For the next month, He Yuan perfected his art of pill refining to the best of his thoroughly handicapped abilities. He had to expend more effort than most since his dantian was sealed.

Each step of the way, he had to directly absorb qi into his meridians, convert it to spiritual energy and then use it in the refining process. It was a good thing his meridians had higher qi holding capacity than most.

All the refining was of course done in the Alchemy peak. He Yuan had no cauldron neither could he afford one so he always snuck over there in the middle of the night to use the general one available to the inner sect disiciples.

He'd been caught numerous times by either the Alchemy peak master or her first disciple, Gu Long. The Alchemy peak master always looked for reasons to chase He Yuan away but Gu Ling ignored him.

After all, He Yuan was elder Mo's disciple and just like Mo Jiu, he was free to practice in any peak until he chose a particular peak to study under. The only catch was that he wouldn't receive any instructions, he would only have access to the general low grade cauldrons and under no circumstance should the artifacts be destroyed.

For the spiritual herbs needed for pill refining, He Yuan used the ones that were assigned to elder Mo and when that wasn't enough, he journeyed to the Back mountain to pick the wild spirit herb and grass that were scattered around and then he exchanged that for the ingredients he needed at the Trading peak.

At the end, He Yuan was able to fill his needles with all sorts of spiritual poisons and drugs. The medicines were actually his own recipe and not the one known to the inhabitants of this realm. This was because if he turned the entire realm upside down, he might never be able to find pill refining manuals or recipes.

It was one of the most guarded cultivation secrets as each alchemy master had their own special technique that was handed down only to personal disciples.

The beginning of the sprit beast hunt finally came and every inner disciple and personal disciple of age eighteen gathered in front of the Spirit beast forest on the Spirit beast peak. There were also numerous disciples and supporters from tons of other sects present.

This was, after all, a very special event as a cultivator's first contracted beast had to be as strong as possible in order to enhance the cultivator's fighting prowess.

He Yuan dressed himself in his defensive robes and activated the hallucination artifact to hide the quality of the robes. It wouldn't be too good to place a target on his back so soon.

Although some spiritual masters could see right through his disguise, the young cultivators that were going into the Spirit beast forest were within the level of early to late stage of Foundation establishment. So it would be quite difficult for them to see through his pseudo medium grade artifact.

The only exceptions were Mo Jiu, who was in the middle stage of Core formation and a few talented disciples at the peak stage of Foundation establishment.

He Yuan patted his chest, where he'd hidden two teleportation talismans as back up just in case his interspatial ring somehow failed him.

At high noon, Ru Lianfeng, the sect master of Duoluo sect, came into the clearing. After a quick speech encouraging every disciple to try their best, the preparations to enter the forest began.

The disciples all around scrambled to form teams. This way, they would all catch high grade beasts together and each of then could contract a beast in its weakened state.

The place with the most attention was of course Mo Jiu and his four followers.

Shen Mianmian had her hands wrapped around Mo Jiu's arm like an octopus. "It's too bad that I can't follow Jiu-ge in there." She was two years older than Mo Jiu and had done her first hunt two years ago.historical

It wasn't impossible for cultivators to have more than one spirit beast but the Spirit beast hunt week was especially reserved for first time contractors. Other cultivators were forbidden from stepping foot into the Spirit beast forest during the week of the hunt.

Mu Qingqing got closer to the love birds. "Don't worry jiejie." She patted her chest. "I would make sure to keep an eye out for Jiu-gege so other scheming wolves don't take him away!" Unlike Shen Mianmian, she was eighteen this year and was qualified to go on the hunt.

Shen Mianmian sighed and clutched the bored looking Mo Jiu harder. "Then I'd have to count on you shimei."

Mu Qingqing nodded firmly at that and then her eyes trailed over to He Yuan, then she humphed. "Even trash like you want to contract a spirit beast? With what spiritual power?"

Mei Hua, with her huge axe pinned on the tree next to her, also looked to He Yuan and rolled her eyes. "Even if you happen to have a powerful master, it didn't mean you're powerful too. Aren't you overestimating your capabilities too much?"

A random Mo Jiu pleaser sniggered. "I'm pretty sure trashy Sheng is hoping his shidi would save him when he encounters danger. I'm warning you, you better not trouble our brother Jiu! He's going to be too busy tracking down powerful beasts to form a contract with!"

"I've never seen anyone so shameless!" Another one spat. "He clearly knows that he's weak but still wants to shamelessly leech off of others."

He Yuan looked straight ahead and pretended not to hear any of them. They were all calling him shameless but he was standing on his own and they were the ones crowding around Mo Jiu for protection. Even the largest scale in the universe would not be enough to measure their level of hypocrisy!

"MO SHENG! You better stop playing dumb!" Mu Qingqing shouted when He Yuan kept ignoring them. Mo Sheng was trash to boot. What right did he have to ignore her?!

He Yuan was pissed off. What exactly was this girl's problem? Mo Sheng had never even personally interacted with the girl before so why was she being such a busybody? He silently moved to a different area to stand.

The surrounding cultivators all stared at Mu Qingqing, who was blatantly ignored and her face contorted in fury. That was why she hated that Mo Sheng! He always acted so high and mighty, like he was above everybody else.

Only because his master was elder Mo. Was he the only one with a powerful master? Jiu-gege was not only elder Mo's disciple too but he was also an unparalleled genius and yet he was so humble and never tried to coax people with his strength!

Soon enough, numerous teams had been formed and the barrier surrounding the Sprit beast forest was lifted. Hundreds of young cultivators rushed into the forest at the same time.

Mo Jiu and his group leisurely strolled in and He Yuan walked in after, making sure to keep a fairly huge distance between them.

He Yuan didn't care if other people misunderstood this as him leeching off of Mo Jiu but he needed to keep the young man in his sight at all times so he would be able to prevent the absorption of the powerful beast core.