It was a moment after Li Kong bid farewell to Xin Qiangdu.
"Li Kong. Let's get back to the forest." White's solemn voice rang in his ears, prompting him to make a detour to the forest.
After Li Kong successfully arrived at the forest, Li Kong brought out the pearly white bead and said, "Why are we here, White?"
"Let's search for the altar he mentioned."
Li Kong simply nodded and he started to navigate through the forest.
After a moment of searching, Li Kong finally stopped on his tracks and gave a good look to his surrounding.
"Should be around here." Li Kong said.
There were many chopped-down trees in the vicinity, the labor of the lumberjack's works, leaving behind only the remaining stump still sticking out from the ground.
Li Kong roamed around the area for another minutes before a charred black texture lied before his eyes on top of the ground and what seemed like the remained of burned wood was scattered through the scene.
Li Kong touched and rubbed his fingers on the ground and commented, "It seems big brother Qiang wasn't lying when he said there's a second altar in the forest."
"Don't be so quick to be convinced. Go look for where he buried the deer." The bead reminded him to be careful.
"Aye, aye," Li Kong replied.
It didn't took long for Li Kong to found the place where Xin Qiangdu buried the animal as it was located only a few dozen of steps away from it.
In front of Li Kong was a mountain of dirt that sticking out from the rest of the ground like a sore thumb. There weren't any commemorations nor symbols, only a simple burial mound sticking out from the ground.
Li Kong picked up nearby fallen branches and poked the branches into the burial mound. He lifted up the dirt and trying to peek the inside of the burial and surely enough, a heavy pungent smell encroached his senses with overwhelming odor which threw his entire body balance into disarray.
Li Kong jumped out from his position and started gagging.
'This kid never learns, doesn't he?' White was getting tired of Li Kong.
Completely out of breath, Li Kong uttered out a complain while still prostrating on the ground, "Damn it! Why does every one of them smell terrible?"
"Maybe if you weren't so keen on smelling them, you won't end up like this." White said exasperatedly.
"Now hurry up and stand up. Our business here is over." The pouch hanging on Li Kong's waist opened and the white bead flew inside before closing.
Not wanting to smell the horrendous scent anymore, Li Kong quickly got up and left the area as quick as he could.
As he navigated his way out, Li Kong silently gazed his waist pouch with meaningful gaze.
The pair of master and disciple had spent practically a month without ever leaving each other side and right now, Li Kong could clearly sense that White was holding something to himself.
Right inside of his brother Qiang's house, White was uncharacteristically silent for the whole time, even when Li Kong had stirred the conversation away from the main focus but White never correct him and let him keep on talking.
"Did you realized something, White? You've been unusually silent today since we met big brother Qiang."
"..."
Hearing no response, Li Kong decided to forget the matter altogether and focusing finding his way out of the forest before a familiar light voice rang.
"I'll tell you tomorrow." The voice said faintly.
Li Kong was surprised but he quickly went back to his usual smile before replying with a soft voice, "Yeah."
"But before that!" Li Kong hastened his pace. "We have to go to uncle Ye's house first!"
...
"Now, what are you exactly doing in front of my house?" Ye Cheng clicked his tongue at the uninvited guest.
"Uh..." Li Kong avoided contact with his eyes and his lips trembling as he tried to mustered out the words.
"U-Uncle... D-Do you know something about the smell coming out of the forest?" Li Kong chose his tone carefully.
For a brief moment, Li Kong saw something else flashed on his uncle's face before returning to his usual annoyed face but he couldn't exactly pinpoint what it was.
"What is this brat blabbering out in the daylight? Shoo shoo! Go home!" Ye Cheng kicked him out from the terrace and closed his door shut.
"Aw!" Li Kong tended his back before looking back and grumbled. "What's wrong with uncle today?"
Li Kong stood up and dusted himself clean.
'Nothing unusual about his temper, I guess. Whatever. Tomorrow I have archery training due. I can just ask him at that time.' Li Kong shrugged and departed from the place.
Behind the door, Ye Cheng stood still, a cold and sharp glint glowed in his eyes.
...
On the dusk of the night, Li Kong was sitting tranquil on his bed and absorbing the Qi in the air while White, as usual, observed him silently.
'Something definitely is wrong with this kid's body.' White murmured.
'When someone see his absorption speed, one would've think that he would've broken through the first realm of Body Tempering already but not only he wasn't in the second realm, this kid hasn't even near breakthrough yet!' It was such an absurdity to White's knowledge.
Li Kong's absorption speed greatly exceeded the geniuses White ever met and those geniuses already could absorbed with three times the speed of normal folks, sometimes even managing to four of five time faster.
But even if White picked the fastest of those geniuses, Li Kong still managed to beat them by a large margin, at least when they were still in Body Tempering stage.
Granted that Li Kong directly skyrocketed to the Body Tempering stage from never cultivating, people may said he was proceeding at a record-breaking speed but compared to his fellow peers in Body Tempering stage, Li Kong's speed was above-average at best when cultivating in the Body Tempering stage.
The disconnect between his absorption speed and his cultivation progress had trouble White since the first Li Kong had started cultivating. If he was currently in his human form, he would already lose bunch of hairs from the constant worry and went bald already.
It was only a week since Li Kong cultivating and White decided to check what was exactly going on inside of his body that made Li Kong cultivation progress abysmally slow compared to his absorption speed.
Turned out the kid's body refined the Qi to its possible purest form. The most inefficient thing a cultivator could do through their lifetime practices of cultivation.
Usually when people absorbed and refined Qi, they only refined the Qi to the minimal extent as long as their foundation wasn't shaken and because the difference between a normal refined Qi and a purer Qi was minimal at best, sometime they didn't even have any noticeable differences.
For example, a technique used with purer Qi might shown a slight increase of power and one might thought that this was good but the main problem was refining Qi to such extent was simply a waste of time.
If there were two cultivators starting at the same point but one was refining Qi normally and the other kept on refining it to the purest extent, the former might had ascended to the highest peak of heaven while the latter had died tens of thousand years ago because of old age. It was just that time-consuming.
No sane person would done that but here it was, for whatever reason, Li Kong's body seemed to be refusing to do the normal way and kept on trying to refine the Qi into its possible purest form.
White had even instructed and directly help Li Kong to consciously control all of the refining process but when he detected there was an instability in Li Kong's body, his nonexistent heart started to pumping out blood like there was no tomorrow and he immediately ceased the activity and since then, he dared not to disturb whatever the hell was going on inside of his disciple's body.
'But at the very least his absorption speed seemed to balance out with his refining. So all was fine.' White sighed inwardly.
His current student really had myriads of problems coming in pack with him. As if, his suffering from enduring his mischievousness and countless nonsensical behaviors wasn't enough, now the universe had decided that he had to constantly monitor the brat's body because of his peculiar circumstances.
Sometimes, White couldn't help but lied down and pondered deep to himself and felt he really wasn't paid enough by his main body to do all of this.
But even though there were many complains, White didn't regret ever picking him up and instead he gazed silently on his pupil as many thoughts crossed his mind.
'I wonder what you will encounter on your journey later.' A smile unknowingly appeared on the corner of the figure inside of the bead.
'I bet it won't be something ordinary.' White chuckled.
A blurry figure appeared out of thin air, standing in front of him with a warm look on his face.
After that, the figure raised both of his palms and held it in the air. The hands was flickering and detail of them slowly disappearing before reappearing again.
'I am gradually dispersing.' White grasped both of his hands before looking at the youthful figure in front of him.
The figure reached out his hand to the youth's hair before his hand ultimately stopped and he withheld back his hand.
'A month...' White counted the time he had left.
'I have a month at most before I completely disappeared...' His gaze landed once again on the youthful figure before a smile bloomed again on his face.
Watching the relaxed expression of the youth, countless memories began to flash before his eyes.
The antics he'd do, the stories he told, the laugh they share, the joy that they both felt.
Everything passed by before the figure eyes as his eyes slowly turned soft. It was really strange that a just a month with this puny brat managed to make him feel something like this.
'Really, what will be of you if I wasn't there to constantly watch you?' The figure shook his head in exasperation.
'Yes, this spirit of mine will disappear.' The figure said calmly
'But before that...' A cold light gleamed from the figure's eyes. 'I will get rid of whoever tried to put my disciple in danger.'
By the time Li Kong had filled his cultivation quota of the day, the blurry figure was no longer there and then, Li Kong went to sleep peacefully.
...
Early in the morning, Li Kong woke up before the roosters' crow and decided to jog around the village while waiting his usual training to began. But the moment he arrived near the animal farm, suddenly a loud moo rang throughout the air and caught by his ears.
Curiosity took the greater of him and he took a slight detour on his route and arrived at the farm where he noticed someone was standing near the fence while rubbing his eyebrows.
Li Kong walked closer to see who it was before realizing he knew the person and cheerfully greeted the person.
"Good morning, uncle Wang! How are you doing?"
The person was frightened at the sudden voice and let out a noise before he shifted his head to the direction where the sound coming from and found Li Kong there.
"Please don't do it again, Li Kong. My heart... I can't no longer take anything like that." Wang Lan said while clutching his heart.
"I'm sorry, uncle." Li Kong stepped back awkwardly and sincerely apologized.
"Just don't sneak like that again the next time." Wang Lan released the clutch on his chest before his eyes wandered back to his frontside.
Li Kong nodded in response before redirecting his focus back to the farm.
"So what's happening, uncle? Why Manman mooed so loud in the morning?" Li Kong pointed at the brown cattle.
The cow, Manman, was running uncontrollably and continuously to mooed loudly. Even when the cow was visibly tired and collapsed from exhaustion, it kept mooing and mooing until it couldn't moo again. The cow trembled furiously and finally fainted in place.
The cow who was mooing was his friend since childhood. Li Kong usually sneaked in with his friend while Yu Mei usually waited near the fence. He personally was fond of Manman as Manman would continuously rubbed her own head to his palm affectionately. Tang Xia even joked at time that Manman was his girl which prompted Yu Mei to attack Tang Xia for some unknown reason.
When the cow collapsed from fatigue, Li Kong creased his eyebrows further and stared at Wang Lan.
"Uncle! What's happening with Manman? Is she sick?" Li Kong grabbed his uncle's shoulder and asked.
"I don't know." Wang Lan shook his head. "Since a month ago, almost every day in the morning, she started to running like that and mooed all over the place until she collapsed just like this."
Wang Lan continued, "Even when I took her to rest at her place, she kept mooing for the rest of the morning and only stopped when the sun had finally dawned."
'When the sun dawned?' Li Kong creased his eyebrows as he wondered what the sentence could mean.
"Uncle, could you explain more why she stop mooing when the sun come?" Li Kong asked.
"I truly don't know, Li Kong." Wang Lan shook his head and answered sincerely.
After that, they talk for a short time before the time for departure arrived and Li Kong bid farewell to his uncle and made his way straight to his house.
The sun had made its grand entrance, proclaiming the ownership of the morning sky as the golden light emerged out from the horizon, illuminating the whole world with the warm light.
With the golden light shining behind his back, a black silhouette loomed on the horizon, slowly walking to Li Kong and the light slowly shed the murky black silhouette, revealing the figure hiding behind it.
It was the doctor, Yan Dangxin. The doctor was holding a basket made out of bamboo, herbs packed up the whole basket to the point of overflowing.
"Good morning, Li Kong." Yan Dangxin smiled at the youth and rummaged the basket in his hand.
"Woah, that is a lot of herbs. Did you just pick all of this, doc?" Li Kong leaned his head forward to the basket.
Watching the doctor's hand trying to grab something, Li Kong retracted his head back and watched the basket before he noticed an unusual color on one of the herbs.
While he was dazed, Li Kong noticed something green was offered to him by the doctor and he immediately woke up and looked at what it was.
"Here take it. It's for you Li Kong. Grind these herbs and then drink them with water. I heard that you trained hard since last month so make sure to drink it a lot, okay? It'll help lessen muscles sore and boost muscles recovery." Yan Dangxin kept his smile afloat while talking.
Li Kong grabbed the herbs out of Yan Dangxin's hand and observed them closely.
'These look exactly like what White told me to get when he told me to make a remedy so I guess it's okay if I take them?' Li Kong pondered before shoving them inside one of his pouch.
"Alright, I'll take them. Thank you, doc!" Li Kong bowed down his head.
"Hahaha. You don't need to do that." Yan Dangxin told him to raise his head. "Just make sure you grow stronger okay? That's enough for me." Yan Dangxin said while pressing his fingers against his bicep.
Hearing the doctor's words of encouragement, Li Kong's eyes beamed. After that, he straightened his spine and placed his right hand diagonally on his eyebrows.
"I won't disappoint, sir!" Li Kong said with serious tone and decisively.
Yan Dangxin laughed in response and bid farewell while Li Kong still maintained his salute to Yan Dangxin for a few more seconds before getting in his house and prepared his bows and arrows before departing again from the house.
"I'll be going, White." Li Kong said but no response was being given.
After that, he reluctantly trudged his body to the house of a certain hunter.
'Sigh... Why did I have to do this?' Li Kong complained and even considering ditching but the consequences far outweigh the benefit so without any choices left, he continued his lonely trudge.