Hunting and Research

Astar had long since studied the compass, the main body was nothing special, what made it extraordinary was the gem on it, it repelled the beasts, and powered the compass.

The gem itself was a very unique object, the closer it got to the city, the less extraordinary it became, it seemed as if someone had taken an ordinary gem and inscribed a law onto it.

the gem could be detached from the compass, but not for long, he came up with his plan after careful study of the compass.

he ran into a pack of terrifying beasts, the group following him had long since noticed the fact that the beasts were avoiding them, they felt greed in their hearts, they looked at Astar with intense focus, in their opinion they had him cornered, it was without doubt that they would kill him the moment he gave them what they wanted.

Astar knew all this but he didn't care, in his opinion, the people behind him were walking corpses. he turned toward them and said "okay, everyone this is the treasure." he took out the compass and moved toward a beast with it, the beast instantly avoided him, he continued "as you see, anyone owning this treasure can move around freely in the wildlands." after that he tossed it into the pack of beasts in the distance and shouted "I hope you don't forget our agreement."

The group instantly charged after the compass, having seen its usefulness up close they couldn't control their greed, they eyed each other with killing intent, as for the mortal they would kill him later.

after they went far enough the tens of beasts noticed them and attacked with incredible ferocity, they could hardly defend themselves and were soon wiped out, their shouts and curses hardly affected Astar, he watched calmly as all this happened.

Before the beasts could feast on their bodies Astar sprang into action, reaching the bodies he glared at the beasts, the beasts had no choice but to retreat, afraid of the gem in Astar's hands.

Astar looked at the corpses with excitement, he put one at a time into his bag and dragged them slowly towards the city, it was noon that he could see the city walls, he proceeded to take one with him every half an hour into his newly bought house, at was midnight when everything was over and taken care of.

he put away their belongings inside a chest and arranged their bodies, ready to experiment on them, since he knew cultivators had powerful fleshy bodies, he had long since bought a special knife that could cut even iron easily for a hefty price.

He didn't waste time and began studying them, the difference between them and ordinary humans only lay in the spiritual root.

He soon discovered that the root was in fact like an organ that resided at the abdomen, it looked exactly like a root the only difference was the color, it differed from person to person with the most common being red, its core was in the Dantian and it spread from there to cover the entire body, the further it got from the core the more delicate and small its branches became, they fused into to the bodies blood vessels outside the Dantian.

the core of the root was very small, only the size of a grape, unlike the other parts of the organ, the core hadn't withered away, upon the death of a cultivator their accumulation of Qi would leave their body and fuse back into the world thus withering their root and Qi passageways.

he found 11 red cores, some deeper in color and one light blue, the light blue one belonged to the same man who spoke to him.

he figured out the red ones were what people called mortal roots, and the light blue one was a heavenly root, albeit a low tier one.

the deeper the color the higher tier they were, he needed more bodies to experiment on, he needed some rootless corpses too.

He began hunting cultivators with the same method since many cultivators went missing every day in the wildlands no one heed it any mind after he had hunted nearly one hundred cultivators he stopped.

he had gotten 78 red root cores, 16 light blue ones, and 4 deep blue ones, with 2 violet-colored ones, the cultivators that had violet colored roots were very powerful, they killed many beasts on their own before they went down.

getting mortal corpses was very easy for him, he just paid some shady individuals to rob the graveyard whenever someone died recently.

after many experiments, he managed to place a root core into a mortal corpse, with the right ingredients and methods he could make it fuse with the body and slowly create branches inside the mortal's body, he failed midway many times but eventually, he succeeded.

seeing he was running out of red cores, he began hunting again, this time he didn't stop until he had over 400 cores, he had even managed to get 6 more violet roots from their bodies.

he perfected his methods over the next weeks and managed to complete the fusion in less than an hour, a mortal without a spiritual root would possess one in one hour, of course, the process would be very painful like worms crawling around in their body, good thing they weren't alive to find out.

he had done a heaven-defying act, he could now theoretically give talentless people, the talent to cultivate, Astar was not naive, he knew if this information spread he would be in a lot of trouble, so he hid his tracks and everything he did, perfectly.

next, he focused on the cores themselves, what they were made of and how they worked, he was surprised to find out that they would attract each other, like opposite sides of a magnet.

this made him speculate if he could combine them to make a heaven-defying core and then implant it into himself. a week later, he had with the help of alchemy techniques he had read about pills, fuse two cores into one, both were light red-colored at first. after fusing they became a deep red, he had made a higher grade core.

He was elated with these result, he began fusing Root cores into his newly created one, the process lasted for 3 days, he didn't sleep and rarely ate, he was completely focused on his work.

he had fused all his cores into one, at first, the core became blue and then proceeded to become violet, at that point red cores wouldn't work so he used blue ones, he managed to deepen the color to dark purple it was then that he ran out of blue cores.

He didn't go searching for new cores, he used his violet cores, The core turned black after 5 of them fused into it, no matter what he did from then on it didn't change at all.

if word got out about his recent activities, he would be hunted down and killed, what he was doing was a grave taboo to the people living in this world. they respected the dead and no one dared to defile their bodies, what Astar did was beyond defiling, He knew that but it didn't stop him, to return home he would do everything, even becoming a demon.

eventually, the day came, he had perfected the method of transplanting the root inside a body, mimicking Organ transplant from the earth and fusing his knowledge with the alchemy of this world, he finally did it.

He sat under a tree holding a black pearl-like object, staring into the sky, he was filled with hope for the future, excited at the prospect of becoming a mighty immortal and returning home, eyes filled with determination he rose up. he went to his basement and muttered to himself: "Today, I shall become a Cultivator, Tomorrow an immortal".