Chapter 49: This Young Master Is A Bachelor (Patreon)

The Spa Cavern, as he had taken to calling this place, had provided no answers as to its nature. All Chen Haoran knew was that it was very large and very easy to get lost in. The heavy steam from the heated spiritual pools obscured both his vision and his qi sense. It made traversing it much harder, not helped by the fact that so much of the ground was broken up by the numerous pools. Of which some, as Chen Haoran had unluckily found out, were quite literally too hot for him to handle.

The denizens of the Spa Cavern weren’t making things any easier. The cave sloths were fine, they kept to themselves up on the cavern roof and were more focused on eating moss than bothering him. The crickets though were a menace. Their senses were better adapted to this place than his own and whenever they were in the area they seemed to unerringly home in on him. They were vicious things always bent on fighting and devouring whether that be him and the sloths or their fellow crickets. Once when they had thankfully ignored him he watched them target the sloths instead, leaping to the roof and grasping them with powerful legs and arms before dragging the screaming sloths down to be torn to pieces. He hated their raucous chirping the most. At least normal cricket sounds could be considered beautiful. These things on the other hand were hell-bent on being an assault on all five senses. The only saving grace was that they were all far weaker than him, he had yet to see one at the Fifth-Layer or higher.

He had a feeling that wouldn’t last. Despite all this spiritual water around him he had yet to see a proper aquatic beast. He wasn’t looking forward to when he did because for all that he complained about the cavern there was one thing that made all his troubles worth it.

Cultivation.

He wasn’t sure if it was because of the pools themselves or if the natural qi here was inclined that way but this place was a haven for a water attribute spiritual root. Every pool he had found was infused with qi in some type of way. That qi-infused water then turned into qi-infused steam. That qi-infused steam was then easily absorbed and leeched of its water-aspected energy by Chen Haoran. This place was unlike anywhere he had cultivated before. Even if he could find a way out it would be a waste not to take advantage of it.

He really did need to find an exit though.

————

Chen Haoran yawned and pushed aside the boulder that sealed the entrance to his temporary home. He had carved out a little hole for himself in the cavern wall with a careful application of the Canyon Carving Sword. Fortunately, he had the foresight to stuff his storage bag with food and camping supplies in the event he had to bug out. Admittedly he had been preparing with Lan Fen’s pocket space in mind but it served well enough here. 

He stripped out of his sweaty clothes and jumped into a nearby pool. He felt its soothing energies ebb and flow through his body like an ocean tide. He had chosen to make his home here because the heat of the pools were perfectly in the Goldilocks zone. Hot enough to push him but not so hot that he couldn’t handle it.

Chen Haoran breathed in deeply the qi-infused steam in the air and felt it sit heavy in his lungs. Cycling the Yellow Dragon River refinement he felt the steam dissipate into energy and soak into his meridians. The yellow dragon danced faster than it ever had before as if it had returned to its natural environment. It felt like he had little rivers flowing through his body being endlessly fed by a deep spring. The energy of the spiritual pool stole away the stress placed on his already enhanced meridians allowing him to cultivate for far longer than he could before. 

Chen Haoran watched the yellow dragon dance for what felt like hours before the exhaustion began to creep in. With the dancing came the expansion of his qi, he was seeing visible progress at a rate comparable to when he devoured greater cultivation supplements by the pound. It was a shame he didn’t have anymore, he could scarcely imagine how fast he could cultivate in this place with the proper resources. 

Slowly he came out of his meditative state, the yellow dragon sounding off a final satisfied roar. He opened his eyes and smiled at yet another successful cultivation session. 

Then a sloth cannonballed from the ceiling into the pool.

Chen Haoran spat out water and directed an unamused glare at the swimming sloth. “You’re doing this on purpose aren’t you?” 

The sloth burbled at him and happily paddled around the pool.

Perhaps because he had helped it before, perhaps because he was new and non-threatening, whatever the case this sloth had been consistently bothering him ever since. It would have been a nice, movie-worthy bonding of animal and man if the little beast didn’t constantly swan dive into whatever pool he was currently occupying. 

“Go on,” he waved. “Shoo.”

The sloth ignored him, lost in its own world.

“I don’t even like sloths.”

———————

“So then he’s like ‘I came here on a whim’ and he expects me to accept that?” Chen Haoran leaned back against the edge of the pool, an arm crossed over his eyes. The other hand ripped off a patch of glowing green moss growing around the pool and fed it to the waiting sloth. “He invades my privacy, acts like a prick, investigates everything I do, then wants me to wander off into the wilderness to some secret port and I’m supposed to follow him?” The sloth grunted and he fed it another patch of moss. “The worst part is he’s helped me a lot too and I just don’t know what he wants in exchange for that. Should I have really stuck around and waited till he dropped whatever favor he wanted on me?”

The sloth squealed. 

“That’s what I thought,” Chen Haoran sighed. “Still, this is nice.” He sank lower in the pool. Away from plots and politics, hidden dangers and overhanging threats. No Song Yuelin, no City Lord, no prince of the Empire. Here he didn’t have to constantly worry about his fraud being exposed and getting a knife in the back for it. It would have been nice if he could have woken up in a place like this. Where no one knew who he was and he didn’t have to pretend to understand what he didn’t. 

There was a soft skittering of carapace on rock. Chen Haoran didn’t move as the monster cricket lunged at him. On his ears, two golden earrings set with orange-black tiger eyes shone with dark light. An invisible wave of qi spread out and the cricket froze. In his mind’s eye he could picture what the cricket saw, a giant tiger sitting above Chen Haoran’s head preparing to pounce. The tiger roared. The cricket sped off. The sloth splashed him for more moss.

“Needy little shit,” Chen Haoran grunted. He ripped off more moss. 

There was a sudden feeling of glass shattering. Chen Haroan shot up much to the disgruntlement of the disturbed sloth. He clutched his chest and looked around with wild eyes in search of where that feeling had come from. Eventually, his gaze roamed up to the burning words floating in the air. 

Everlasting Hundred Blessings Charitable Prosperity

Lan Fen’s name had disappeared. He probed the Gifting power with his mind in search of her slot. Instead, he found the metaphysical equivalent of empty space.

He sank back down into the pool with a sigh. Lan Fen must have finally turned in the annulment papers. Chen Haoran didn’t know what he felt in his chest. On the one hand he was relieved that his guess had been accurate, the marriage was indeed the basis of their connection. He was also happy that breaking the connection hadn’t led to any adverse effects on the Gifting power. On the other hand… “I’m crazy,” he laughed and shook his head. 

The sloth angrily squealed at him.

Chen Haoran laughed again. “Guess I’m divorced,” he told his sloth friend. That did lead to the problem of him finding a new connection though. He had to choose carefully lest he ran into the same problems he did with Lan Fen.

The sloth squealed again. “I don’t suppose you want to marry me?” he asked, forking over more moss to appease its anger. Idly he checked his connection with the beast.

Connection: Negative

He froze. He hadn’t expected it to work on an animal. Could there be a chance he could actually form a connection with something not human? His mind raced. Why couldn’t it work? It’s not like the connection being negative meant it was permanent, he just had to create the right relationship for it to be positive. Lan Fen had been negative before their marriage after all.

Chen Haoran shot out of the water again much to the sloth’s displeasure. He pointed his finger. “You will become my pet.”

The sloth squealed at him and floated away.

“Come back!”