[Last Emperor] Chapter 12 - New Found Power (Patreon)

Tao Zi woke up with the largest migraine he ever experienced in his life. Everything part of his brain hurt. It took what felt like ages and eons before the pain began to recede away. Disappearing from wherever it had come from. 

He groaned as rolled over in his bed. Wrapping the blanket tighter around his legs. The heat almost escaped into the dark void of darkness that was the outside world. Tao Zi was lucky he caught himself. Doing his best to return to sleep. The sect elders could jump off a cliff for all he cared. None of them would be capable of dragging him into meditating or cultivating. 

Then again, he was pretty helpless if a foundation establishment level cultivator wanted to do him harm—

Something jumped on him. 

Purring and vibrating rumbled pleasantly on his side. Kneading him. Claws digging deeper than they should.

Tao Zi jumped. Shouting as a nail got stuck, hooked, and Tiger pulled with all the fury of a terrified cat trying to escape certain death. It yelped and let out an unholy sound that broke Tao Zi out of whatever trance he had been in. Clearing his head and eyes as well. 

He looked around. Eyes taking in the dreary scene of dark gray stone colors and lacking amounts of light. Rays of the sun only entering from the blocked cave entrance and nowhere else. He looked down at himself. Staring at the cat bed he received a couple days ago. The cat themed blankets with felines that suspiciously looked too familiar to Tiger.

Lastly, to Tiger. The cat had transitioned into liking its belly and anus. Forgetting the fright it had just gone through just a moment ago. 

All his memories seemed to return to him at once. The system he had been given and all the workouts he had been doing to optimize his growth. Ambushing the first party of chimps, taking out the sickly and old one, and finally being hounded by Zarfu. The towering, hulking, indefatigable, mass of muscle and a giant axe.

Finally, what happened right before he clicked to break through to the next stage. 

He pulled out his status page quickly. This was his first true level up from the system. Visible proof that he changed somehow, drastically actually. In such a short amount of time as well. He couldn’t help the skepticism and doubt that remained in the back of his head, tainting all his thoughts. 

Now he could soothe all of those worries of this being nothing more than a prank or trick. Or him stuck in a coma. Continuity was the greatest test supposedly. Nothing should make mathematical sense if he was hallucinating. 

Status - 

User A009328s815hh8: Tao Zi

Clan Affiliation -

Error… Banished from Sect/Clan

Cultivation -

Qi Initiate Stage 5

Cultivation Progress - 

▰▱▱▱▱▱▱▱▱▱▱▱▱▱▱ 9%

Body Cultivation -

Body Tempering Initiate Stage 4

▰▰▱▱▱▱▱▱▱▱▱▱▱▱▱ 17%

Dao - 

Unfounded

Domain - 

Locked and Unfounded

Spirit -

Un-Solidified Intent/Spirit Connection

General Tips and Hints:

Keep fighting and risking your life. The rewards are always better. 

It was real. All of it. The danger and rewards. 

Tao Zi started to laugh. He stopped himself from falling over as it got worse and worse. His stomach and face began to hurt him. Unable to stop it or control it at all. He had leveled up from stage 4 to stage 5 of Qi cultivation within three to four days! Even his body cultivation went up a level too!

It was unheard of for someone to grow this quickly. It still took years even for the biggest geniuses all the clans and sects paraded around like trophies. An average person like him couldn’t hope for anything like this in their wildest dreams. 

Now it was reality. 

His other senses started to return to him one by one. The dull thrum in his ears vanished and his hearing cleared. Tiger was insistently crying a few steps away, giving Tao Zi a bit of distance after being thrown across the cave by mistake. 

Tao Zi got up. The poor cat hadn’t had a morsel to eat ever since he had stepped out to hunt the day before. His expectation was to go kill a chimp or two, grab roots or another source of food and return within an hour tops. Not the harrying chase he experienced or leveling up without thinking it thoroughly in the fugue state he had been in until he popped the rank 2 medicine pill.

He made his way to the food bowl. Filling it up and stepping out of the way for Tiger to eat. It stopped in front of the bowl and turned to him staring. It yelled at him and slapped the ground. 

“Alright, alright. I’ll back up, don’t hold a grudge—”

His sense of smell returned and he quickly learned why Tiger was demanding he give it space to eat. Preferably all the way on the other side of the cave. Tao Zi turned to look at his bed in dismay. How had he not noticed the crusted black sludge he had been laying in.

Tao Zi threw his clothes off, the insides were nauseating at best. Unimaginable horrors at worst.  

Stripping naked was the least of his worries. He had no soap. No loofah or sponge to scrub himself with. Forced to use nothing but leaves and rocks that he had access to inside of the cave. The cat bowl was requisitioned for some time as well, much to Tiger’s dismay. But it had a purpose to serve and it was to shower him. 

He had no other choice but to get to work. No matter how disgusted he was with everything that turned sloppy and mush at the touch of water. Tao Zi puked a few times, unable to help it. He had heard and read enough stories to know this had to do with his body cultivation. 

Impurities that built up in him. 

All of his time lazing and procrastinating was before him now. In the form of whatever this was supposed to be. 

It took him multiple hours and multiple showers just to get off the last layer of the filth. Another couple to get the stench off his body. Tiger had been forced to be his guinea pig and test to see if he still stank. Forced to sniff his arms and legs until Tao Zi passed its scrutiny. 

Who knew cats were such brutal inspectors. Refusing to let him pass to a smell he couldn’t quite catch himself. But it could and that was reason enough. The HellHound and other predators in the forest were equipped with stronger senses of smell than he was. Each one would be able to find him, including all the chimps and any orc out there looking for a new sparring partner. 

The final verdict came when it was able to cautiously smell around him without bolting like he had the plague. 

Yet, that didn’t solve another issue he suddenly had. Tao Zi needed to dispose of all the clothing in a manner that would not attract HellHounds like the underwear did. He couldn’t just keep it in his ring… Well he could, but he refused to. 

The bedding, all his clothes that had been on him, and even the bed itself that he was sleeping on. He would have been quite upset at losing such an important piece of his rockery system, but he had been gifted another one soon after he got the first one. Again, shaped in the form of a cute cat. Much to his displeasure. 

One that he would never be found sleeping in outside of this case. 

He shivered at the thought of someone finding him sleeping in such a thing. Hiding under a rock from embarrassment would not be enough. Tao Zi would need to actively look for cliffs to jump off of to wipe his face with. 

So he did what he could. Put the clothes in his spacial ring. Bolted out of the cave and ran as fast as he could to an outcropping of nothing but stone and no vegetation around. 

He threw them out of his ring and set them aflame. Blue fire jumped off his fingers in quantities more than he had expected. Washing the stones and leaving burn marks. Stronger, more potent, and more Qi than he had expected to be available to him. He stared stunned for a moment before he recollected himself, sprinting back towards his cave. 

Tao Zi could already hear the scrambling and snapping of twigs in the forest. He did not even consider looking around. Covering as much space with every stride as possible in hopes nothing caught up to him. Too much ground. 

Struggling to not run into trees was also not in his ill thought out plan. He quickly learned to take some time off between level ups if he planed on doing anything dangerous right after. He was faster, stronger, and physically more in every way. The changes were too pronounced for him to not need a buffer time. 

He came to a slide in front of his cave. Pushing the boulder and almost sending it tumbling down the slight slope of the hill. Barely catching himself. He snuck into the cave and gently pushed the boulder back into place. The difference was just enough to be visibly obvious, though he didn’t suddenly turn into the hulk or superman over knight. But it was tangible progress.

One that he couldn’t help but feel ecstatic about. 

There was so much he could test out. Experiment on. New workouts and even a new regimen of acrobatics too. He trusted his new found power to not land head first into the stone and kill himself instantly.