It did not reply, but I did feel the Qi in the air become slightly denser. I took the hint and began focusing on my cultivation. Drawing as much Qi into my body as I could, while guiding it out to saturate every cell in my entire body at an equal rate. I pushed my mind, focusing completely on accomplishing this. At first, my mind raced throughout my body making sure everything was getting the same amount of Qi as every other part, but it was quickly becoming mentally taxing.

  I had to stop and think about the best way to accomplish what I was trying to do, because mentally running from head to toe and back again wasn’t working. I decided to focus on just my left leg, I didn’t draw Qi to it, but I observed how the Qi was already running through the leg and soon found many flaws that my mental running had missed in its mad dash to be everywhere.

  Frowning slightly I began moving around my body observing each part carefully finding similar if not the same issues throughout my body. My frown only grew deeper the more I found.

  ”This is not good, I’m going to have to fix this carefully so I don’t ruin what I have established.” I muttered to myself before getting to work.

  I gently pulled the Qi from my dantian and started with my left leg again, gently guiding the Qi to the cells that it had missed or hadn’t shared the Qi equally to. It took a while, but I slowly fixed and repaired the mistakes I had made in my left leg. Once I had managed to get the leg equally saturated, I began to get a suspicion that I wasn’t looking close enough and began to inspect my toes, foot, ankle, calf, knee and upwards. Now and then I found small mistakes that I slowly fixed.

  A couple of times I almost had a panic attack when I couldn’t guide the Qi away from the area I was saturating in time. However, I managed to get the left leg properly finished and moved onto the next part, making meticulous efforts to ensure that every cell was a Qi brush stroke away from completion. I knew that to finish perfectly I would have to finish off every cell at the same time and had begun to practice by expanding the area I was working on each time. It didn’t work, and I had to stop, instead I started working on my sight, making sure I could see what I was doing as I guided the Qi around without it touching anything. It took what felt like days before I finally felt like I was ready to attempt the breakthrough.

  I moved the Qi out of my dantian and around my body, holding it back from doing anything to my body while I waited for every inch to become saturated in the dense void Qi. When it was finally ready, I began to push the Qi into my cells, moments passed before I felt the shift that led to something black pouring out of my pores and all over my outfit, it even got in my hair and stained the cushion I was sitting on. The first and worst mistake I made was breathing in through my nose when I went to let out a remark of surprise at something I wasn’t expecting. The smell nearly made me pass out, it was so horrific that I threw up all over the floor.

  What felt like hours later when my stomach had completely emptied itself and I had continued on dry heaving before I finally managed to discard my clothing and crawl into a hot shower, scouring my skin of any residue left over from that disgusting gunk. I finally managed to draw fresh air into my lungs and did not want to puke again.

  I sat down in the shower letting the hot water run over me and slowly began to inspect my body and was delighted to find I had done it! I had saturated my entire body in the Qi and finished the technique I had been given. Mentor Zhang had said this was the stage where I would need to begin cultivating the Time and Space Golden Core Technique. I had quickly sifted through my mind looking for it, but stopped when I thought that it would probably be for the best if I began when surrounded by void Qi instead of water.

  I got out of the shower soon after and got dressed. I had just finished scouring the cultivation room clean of the gunk and any left between it and the shower when I heard the front door declare loudly that I had a guest. Letting out a groan, I discarded the protective gear I had been using to clean up that foul evil gunk and went to the meeting room to see who was knocking on my door.

  I raised an eyebrow when I saw it was Itshu Biyu but opened the door letting her in. She quickly walked in, closing the door behind her, and we moved over to sit at the table. Moments later, a tea seat appeared from her spatial ring, and she was serving me tea. I sat down, deciding to wait for her to tell me what was up instead of asking. Only when I had a nice hot cup of tea in front of me, and she had taken a sip of her own, did she finally speak.

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  ”Lady Kenna, your ship has arrived in the same Star System as us, and is now awaiting your arrival onboard.”

  ”and?” I replied before taking a sip of my tea to indicate I would not be adding anything more to the question.

  “Uh, and we will need to make a few decisions before we depart this outer sect ship.” She said, looking a little nervous.

  Deciding to continue my cheeky one word responses, I answered with “like?” And then sipped my tea again while watching her squirm.

  ”Like, how you plan to pay for everything from food to Qi.” She responded as she looked at me seriously.

  I nearly spat the tea out of my mouth as I yelled in shock, “pay! What the hell do you mean, pay?”

  ”Oh, I thought you knew, your mentor was meant to tell you. Everything is free for Qi gathering and Foundation establishing cultivators because it is paid for by the ship's owner. However, once you reach golden core the freebies end, and you have to start taking on tasks to earn money to pay back this generosity as well as buy everything you use, like food, water, accommodation and the Qi that you use to cultivate past the golden core realm.” She then sipped her tea as she looked at me with a look that I thought was a bit smug.

  I glanced at where my HUD should have appeared, but it didn’t, and I was starting to panic slightly because I had no idea where I was going to get money or if I even had any.

  Itshu Biyu, the evil tramp, let me stew in my panic for a few minutes before finally putting me out of my misery and made me feel like she needed punishment.

  ”Your cultivation master has paid for the ship to be fully stocked, so it will easily see the first 10 recruits through to the golden core realm before it will need resupplying. However, they probably won't reach that stage before the next batch of ten starts using up resources. This means we are going to need to do a little side work, earn credits, and purchase more supplies. Suggestions?"

  ”I, uh… well, we could haul cargo or passenger transport.” I asked more than suggested.

  “Out of the question!” She responded unequivocally.

  She stared at me for a moment before slowly giving me a look like she was considering it but not shifting from her stance. A few moments later, she gave me a nod and continued talking.

  “Passengers on a sect ship is out of the question, forbidden. However… we could theoretically take on cargo, if we use our own people to load and unload it. This would allow us to earn a bit extra credits, but we would have to wait until the disciples are at least golden core and set the task to load and another for unloading, paying them to do so. Doing it would mean a large amount of cargo would need to be transported in order to pay for the disciple's work as well as earn the credits needed for the supplies, after the cost of fuel is deducted. It’s doable, but not immediately. Do you have any other suggestions?”

  I opened my mouth and closed it a few times before I started thinking about what the ship had, and quickly came to the realisation I had no idea what was even on the ship now, let alone what we could do with it to make creds.

  “I am sorry, I have no other ideas until I see what I have to work with.” I responded before sipping the last of the tea in my cup.

  She nodded then waved her hand making the tea set disappear before getting to her feet and smiling at me. Her hand was held out as she shifted her head to indicate the door out.

  “Shall we go find out then?” She asked.

  I grinned and got to my feet, taking one more look around the room and nodding my head to her. “Yea, I don’t have anything here I need to take with me.” I said as I followed her out the front door.

  She laughed as we walked down the corridor, she glanced at me a few times as she bit her lip. She had something on her mind and I considered waiting for her to ask before tossing that idea away, I was too curious.

  ”what’s on your mind?” I asked.

  ”I had difficulty acquiring the techniques and was wondering if you had any to fill the library with?”

  I shook my head slowly, watching her hopeful look die. I felt bad, but I honestly didn’t have anything that I could put in the library, let alone if I had any money to buy some.

  ”you wouldn’t happen to know if I have any money to buy some, would you?” I asked, looking at her curiously as we passed into a hangar that had a small ship parked in the middle of it.

  She shook her head before suddenly turning to look at me. “Oh, I didn’t mean it in a financial way, I can afford them, they are just hard to get.” She said nervously.

  “Ah, I see, that is troubling, but unless we rob this ship for techniques I unfortunately don’t have any that I could add.” I replied as we boarded what appeared to be a luxury civilian version of the drop-ship I had flown back in the Galactic Federation.

  “I would strongly recommend we don’t try to rob a ship for anything, it won't end well and nine times out of ten will end up with us dead, long before we make it anywhere near an exit from the ship.”

  ”yea, best to avoid that” I replied firmly as I sat down in a chair, shoving that scary thought far from my mind, and turning my attention to the screen in front of me. “Perhaps there is a market we can purchase from while we are picking up the disciples.” I suggested.

  “Oh, I hadn’t considered that, a huge market always pops up at the entrance ceremony, and they sell all sorts of things. We definitely could take a look and see if there are any good things we can purchase. The ship we were just on was already on its way to the entrance ceremony’s location, so our ship can fly alongside it till we get there.” She glanced at my hands before adding. “And we will need to get you a spatial ring or bracelet.”

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