Molting the Mortal Coil

Chapter 26: Wandering

Sage felt like he spent hours examining the the Seed of Life inside his spiritual sea before he attempted to return his perception to the physical world. Luckily, he merely had to focus his attention and his senses slipped out of the spiritual sea. With a relieved look around he took a deep breath and tried to check his spiritual sea again. After a few attempts he realized that merely slipping into a meditative state sent his senses into his spiritual sea. So, this definitely would have happened eventually anyway that seed gave me quite a boost.

Not sure what exactly the Seed of Life could do besides increasing his spirit power, Sage also had no idea to even take it back out of his body. Checking the small cavern over to make sure nothing else was left Sage called back the bees in the room and returned to the surface. Riding back to the surface in the Silverbee Queen he made another sweep of the area for treasures and picked up a few low ranked plants, adding them to the collection in his ring. Experimenting with the properties of the storage ring, Sage found out that he could move things into the empty air and they would simply float in place, letting him use the full area of the ring instead of just floor space. Is it a lack of gravity or has time stopped?

Years passed.

Sage lived the life of a wanderer. Traveling every day and training every night. Even as he reached the area that he considered safe from the Fu Clan he had no reason to stop. He took more than a few escort jobs protecting caravans and ran into more than a few life threatening situations along the way. He made a few acquaintances, but no friends. Since he didnt want to even slow down until he was at least three provinces away it made it hard to connect with anyone. Even worse, he started to form trust issues.

After the incident that took his hand, Sage had a couple other serious wounds and half of them were caused by betrayal. The second came when he was traveling alone between towns and found another lone traveler. The man seemed amiable, naming himself as Sun Heng and Sage agreed that it would be safer to travel in a group. Later that night, Sage was awakened by the sharp pain of a blade stabbing into his side. Sun Heng had tried to kill and rob him and if Sage didnt have the Insect Immortal Index he would have died. The Silverbees ended the would be bandit and Sage found that he lucked out and that initial stab missed the vital organ it was aiming for.

The third betrayal came while guarding a merchant caravan. Despite having hired a crew of Black Dog Company guards, the caravan was a ruse. Instead of needing protection for traveling civilians or transporting goods, the caravan was a trap. Thinking they had reached their destination, the many hired guards had all let down their defenses and found no fault with sitting down for celebratory drinks with the caravan master. It was then that the poison in their wine set in and a horde of monsters attacked. The caravan master was actually an evil cultivator who hired the caravan guards to use as food for his Spirit Animal pets. Feeding the qi rich warriors to his purple blooded grey wolves, the beasts grew in power. Sage was only barely able to escape due to the help of his Silverbees, the stinging bees clearing him a path as he rode inside the queen to slip away in the chaos.

The fourth time was even less expected. Sage thought he was saving a young woman from rapacious bandits only to be stabbed in the back again by the woman who was never actually a victim. Only after he was taking a literal knife in the back did he realize that hed heard of such things happening in books or watched it in movies. As with the other times, he was saved by his silverbees swarming the woman and the pair of bandit accomplices to death. It was at this point that Sage decided to no longer trust any strangers, guarding his emotions and keeping disconnected from everyone he met. His other near deaths came from frontal conflicts with bandits or different types of monsters, but they nonetheless put him even more on guard.

Sage had his twentieth birthday all alone on the side of a road. He had only reached the fifth stage of Qi Condensation after all these years. Those things hed been told as a child seemed to be true. He had only middling talent and the years of travel left little time for focused training. With no home or foundation there was no way for him train or cultivate in peace. Even after he left the Dou Kingdom and passed into the Shihu Kingdom, Sage found it hard to relax. He felt like hed become a wounded beast. Other people were more likely to be enemies than to be friends. Anytime he tried to open up to a stranger he was either ignored or betrayed and eventually he stopped trying.

Within the Beast Bag he ran many experiments with the Insect Immortal Index. With his own strength being so abysmal he focused on the insects that had saved him time and again. Creating many different mutations and permutations in an attempt to make them more powerful. No matter what he tried though, the Silverbees would lose their miraculous properties as soon as he changed even the smallest things about them. The honey the mutated silverbees created was never moon honey. Some of the varieties had interesting flavors and he kept a few hives and collected the honey to sell.

For some reason Sage stuck stubbornly to that first decision of his escape. He wouldnt stop until he found somewhere interesting that made him stick around. In the meantime, he continued to travel. Wandering the world and passing through another couple Kingdoms. In time, he even forgot how far away his hometown was. Hed become a professional caravan guard, joining different protection companies with every Kingdom he entered. The Four Major Businesses of the Dou Kingdom seemed to have similar counterparts in other Kingdoms and Sage had joined up with two other groups that were the equivalent of the Black Dog Company.

Hed also traded for many different martial techniques, qi techniques, and even a couple qi cultivation arts. Sage had tried out several of them and hoped that if he could find just the right technique he would improve rapidly, but was distraught to find he showed no talent with those either. He tried a few other weapons and trained matching skills, again the same result.

Is this all I will ever be? I have to make a change.

Discouraged at the lack of progress, Sage broke up his harsh travel with focused training. After finishing a job hed stay in a town for a few months and do nothing but cultivate before taking a job and traveling to a new town. He never went to the same town twice, making sure to always take a job that would let him see somewhere new. Would he ever find the place that could stir his heart and urge him to put down roots?

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