25 - Girl

Meanwhile, Su Tao had no clue this was happening as he simply left the cave that the ring was in and continued to look for some more treasure with the rusty ring on his finger.

He did not know that the rusty ring was left behind by the unfathomable existence which had just died. He also did not know what profound effect this ring would have on his life at this moment.

As he continued to explore the forest, he saw a few more caves, but none of them had anything in them. Very quickly, another week passed, and during this week, Su Tao had found several natural treasures that he could use to cultivate with, but nothing else.

Most of the natural treasures were just common ones that most people would generally have access to as long as they had enough money, but one of them that he found was especially rare. It was so much so that it was sometimes even used by those at the second silver star, which showed its quality.

This rare treasure was called the water moon lotus, and it was a rare lotus flower that grew next to rivers and under the direct moonlight but not the sunlight. This was why it was so rare, because there were very few spots in the forest that were under moonlight but blocked from the sun, and there were even less next to a river. Another thing was that this plant could not be grown under controlled environments like other plants because it was not grown from seeds, it just randomly appeared.

If he did not have his new eyes which could see two thousand times as good as other eyes, then even if he searched for a hundred times longer, he wouldn't have ever found that water moon lotus. This showed just how valuable his eyes were when it came to searching for things.

What would have taken other people a year or two to find with constant searching, he had found with only a week of time. Of course, this also relied upon luck, but that was different. It did not mean he would find resources of this level if he searched for another week or even another month, he was just lucky enough to be in the area of it and have the ability to find it due to his eyes.

As soon as he found the water moon lotus, he decided to cultivate with it to see how much progress he could make. After all, the lotus would lose energy after being picked, and it would not be worth as much later if he left it be.

On top of that, starting with a high quality resource would make a better base for his inner energy while breaking through.

As such, he made sure that there were no powerful beasts in his area and found a tall tree to cultivate in. He was able to easily climb trees due to how strong he was, and he was able to partially leap his way up the trees until he could reach the branches and climb from there.

As soon as he got to the top of the tree, he sat down in the branches and took out the water moon lotus. It was a deep blue lotus that had seemingly no aura, but in reality it had an aura, Su Tao was just not powerful enough to sense it.

The only reason he was able to pick it out from other plant treasures was because he spent time when he was younger learning about all sorts of resources in case he ever came upon one in the forest so he could sell them.

He never imagined that he would actually dare to use one of these valuable resources for himself and not sell them, but at this point, it was better to use it since he actually had the ability to reach the silver rank now.

Even though these resources were mainly used for those at the silver rank since they contained a power of Qi, they also contained a power that could help one break through to the next rank, otherwise they would be useless even if they were full of Qi since it would just push someone past the limit of their potential and hurt them instead of help them.

Of course, these resources were almost useless for those at the bronze rank since the bronze rank was dedicated entirely to training the body and Qi didn't play a role in it, and even the breakthrough properties could not strengthen the body at all.

In this way, only healing pills of high quality that released their energy slowly and consistently were useful for those below the silver rank unless they were trying to break through to the silver rank.

But the cost of using healing pills to increase the strength of the body while at the bronze rank was ridiculous, so almost no one used this method, and even the city master's son did not have the ability to use this method since it was just so ridiculously expensive. This was why he was still stuck at the bronze rank despite his high position in the city and his access to resources.

As for resources that could strengthen the body, they were rare, but not to the point where they were unfindable.

They were rarer than normal resources, but the energy contained in them was too strong, so anyone under the silver rank would likely be hurt by the energy instead of gaining anything out of it since it was dangerous.

The city master's son had tried body strengthening resources before, but he was just injured by them instead of the effect that he wanted.

As Su Tao took out the water moon lotus, he took it and put it into his mouth before chewing and swallowing it. He cringed a bit from the weird sensation of eating a flower, but he still ate it nonetheless. After all, this was how you absorbed the energy the in the most efficient way.

Instantly he felt a cool stream of energy enter into his body, and it brought with it a dominating wave of Qi, which spread through his body in an instant. Luckily, Su Tao was able to slow the spread of this energy with the help of the black blood, and he stopped it from going to the bottleneck to the silver rank.

If he let all that Qi go directly to the bottleneck, it would certainly break due to the fact that this resource was useful even for those at the two star silver rank, let alone him who wasn't even at the silver rank yet. The Qi contained within it was something that even the amount of Qi he could summon couldn't compare to.

But if the resource was purely Qi and nothing else, it would be useless for reasons previously stated, which means that there was another power contained within it that Su Tao *could* use. This was the power of the water moon lotus - a cultivation resource - itself, and it was a calm cool stream of power that was not Qi. This stream was like a stream of cold water, and it cooled down his body and seeped into it, going towards the bottleneck.

Unlike the Qi, Su Tao did not stop this power from going to the bottleneck, and he allowed it to seep into it. As soon as it did, he could feel the bottleneck start to lightly dissolve, and it also started to get slightly weaker.

This time it was not getting weaker due to cracking, but rather, it was an effect of the water moon lotus, and it would help him to break through. It was controlled, and it would not effect him at all in the future.

As soon as he felt this energy enter into his body, he started to allow a small portion of the Qi from the water moon lotus enter into the bottleneck to the silver rank, and it instantly started to grind down many times faster than before. The difference was that this time, it did not break the bottleneck at all, and he could go at full speed while cultivating.

As such, he was able to use the full speed of his talent due to the effect of the water moon lotus. The difference was that due to the immense amount of Qi contained within the water moon lotus, he did not have to actively summon Qi, and instead, he actually had to restrain most of the Qi that was streaming through his body in order to not exceed the limit of the effect from the water moon lotus.

This meant that a lot of the energy was being wasted, and he was annoyed by that, but there was nothing he could do since his level was just too low. Of course, normally he would sell the water moon lotus since he could not possibly use it to it's maximum potential, but he now hated the City of Silver Sparrow, and he would not do anything that could possibly help it from now on, let alone sell a valuable resource to it. On top of that, he would be endangering himself anyway.

As the energy from the water moon lotus flowed into his bottleneck to the silver rank, he could feel it be ground away quickly and without damage. The speed of it being ground was even slightly faster than the limit of his talent, which was comparable to the city master's daughter. If his body wasn't restricted by its natural potential in the first place, the effect would be even stronger, and it would be several times as fast.

This meant that, if he was not restricted by his body's original potential, then he would be able to absorb several times as much energy and he would be able to break through even faster. If this was the case, he would probably be able to break through about 5% of the bottleneck in only a single day, which would be five times the speed of his body's talent.

Of course, Su Tao was happy just being able to cultivate at the speed of his talent, rather than the limited speed of his potential. This meant that for as long as the water moon lotus lasted for, he would be able to cultivate at a speed of approximately 1% per day, which was ten times as fast as before. Of course, this effect was limited for how long it would last, and it was different every time.

The effect could last anywhere from a couple hours to a whole day, and it simply depended on how fast you could absorb the energy contained within the lotus.

With the amount of Qi contained in the water moon lotus, most people at the three star bronze rank would not be able to handle the amount of energy and they would damage their source of cultivation; the dantian, or their lifeforce itself, with some extreme cases having the person just directly die or something similar from the overwhelming amount of Qi pushing their body past what it could handle.

However, what was unique about resources was that they could allow someone to use this extreme amount of Qi without hurting them, which was why Su Tao dared to use this resource.

On top of that, Su Tao had the black blood to rely on, as well as the fact that he had already experienced what his body could take in terms of Qi intake without permanent damage, otherwise he wouldn't dare to use the water moon lotus even if he was twice as daring.

As for others at the three star bronze rank, they would not be able to escape dying or being injured from the overwhelming amount of Qi contained within the water moon lotus, even with the effect that cultivation resources had that allowed them to absorb this power.

This was because, even though Su Tao's body's potential was not high, this was only in comparison to the rest of his aspects, which were all top-tier. His body's potential was actually only a little weaker than someone like Su Xue, but his talent was many times stronger than hers, allowing him to catch up and even surpass the difference between their potential.

As such, with the help of the water moon lotus, Su Tao's speed of progress managed to catch up to the full speed of his talent, which was half as fast as the city master's daughter. Of course, because of the immense amount of Qi contained within the water moon lotus, Su Tao did not need to summon any Qi to cultivate right now since more than the maximum amount he could use was already flowing through his body.

As he let this power spread through his bottleneck and grind it down, the speed had increased to the speed of his talent; about 1% a day. As he cultivated in the tree, he allowed the immense Qi contained within the water moon lotus to grind down the bottleneck with the help of the water moon lotus' resource effect. This speed would be enough to make the whole city jealous even if it was with the help of resources.

In fact, the speed that he had even without the help of the water moon lotus was still enough to make the top two families jealous because it was only a bit slower, if at all, than their top super geniuses.

The only reason that Su Tao felt his speed was slow at all was because he could be just so much faster if his potential wasn't dragging him down. Otherwise, he would only be a bit slower than the city master's daughter, the top genius in the city and the entire surrounding area, without even using any resources.

(I know that this doesn't really seem like it lines up, but it actually does. Comment on this paragraph if you have any questions)

He was overjoyed as he felt the bottleneck break so quickly, and he quickly tried to absorb this energy as best as he could.

But he suddenly had a thought. Instead of just using this energy to help break through the bottleneck to the silver rank, why not let the black blood absorb some of it? After all, he could not use all of this energy and some of it would be wasted anyway.

As he had this thought, he allowed some of the unused energy to merge into the black blood that was spread through his body. But weirdly enough, he felt no change whatsoever after it merged into the blood. It was as if the energy had simply vanished into thin air.

After doing this a few more times, he realized that the energy was not just vanishing into thin air, but rather, it was being dissolved by the black blood. He found this weird, but he ignored it since this meant he could use the black blood to dissolve Qi in case he ever unknowingly ate a resource that had far too much Qi in it.

After all, right now, all he could do was suppress the excess Qi in his body right now, and he would use it later rather than let it overrun his body right this second. He felt that the only reason he was able to suppress the Qi in his body right now was also due to the black blood, otherwise he wouldn't dare to use the water moon lotus.

As the Qi was just dissolved by the black blood the moment it came into contact with it, Su Tao just let it be since he didn't want to waste any more of the power from the water moon lotus.

The power from the lotus ended up lasting for the whole morning until night, and by the time it ended, Su Tao managed to break through about 1% of the bottleneck, which was equivalent to his speed if he cultivated not worrying about breaking the bottleneck. He was extremely satisfied with this progress, and adding on the fact that he had not stopped cultivating even when he had gone searching for resources for a week, he was now about 11.7% through the barrier to the silver rank.

The water moon lotus was rare, and its energy did not disappoint him. The amount that it let people break through was about the same for each person, and it would always break through about 1% of the barrier to the one star silver rank, and at the very most about 0.5% of the barrier to the second silver star. This could show its value, because it would only take so many of these treasures before you could break through to the next rank.

These resources were not ridiculously rare, but the demand for them was extremely high, making it almost impossible for someone to gather all one hundred resources required to break through to the one star silver rank or the two hundred for the second silver star.

This was why only one in ten people were able to break through to the silver rank, while only one in a hundred of those people were able to break through to the second silver star. It was extremely slow to break through without resources, and barely anyone had the talent and potential to do so, so everyone used resources to speed up the process.

If one had good enough access to high quality resources, it did not matter how bad their talent or potential were as long as they could reach the peak of the third bronze star on their own. This meant that someone like the young master would be able to get stronger easily with barely any work and they could just ignore the effects of the shaky foundation since they had bad talent and potential in the first place, not allowing a stable foundation anyways.

But for those that had true talent and potential like the city master's daughter, she only used resources enough to increase her speed but not nearly enough to shake her foundation. This meant that if she were to essentially sacrifice her foundation, she would probably be able to reach most of the way to the third silver star by now, which would be ridiculously fast.

But this would limit her to at most the one star gold rank in the future instead of her current potential which was enough to reach two gold stars and maybe even the third gold star if she was incredibly lucky.

As such, there was really no option when it came down to it, so she went with the slower option that was like the popular saying, slow and steady wins the race. If she went slowly and built up a solid foundation, she would have much higher achievements in the future than if she went fast and ruined her potential.

But this did not mean that it was simply a matter of finding one hundred or two hundred resources to break through. You also had to take into account the element of the resources, and although it did not matter quite as much while breaking through to the first silver star, it would help if they were all of the same element since it would make you stronger once you broke through.

On top of that, these high quality resources were all hard to come by and were not something that showed up often, meaning that people usually used lower quality resources like the other ones that Su Tao had found.

As for the second silver star, the element had to be the same as the element of your inner energy, otherwise it would simply cause many issues and would instead hurt you due to the clashing of energies.

You could use the resources of breaking through to the one star silver rank to determine the element that you would get for your inner energy, and this was the only way to do so. Otherwise your inner energy would be without an element or attribute, and it would not be very strong. You could add an element to it fairly easily, but it wouldn't be as strong as breaking through with that element.

You could also change the element of your inner energy after you already broke through to the silver rank, but this would take a long time and a lot of energy, not allowing you to cultivate at all or do anything with your inner energy in the process.

In other words, your inner energy was volatile and would exhaust you if you used it while changing the elements contained within it. Of course, you could combine elements, but this was the path of the top elites and not something that normal people could think about.

Su Tao had chosen to go down the path of water at first since it would suit his left eye. He figured that, above all else, he should have survivability, otherwise absolute power meant nothing if you couldn't survive.

It was also easier to find resources with the water element anyway since it was just more common than resources with the element of something like lightning which suited his right eye. In fact, lightning resources were extremely rare and possibly one of the rarest.

As for the black blood that came from his black heart, he had no clue what element it could be or what would suit it, so he just decided to go with water since it had immediate advantages that Su Tao could utilize.

One such advantage was that water focused on defense and healing, which suited his left eye, which meant that its power would increase if his inner energy was of this element. Of course, this was only his theory since he had never heard of anything like his eyes and he had nothing to base it off of.

Su Tao then took out some more water element resources that he had found and started to cultivate with them.

He had found some resources of other elements, but he did not use them since they were not of the element that he wanted his inner energy to have. These resources increased his speed, but not nearly as much as the water moon lotus.

Another three weeks passed in a flash, and he finally ran out of resources of the water element. He had reached a progress point of about 15.9%, which was faster than before by about double.

But Su Tao did not plan to continue to solely use resources to increase his speed since it was well known that it was not good to use resources constantly since it would make your foundation unstable.

However, most people just ignored this since it would take far too long otherwise and they didn't have much hope of reaching higher ranks anyway.

After all, unless it was a special resource like the water moon lotus, the effect of each plant was relative to the talent and potential of the user, and it would at most double their speed, which was what had happened for Su Tao.

For others, they had to use massive amounts of these resources to make even the tiniest bit of progress, and it would be considered fast if they could get 0.02% of the bottleneck ground down in one day, showing just how slow it was. In comparison, Su Tao's 0.2% every day was ten times as fast, and even just his normal speed without resources of 0.1% was still five times as fast as others using resources.

And this was under the basis that those people already were talented and that they were good on their own. Normal people would be even slower than that. Of course, this was under the scaling of the Su family, not something like the two big families or the city master's family. In that case, it would not be nearly as shocking.

(By the way, for those reading, I have a scale that I am going to keep everything to so there are no inconsistencies. It goes for the eight small families and the big two on two separate scales. I don't feel like doing the math for time using and not using resources, so I just put in a general number of 0.02% as a way to show the average spread out with *and* without resources over the time they use to break through.)

Suddenly, as Su Tao was about to get down after stopping his cultivation, he noticed something in the distance. About a quarter mile away from him was a girl about his age walking towards him. It didn't seem that she knew he was there, but rather she was following something, although he couldn't tell what it was.