The Cosplay Cultivator

Tang Ze opened up the envelope to see that indeed, there were three pills inside of it. Were they really first-class pills though? He couldn't tell.

As it was, it was a rather stupid idea to take drugs from someone who he didn't know even in this world, though he thought to get Yin Tiang to take a look at them later.

Before heading back to their common living quarters, Tang Ze decided to visit the sect library. He had asked around regarding what Ling Yuan mountain even was, and where it was located. The location was easy enough to get - it was quite far from here, and was actually outside of the Rising Phoenix sect's demesne. Tang Ze could get around that, but other than the location he couldn't find much more about the area.

The mountain didn't seem to have any special lore or history to it. As for Xian Yue, Tang Ze tried to see if there were records of her, but she probably belonged to a different sect as he couldn't find her name in the Rising Phoenix sect's records. That name could have also been an alias.

Having not gotten much further regarding digging into this mystery, he supposed the only way he was going to learn more about it was to finally try to open Pandora's Box by visiting her. She spoke to him every single night now, asking when he was finally going to show up to the point where it was getting really annoying. He could tell that she was getting rather annoyed as well.

Still, though he had resolved to go there, he was going to take the necessary precautions of course.

Hence, the costume he was putting the finishing touches on back in their common living quarters.

He took the small pieces of fur from the Komainu and set about working on them. He needed them dyed white for what he was going to use them for. After that, he would need to get them to stick together so that they could act like a fake beard, and he would need some string as well so that he could easily hang it around his face - although an adhesive one would be better, he didn't want to commit to that just yet as that would be a pain to take off.

These steps would've been much easier back on Earth even if he couldn't just buy the costume off of a store. For example, the adhesive - he couldn't just run down to the store to get some glue, he had to find something like that himself. He had heard that glue was made or used to be made from horses, but that was the limit of his knowledge. How was it made from horses? And was modern glue also made from horses? He also didn't have the time or money to experiment with such things to see what would work and what wouldn't.

Even if he found something like it on the market, buying it was a different problem since the sect did not usually give them the metal coins commonly used outside when they distributed resources, so he often had to barter for things. Many people were happy to help him with stuff in exchange for cultivation resources which were relatively easy to sell. He had gotten the white dye he was currently using for the beard through such a deal, and he would sometimes find things that other people were throwing out to use.

Some things though were just nearly impossible to find or manufacture. Say, contact lenses that could change your eye color. Maybe there was an alchemical solution that could do so, but Yin Tiang didn't know about one. It was a rather niche use after all and Tang Ze couldn't imagine that there was a lot of demand for such a product other than from someone like himself.

Ultimately, this led to some rather shoddy and odd costumes that he would otherwise not have found to be acceptable back on Earth. He had not yet managed to make one which was more than seventy percent acceptable according to his talent, so his talent clearly agreed with him in that regard as well.

A lot of them not only did not look that pleasant, but they were also not really that durable and would fall apart if worn for more than a day, and when they did, he would lose their powers. Tang Ze would've liked to have multiple sets of the same costume for situations like these - but that was not feasible for a number of reasons. Lack of resources was one, but also, they would take up too much space.

The others had already been more than accommodating with him having an extensive wardrobe, but he really couldn't expand it any more until he got more space.

Something he likely wouldn't get until he had gotten past the rank of Initiate.

He was already on a first-name basis with the sect's tailor, but even he couldn't help Tang Ze out that much. While the tailor and seamstress were good, they were good at their tasks when it came to making the regular clothes the people of this area and time period usually wore - they had not seen or heard of things like the costumes that Tang Ze made for his cosplays. It was hard for him to describe such things to them, and oftentimes, they would just shake their heads, saying that they didn't know of any solution.

These thoughts weighed on Tang Ze as he waited for the fur to finish dyeing, and once the others walked in, he remembered the pills he had been given.

He handed one of them to Yin Tiang. "General rule of thumb - don't take things that strangers give you," Yin Tiang said, examining them closely. "I can't really see anything wrong with them, but there could be a hundred ways to tamper with them without me being able to tell. I could try to find out, but that would destroy them in the process."

"Who gave them to you again?" Zhang Long asked.

Once Tang Ze had finished recounting the story again, this time with more details, Zhang Long said, "Ah - that must've been the sect janitor! You couldn't tell his cultivation level because he's at Golden Core! So these aren't weird pills from a stranger - you know who it is. It's safe to take them then."

Tang Ze looked down at them, not feeling entirely sure. He trusted Zhang Long - and Zhang Long seemed to trust this person completely, but was this really okay?

"So, they're first-grade pills right, what makes them different from the ones we get?" Tang Ze asked.

Yin Tiang sighed, as he usually did whenever asked a very basic alchemical question that he felt the others should already know the answer to. "Pills have Qi energy, but because they are based on either plants or animals, and they are ingested instead of being absorbed from the air, since they aren't the body's normal Qi - much like eating food this process generates waste as well. The waste has to be removed by the body's meridians. Higher quality pills not only have more Qi, but they also generate less waste. So you can use more of them in a single go, they don't have as many side effects, and you get more value from them per pill. But, if this is your first time taking them, I still wouldn't take two of them at the same time. Space it out by at least twelve hours."

That part was easy enough to do, Tang Ze could take one now and then another one the next morning.

It was his first time using a pill, and with a slight bit of hesitation, he swallowed it. It didn't carry any of the bitter aftertaste of medicine on Earth, and for a while, he didn't feel anything and went back to working on his new idea for a costume.

He likely couldn't feel anything because it would take time for it to be digested - though he began to notice the difference within half an hour. It was as if a small fire had been lit within his stomach, not to the point of being uncomfortable, but if he hadn't been at the Qi Condensation stage, he would not have noticed the slow flow of Qi from his stomach, down to his lower dantian, and eventually through his meridians.

Cultivation at the Qi Condensation level was often compared to, at least by Tang Ze's teachers, to paving a road. In the beginning, at the Zeroth stage, it was as if there was a wild, expansive forest with no path made for Qi to flow.

At the first minor realm of Qi Condensation, it was as if a portion of the forest had been cleared and eight paths had been developed in it, but they were very rough paths which were difficult to traverse. In order to facilitate the flow of as much Qi as possible, they had to eventually be turned into paved roads before one could ascend to Qi Refinement.

Initially, the roads would just be dirt and overgrown weeds, though through a series of stages, one would build upon them. First, by removing the weeds, then by flattening the roads, then by making a rough dirt path, then building upon it with a layer of underlying support in the form of gravel, and then finally with the last layer of bricks.

That was going a bit too far into the road metaphor for Tang Ze's taste, but it was rather accurate to what Qi Condensation was mainly about.

Tang Ze felt a strange warmth moving through his meridians - it was like what he felt back when he was meditating and gathering Qi, though if he had to quantify it, it was a dozen times stronger.

Not only that, but it was steady. When Tang Ze tried to do it himself, his concentration would naturally waver after a while, and this stream of Qi would be interrupted. But, the Qi from the pills continued to flow for several hours without any pause, working on his meridians and upgrading them so that they were one step closer to maturity.

Tang Ze could see how this would help with cultivation given that it was far steadier and stronger than his own ability to gather Qi from the environment and drive it towards his meridians - maybe his own ability would get better with time, but even if he got two or three times better at that he could see how these pills would still be useful.

Not to mention, it was a way that he could cultivate even while he was sleeping.

He went to sleep, to find Xian Yue in his dreams asking him yet again why he hadn't gone to visit her yet - and he reassured her that he would try to visit her tomorrow.

By then, his new costume would be ready.