciples have been here for a long time, and they don’t need the low count of spirit stones they would get from this bounty, anyway.”

  Seph raised an eyebrow and said, “What about the sect contribution? Doesn’t anybody want to learn skills from the manual library?”

  Windsor said, “Sadly, the manuals aren’t that good, nobody wants to waste their time learning low rarity manuals, and those who would already did so long ago. You all will pump fresh blood into our sect though, with your needs, things will move around a bit until they stale again.”

  Seph grimaced since he hated the manual will be low rarity, but there was nothing much he could do about it, “Thank you, anyway, Windsor, I’ll try to figure something out and complete the entire rat infestation bounty, because I want something from those rats.”

  Windsor made a disgusted face, and said, “You want something from the rats?”

  “Yeah, it’s a long story, but I’ll keep you posted.” Seph said as he bowed and left, it wasn’t a long story or anything, but he wouldn’t tell Windsor that he was on the verge of upgrading his growth weapon.