The days began to turn warmer with only two weeks left until the spirit hunt began. I took a deep breath in, running the sharp blade over my hand once more as I made a small cut on my palm, as blood began to pool up and run down.

I held my palm above the box filled with dirt, dripping it down carefully. The blood mingled with the dirt for a bit, hurriedly being sucked in by the bloodroot. I picked out the crushed salve of herbs that the Old Man had made for me, and smeared it on the cut. Within a few seconds the cut has scabbed over and a minute or so in, I peeled off the scabs to see fresh pink skin underneath.

No matter how many months I spend in this world, the wonder and mystery of being able to do things like this will never stop to awe me and fill my heart with excitement.

I put the box of the salve away, noticing the similarities it had with the salve Granny Lang had made. I really needed to ask one of them about what their relationship was. Putting the thought aside, I turned my sight towards the seed with anticipation. I was almost tempted to channel some Gu towards the seed but I already knew what that’d do.

Silently I watched the seed for any sign of movement for a while before a despondent sigh slipped from my mouth. Didn’t work again huh?

It’d been almost seven days since I’d returned from Taizhou, having taken the time to visit the library in the meanwhile to pick out books about bloodroot, precautions and how to safely grow them.

Only cultivators lived within the sect, yet that did not mean that an outer disciple in the first realm wouldn’t fall to the plant if allowed to go out of control, and I had no plan to do something like that.

After a day of research and searching I’d finally found a method that mentioned forming a blood bond with the spirit herb. Further research had revealed the sentient nature of the plant and how it could be tamed and formed a bond with almost like a spirit. If nurtured carefully, the miasma would be contained within the petals of the plant, which it could digest and use for its own nourishment without needing to harm anything else.

An issue with that though, was that the root would be dependent on the blood of the one bonded to it, and normal mortals would not really survive the drainage of lifeforce. So this thing was pretty much a vampire parasite that could make thralls.

The process of bonding was quite simple as well. I had to feed my blood to the root at regular intervals, almost as if I was nursing a child. The bloodroot would slowly but surely come to recognise me as its mother, for the lack of a better term. Being fed solely on the blood of a human would allow the germinating plant to take on a human form as well, and would have it be formed as a Blood-root spirit of sorts.

That bit was good. The issue began when I read that the process would take anywhere from three to ten months to happen. Far far too much time than I had available to me. I needed this little vampire plant to grow up now, and grow up fast. My drugnade’s development was at stake!

At first I’d thought that connecting the plant to my existing spirit anchor would work. I already knew that the cycle went both ways, with the heaven and sky coming together, and I’d been hoping a similar two polar cycle would form by bringing together the two kinds of plants into the same anchor.

That had been a mistake.

The Qi from the herbs had lashed out towards this place, intense enough to almost burn it if I hadn’t cut off the link in time. I’d tried cultivating through both of my cores as I connected myself to my spirit anchor, yet the bloodroot had refused to show any reaction.

That began almost an entire week of madness and Qi-water energy drink filled days where I ran over and over to the library and other places, trying to find a way to induce faster growth through the plant.

I tried a lot of methods. From crushing up mushrooms and then disintegrating them with my Gu, and artificially aging them, before mixing in the soil to finding the manure of some exotic spirit cow from a farm on the sect, yet nothing had worked so far.

“The things I do in the name of science,” I muttered out loud, shaking my head as I turned to look at Sheldon lounging in his pond, with his arms and legs stretched out from his shell to soak in the sun in a pose oddly reminiscent of superman. I was starting to suspect that Sheldon liked being small in size a lot more than he let on.

I’d been a bit worried that Sheldon might become angry at the root, as it had been the cause of a lot of suffering for him, but if the turtle had any issues with the plant, he hadn’t mentioned them to me.

“You wouldn’t happen to know how to grow this faster would you?” I asked, as Sheldon opened his eyes, maintaining his odd pose as he looked at me, his neck slightly peeking out from his shell.

“Feed. Spirit. Purer. Energy. Will. Grow. Faster.”

The turtle said, in the low rumbly voice that was in absolute contrast to it’s tiny form before closing his eyes and returning to his peaceful sun basking instead. I looked at Sheldon a bit enviably. Must be nice, not having any worry and just relaxing as you pleased.

“I think I’ve tried that already. Doesn’t seem to be working,” I said, and the turtle remained silently, his eyes closed and I turned away to stare at the plant once again. Guess I was on my own.

I got up from the floor, dusting off the dirt from my robes as I walked over to my notes. Five cylindrical containers were present on the table, courtesy of Liuxiang and my work, as we’d developed different models for the Drugnade vr 2. Which I had dubbed the Gu-nade.

I sent a strand of Gu to each of them, watching the formations trigger as a spark set off at the top, and the shaft moved in the middle which would combine the Gu and Qi drugnades together. The mechanism had been quite clever, as Liuxiang had used a self repairing formation which would then be destroyed by my stand of Gu. The heat resulting from that would spark the ignition formation within, while also triggering the moving lever in the middle of the gu-nade to set it off.

It was his best work, or so he liked to claim and with how hard he’d been smiling when he’d shown me the first working model, I was not too surprised to hear that.

I held up the Gu-nade, triggering them one at a time to check all the formations were working. The next step of the process had been finding a cauldron not infused with Qi. A task that had been surprisingly a lot easier than I’d thought it’d be.

I’d managed to find something called a spirit shell, which was pretty much an empty spirit stone that can be filled with Qi of specific attributes. As it turns out, it could also be filled with Gu, although it loved to explode sometimes when I did that.

After buying a bag of these shells - which made my metaphorical wallet cry - I’d set off to get a simple cauldron that hadn’t been carved with anything just yet. Now all that remained was for me to carve the cauldron without using any Qi, and then infuse water with some Gu before working on the Gu drugnade pill.

The only thing remaining, of course, was the bloodroot. And as more and more days passed by with not even a single bud forming from the seed, I was starting to get impatient.

“Perhaps the Old Man can help?” I muttered out loud, frowning. I was a bit hesitant over carrying a plant with Gu in it, but bloodroot didn’t seem to be an outright taboo, just something you’d rather not want to have with you. But if there was anyone who could help me with the plant it was the Old Man.

I thought over the topic over a while before deciding that the risk was worth the rewards. I trusted the Old Man, and the box had a formation set on it to hide whatever was inside anyway.

I went ahead and closed the lid on the box, placing it carefully under my robes. I took a moment to settle it in a way that wouldn’t look odd. I was finally starting to understand why the people here wore such loose clothes and billowy robes, there was no way I could fix a box in what would’ve been normal clothing back home.

“Take care of the room while I’m gone,” I said to Sheldon.

“Chirp!” the reply came.

I smiled and walked out.