The situation was extremely awkward as the girl forgot what she had to say. She covered her face with her palms as she got as red as a boiling lobster and angrily shouted at Bai Feng:

"Cover yourself, you damn animal!"

Even though she said that with conviction. She couldn't help but peek between her fingers once at Bai Feng's lower body, Bai Feng became embarrassed, but he couldn't say anything underwater, and he was also running out of air, so he tried to swim up.

The blue-haired girl was quite embarrassed by what happened, so she didn't stop him from swimming up, even though she did want to stop him as he polluted her river.

Bai Feng swam up and took another gulp of air as he sighed and looked down at the water:

"Why would she drag me down? Actually, why can she talk underwater?"

Bai Feng was full of questions, but considering his location, he just took her as a water spirit of some sort that might have been offended by his act of taking a bath in her river. He wondered why didn't Mo Pian tell him about this possible situation.

He was already pretty clean, so he decided to leave the river. Even though he felt something right in his lower body when he had looked at the blue-haired girl, he knew better than to mess with those magical beings.

He jumped out of the formerly crystal clear river only to find Mo Pian waiting for him with a set of clean clothes that he immediately threw to him.

Bai Feng caught the clothes clumsily, almost dropping them into the river. Then he put them on.

He now wore a pair of khaki pants, a white shirt, and sandals which all looked to be of medium to low quality, but it was an upgrade compared to his former greasy clothes.

His hair now stood below his shoulders, and it looked a rather silky smooth after he bathed properly. He lost the hair binder when the girl dragged him underwater, so he couldn't tie it in a ponytail anymore unless he would get another one.

Mo Pian looked him up and down and said:

"Finally, you look like a proper person now instead of a pig, you still have the proportions of one, but you resemble more of a human now."

Bai Feng didn't comment on Mo Pian's words as he asked:

"So, can we eat now?"

Mo Pian shook his head as he said:

"We still have to get the freshest ingredients, first. If anyone comes up to the kitchen to buy food, we need to serve them with fresh food, and for that, we need fresh ingredients. Do you follow me?"

"Follow you where?"

Mo Pian sighed:

"I mean do you understand me?"

Bai Feng nodded and he said:

"So, what type of ingredients do we need?"

"Actually, I will have you split up with me after I give you the location. There are is more than one ingredient that we need to take, and it would save up time if we split up. Both of the ingredients' spots are in the forest but situated in different directions."

Mo Pian pointed towards the south of the forest as he said:

"I will need you to get me some soul mushrooms and some devil jalapenos, along with dirty pears, the mushrooms are blue, the jalapenos are red and have flaming patterns along with devil horns growing out of their side, and the pears are just very brown pears."

"Did you get everything that I said?"

Bai Feng nodded and saluted. He was really eager to taste whatever dish would come out of this combination of crazy special ingredients that he just heard about.

Mo Pian left in the opposite direction as he didn't say what ingredients he would get.

Bai Feng's steps were quick as he made his way into the well-lit forest.

The noise of cicadas and other bugs could be heard coming from all over the forest along with the song of birds and other animal noises that Bai Feng couldn't really identify.

Bai Feng's steps had a spring in them as he made his way through the forest around the trees, looking for the described items.

He looked down, and he found a blue mushroom that grew out of the soil. He tried to remove it using his strength, but he realized that the moment he did so, his hands slipped through the mushroom as if it was only an illusion.

Bai Feng scratched his chin, making the folds roll a bit, then he sighed as he tried to do it once again, only to fail.

"How do I pick this up?"

Mo Pian didn't tell him anything about this. Did he think that he would automatically know how to harvest these mushrooms?

Bai Feng shook his head, and since he couldn't pick it up, he wouldn't insist on doing it and wasting his time as there were still the devil jalapenos and dirty pears to collect. He would just ask for Mo Pian's help on collecting the soul mushrooms.

The devil jalapenos were quite easy to identify due to their peculiar intense color and the horns that grew out of their side, making them look like small devil heads.

Bai Feng easily found a batch of those that he tried to pick up. Only to feel an immense heat journey through the hand that he used to pick one up.

If he didn't let go of it, his hand would have melted, leaving only his skeleton behind.

Bai Feng swore under his breath as he glared at the offending spicy vegetable. Since he couldn't pick this up either, he could only go ahead and try to pick up those dirty pears.

This time Bai Feng had to walk for around 20 minutes before he saw a tree that bore those brown pears, they were quite far up, but Bai Feng knew how to climb a tree. He slowly made his way up to the crown, trying to pick up some pears.

The moment he reached the pears, he realized he oversaw the brown owl that was near the pears, camouflaging itself into them.

The owl wasn't that much different from the ones he saw try to pick up his chickens back in the village, so he tried to shoo it away as owls were generally more scared of you than you were scared of them.

However, the owl had a violent reaction as it picked up a dirty pear with his beak and threw it at Bai Feng, hitting him squarely in the head and making the pear explode, covering Bai Feng in its juices and wetting his new clothes, he also started to gag as the dirty pear had a disgusting stench, the smell drifted off from the pieces that broke up and embedded itself into Bai Feng's nose and clothes.

Bai Feng's eyes involuntarily started to tear up, and he thought he was hallucinating as the owl looked him directly in the eyes as it gave him a smug look before picking up another dirty pear and practically taunted him with it as it was seemingly ready to fire another attack upon Bai Feng.

Bai Feng was ready to go killer mode on the owl as he became noxious due to the intense smell that was drifting into his nose, but he calmed himself as he slowly made his way down the tree, only to have one more dirty pear thrown on his head, and wetting his newly washed hair, making it sticky and smelly once again.

Bai Feng swore under his breath as the owl made cackling sounds while ruffling his back fathers as it made itself visible to Bai Feng, regardless of its camouflaging ability. It was taunting him!

Bai Feng knew that if the owl could throw pears at him, there was also a high chance it would turn even more violent if he approached it more, so he decided to go back to the river, where he would meet with Mo Pian, and explain to him what happened.

The moment he arrived back at the river, he saw Mo Pian waiting for him while looking at his reflection into the river water. Mo Pian rose an eyebrow as he saw Bai Feng's condition, and seeing his lack of ingredients, made him pop the question:

"What happened to you?"

Bai Feng decided to tell him exactly what happened without missing any of the details, but that made Mo Pian facepalm as he asked:

"You are a newbie? You don't know anything about cultivation? How did you even get onto Shredder's good side?"

Bai Feng wanted to explain but Mo Pian waved his hand and said:

"I don't really wanna know, but I'm quite annoyed that I have to teach you everything from zero."

He then sighed as he looked at Bai Feng and said:

"Go take another bath before I will start to teach you how to harvest those ingredients... I already finished mine, and I can only hope that no one will come to order anything while we are gone."

Bai Feng felt a little bad as he took off his new clothes and walked with them into the river where he started to clean himself and the clothes.

Mo Pian wanted to facepalm again, but then he sighed as he waited for him to finish.

After a while with no further incidents from the river's water spirit, Bai Feng came out and wore wet clothes. Making him look quite comical.

Mo Pian pointed towards him and a little hot gale dried off his clothes as he said:

"I don't sense any Qi from you, which means that I will have to teach you our sect's Qi gathering technique first."

Bai Feng waited for instructions as they both stood near the river.

"The world is full of what we call life energy or Qi for short, everyone lives in Qi filled environments, no matter how small the amount of Qi is. But not everyone can absorb and make use of it."

"For instance, someone who is relatively talented would take around 1 or 2 years to gather enough Qi to be considered a Qi apprentice, the lowest level of Qi cultivators that are known to our sect."

"Someone very talented would take at most 3-5 months to become a Qi apprentice, a prodigy would take 2-3 days, and rumors were circulating in the casino about some super freaks that could take minutes to achieve this level, hours to arrive at the peak of it, and days to break through to the next one."

"Anyways, those are only bedtime stories for us cultivators. There is no way such people exist anymore."

"As for the technique that I'm going to teach you? It's one of the simplest and most efficient that every disciple of our sect learns. Regardless of what position he has in the sect, everyone needs to have the best cultivation of a Qi apprentice- or it would make ourselves look bad in front of our guests."

"Here's the gist of it."

Mo Pian started to explain to Bai Feng the technique as well as he could, making the simplest descriptions to him so he couldn't confuse Bai Feng as a newbie to cultivation.

According to Mo Pian's instructions, Bai Feng closed his eyes and started breathing regularly until it transformed into a certain pattern. His nose twitched as he started to smell something funny. Something that he hadn't been able to up till now but something very familiar that he recognized at first smell.

Bai Feng wondered to himself. Besides the smell, he didn't identify any of the other points that Mo Pian explained to him so he was thinking:

"Is this really Qi? Or what am I smelling here?"