When Yan Mo finally woke up from his deep meditative sleep, it was midday and his body was filled with fatigue. Not from injuries or aches, no, it was from hunger.
He got up off his bed, taking his time doing it, and heading to the training grounds. He's made 1 colleague, or friend? In his month at the sect.
He waved over at Liu Mei, who was tending to a small bird in her palms. She waved back, "Where have you been the last three days? I've never seen you miss a day of training," she asked, quite curious.
"I, uh," He caught himself, he damn near revealed the secret up his sleeve, "I…"
But he couldn't think of anything, what would he say? I've been asleep for three days but I'm more tired mentally than I was before? I've had a three day long nightmare?
"Well, I guess you don't have to tell me then," She smiled, patting the bird on her other hand, who seemed quite cautious of the newcomer, "You don't look too good huh?"
Yan Mo shook his head.
"You hungry too?"
Yan Mo nodded his head.
"I've been wanting to go look around the White Tiger City nearby, I've heard they have good food, and if you want to be better at fighting, you'll need more than a wooden sword," she said, she made it sound like she was giving a choice, but for some reason Yan Mo felt like he really shouldn't say no.
So they walked, together with the bird coming along too.
"Hey, what do you do every day? I see you come to the training grounds from early morning til sunset, what do you do in your free time, if you even have any?" Liu Mei asked after a few minutes of silent walking.
Yan Mo shook himself out of his thoughts, he spent the time thinking about how he would save them if an armed bandit were to suddenly attack them, "I eat, go to my room, meditate, and sleep."
She stopped walking, turning to look up at him directly in the eyes. She squinted, her mind racing, "No you don't."
"Eh?" Yan Mo was caught off guard, now stopping too and being overwhelmed with a sense of…of confusion?
"You don't sleep. You might be energetic in battle but anytime you're not fighting, you look like a zombie."
Oh, he hadn't realized that. Is that why everybody looked so startled when I came up to challenge them? "I, yeah, yo-you're right," he said awkwardly, scratching the back of his head.
"You don't know how to rest, huh?" Liu Mei didn't give a chance for Yan Mo to answer, "Well, today's your lucky day, I'm going to teach you how!"
Ah, that is not where I thought that was going. Yan Mo surely thought she would try interrogating him to find out his secrets, but it seems she doesn't care. Or maybe she just thinks he's an insomniac? Either way, Yan Mo was happy with it.
They got to the city only a few tens of minutes later, with some small talk. Yan Mo learnt that Liu Mei had a little brother called Liu Ren who was pretty talented and was apparently out of the sect for some kind of task.
He learnt a new part of the sect he had not known about before, the Task Hall. A Hall where disciples can pick up different tasks and missions and get rewarded in contribution points or silver.
"I might need to visit there soon, since I have no money-"
"Hah?!" Liu Mei shouted, "You have no money? What was the point of coming here? I have some but it's not enough for you."
"Oh," He scratched the side of his head, "Can I fight somebody for it?"
"No! This is a rest day, we're doing zero fighting!" Liu Mei smiled at Yan Mo, who was clearly dismayed, "Instead, we're going to do some city missions!"
She led him through crowds and crowds of people as she explained, "The city is mainly influenced by two rivaling factions, the Azure Sword Sect and the White Tiger Clan, but politics be as politics be. If one faction overly helps the city, it'll anger the other, or something along those lines. So instead of the sect or clan directly helping, they make missions just like tasks, except given by the city!"
The two arrived at a large, ornate wooden building. It was decorated with red and silver and had several high realm guards at the entrance. Yan Mo quickly analyzed them to be middle Foundation Establishment Realm. When they entered, Liu Mei took a sharp turn left towards a large board pinned with several papers and quickly took one out.
Yan Mo just stood still and observed as she went over to a counter with somebody, spoke a little bit, then got the paper stamped and walked back to him, "We're going to do some herb picking!"
"..."
"Try and hide your excitement, why don't you?"
He sighed, following her out of the city and to a large, forested area where the trees seemed to only grow taller the deeper one went into the forest. It reminded Yan Mo of the way an ocean gets deeper the farther out from shore one went.
Liu Mei, the small bird, and Yan Mo all walked through the peaceful forest. Liu Mei kneeled down to examine a patch of herbs that were growing on the base of a tree, "We've been tasked to get forbidden grass, but picking up useful ones wouldn't hurt!"
She dug the dirt around the group of flowers and put it close to Yan Mo's face for him to see, "This is the Ember Bloom Flower, it's very very useful for treating inflammations and small cuts!"
Yan Mo nodded, trying to look interested out of respect, but he couldn't help his gaze aimlessly wander to look at the trees and hills around them, as if searching for something, anything to distract him. Him being starved wasn't exactly helping his attitude either. Liu Mei, meanwhile, was carefully harvesting more herbs, explaining what they were and their effects as she did so.
They had to stop several times as Liu Mei's keen eyes and the bird's chirping let them find countless herbs. Yan Mo, however, was just growing restless. He had never felt this bored before, just walking and listening to her voice. It was nice, no arguing against that, but the content of her speech was just so boring!
Yan Mo's hand drifted to the hilt of his sword, he was desperately searching for even the slightest trace of Qi, a sign of something, anything. And when he finally sensed two powerful energies clashing, he could barely restrain himself.
Looking back, he saw Liu Mei and the bird were fully engrossed in the herbs they had found and kept finding, Yan Mo looked at the direction he sensed the energies from, and back at Liu Mei and the bird. Then back, and back again. He took a step towards where his senses were leading him. Then one more, and another one before he broke out into a full, silent sprint.
The little bird quit it's chirping momentarily to look at the absent space where Yan Mo was. It was silent, tilting it's head and quickly looking around for signs of him, after it hadn't found him, it seemed to be happy.
Wild beasts and animals, much like the adolescent bird, have an increased perception of possible danger than humans could achieve at the same level. The bird had an even stronger one, having encountered a powerful falcon that it only barely managed to escape from, damaging it's wing in the process.
Yet when it met Yan Mo, it's senses didn't even let her fight or flee, it could feel, it could tell, there was no point. It could sense the immense persistence and 'hunt' within the human, a feeling that said the human wouldn't stop hunting a good prey even if their life was at stake.
The bird looked up at it's caretaker, the nice girl who had been helping it with it's broken wing. It chirped, pointing her attention to another stalk of Forbidden Grass. It knew that if the long-hair human noticed the other one being gone, that she would definitely search for him.
But that was the last thing the bird wanted.
Yan Mo was perched up on a thick branch of a hundred meter tall tree, putting a hand up to block the sunlight filtering through the thick canopy so he could properly observe the fight below.
It was somebody with a black and white robe, one that reminded Yan Mo of an Azure Sword Sect robe, just slightly redecorated. He was wielding a strong, silver sword, a special kind and used some kind of white mana as he attacked the giant, fiery bear.
Fiery in the literal sense, there was a line of powerful flame starting from the brown bear's forehead down it's back and ending at it's butt. It was scary and made Yan Mo wonder how it hadn't yet burned the entire forest down. He couldn't help but call it a Fire-Mohawk Bear, yeah, that's a cool name.
He sensed the ranks of both the fighters, quickly realizing he couldn't join in even if he wanted. The Fire-Mohawk Bear was at the peak of Body Tempering, while the swordsman was at the 8th Layer of Body Tempering. He was clearly trying to use this fight against a superior opponent as a chance to breakthrough to the peak of the Body Tempering Realm!
Yan Mo sat quietly, meditating with his eyes open, his gaze never leaving the fight. And as the fight slowly drew to a close, with the swordsman winning out in the end, Yan Mo fell into another sleep.
He woke up again inside his dreamscape, a nearly endless black void. He put his hand out and a small, foresty arena was formed, no more than 10 by 10 meters and very rudimentary in it's decorations, but Yan Mo did not care for that.
His focus was on recreating a dream version of the two powerful beings he had been observing, both first appeared as a cloud of vapors, frozen in the last pose Yan Mo remembered them in. But as he drew from his memories and observations, the vapors swirled, slowly forming a more concrete form.
This went on for a few more hours inside the dreamscape arena, where the two beings were slowly becoming more and more detailed, with their power also increasing as Yan Mo focused more on it.
Then he heard a great rumbling and was pushed out of his dreamscape and nearly fell off the damn branch he was sleeping on. He cursed himself, he was still hungry, but worse than that, he had only managed to get halfway with his dreamscape formation.
He looked up and around, noticing only an hour or so had passed, he was still curious as to how exactly the time dilation within the dreamscape worked. When he slept at night, he felt like it moved like normal, but when he took short naps like just now, he felt like it distorted greatly.
He shook his head, this was not the time or place to try and solve a mystery of his talent. He would need to get stronger first to get more answers, at the very least, he imagined himself to be as strong as the Sect Ancestor himself. A man titled a sword saint that recently went into seclusion cultivation to breakthrough past the Nascent Soul Realm, a level of power Yan Mo couldn't even imagine yet.
"Hey! You owl!" He heard a voice shout at him from below, he recognized it easily, "I got all the grass myself, no thanks to you! I'm going to go eat now, unless you want to keep dreaming out here!"
Yan Mo's eyes widened.
Food!