Chapter 38: Chapter 38: ATG 4
Carl entered the gates of the Demon Imperial City with a sigh of relief. His ordeal was finally over.
Once he had left the small town he had appeared in to travel to the capital, he had initially been enjoying the scenery. There was a decent road that passed through the town on the way to the Capital, so Carl had no worries of getting lost.
But once the road had passed through a forest is when his ordeal started. No less than 13 small bunnies flew out of the brush immediately next to the road, determined to eat him like a carrot.
A small group of traveling merchants traveling away from the Capital had seen the assault, and the guards had busted a gut laughing at him trying to subdue the rabbits without killing them, when their horses that pulled the wagons tried to get in on the action. The whole convoy had turned into a giant mess after that.
Naturally the guards thought he was doing something to disrupt their convoy for an attack, so they tried to apprehend or kill Carl. He had gotten sick of the commotion, and knocked the guards back when they came for him. He then pulled his sword and decapitated the bunnies that were still swarming him. The cute demon bunnies had gotten on his last nerve.
He didn't want to tangle with the convoy, since he didn't know who backed them and so he didn't want to make unnecessary enemies, so he ditched them by traveling a short distance into the forest so he could parallel the road and avoid the convoy.
And while he was doing that he had a constant stream of birds, squirrels, more rabbits, and raccoons attacking him from above and below as he made his way through the forest.
Carl changed his mind about joining a troop of mercenaries to go out on a hunt. There was no way he was going out to use himself as bait. Any creature that was at least Elementary Profound was attacking him as if he was the most delicious thing ever the moment they got a whiff of him. It would be so aggravating to have to deal with the swarms of small creatures while trying to catch larger prey.
He still planned to send out hunters to capture profound beasts for him, but there was no way he was going to subject himself to the constant bombardment of critters whenever he went out.
When he finally got within a few miles of the capital, he'd run across several farms, where he was attacked by goats, chickens, and ducks. The farmers had been enraged, thinking he was trying to poach their livestock. It took some work and a lot of running before he finally got away from them.
Carl sighed as he thought about the whole thing. He looked down at his clothes. While his armor robes weren't torn or ripped, it was smeared with all kinds of dirt, grass, and muck. He stepped into an alleyway and cast some cleaning charms on himself, as well as some quick grooming charms to clean and arrange his face and hair.
He soon regained his composure, and exited the alleyway. Using a small bribe, he soon had directions to the area where his headquarters was located. As Carl walked through the city, he kept an eye out for any horses or other mounts people might be riding around. He didn't need any more hassle.
As he was walking, Carl's mind was still thinking about the morning fiasco. It seemed that the animals didn't attack when they saw him, just when they smelled him. Carl face palmed. He'd been so flustered and reacting instead of thinking and acting, he hadn't realized what specifically was setting them off. Naturally he had a spell that could solve his problem, if he had only realized it before. He quickly cast a spell to block his scent from spreading.
Later on he'd have to create a small runic device that would make a permanent personal scent blocking ward. Once the animals couldn't smell him, they would have no reason to think he was tasty. And he certainly wasn't going to let any animals lick him to find out. Thank goodness his familiar wasn't affected by the drawback, since he was linked with Carl.
Carl arrived at his headquarters building, feeling relieved that he had a place to crash. Looking at the building, Carl wasn't positive at first if it was his, since the look of the building had changed, until he'd double checked the address a few times. Carl remembered that the headquarters was designed to change its design based on the world he was in, so it made sense that he didn't recognize it. In the previous worlds it had appeared as a modern building, so he'd gotten used to how it looked then.
But now his headquarters looked like a traditional Chinese shop building. Carl spent a moment enjoying how different the architecture looked now. He entered the building and started a tour of the facilities. It still had the same amount of space, but the style of the building and furniture had changed. It was still hooked up to his Warehouse power and water though, which was a relief.
Carl started cooking a meal while he thought over his plans. When Carl had looked over the details of his properties, he had found that most of them were located in the Illusory Demon Realm, probably since he rolled that continent as his location. His properties were located in important cities around the Empire.
But he also had several properties located in the capital cities of the Profound Sky Continent and the Azure Cloud Continent. So if he ever had a need to travel to the other two continents, he had places available.
One of the first things he needed to do was to gather information. Since Carl already had several properties around the world, he had sent out a series of instructions to the managing VIs on how to go about gathering rumors and information in their areas. He kept it simple for them, since they wouldn't be capable of building him a large network of spies. Mostly they and the workers listened to what people were talking about while on his properties and reported it back to Carl.
Once that was organized, Carl settled into a daily routine. He spent a couple hours a day working on his runic scent blocker. He also spent a large chunk of his time training and absorbing profound energy to level up his profound level. Working on increasing his understanding and level of The Great Way of the Buddha, The Golden Crow's Record of the Burning World, and his fire control were an ongoing part of his training.
After only a few days he had a bracelet that combined runes and profound inscriptions to make sure that both his scent was blocked and his profound energy signature was shifted a bit. After a bit of thinking, Carl had also considered that sensing his profound energy would attract beasts as well, so he was going to test if his little signal scrambler for his profound energy signature worked.
A little over a week after he'd settled in the capital, Carl managed to attain the second stage of the Great Way of the Buddha. Carl tested out the regenerative healing factor he attained from the Great Way of the Buddha, and he was somewhat impressed at the increased speed he healed the cut he inflicted on himself.
And throughout the time he trained and read the intelligence reports his VIs were sending him, he continued to practice his combat forms, ensuring he was completely in control of all his strength and power.
Carl was strolling through the market place one morning a few days after he'd finished his bracelet. He had strolled past several pets that didn't even look at him, so he was pretty happy with his work on his bracelet.
Now that Carl was sure he wouldn't be mobbed by random animals, he decided that he would check out the city. He could gather more information himself than his VIs could, and he wanted to gather different cultivation resources while going out and about to see this cultivation world for himself.
He was just looking over several herbs at one marketplace stall, and getting ready to barter for them, when he heard a commotion behind him.
Looking back, while keeping a wary eye on his surroundings in case someone took the opportunity to attack or pick pocket him, Carl saw a group of 15 year olds surrounding and bullying one young man who also looked 15.
"What do you think you're doing out here, giving us Yun Family members a bad name!" One brat shouted at the kid they were bullying.
Carl snorted in his mind. 'The one giving the Yun Family a bad name is you, for making a stink in public, idiot.'
The kid they were bullying just gave a small polite smile at the group, gave them a small salute, and moved away. His polite demeanor didn't give the bullies anything to grab onto and use as an excuse to criticize him. But of course that didn't stop them.
"You're pretty much a bad omen for the Yun Family!" One of the bullies shoved his shoulder, trying to get a rise out of him.
"You leave Brother Yun alone, bunch of meanies!" A feminine voice yelled out just as a 13 year old girl showed up, grabbed Brother Yun's hand, and dragged him away. "Come on, Brother Yun, escort me back home."
Carl recognized the girl who "saved" Brother Yun as the one whose dog previously latched onto his ankle back at the no name town. The girl was Number Seven Under Heaven. Carl smiled a bit to see that the bullies had no choice but to let them go. Apparently she was from a clan they didn't dare offend. As they left the area, Carl thought about what he'd learned from the encounter and added to what he already knew of the situation in the capital.
The Yun Family, which had previously been the number 1 most prestigious and powerful family among the 12 Guardian Families, had been on the decline for the past 100 years. Ever since the last patriarch, Yun Canghai, had disappeared after going to the Profound Sky Continent in search of the Demon King. It was after Yun Canghai disappeared that he had been accused of being the reason that the Demon Emperor's Seal had gone missing, and his family had borne the brunt of the repercussions of the crime of losing a treasure of the Demon Royal Family.
And now, a hundred years later, the Yun Family was considered the last place among the Guardian Families. The Yun Family was apparently not pulling together as single entity in the face of opposition. They were instead fracturing. Carl figured that was likely because they didn't have a strong leader to set the tone and keep the family in check. So there were likely several factions struggling for control at the moment.
The current Yun Family Patriarch, Yun Quinghong, and his wife had secretly traveled to the Profound Sky Continent some 20 years ago in search of Yun Canghai or any news of the Little Demon Emperor. While there they had been severely injured and had lost a lot of their profound power, only barely escaping back to the Illusory Demon Continent with their lives.
So because Yun Quinghong was in a weakened state, he couldn't control his family and keep them strong enough to weather the storm that was arrayed against them. And the public infighting was doing their family no favors, because any opponents the family had must be positively gleeful that they were falling apart. They were probably sitting in the shadows and sharpening their blades for an opportunity to throw them down from their position and steal resources from them.
Now that the ruckus died down, Carl turned back to the merchant. "How much did you say for six stalks? 24 cyan profound coins?"
"Ahh, valued customer, I think you must have misheard. It was 40 cyan profound coins. These are the best quality in the whole market, I'm already giving you a discount as it is, because its you."
"Hmm, well, if you can drop the price to 28 coins, I might see my way to buying the stalks and also purchasing this batch of ember seeds from you for 20 coins a packet." Carl replied. He was sad that his perk to be able to sell as much as he wanted for the best price only worked when he was selling, not buying.
"Yes, if you buy these ember seeds for 30 coins a packet I can let the seeker stalks go for 36."
Carl internally chuckled, and continued haggling with the middle aged man. He eventually brought the price right to the middle of where they both started, which Carl decided meant he had probably correctly figured out what the man was willing to sell them for.
"Thank you for coming, valued customer. Please come again for the best goods in the market!"
Carl just smiled at the man, amused at his boasts, as he left with his seeds and stalks. As he continued through the market, he was pondering the merits of the idea he'd had while watching the altercation earlier among the youth of the Yun Family.
With the Yun Family weak at the moment due to their Patriarch's injuries, Carl had an opportunity to benefit. If he approached the clan, healed the Patriarch's injuries, and offered his services to them, he would get their backing and it would help the Yun Family solidify their position. They could then present a strong front against any enemies and reassure their allies that standing with them was and is the right choice.
This was a prime opportunity because usually the Guardian Families were very strong and wouldn't need help from some individual like him, no matter how skilled in medicine he was. At most he would be an honored guest, at worst a tool to be used only to benefit them.
But helping them now, when they were at their weakest, would give him a lot of trust points with them. And if the clan was related to the protagonist, Yun Che, like Carl thought it might be, he might be able to avoid conflict with a rival protagonist.
While Carl wasn't afraid of Yun Che, per se, he was wary of him. Especially if it ever devolved into a life or death fight. Protagonists always had trump cards and more trump cards. So how would his trump cards stack up against Yun Che's trump cards if it came to a fight? If Yun Che would at least stay neutral toward Carl, then he wouldn't have to worry about it at all, and he could safely depart the world in ten years.
Since he didn't have any knowledge of this world, he didn't have any opinions of Yun Che at the moment. It wasn't like the Death Eaters in the Harry Potter world. Carl had planned to take them down eventually even if the ritual he used to kill Voldemort hadn't done that for him. But here in this world, his only real concerns for the time being was surviving for 10 years, gathering as many resources as he could, and getting strong.
Carl started thinking over the pros of helping the Yun Family in their time of need. After becoming trusted by the Yun Family, he could count on their help and networking in the Empire. The allies of the Yun Family would be available to be his allies. There were the possible bonus points of Yun Che owing him one if the Yun Family did turn out to be his family. He would then be integrated into the Empire, with a backing to keep any enemies off his case. And the Yun family already had a large amount of manpower, if he ever needed them to gather resources for him.
The cons would include putting himself on the radar of the Yun Family's enemies. Possible exploitation of his skills until he got strong enough to defend himself or was forced to hide. Being shanghaied to be part of the Empire's politics, and being used as a tool. Being targeted for assassination.
'Eh, but now that I think about it, even if I get dragooned into the Yun Family and get used for 10 years, I'll still be alive to leave the world.' Carl thought. 'Well, as long as I don't precipitate the Yun Family's enemies to go all out and kill me along with them.' Carl wryly thought. 'If that happens I'd just have to hide out for 10 years.' Carl shrugged off worrying about any enemies he might make by taking action.
Carl then thought through the possibility of weighing in on the side of the Yun Family's enemies. 'The risk-reward possibilities don't appeal as much with the Yun Family's enemies. With a bit of research I'd be able to discover who is opposing the Yun Family, but by joining them I would just end up being a useful tool. They are in a position of power, so they wouldn't likely give me as much trust or respect if I just showed up and asked to join them. And it isn't like they need my help, so I'd just be a resource. They may even just try to silence me by killing me without even giving me a chance.'
After some thought, Carl decided that he would help out the Yun Family, and try to help them turn their situation around. But he wouldn't be jumping into the deep end without preparations. He would take the time to learn as much as he could, get stronger, and come up with plans.
While the idea of having some backing was nice, putting himself at their mercy and just trusting they had his best interests in mind was naïve and just asking to be exploited. If he didn't even have any pride or sense of worth, they wouldn't care about him either.
So Carl continued shopping in the market while thinking of what he needed to do in preparation.
Before entering the ATG world, one of the things that made Carl curious about was the herbs that were used to make medicines and pills. The stories always had recipes that called for ingredients like 1000 year Ginseng, or Lingzhi Mushrooms, or whatever. So Carl wondered just how common or rare 1000 year old herbs were, if they were parts of recipes commonly used. Because 1000 years wasn't exactly a short amount of time to be growing herbs, even for cultivators that lived for thousands of years.
Carl found some answers among his medical knowledge. The first part of the answer was that only certain rare recipes needed such specific long lived herbs, hence why they were rare. Most of the medicinal recipes used normal herbs, while the more rare herbs were usually kept for rare cultivation resources for the purpose of strengthening each organizations cultivators that added to their strength. Only the rich and powerful families could afford it, really.
Next was that the families that produced the herbs to be sold to alchemists that produce the cultivation resources have been in business for thousands of years, so they have fields of herbs that are constantly being harvested and replanted regularly. So there was a hard cap on just how many herbs per year/decade/century they can produce and sell. Which means the cultivation resources are limited. If one person buys one herb, another person can't. There just isn't a big enough supply.
And the limited amount of resources is exactly why there was so much competition in cultivation worlds for resources. If one family doesn't secure the resources, then not only does the family miss out on the resource and gaining strength, but if their enemies get the resources then they would get weaker at the same time that their enemy gets stronger. It lends itself to a very cutthroat competition.
The last thing Carl found out as he experimented with the herbs on his Farm is that the 1000 year old label is only an estimate for how long it normally takes an herb to gain a certain amount of profound power as it passively absorbs it over the years. If the profound energy atmosphere around the farm was much denser than normal, then the herbs could store the same amount of energy needed in less time.
And if there was one thing the Farmville farm was useful for, it was being exactly what Carl needed to grow different crops fast. Crops that would usually take several months to grow, on his farms only took a few days. So when he started growing the local product that required profound energy, his farms changed to create the best atmosphere needed. The air was absolutely saturated with profound energy.
Carl found that the herbs saturated in profound energy he needed for use in the different recipes grew in a fraction of the time usually needed. And his crops already grew a great deal faster on his Farmville farms than was usual. So he estimated that he would have a crop of 1000 year old herbs in only about 5 years real time, while he would constantly be getting fresh batches of ordinary herbs. So once Carl had charged up his Heavenly Time Pearl once more, he could produce masses of the most expensive herbs on the market.
Meanwhile, with bunches of ordinary herbs constantly being harvested, Carl had the materials needed to add to his daily routine, namely the practice of his alchemy and pill concocting skills he learned from the Genius Doctor perk. As was usual, simply having the medical and alchemy knowledge wasn't enough. He needed to practice it to fully master it. So he needed a cauldron to concoct his medicines and pills in.
Carl made a trip to the market to pick up a cauldron so he could get started. And that's when he ran into another little hiccup. When he inspected the cauldrons, he was aghast. Such shoddy craftsmanship! That metal was crap! The construction of those cauldrons was half-assed! There was no way he could work with what the market sold!
Carl sighed in resignation. Good thing he's got a bunch of metal to work with and the crafting knowledge to fix the problem.
So he shifted his focus from pills, and started practicing his crafting skills daily from then on. He spent a week in crafting before he finally crafted an acceptable cauldron for his purposes. If he had even better materials, he could make something far superior, but what he had was good enough for the time being.
For the next several weeks, Carl spent time daily practicing the various aspects of his crafts. He started off at the bottom and made various medicines and cultivation pills. He crafted various tools and devices. He practiced his inscriptions and building arrays.
As he practiced his skills, he gained mastery at a heaven defying pace in no small thanks due to his Heart of Snow Glazed Glass Inheritor perk.
Once Carl started feeling confident in his medicine concocting skills, such that he wouldn't make any mistakes and ruin a batch of medicine, he started the next phase of his plan.
First, he used his metamorphmagus abilities to appear in his early 20s, instead of 15. It was hard to play the part of a doctor looking like a 15 year old. Most people would rightfully be skeptical of his actual knowledge and skill level. But in a society where cultivators can live for thousands of years and stay looking in their 20s for all that time, it was at least more believable than appearing as a gawky 15 year old.
He then spent some time remodeling his headquarters building. The ground floor would be a shop where he would sell medicines and cultivation pills. Mostly low level stuff for the time being. He didn't want to have anything too valuable that might tempt people before he was strong enough.
Carl kept the meeting rooms on the first floor the same, he saw no reason not to keep them as training and meeting rooms for his future staff. Some of the office spaces on the second through sixth floors he converted to rooms where some of his single future workers could room at, others he kept as office space for his workers to do paperwork, finances, and other such things.
Carl then hired a group of workers to staff his shop/clinic.
Sure there were stories of itinerant medical masters that wandered around alone while practicing their craft, but Carl couldn't be bothered with that. He would rather have a staff on call to deal with certain aspects of a business, like making sure the customers weren't rowdy and crowding him. So Carl spent a few intensive weeks teaching his staff how to handle his business and sell the basic medicines and cultivation pills he made for his new clinic to sell.
Once the little clinic was open, he had scheduled clinic hours three times a week for a few hours where he would see patients and heal them. And while he would be practicing and training his medical skills, he couldn't spend too much time on it. He wasn't a maniac obsessed with medicine after all.
Besides, Carl set up the clinic mainly for the purpose of establishing his reputation. It would be very awkward if he showed up on the Yun Family's doorstep proudly proclaiming his medical genius and how he could help them and they rejected his assistance simply because they didn't know him.
And any money he made was just a bonus. A very welcome bonus that was actually quite profitable since he owned the source of his herb production, rather than buying them, so it was nearly 100% profit, aside from his employee's salary.
By the time Carl had been in the ATG world for a year and five months, he had a good reputation as a competent doctor around the lower level cultivators and mortals of the Demon Imperial City. He was almost ready to approach the Yun Family.
He had also reached Earth 10 Profound level. Just a little bit more and he would break through into the Sky Profound Realm, where he could fly with his profound energy. He was pretty excited about that.
He had reached the third level of the Great Way of the Buddha, and was steadily working his way to the fourth level. In the third level he was finally starting to gain substantial boosts to his physical strength, so he was happy he'd spent the cp to get the technique.
Carl had also mastered the third stage of the Golden Crow's Record of the Burning World. After the first two stages that were focused on his affinity with and control over fire, Carl was happy that the third stage included attack, defense, and movement techniques.
The defensive technique could be simplified to "burn any enemy's attack with fire". Very simple, yet useful. Don't want to get hurt? Don't get hit by the enemy attack. Burn the attack first.
The movement skill of the third stage didn't directly utilize fire, but it directed Carl in how to use his profound energy to enhance his movement ability. Combining the air movement technique with his Golden Crow abilities made for an impressive ability to be mobile. Carl was quite confident in his ability to dominate a battlefield with his skills.
And the attack technique was called Burning Sun Rupture. Carl had been amused by the name, because it wasn't descriptive at all of what the attack was like. He didn't make an artificial sun or rupture it. It was a very fast single target attack where he accelerated a stream of fire like a whip lash. Carl had had a lot of fun practicing the fire whip attack, as he called it.
And now he was working on the fourth stage, where the attack technique was called Raging Fire Rupture. It used multiple fire whips to attack more than one target. Carl could see a theme here, and looked ahead to the fifth stage. And just like he thought, the fifth stage attack technique, Golden Annihilation, would target dozens of people at a time. At least it was consistent in its escalation.
The fourth stage defensive technique could easily be summed up as "burn even more enemy's attacks with fire". Carl was starting to see that the Golden Crow had pretty much one answer to any problems he had: Fire. Which was exactly why Carl had picked that legacy! Fire is the solution to all problems!
And the fourth stage movement technique actually had Carl making wings of fire to accelerate his speed and movement. Rover had actually drooled when he saw the wings of fire that Carl made. So Carl let himself be convinced to share the Jade Tablet with Rover so he too could start practicing and learn to create great big honking wings of fire. Carl just chuckled at Rover's antics. Even though he already had wings, who wouldn't want big fire wings?
Carl was striding through the shopping district around lunch time. He had a particular destination in mind, and someone to meet with, so he wasn't out for idle pleasure or resource gathering. He arrived at the restaurant at the same time as his target, Yun Xiao who was there with Number Seven.
Since the first time the girl had seen him was when he was in his normal for his 15 year old face, Carl changed the look he had from the mid twenties that he wore for his clinic, to about 18-19. That way Number Seven would be able to recognize him, and he would still not look too young for his doctor status.
"Hello there again, girl. How is Xiao Bai anyway? Biting any more passerby?" Carl greeted Number Seven in good humor, teasing the girl.
"Ah? Ah! It's you! No! Xiao Bai is a good doggy, he doesn't bite anyone. It must have been you that did something!" Number Seven jumped and pointed accusingly at Carl when she recognized him.
Carl laughed. 'She's not wrong, the issue was with me.' He thought about his drawback.
"Well, your dog still bit me. I think in compensation you should treat me to a meal. How bout it?" Carl smiled.
"Seventh Sister, who is this?" Yun Xiao interrupted in a somewhat suspicious tone of voice.
"Ah, how rude of me. My name is Carl, a minor doctor here in the city. It's a pleasure to make your acquaintance." Carl then saluted them.
The two clan heirs' training in manners kicked in and they introduced themselves.
"Yun Xiao, of the Yun Family."
"Number Seven Under Heaven, of the Elf Clan, but call don't call me that. Call me Seventh Sister."
Carl smiled at the two. "Yun Xiao, Seventh Sister. Would it be alright if I joined you for lunch then?" Carl invited himself.
The two young teens hemmed for a bit, but ultimately agreed. Carl chuckled at how it worked out. From what he'd gathered, Yun Xiao had been bullied a lot, but in order to not make problems for his crippled father and mother, he endured it. By this point his politeness was ingrained in his bones, so he had a hard time saying no to Carl.
And Seventh Sister was already sweet on Yun Xiao and would have preferred to have lunch with him alone, but with Yun Xiao not outright denying Carl, she didn't want to contradict him and make him dislike her, or make him think she wasn't magnanimous.
While Carl felt slightly bad about taking advantage of their good manners and becoming a third wheel to their lunch date, he figured it was his best chance to get introduced and get to know them. His prior meeting with Seventh Sister was just the ice breaker he needed to be able to introduce himself.
So while they were enjoying lunch, Carl engaged the two in conversation. He told them a bit about himself and his clinic. He listened to some of their stories about growing up in the capital, while sharing his stories of some of his friends' adventures, slightly altered to fit the world.
With his ability to judge a person's character, he could tell the two teens were good hearted people, so it was a pleasure to simply spend lunch chatting with them.
After the lunch was over, and Carl passed along his thanks for the meal, and invited the two to come to his clinic where he would gift them something as a thank you for the lunch. With their promises to come by and see his clinic, Carl departed.
He was pretty satisfied with their first meeting. It had been a decent introduction and chance to make a good impression on them. He couldn't go too fast or push too far, or they would retreat from his overtures, worried that he had ulterior motives.
Smiling at his success, Carl made his leisurely way back to his clinic, and continued his daily practice.
At just about the year and a half mark of his time in the ATG world, Carl finally broke through to the Sky Profound realm. Once he broke through, he could feel a huge difference in his profound energy. The density and quantity of profound energy in his profound veins once more jumped higher.
Once Carl had finished consolidating his level, he immediately started playing with the new abilities he had. He was able to control his body's movement through the air, unimpeded by gravity.
He went into his Warehouse and brought out his Ark. He called for Rover and they both entered the inner world of his Ark that had dozens of square miles of space. More than a year ago, while trying to figure out where he would practice his more devastating attacks, since he didn't have much training grounds and the Heavenly Time Pearl was still recharging, he suddenly remembered the space in his Ark. Ever since then, he and Rover would enter the Ark daily and practice.
Now, with both Carl and Rover at the Sky Profound level, they started flying around the place, testing out their new speed. Carl was laughing his head off at seeing Rover just tuck his wings into his side and fly around like that. The look on Rover's face was so excited yet awkward at forcing himself not to use his wings. Carl busted up laughing at the hilarious sight.
After several hours of flying around, testing his speed and maneuverability, Carl was satisfied. He could even use the movement techniques from the third and fourth stages of the Golden Crow's Record of the Burning World to accelerate even faster.
From then on, in Carl and Rover's training, they added in a bit of aerial combat against each other as they sparred. Carl and Rover had no one else to fight against and test their skills, so they had been fighting each other.
Since they were both immune to fire due to the familiar bond and the Evil God Seeds, they could go all out with their fire attacks and not worry about burning each other to death. There was still the impact or cutting damage that the attacks had, but that was negligible for Rover due to the enhanced strength and regeneration from The Great Way of the Buddha. And for Carl by the same technique as well as having the Dragon God's Bloodline.
A week after Carl broke through, he was in his Warehouse crafting some Spatial Rings. Spatial rings were storage devices that had a little pocket dimension used for storing goods. Items could be put in and retrieved by the use of profound energy. Right as Carl was about to start on another ring, his "doorbell" ward was pinged by his employees. He had left instructions that he was only to be disturbed in certain circumstances. So he put away his project and exited the room.
When he arrived at the ground floor, he saw that one set of circumstances had indeed arrived on his doorstep. Yun Xiao and Seventh Sister were sitting down on chairs provided by his employees.
Looking closer, Carl saw that Yun Xiao appeared to have been roughed up quite a bit, with cuts and a couple of broken bones. Seventh Sister looked furious at whatever had happened to Yun Xiao.
"Hi, Carl. Yun Xiao didn't, er we didn't really have anywhere else to go on short notice." Seventh Sister stuttered out. Carl could tell that Yun Xiao had refused going elsewhere for treatment so that news of his beating wouldn't travel back to his parents and cause them to worry.
"Greetins Yun Xiao, Seventh Sister. I see the social niceties can wait, let's get you seen to first." Carl ushered the two teens back into a treatment room. It wasn't the time to talk about anything until he'd taken care of the teen boy.
Once Carl had Yun Xiao sitting down, he put on the whole Doctor persona. He'd already diagnosed him with a look due to his skills gifted from a perk, but Carl had found it put people at ease when he put more effort and thought into diagnosing them. It made it seem like he wasn't just talking out of his ass. And when the people felt that he was taking their health seriously, it made them feel better and more trusting about the treatment he prescribed.
So Carl went through the whole diagnoses, checking Yun Xiao's pulse, feeling the broken bones, examining his cuts. Once he'd finished, he set about fixing the issues. First he had Yun Xaio take off his outer robe, which caused Seventh Sister to deeply blush and let out an "eep!" that hugely amused Carl. Once Yun Xiao was reminded that Seventh Sister was seeing him in a nearly shirtless state, he too blushed.
Carl chuckled at the byplay. The lucky boy had the lovely Seventh Sister locked in as a future wife, as long as he wasn't a complete bonehead. Carl briefly thought of ways to help them overcome their shyness, until he remembered they were only 16 and 14 years old. They could wait 5 or so years until they were both older.
"Well, let's start with the cuts to stop the bleeding." Carl fished out some cleaning supplies to clean out the wounds, making sure there wouldn't be any abscesses forming from leaving behind sources of infection.
He used simple bandage wraps in most cases to keep the wounds closed while they healed, but resorted to stitches in one instance.
Carl then focused on the broken bones in Yun Xiao's forearm. Sending in a probe of profound energy to keep track of it, Carl quickly set the bone and put a small splint on it to keep it in position. He then pulled a bone-knitting potion out of a cabinet.
He had found over the past year that while cultivators didn't have magic in their bodies, they responded to potions just like magicals did, even if they weren't able to sense magic. Even when passing through very strong wards, no cultivators that he'd observed had sensed magic, unless it had a direct effect on them, like a jinx or curse.
And Carl had discovered that the 16 year old Yun Xiao and the 14 year old Seventh Sister were both in the early Emperor Profound realm. With Yun Xiao's neglectful treatment and lacking of resources at the hands of his Yun Family, he was an impressively skilled and determined individual to have clawed his way to the Emperor realm basically on his own.
Seventh Sister, being the princess of her Under Heaven family, was treated well and given plenty of resources, which she had been sharing with Yun Xiao. So it made sense that the two were about the same profound level, even though Seventh Sister was a couple years younger than Yun Xiao.
Which, now that Carl thought about it, made him wonder just who was being so brutal in bullying Yun Xiao, to break his arm. Well, Carl would probably hear about it later, from the two teens, or from gossip in the capital. So Carl put aside the thought for the time being, and focused again on the two.
"Okay, now, this potion is going to taste absolutely horrible. But it will help your bones heal just as strong as if you hadn't broken it. It will still be tender for a few days, so go easy on it in training until it is 100%. I don't want to see you in here for treatment from a relapse, got it?"
"Got it." Yun Xiao nodded agreeably.
Carl handed him the potion and smiled faintly at the disgusted expression that appeared on Yun Xiao's face after he downed it. He sat back and enjoyed the scene of Seventh Sister fussing over Yun Xiao. It was enjoyable to see good people getting together and caring for each other. It was almost like watching a television drama.
Once they remembered he was there, Carl did one final check over Yun Xiao's health. "Okay, you should be all patched up now. Come back in two days, you should be healed up enough for me to take out the stitches then. And I'm entrusting him to you, Seventh Sister. Make sure he doesn't stress those wounds by training until he comes back here."
Seventh Sister perked up at hearing that Yun Xiao was in her care. "Yes! I'll take good care of him!"
Carl then tossed a couple of rings to the two teens. "Here you go, greeting gifts, or some such. Just some things I had laying around."
Carl had just given them two Purple Spatial Rings that he'd built, along with some cultivation pills that would help them in their practice. The Purple Spatial Rings that Carl had made had a pocket dimension of (100 m)3.
"I can't accept this, it's too expensive!" Yun Xiao exclaimed.
Carl waved him off. "Don't worry about it. I'm very well off myself, it's nothing big." And to Carl who had Farmville farms that could constantly supply him ores, gems, animals, and herbs so that he could easily make more Spatial Rings and pills, it really wasn't much of anything.
Seventh Sister was quite used to Yun Xiao's stubborn personality that didn't want to take advantage of anybody, and she had quite a bit of practice wearing him down, so he eventually accepted the gift. Carl just sat back and sipped a drink while watching the show.
Before entering the room, Carl had told some of his employees to set out some snacks for them in a break room. So after cleaning everything up after the treatment, the three retired there for a while to chat and eat.
Carl enjoyed the time spent with the good natured couple, and had fun teasing them a bit, hearing about their opinions of the different people in the capital, and just hanging around. After a couple hours, when it was time for them to depart, he once more confirmed their appointment in a couple days, and saw them out.
If Carl had any reservations about helping the Yun Family, then meeting the Patriarch's son and getting to know him made him want to help them. He genuinely liked the guy. Yun Xiao kind of reminded him of Neville when they first met. Neville too had reacted to being judged and pushed around all his life by sinking into himself and becoming shy.
Yun Xiao wasn't that bad off because he had Seventh Sister in his life. But other than that, the kindness and reluctance to overstep his boundaries was pretty much the same. 'Well, we'll just have to see if we can't toughen him up over the next eight and a half years. I'm assuming that like Neville he'll have a deeply hidden backbone that will become apparent in certain situation.'
Carl then returned to his Warehouse and continued crafting rings as practice. He would soon test to see what happens when he combined spatial rings with expansion charms.
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