Chapter 134: No Need to Seek the Caravan for Now

Yun Qing only then recalled that not long ago, Liu Liu had scavenged a great deal of meat.

Good heavens, she had suffered, been injured, exhausted, and terrified, while it had eaten so much meat that it was rolling around in a food coma. It was simply unfair.

However, considering it had also helped her gather quite a bit of gold and silver, she would forgive it this time.

Yun Qing took out some roasted meat that restored health points. Judging by the position of the sun, it was afternoon, and she was still by the river in the uncharted forest.

With 90/250 health and in a wounded state, dragging her battered body through the forest to find the merchant caravan was not a wise move.

After eating her fill, Yun Qing entered her cave dwelling. She first checked the fly swatter, which had zero durability left. Its adhesive function was completely gone, and the mesh was riddled with large holes; it would be a miracle if it could even hit a mosquito in its current state.

This weapon had earned her a lot of experience. Although its level was low, she still wanted to repair it. She was out of powerful cleaning agents and wasn't sure if basic functions could fix it.

Yun Qing placed the broken swatter on the crafting table. A prompt appeared: "The fly swatter has 0 durability. The adhesive function cannot be repaired. Other functions can be restored. Repair requires 5,000 Tier 1 energy and 500 Tier 2 energy. Proceed?"

Seeing the energy cost, she immediately abandoned the idea. She was too poor at the moment; the dilapidated swatter would just have to serve as a souvenir in her simple wooden cabinet.

It wasn't just the swatter that was ruined; she also realized that at some point, the clothes she had taken from the original owner had been destroyed and no longer provided any protection.

These clothes couldn't be repaired either, so Yun Qing put them in the cabinet as a keepsake.

Now, the most important thing was to heal her wounds.

The intermediate crafting machine was currently producing wooden walls, roofing, fencing, and other items. Many parts of the villa were under repair and had not yet been completed.

During the monster siege, the meditation room, which contained nothing, had suffered almost no damage.

Yun Qing took out the Qi-gathering meditation cushion, placed it in the room, and sat down to cultivate.

Her combat level was already 41, which counted as a "half-step" into the Qi Refinement stage. Perhaps she could begin to draw in spiritual energy.

She held the jade slip containing the Qi Refinement chapter of the Wuji Technique against her forehead. The content flowed into her consciousness. Drawing Qi into the body—she felt as though she understood it, yet also as if she didn't. The technique was something that could only be grasped through intuition, and she felt she wouldn't truly understand it until she actually succeeded in drawing the energy within.

She closed her eyes and used her spiritual sense to perceive the energy in the room. It seemed denser than in the outside world. Following the instructions of the Wuji Technique, she circulated her internal energy, using her consciousness to capture the spiritual energy in the air and guide it into her body and meridians.

After multiple attempts, she still failed.

"Liu Liu, do I really have to be level 41 to draw Qi into my body?"

"Not entirely. If your physical fitness were exceptional and you had cultivated one step at a time, you could do it even without reaching level 41. But since you are using the shortcut of character levels, you need to reach 41. At level 41, you will definitely be able to draw in Qi and practice the Wuji Technique."

Yun Qing sighed wistfully, "I aspired to be a 'grind-master,' but in the end, I was forced to take shortcuts. There’s no helping it. Let me go back to level 35; I’ll cultivate properly."

"That’s impossible. Who told you to stand in the path of the wind? It’s hard not to skyrocket in levels."

Yun Qing rolled her eyes. "I feel like you’re insulting me, but I have no proof. Just go back to counting your meat; I need to heal."

Liu Liu turned, and the black dog-shaped shadow vanished from the room.

Yun Qing began circulating the innate chapter of the Qiankun Qi-Circulation Technique, slowly repairing the minor injuries in her meridians.

Time slipped away as she healed. By the time her health points returned to 200, it was the morning of the third day since she had gone missing.

As for the energy in her cave, only 3,200 Tier 1 and 680 Tier 2 remained. It seemed like a lot, but it wouldn't last long.

Although she still had some mosquito nutritional fluid, she needed to plant trees on the farmland, finish the villa, and reinforce all structures to at least Tier 1 or Tier 2. She also wanted to spend nights and practice in the cave frequently.

She needed to gather more materials to put into the energy converter to sustain the cave.

...

Yun Qing exited the cave. She could identify the direction by the sun, moon, and stars, but she had no idea where she was or where Rizzhao Town lay.

Level 40 to 41 was a bottleneck. The few alchemy recipes she possessed had all been mastered to a proficient level through automatic crafting, and they no longer granted any experience.

Manual crafting should provide some experience, and now that she had spiritual sense, she could attempt it.

She had plenty of auxiliary materials for Qi-replenishing pills and Body-tempering pills, and she could craft enough anti-mosquito toxin pills as well.

The monster siege had provided her with a lot of crafting experience, but future experience points would not be as easy to obtain.

Cooking food also yielded crafting experience, so reaching level 41 in crafting wasn't difficult. Compared to crafting, gathering experience was what gave her the biggest headache.

She had only reached 20% of the gathering experience required for level 40, and she still needed 80% more to hit level 41.

She really wanted to reach level 41 to practice the cultivation technique.

If she returned to the merchant caravan now and didn't stumble upon a valley filled with herbs, it would be difficult to earn gathering experience.

Yun Qing "consulted" with Liu Liu: "Liu Liu, there are many flowers, plants, and trees in this forest. How about I grind here until level 41 and draw Qi into my body before going to look for the caravan?"

"That’s fine. Whether you find the caravan or not is up to you."

She had joined the caravan because Xiao Haoran felt indebted to her and wanted to provide her with a place to earn money and cultivate. She had thought it would be interesting to see the world with them.

She didn't want to level up too quickly; she had only been with the caravan for 20 days and had already broken through from the third layer of the Houtian stage to the Xiantian stage.

Returning to the caravan would require spending silver every day to use the Breath-Concealing Technique to hide her cultivation, and she wouldn't get much gathering experience. Returning didn't seem like a good choice right now.

And, as Liu Liu said, it didn't really matter if she returned or not.

"Then let it be fate! I really want to start Qi Refinement as soon as possible. As for the caravan, it depends on whether we are destined to meet again. Before I reach level 41, I won't go out of my way to find them."

Yun Qing searched the forest for items to gather. To her frustration, the jump from level 40 to 41 was a threshold; even when gathering high-quality items like contaminated Hemostatic Grass or contaminated Qi-replenishing Ginseng, the experience was minimal. A single perfect specimen yielded only about 10 points, and these items were not abundant.

Chopping normal trees yielded less than 5 experience points, and even contaminated trees only gave about 10.

In short, after grinding hard for two hours in a forest full of harvestable resources, she gained less than 200 experience. She needed 60,000 to reach level 41, and she was still over 47,000 short. If she relied on these items, it would take nearly 500 hours of grinding.

If she worked hard and ground for 20 hours a day, it would take nearly a month—enough to strip an entire mountain bare.

In the distance, there were endless mountain ranges, and on the other side, it looked like the grasslands of Rizzhao Town. Yun Qing rubbed her chest; a "grind-master" shouldn't have to grind quite this hard. She headed deeper into the forest.

Having spent over twenty days with the caravan, with everyone's help, she now recognized most of the spiritual herbs and fruits needed for the Qi Refinement stage, some from seeing the real thing and others from pictures.

After walking for half a day, feeling the spiritual energy in the air gradually increasing, with the help of the system, she finally spotted a plant with the long-awaited prompt:

"Qi-gathering Grass, harvestable at Gathering Level 41."