Once the memory transfer ended, Richard fell over and began convulsing. There was too much new information for him to process at the time. It felt like his brain was going through a blender as each meaning was branded into his brain.

"Teach it how to cultivate once it recovers from the side effects," said Lo Qi's master.

Lo Qi saluted enthusiastically and said, "Yes, sir. By the way, why didn't you use that technique in the first place?"

"One does not simply transfer memories without a cost. If it wasn't such an interesting subject, I'd never waste this technique upon it. Now, I'm going to bed. Thanks to that I'll need to sleep more these next few days," said Lo Qi's master before letting out a yawn and walking away.

In his master's absence, Lo Qi sat down and pulled the branch out from behind his back. Redirecting the rage of wasting so much time uselessly, he carefully broke the branch into a thousand tiny pieces one half at a time.

The sun set and rose before Richard recovered. The transferred memories were now his own. Everything he saw now could be associated with a word or described. No longer were the days that he took things for granted. He tried to shout out his happiness about this discovery but failed.

An awkward crow came out. The knowledge on how to say words were there, but the teeth and tongue necessary to say it weren't. It crushed Richard's spirit. Compared to a human being, he was no different than a mute.

The noise woke up Lo Qi, who had been resting nearby. He let out a yawn and stretched out a bit. Then he said, "Awake already? Can you understand me now?"

Richard opened his beak to respond. No sound came out; he stopped himself, choosing to nod his head instead. It was impossible to communicate properly.

"Ahh, right. You're not a true spirit beast yet. With your sentience, you've got the spirit part down. However, with no cultivation, you're just glorified livestock. Speech is beyond your abilities and understanding was handed to you on a silver platter with no effort involved," said Lo Qi.

Putting it so bluntly enraged Richard. His feathers puffed up and he stomped his leg against the ground. Then, memories of what this fat man could do surfaced in his minds. Regret and fear barged into his brain, taking over while ordering him to hide behind the tree.

Lo Qi laughed and pulled a few books seemingly out of nowhere. They were quite varied in size, materials, and color. Richard peeked out from behind the tree to examine these books.

"Don't bother hiding behind the tree. I'm not so petty as to attack something for being cocky. Besides, right here I have the methods that can help solve your issue, cultivation manuals. Rather than growing a plant, you're going to grow your mind, body, and soul," stated Lo Qi.

Reassured by Lo Qi's words and knowledge that he couldn't escape, Richard left the tree's cover and walked up to the books. He tried choosing one to read, but couldn't decide.

Lo Qi stretched out his hand towards the ground in front of Richard's feet. Seeing this, the rooster jumped backwards, wanting to avoid being rooted to the ground. Lo Qi ignored this and drew two letters on the ground, 'E' and 'I.'

"Let's narrow things down so you don't have to read every book. I for internal, stores cultivated energy deep in your body's organs or blood vessels. It requires strengthening and widening those then filling them with energy. The energy used is from the environment around us like the ground or fire," explained Lo Qi.

Richard nodded his head as if he understood what was said. He knew the meanings of everything but actual knowledge about the topic escaped him. Now, he was just waiting for a keyword to catch his fancy. If he chose badly; he could just switch to a different manual after a quick read.

"Next is E for external. This is the path of cultivation I took. It focuses on gathering energy in the external parts of the body like hair, skin, and fat," when Lo Qi said fat, he slapped his belly. His obesity was revealed to also be his source of power.

Continuing, he said, "It relies on more astral sources of energy such as the sky, stars, the moon, and the sun..."

There it was; the keyword that Richard was looking for. Ignoring the rest of Lo Qi's explanation, he looked towards the sun. It was something that his life relied upon each day. Each day, he would cry out when it showed itself and illuminated the world. What other technique could possibly match up to something that important?

"...so, which kind do you choose? Internal or external?" asked Lo Qi as he wrapped up his explanation.

Richard took a step forward and reached out with his wing. His wingspan was limited though and it was difficult to reach that far without bending down. Finally, he placed his foot on top of the letter 'E.'

Lo Qi kept a neutral expression as he swept away most of the books, leaving behind only five. These five were all external cultivation manuals. And supposedly, at least one of them was related to the sun. Lo Qi started pointing at each while explaining the basics.

"Here's Betelgeuse's Tri-Repetition Star Plane, absorbing power from the stars into fat. Next, we have Lupis's Beastman Moon Manual, power from the moon into hair. And here is Cancer's Radiant Sun Scripture..."

Once again, Richard drifted off after hearing about the book he wanted. The thought of perhaps a second sun related book being there slipped his mind. He focused all of his attention on the book.

It was a yellow, gold color with a symbol on the front. The symbol resembled a circle connected to a triangle. Beautifully simple compared to the other books' fancy words and colourful pictures. It was just a whim, but it felt like destiny.

Before Lo Qi had finished explaining the details of the books, he put his foot on the book; He didn't even try to hide the fact that he stopped listening and didn't care about the rest. Lo Qi didn't mind and just took the remaining books and left, leaving Richard to his own devices.

Removing his foot from the cover, he ran into a problem. How does he open the book without damaging it? Lo Qi had already left a few minutes ago.

First, he tried with his wing, shimmying his feathers between the pages then lifting. This failed miserably as he kept sliding into the wrong page or losing a feather while trying to lift.

Second, he tried with his feet. Since his claws were trimmed, he didn't have to worry about accidentally damaging the pages. However, this also made it harder to grip the pages. After some trial and error, he flipped to the first page and began reading.

A short summary of what was read was that Cancer was a researcher interested in the astral due his name's relation to horoscopes. The insistence of people saying their fortune could be found amongst the stars drove him to the external path, specifically the sun. After tasting power from each important astral being, he found that the sun's energy was the most direct and powerful; the energy would literally invade the body and damage it with prolonged exposure.

After this, Richard had to flip the page. Throwing concern out the window, he used his beak to drag the page up and flip it. An obvious mark was left behind on the edge, but that's Lo Qi's fault for running off.

The next few pages described how prolonged exposure to the sun would create natural containers of energy below the surface of the skin. These "containers" we're highly dangerous if handled improperly though.

Basically, the technique amplified the sun to imitate hours beneath the sun within a few minutes. Then, speeding up the body's processes until a lump forms. And using some sort of technique to prevent the force creating the lump from spreading elsewhere while filling up the container full of energy.

This entire book was suspicious. It suggested using self harm from too much sunlight, amplifying all the effects, then hijacking and using the side effects. A normal person would close the book and look at the other options; They would never come back as they'd find safer methods in other books.

Richard was not a normal person; he wasn't even a person. So, he eagerly read the next few pages, finding detailed drawings on how to cultivate.

Turning to the last page, he was fantasising himself being able to speak, then slowly surpassing Lo Qi and his master. Being a lowly servant of a servant would not satisfy his ambitions. He was a king amongst the coop. And he won't rest easy until he became a king here too.

On the last page was a recommendation from the author. Somewhat of an afterthought that the author forgot to include earlier. It read that the best places to cultivate the technique on was areas where it wouldn't get in the way of the body. Places where the body already has stuff hanging around like earlobes or...

Author's Note: Doing a chapter daily worked for the first few days, but now the chapters are getting longer and issues keep popping up. I've decided that my official update schedule will be one chapter every other day. The main issue with daily chapters is that I'm most comfortable with writing at nighttime. And the people around me are all early risers. So... my internal clock conflicts with theirs.

First 0.5 rating with no explanation GET. I wonder if it was due to the humor or that this is Xianxia despite being an original novel. It makes me so happy that this is popular enough to have haters now.