After finishing his molting, Jaekyung realized his body had grown once again. His body, which had originally been a little over 20 meters long, now seemed to be 25 meters, or perhaps a bit longer, and the thickness of his torso had also grown to match.
The cave, which he had thought was just big enough to lie down in despite being a little small when he entered, now felt frustratingly cramped after he finished molting. As he led his larger and heavier body out of the cave, the passage that he had been able to enter with some room to spare now felt tight.
As he was leaving, his body brushed lightly against the cave walls and ceiling, making a small crumbling sound as stone debris trickled down.
Hoo.
His larger body was filled with even greater strength. This feeling of growing stronger was something he could never get tired of. It was more than just his strength increasing and his body growing larger; he knew he was becoming superior on a fundamental level of life, which made it all the more satisfying.
If he repeated this experience a few more times, or a few dozen times, or even more, he would be able to become a Great Spirit Beast. When that time came, he might be called Dao Friend by the Seniors of the Garden of Remembrance and be acknowledged as their true kin.
‘Not that such things are important.’
In any case, it was a good thing to have a goal and to be able to feel a sense of accomplishment. On this long Immortal Path, with no end in sight, wouldn't it be too desolate without at least these small pleasures? After coming outside, Jaekyung considered waiting for Cheong-o but decided to go see the tree demon first.
Whooo- The small cave that had been Jaekyung's temporary shelter was located not too far from the tree demon's habitat. When he appeared from a distance, the tree demon awkwardly acknowledged him. Without Cheong-o, he naturally couldn't understand what it was saying, but Jaekyung figured it was probably just an awkward greeting.
‘It looks like it’s fully grown now.’
Just as Cheong-o had said, six smooth fruits were hanging from the tree demon's branches. They looked ripe on the outside, but upon closer inspection, he felt they were slightly less alluring than the fruits he had eaten before. Still, the difference was subtle, and Jaekyung predicted the fruits would be fully ripe in a day or two.
Seeing the tree demon show no particular reaction after its greeting, Jaekyung found a spot at a reasonable distance and coiled himself up. His immense weight, for which heavy was an understatement, caused the soft mud ground to ripple greatly, creating small waves. Jaekyung glanced sideways at the tree demon, feeling the plush sensation of the mud, like a waterbed.
Bubbles occasionally formed in the mud around the tree demon, making it look as if the ground itself were breathing. Of course, the reality was just that the tree demon's roots, submerged beneath the mud, were respiring. Its thick roots were its respiratory organs, its means of attack, and also its method of movement.
‘It’s truly a monster.’
Jaekyung thought of himself as something of a monster in terms of size, but he was incomparable to the tree demon in every aspect. In size, in strangeness, from any perspective, that tree fellow could be called a true demon. And yet, looking at that monster, he felt no sense of strangeness or fear.
On the contrary, that big fellow just looked appetizing. How great would it be if he could make that fellow work for him like Cheong-o? He could use a few fruits for hunting, and pluck the leftovers for a snack from time to time…
Flinch!
Perhaps his gaze was too intense, for the tree demon, which had been quietly enjoying photosynthesis, shuddered and stealthily lowered its leafy branches to hide the fruits. A sense of tension seeped into the once-peaceful atmosphere. As this uncomfortable time continued for one of them, Cheong-o appeared with the sound of powerful wingbeats.
"Jaekyung! I'm back!"
“Yes. How was it?”
Cheong-o, who had energetically announced his presence, flew to a spot between the tree demon and Jaekyung, but closer to Jaekyung's side.
"I checked. I confirmed everything. All those fellows from last time were still there."
Jaekyung had instructed Cheong-o to confirm the nearby spirit beasts and their habitats. As his work had always involved observing and searching, Cheong-o had now become a skilled scout. On top of that, thanks to eating many good things over time, he had now become half a spirit beast, making the scouting he was already skilled at even easier.
"There were so many. There were leopards, monkeys, flightless birds, and insects."
It seemed that if left alone, he would chatter on about every single thing he saw, so Jaekyung cut Cheong-o off at an appropriate moment.
"Alright. Good work. Now, tell me about the ones you saw that seemed slow."
“Seemed slow?”
"I mean the ones that didn't show much of a reaction even when you flew over their heads."
"Ah. Umm..."
Cheong-o fell into thought for a moment before naming a few that came to mind. Jaekyung mentally chose one of them. Then he looked at the blankly staring Cheong-o and spoke.
“How do I look?”
"Huh?"
“Don't I seem different from before?"
“Different? How?"
Cheong-o, who had been tilting his head, narrowed his eyes as if he had noticed something. Tilting his head a few more times as if something was strange, he flew around Jaekyung, chattering.
"It's strange.
Jaekyung, did you get weaker?" It seemed that concealing his energy with the Aura Concealment Art gave Cheong-o the impression that he had gotten weaker. This meant that the creature's standard for judging a target's strength was its energy.
Presumably, Cheong-o wasn't the only one with such a standard for judgment. A normal beast's strength could be gauged just by looking at its size, but that wasn't the case for spirit beasts. ‘So the Aura Concealment Art can hide not just my presence, but my power as well.’
Jaekyung thought the Aura Concealment Art might be more useful than he had expected. When it came to spirit beasts, it was difficult to judge their strength by appearance alone. Therefore, one had no choice but to rely on the energy they exuded rather than their visible appearance, and the Aura Concealment Art could hide this energy.
This meant he could feign weakness to induce carelessness in his opponent. It might not work on suspicious types, but against simple-minded ones who charge in as soon as their opponent looks weak, it could be used quite effectively.
"Jaekyung!
Did you really get weaker?”
When Jaekyung silently released the energy he had suppressed with the Aura Concealment Art, Cheong-o finally stopped making a fuss.
“How about now?”
"Jaekyung's strong again! What? How did you do that?"
Jaekyung felt anew that Cheong-o was a born audience. He made a huge fuss over everything, which made it quite enjoyable to show off. Perhaps that Immortal had been so impressed by the little bird's passionate reaction back then that he had specially granted it an awakening of its spiritual wisdom?
‘Come to think of it, what was that Immortal’s cultivation level?’
Jaekyung had picked up various stories at the Garden of Remembrance, but he had never heard of the ability to awaken a beast's spiritual wisdom. Besides, considering the things Cheong-o had told him that happened after the Immortal died, he probably wasn't at the Foundation Establishment stage.
‘Then the Golden Core stage?’
At the Garden of Remembrance, Jaekyung had learned a fair amount about the state of this world. The Azure Abyss Realm he was in was also called the cultivation world, and this name was not given for no reason. All humans in this world were fundamentally cultivators, or those who failed to become cultivators due to a lack of talent.
This meant that everyone who could cultivate tried to do so to become a cultivator. How many people lived in this world? Probably no one knew.
The human territories where the humans lived were only a part of the entire Azure Abyss Realm, but even that part was unimaginably vast. On that unimaginably vast land lived an equally unimaginable number of people, a significant portion of whom were cultivators.
However, among those countless cultivators, the vast majority, over ninety percent, remained at the Qi Refining Stage for their entire lives, and at the early stages of it at that. Foundation Establishment stage cultivators?
They were so rare that maybe one would appear out of hundreds of thousands of people, and they were treated as high-ranking figures in most human cities. Then what about Golden Core cultivators? Most were at the level of a director in a major city and were part of the upper echelon of the entire human race.
‘If that Immortal was a Golden Core cultivator, why did he die in a remote mountain valley like this?’
Could it be that he disliked the bustle of the secular world and continued his Cultivation in solitude until he passed away in meditation? As his thoughts reached that point, Jaekyung unconsciously brought up a question he had been putting aside.
‘Where is this place.’
Jaekyung had learned from the Seniors at the Garden of Remembrance that the humans' sphere of influence was called the human territories, but even those Seniors didn't know the exact extent of these territories.
Wondering why, Jaekyung asked if the humans had no maps, and the Seniors replied that while maps did exist, they were mostly small-scale ones made by individual human cities, and there were no maps covering the entire human territories. This, as mentioned before, was because the Azure Abyss Realm, and the human territories, were simply too vast.
It was for the same reason that someone who lived their whole life in a small countryside village wouldn't bother looking at a star chart. Even if such a person made up their mind to leave home, they would at most visit the next village or the next city.
What would they do with knowledge about the positions of stars and the universe beyond the sky? Would they even be curious? For this reason, a map covering the entire human territories did not exist.
At least, that was what was publicly known. Hearing that, Jaekyung wondered if his act of completely hiding his identity at the Garden of Remembrance was an unnecessary display of mystique… but he soon dismissed the thought.
Even the kind Seniors of the Twilight Gathering kept their own identities strictly secret, so how could he, a member of the demon races, harbor such a complacent thought?
‘Setting aside the Immortal who might be at the Golden Core stage, just considering the two human cultivators I saw before, it's highly likely that this place is within the human territories or an area adjacent to it.’
Those two cultivators who had captured his parents had been utterly terrifying at the time, but thinking back now, they weren't all that impressive. This was partly because Jaekyung's standards had been raised after meeting the Seniors of the Garden of Remembrance, but even calmly recalling that time led to a similar conclusion.
The pressure and fear he felt from them at the time were far weaker than what he felt in front of the Seniors of the Garden of Remembrance.
‘They were definitely Qi Refining cultivators.’
Jaekyung surmised that since Qi Refining cultivators wouldn't dare risk their lives wandering through the demon lands, this place must be within the human territories or adjacent to them.
‘If that’s the case, then the direction I’m heading now must be away from the human territories.’
Humans have good unity. In other words, they like to stick together. Even if this area was within or adjacent to the human territories, he didn't think two mere Qi Refining cultivators would have been wandering around all by themselves.
They must have had a small group, or a collective.
‘As I thought, getting as far away as possible is the right answer. But going too far away could also be bad.’
The fact that humans were active nearby meant, in other words, that there was a high probability that no powerful other races were in the vicinity of their activity zone. Looked at that way, moving too far from the human territories might also be a poor choice.
He had heard that the law of the jungle also applied in the human cultivation world, but it was nothing compared to the other races, especially the demon races. When humans spoke of the law of the jungle, it had a somewhat figurative aspect, but among the demon races, the weak were literally caught and eaten. The concept of kin?
There was no such thing. In Jaekyung's eyes, for the demon races, it wasn't a matter of 'me or others,' but 'me or my enemies.' However, Jaekyung did not look down on such spirit beasts.
This was because he too regarded other spirit beasts and demon races as competitors, or as prey. To him, the classification of 'kin' was meaningless. As long as he could trust them and be with them, he didn't care if they were humans or from the demon races.
This was a long digression, but the point was that he had to avoid powerful beings as much as possible, whether they were human or from the demon races.
‘I can't rely on Cheong-o forever. Fortunately, I have the Aura Concealment Art, so I must train it as much as I can.’
Woo Do-baek had said that if he became proficient in the Aura Concealment Art, he could evade the divine sense of a Foundation Establishment cultivator to some extent. Here, 'to some extent' meant that even if caught by a divine sense, he could lower his presence.
Simply put, it meant he could pretend to be an ordinary beast instead of a spirit beast. Of course, this was on the premise that there was a considerable distance between them, but still, that was something. Jaekyung, having strengthened his resolve to train, looked at the still-bewildered Cheong-o and spoke.
“When the fruits are ripe, take one in your mouth and go toward that lizard fellow. When you pass him, fly low over his head so that he can see the fruit in your mouth.”
"Okay!"
“Once you pass him, come back quietly. Then, after about two days, repeat the exact same thing. Do you understand what I mean?”
"Okay! You want me to let him know where I'm getting the fruit from, right?"
“That's right." Indeed, working with a clever fellow was comfortable. Jaekyung tore his gaze away from Cheong-o, whose eyes were bright and alert, and looked at the tree demon. “I'll hide nearby with my energy concealed, just like before. When that lizard fellow comes here, you'll face him first. It would be even better if you could pretend to be weak and make him attack more aggressively. Once he starts fighting you, I'll ambush him immediately.” Whoo~! "He says he understands.”
“Good. Let me know when the fruits are ripe.”
It took two days for the fruits to ripen completely. During that time, Jaekyung trained in the Aura Concealment Art, moderately adjusting the intensity so as not to interfere with the hunt. Controlling his energy was a completely different matter from using his body, so training the Aura Concealment Art didn't tire him physically, but his mind grew fatigued instead.
Despite having adjusted the intensity, by the time the fruits ripened two days later, his mind felt weary, as if he had become lethargic.
‘In a way, this must also be training for my state of mind.’
It was a relief that the fruits ripened without too much delay. Otherwise, he might have had to rest for a few days even after the fruits were fully ripe.
‘My motivation is low, but it won't affect the hunt.’
Jaekyung held back his desire to simply rest with his willpower. A short while later, Cheong-o took flight with a fruit in his mouth. And three days later.
A giant lizard, with long spines growing thickly from its head to its back and tail, appeared from between the withered trees, flicking its tongue.
Whoooo~!
The tree demon, sensing an enemy, let out a long cry and lifted several of its roots. But the spiked lizard paid no mind to the tree demon's threat. Its gaze was fixed on the fruits hanging abundantly from the tree demon's branches.
"Kareuk!"
Its eyes crazed, the spiked lizard charged like a wild boar. The tree demon swung its roots to counter. And Jaekyung, hidden at a distance, watched the scene unfold.