Yu Xiang approached his first downed spider, his upper lip rising slightly in an expression of disgust at the scene he’d found. The overgrown bug’s remaining legs had curled against the carapace covering its underbelly, just like a normal spider at the end of its life would.

The green eyed cultivator stopped a couple of steps away from the carcass, examining his kill with his spiritual senses while he tried not to let the disgusting sight make his skin crawl, and failing immediately.

At the same time, Su Rong started to inspect his own thoroughly cooked spider, crouching down over its charred body to get a closer look while poking and prodding at its blackened insides with one of his fingers, obviously far less impacted by the unappealing form of the spiritual beast.

A trait gained in his brief tenure as an apprentice blacksmith in their sect, having spent hours upon hours butchering various spiritual beasts of all shapes and sizes, ones that looked like insects included, to acquire materials for his forging attempts.

Yu Xiang pulled an even more disgusted face, turning a bit sideways to try and ignore the sight he could still slightly see from the corner of his eye thanks to his refined eyesight, lest it made him even more squeamish than he was already feeling.

Just as he’d noted before, the flow of spiritual energy inside of the spider was wild and erratic, moving inside of its ethereal circulatory system with no rhyme or reason, something made even worse by its current state of life, or rather lack thereof.

If before its gruesome demise the spider’s spiritual energy had been acting like the sea during a storm then now it was more akin to a rampaging tsunami, moving so violently inside of the eight legged, wait no, six legged after he’d de limbed it as an opening move, abomination that Yu Xiang was mildly surprised that its chi hadn’t broken its flesh asunder in its quest to reach the outside world and rejoin the natural flow of energy.

Actually, that brought to mind something that the green eyed cultivator had never seriously thought about before. What would happen to his spiritual energy if he died?

Obviously, it would start seeping out of his body, but would the sheer amount of spiritual energy held inside of his spirit break his body apart? While his body was extremely sturdy compared to that of a mortal it wasn’t that much to talk about when compared to that of a spiritual beast, since their natural body refinement was several times better and more efficient than that of humans.

What about someone who was in a much higher realm of cultivation than him? Would an elder of the Golden Peak sect create an explosion upon their death, or would their bodies be resilient enough to weather the chaotic flow of their uncontrolled spiritual energy trying to escape their bodies?

Yu Xiang shook his head in an attempt to dispel the sudden surge of morbid thoughts, returning instead to his inspection of the bug carcass.

After a few moments more spent inspecting its wild energy flow, the young reincarnator gave up, all of the bug’s spiritual energy finally exiting its broken body. Retracting his aura from his downed foe Yu Xiang readily admitted to himself that he could find out more if he was willing to get his hands dirty, but he categorically refused to shove his hands inside that disgusting thing.

The green eyed cultivator briefly turned towards his taller companion and instantly regretted it as a full body shiver shook him from the tip of his toes to the ends of his hair.

While Yu Xiang had been unwilling to really get inside his own carcass to examine it thoroughly, or even touch it in any way, Su Rong had done the complete opposite.

Hunched over the blackened remains of his kill, the fiery cultivator was currently elbow deep in the spider’s guts, rummaging through its insides calmly with a carving knife held firmly in one of his hands.

The wet, squelching sounds of viscid meat and viscera rubbing against each other reached Yu from all the way over the place where he was standing, proving that despite what its carapace might lead him to think, the spider hadn’t been charred from the inside out.

Yu Xiang turned away a few moments later, staggering minutely as his face took on a greenish tint.

The green eyed and faced cultivator suddenly decided to leave Su Rong to his work, not approaching him for any reason, and instead using this time to keep a look out with his spiritual senses.

As he waited for the other young man to finish up with his investigation Yu focused all of his brain power into searching for other spiritual beasts in the vicinity but was thankfully unable to find any, as after his liberal use of Intent his spirit was feeling a bit spent.

It was a curious sensation, altogether different from the normal overuse of spiritual energy, which could leave a cultivator in a weakened state, barely able to walk.

Instead of his body, his extended novice use of his Intent in battle had taken a toll on his mind, leaving the green eyed cultivator feeling a bit groggy, even if not enough to seriously impact his performance. None the less, he was looking forward to the few hours of sleep he would be able to get once they returned to their makeshift camp.

Not long after that thought crossed his mind, Su Rong finally stopped doing whatever it was that he was doing, unsheathing his arms like Excalibur from the world’s most disgusting rock.

“These things don’t have a beast core.” He said once he got back on his feet, his arms dripping with a cobalt blue substance that the young reincarnator assumed was the blood of the butchered spider, alongside bits and pieces of minced bug flesh and organs.

Yu Xiang's eyebrows knitted in confusion. "What do you mean?" He asked him.

Su Rong shrugged his shoulders, igniting his spiritual energy into pale flames to clean the mess coating his arms. "Just what I said. I couldn't find any trace of a beast core inside of this thing."

The fiery cultivator kicked the split open bug carcass hard enough to turn it over before he pointed one of his fingers at it, and a long tongue of fire engulfed the dead spider, turning it to ash in moments.

"I couldn't even find a hollowed out section in its body where it should've been placed, so it's not like it disappeared after its death." He then finally turned his head towards his nemesis, their enmity temporarily set aside due to the strangeness of their situation. "I don't know what these bugs are, but they don't have a beast core. Which means they might not even be spiritual beasts..."

Unsaid went the question of how exactly these spiders had been able to use their spiritual energy without a core, as neither of them had an answer.

Spiritual beasts had a different way of cultivating chi inside of their bodies to that of human beings, and beastfolk too.

They were able to directly consume spiritual plants without worrying about impurities, something cultivators from all corners of the continent had spent centuries, if not millennia, immersed in the study of spiritual beasts to try and emulate for themselves, with nobody ever being able to figure out how exactly they were able to do this as far as Yu Xiang was aware of.

But what they knew was that it was the beast core formed by all cultivating beasts that gave them such an ability, even if the mechanics of this process escaped them. For after a spiritual beast's death something happened to their core, rendering it immediately spiritually inert and dead, so its exact functionality became impossible to figure out.

On the other hand, this deadening of the spirit in the beast core made it an easily available source of spiritual energy, that was even easier to consume than spiritual herbs due to the lack of a residual foreign will, which tragically led the spiritual beasts into becoming prey to all manner of cultivators.

But that is the way of the world. The strong fight tooth and claw for resources to advance, killing and consuming as needed to fuel their path towards the heavens. And Yu Xiang wasn't enough of a hypocrite to criticize the way cultivators as a whole acted since he himself had killed and stripped for resources his fair share of spiritual beasts.

As for humans and beastfolk, they had no physical core inside of their bodies to help them absorb the spiritual energy from their food, which is why for a human to start cultivating they need both an area with a heightened amount of spiritual energy in the air and frequent meditative sessions to learn how to feel and attract spiritual energy into their being.

Once enough spiritual energy has been gathered, a human can then break open their sealed Natal Gate, giving them access to the spiritual channels hidden in their spirit, which will then allow them to form an aura and the tied spiritual senses, making them into a full fledged cultivator.

"Well, we better return to the others and tell senior brother Chun what we found out." Yu Xiang said, piercing through the sudden bout of silence hanging between the two.

His eyes then landed on the single carcass still left behind by the downed beasts. "And I guess I should probably clean up the mess I made."

Yu Xiang had never studied techniques that dealt with the creation or manipulation of fire, but he figured it couldn't be that hard to make, especially since he had an advantage most other cultivators at his stage didn't have.

Another spark of Intent was taken from the crackling fire in his mind, now looking diminished due to his extensive use in such a short amount of time.

Yu summoned some of his spiritual energy into his right hand, immediately willing it into rubbing against itself violently to create some kind of spiritual friction, though he had no idea if that was a thing. Then he dropped the spark of intent into the controlled chaos resting in his hand, and with a conflagration that almost signed off his eyebrows a purplish flame came to life in his hand.

With a satisfied smile, the green eyed cultivator poured the crackling fire over the spider corpse, watching it drip down from his hand almost as if it was a liquid.

He kept watching as the purplish flame melted a hole through the center of the beast's corpse, rapidly eating away at the rest of its body while Su Rong glared at him from where he was standing, probably offended that he'd dared to use his element, as if he could lay claim over it. Bah, cultivators. He would never understand them.

After all evidence of their short battle was erased, they finally moved out, returning to their base for the night.

It didn't take them long to retrace their steps, merely a couple of minutes, and when they sat foot back into their camp they were immediately greeted by all of their teammates, having apparently been the last group to return, sitting around a campfire.

"What did you find?" Asked the lone core disciple, standing by himself leaning back on the giant stone that was to act as their shelter for the night.

They gave their enraptured audience a brief retelling of their fight with the spiders, quickly shifting into discussing what they'd found out from their brief investigation of the spiders' bodies.

After they were done, they looked up at their fellow disciples, noting their pensive expressions as they no doubt came to their own conclusions. But most of all they focused on Chun Dai, who looked the same as ever, his eyes never wavering as he heard their hypotheses.

"I will meditate over this information." He said shortly after a few moments of silence. "In the meantime, you all should head inside and rest as much as you can. Depending on how things develope from here on out you may be unable to sleep again until we're back at the sect."

Yu Xiang bowed slightly at the older man, followed a step behind by the rest of his fellow inner disciples, more than willing to take him up on his offer since he'd tired himself out with his overzealous use of Intent.

The green eyed cultivator headed inside the hollowed out boulder, finding a central room with three other openings leading to three separate rooms, which Lin Fen, who'd followed him inside, told him where for the women, the men, and the lone core disciple with them, although he doubted Chun Dai would end up needing it since he seemed to have decided to act as a guard while they slept.

Yu Xiang entered the room that held his pack, quickly extracting a thick blanket to cover the dusty ground so he could lay back to rest.

He let out a sigh of relief as he finally closed his eyes, his back resting against one of the carved stone walls, feeling Lin Fen laying against his side to join him in his rest.

Yu Xiang briefly wondered what other bizarre things would they find on the morrow before the darkness of blessed sleep claimed any further musings.