Chapter 166: Chapter 166: First Grand Elder

Confused about its effect, Fengyu thought about it and asked Zimu, who instead asked him whether he felt anything different mentally.

After a moment of trying out to sense a different sensation, Fengyu realised that there was none.

Yet Zimu told him that he could virtually see the peaceful aura in the space around him gathering, slowly forming duck-waterfowl symbols in the area around him.

"Quack, your aura... it feels a lot more comfortable, combined with your natural peacefulness, it makes me want to stay with you all the time!" Zimu said as he looked at Fengyu.

"Well..." Fengyu didn’t know what to say, as he himself couldn’t feel it yet. He could only hope that with the passage of time, he would be able to feel the aura.

At that point in time, he should be able to understand his own ability.

The wisps of cultivation in his dantian rushed to the largest bowl, filling the whole foundation. Looking at it, he was very close to the eight stage, his progression having become extremely rapid now that he had 50 ducks each laying so many eggs every day!

Looking at it this way, he had finally achieved the level of what a cultivator with high talent should have - 8% cultivation yearly!

With this, he’d have achieved the full 100% in at most twelve and a half years. How crazy was that?

Looking over it several times, this was a moment, a moment among many yet standing out on its own, where he felt a sense of accomplishment.

The past two years were incredibly difficult as he slowly got used to the even busier city, so only now did he really have a sense of having achieved something in all the time he spent here.

"Alright, let’s do the next few!" Fengyu said right away and walked out of his hut, where he saw a line of ducks watching with hope and worry.

"Haha, you guys! I told you to just relax, it’s nothing serious!"

"Quack, quack quack!"

"Quack quack!"

"Quack quack quack?"

Mother Duck looked at her children and quacked at them to slow down with their quacks, then she turned to Fengyu and asked, "Quack, has it been successful?"

"It has, my cultivation has transformed and I contracted Zimu right away. I awakened a new inspiration... well, it’s a bit weird, so I will explain it later. For now, I wanted to contract all of you together!"

"Quack, then don’t wait and do it right away!" Mother Duck seemed to rush him while glaring to her children, telling them to become quiet.

Fengyu agreed and used his mind to enter his dantian, information of his contract appearing in front of him. Now he had completed one, so he gained more information. It was weird how everything was revealed sequenced, as if trying to teach him cause and consequence...

The note at the end of the newly revealed Grand Elder was, "Only for extremely important members of the herd, second only to the leader!"

’Hmm... which one is second only to the leader?’ Fengyu thought about it. Technically, every one of his ducks were important in that way.

But since Zimu was rather uninterested in leadership... well, leadership of his clan, he somehow had interest in establishing a cult... anyways, since that was the case, he should choose one of the other ducks for this important position. He also decided not to give all three positions away, since they were the only ones with a limit, while the others were open.

’Those with real leadership roles and positions are Mother Duck and Spring Rain. But, thinking about it, I feel that while Spring Rain does the job well, he’s too busy to do it. On the other hand, Mother Duck mostly gathers and saves her energy and is only absent for a few months in ten years, which is a peak situation for such an important position.

In that case, let’s take her!’ he no longer hesitated and willed his contract -

Instantly, the third largest bowl in his dantian, or rather, the smallest bowl that he could see and probably the second smallest in total, glowed in bright colours. 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝕨𝕖𝗯𝚗𝚘𝕧𝕖𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝕞

A third of it suddenly cut off, yet Fengyu felt no pain nor any drop in his spiritual power... only a short sense of loss.

This third flew out of his dantian and appeared outside, flying right to Mother Duck and hovering in front of her for a moment.

It slowly melted down from a bowl part to a small pellet.

"Eat it," Fengyu told her.

Mother duck complied and opened her bill, and the pellet flew right in.

Just as she was confused about what to do, she suddenly felt a surge of spiritual power being sucked from the outside!

Fengyu saw this directly used his Spiritual Absorption Spell while telling Spirit Circle to use the Spirit Gathering Spell!

The combination of gathering and absorbing aided the pellet in its absorption -

As Fengyu looked at it, he saw that the pellet expanded from an initial pill-sized sphere to a... core?

"Beast Core!" Fengyu suddenly exclaimed when he saw it. A beast core! how was this possible?

Only beasts of the third stage could cultivate a Beast Core! Unlike the Spirit Core of humans, the Beast Core was an essential tool of beasts that started growing from a small pellet in the first stage, to a small marble, and finally to a fully fledged core!

The core reason why beasts couldn’t do many things humans found easy was because... this core was their dantian!

Beasts’ bodies are complete upon their birth, and their three dantians aren’t split like that of humans. Instead, they are already a combined entity, so deeply fused into their body that they can only slowly form it over time. Once formed, it has an immense advantage over other beasts -

The most important being that from then on, the bloodline shackles can only hold them back, no longer fully blocking their path!

A turtle, even with third stage bloodline, can become a fourth stage beast after ten thousand years of quiet cultivation!

This cultivation wasn’t one where you would turn into a wild beast, but it was a legitimate way of cultivation!

And now... Mother Duck had a core?!