14 Dig in

"Dig in!"

Right after saying those words....

The panda jumped up high after which starlight filled the room and when it disappeared...

"My wine!!! You ungrateful little...why did you have to take my wine? Not only is the food gone, even my wine and the table is gone! More importantly, why steal the tabletop but leave the legs!"

Seeing the old man being angry was new to Fang Qiu but nothing surprising, didn't everyone turn grumpy when they're old?

"Old man, no need to worry, losing your wine was worth it, look! I reached the ninth tier of foundation realm!"

Sensing his aura...the old man noticed his disciple was correct. He rose six tiers in a span of a second? Isn't this too overpowered?

"Little Fourth, where did everything go? And how did you instantly rise six tiers? Is this the real star swallowing ability?"

The old man asked question after question so after interrupting him Fang Qiu replied "I accidentally discovered I could do this back in the forest, practically everyone knows their spirit ability when they awaken but somehow I didn't know about this ability right from the start.

From what I have gathered the ability allows Little Black to instantly convert anything within a one meter sphere into cultivation progress, hence why I rose six tiers."

There were still over two hundred dishes remaining on the table stacked in fancy boxes previously but now they were all gone.

"But isn't your ability related to consuming flesh? Why did all the boxes, wine and even the tabletop vanish aswell?"

Awkwardly scratching his face from embarassment he replied

"Well, it's not like they're 'gone' per se...you should see them back in about a couple minutes' time when Little Black does his business..."

"Old man? Are you okay? What are you doing with that remaining leg from the table? Don't come closer! Aaaaaaaah old man please be gentle it's my fist time!"

An incense stick of time later...

"You shameless disciple, I was just beating you up for stealing my wine, why did you have to make the servants think I swing that way? How am I supposed to find a wife if you make people think I'm looking for a husband instead?"

Talking about it gave the old man the urge to beat up his disciple once again.

Humph* "not only did the kid steal my wine, now his core spirit even ejected everything that is not food back out by throwing it up. I'm not a fan of wine that came out of some core spirit's body, wait..."

Thinking to himself the old man suddenly noticed a flaw in his logic...

"Little four, how can your panda do his "business"? Core spirits are not capable of ejecting substances after consuming them since they have no organs, they are part of a cultivator's core so how can yours be like a real animal?

Still rubbing his brand new bruises all over Fang Qiu replied "can any other core spirit eat? No! They would cause harm to your core if you fed them anything besides treasures related to your element, so of course they can't excrete stuff since the only thing they consume is converted into elemental comprehension.

But Little Black is number eight on the universal spirit rankings! My spirit ability is related to consuming flesh so just like other core spirits it can consume elemental resources and convert them into elemental comprehension, but it can also do the same for flesh and convert it into cultivation progress.

But this ability consumes anything inanimate in a one meter radius around Little black, even the ground which is why I had him jump up first.

One of its limitations I discovered from testing in the forest is that it can't discriminate between food and ownerless objects, so it just consumes everything.

But since it can't convert your wine, the table and the food boxes into cultivation progress it will have to come out again! This ability doesn't store the items in the void storage so they have to come out..."

And right as Fang Qiu finished saying that sentence...

*Hurk....hurk.....Bluuurghhh*

"See! There it is!" Everything is intact and just the way it was a couple minutes ago, all we have to do now is put it back in their place and it would be like nothing ever happened. And why did you even assume Little black would Sh*t it all out? It doesn't have organs nor an ass. So how would that work?" Fang Qiu said proudly patting the puking panda's back.

Unsurprisingly no saliva or juices got puked out since Little Black was a core spirit, it didn't have any real organs after all.

"I call this ability "dig in" since little black literally removed a piece of land the first time I accidentally used it in the forest"

_____

Leaving the restaurant and the weirded out servants behind they made their way over to the second building, the treasure city pill pavillion. In total Fang Qiu still had nine hundred and ninety spirit stones left, the food, repairs, and some other dishes that were now in his voice storage ended up costing exactly ten spirit stones altogether.

Yet, a few minutes later they came out again, there wasn't much Fang Qiu could use since he didn't cultivate the normal way. So pills increasing cultivation speed or helping with breakthroughs were useless to him. Even different types of healing pills were pretty much useless since Fang Qiu could heal. (light element innate ability)

So, in the end he only bought some healing, antidote and other miscellaneous pills for emergencies as healing did use up his qi reserves so no harm in bringing some pills for emergencies. To most cultivators the pill pavillion was the place they needed most but for Fang Qiu the restaurant took that spot.

The old man was very happy exiting the pill pavillion since he barely spent any spirit stones inside. In fact, they only spent a couple hundred gold, on average a cheap eighth rank pill cost five to ten gold with the most expensive barrier breaking pill costing one hundred gold.

Spirit stones were still useful even to him since they contained pure qi and improved cultivation speed by over ten times, hence why they were used as currency for revolving core and above cultivators since mortal currency had no value to them.

Next up was the auction house but the big yearly auction would only happen in a couple of months and Fang Qiu had no interest in the smaller weekly auctions, so they walked right past it finally heading inside the treasure tower.

This place sold anything a cultivator could possibly need to increase their strength that was not pill nor skill related.

The pill pavillion employed alchemists and had the best alchemists on the continent, hence why no others tried to compete. The treasure tower on the other hand had the best formations masters and craftsmen often referred to as refinement masters.

Thus the treasure pavillion had everything from weapons to formations to armor to even elemental treasures that could increase comprehension like nature stones which were actually beasts and cultivator's elemental cores. Of course, the very rare ones were usually sold in auctions instead of in this place.

The old man directly took Fang Qiu to the second floor which was where all eighth tier treasures were bought and sold. Eighth tier meant these were useful to foundation realm cultivators just like eighth tier pills. Fang Qiu wanted to go to the third floor to get some revolving core treasures and armor but according to the bet he couldn't buy treasures he couldn't use. Now that he was a foundation realm cultivator he could finally start learning skills and using treasures. Liquefied qi was the qi foundation realm cultivators had. First tier meant 10% was liquefied and reaching Fang Qiu's level being the peak of foundation realm meant that he had 100% liquefied qi.

The reason he couldn't use revolving core realm treasures was because revolving core cultivators had gaseous qi. Using seventh tier treasures required the use of this gaseous qi so Fang Qiu would be breaking the rules of the bet if he bought treasures that needed gaseous qi whilst he was still in foundation realm.

As for why he didn't breakthrough to core formation in the restaurant...it was literally impossible! The old man told him that in order to breakthrough from now on Fang Qiu would need to raise his elemental comprehension correspondingly or he would not breakthrough no matter how much he ate.

Fang Qiu had two goals in coming here, first was finding a good bow to temporarily train with until he broke through to core formation. Of course he could just buy a cheap bow but since it was the old man that made him become an archer he would get the most expensive bow there was and make sure all the money was used up within the year!

And secondly he needed some nature stones so that he could reach core formation sooner. At Fang Qiu's rank they were not overly rare if you had enough money since he only needed main element ones and this was the biggest city on the continent! Foundation realm cultivators were in abundance and even revolving core realm cultivators were very common here, only experts on the old man's level were considered elite in this city.

In boundless city nature stones might have only appeared in auctions but here as long as you had the money you could buy them until core formation, to reach nascent soul realm you would have to buy them in auctions and the old man's realm required not only lucky chances or big auctions but also an incredible source of income.

Finally finding the weapons section Fang Qiu made his way over to a counter.

"Greetings, what weapon would this young master like to purchase?" The clerk replied in a sweet voice.

"I need a bow!"

After a moment of silence...

"Pffffff hahahaha, young master you sure are good at making jokes, I haven't laughed this much in years."

Slowly putting down his Little Blackpack he looked back at the clerk an took out a big drumstick he ordered back in the restaurant and slowly started eating from it.

"I need a bow, in fact I want your most expensive bow! And you will sell it to me without laughing at me, or you can forget about me ever coming here again!" The youth replied whilst pointing right at her nose with his remaining arm.

"Very well then, as you wish. I assume you want a right handed bow?" She asked whilst stifling her laughter. Even the old man had difficulty holding it in.