Junior Brother Pays Respect to You: Chapter 17 - Third Tier Cultivation
Chapter 17: Third Tier Cultivation
Qin Zheng had been waiting early outside Qin Su’s small wooden hut.
He had checked the schedule—Qin Su would be cultivating in the Third Tier Room all day today. Now that Qin Zheng had finally advanced to Third Tier himself, of course, he was going to tag along.
At this point, Qin Zheng wanted to spend every possible moment, aside from when he was sleeping, within Qin Su’s line of sight. His goal was to slowly soften the boy’s heart and achieve his own purpose.
When Qin Su stepped out and saw his senior brother, he wasn’t particularly surprised—he had already sensed the other’s presence from inside the room.
Seeing Qin Su appear, Qin Zheng immediately beamed. “Let’s go together.”
Qin Su stared at his senior brother for a while, as if trying to figure out his intentions.
But after pressing his lips together, he said nothing, merely walking past Qin Zheng and taking the lead.
Qin Zheng cheerfully followed, staying silent, shadowing him closely.
The two walked in silence all the way to the entrance of the Third Tier Room.
Just as Qin Su was about to step in, he paused and pulled his foot back.
He turned and looked at Qin Zheng, who had followed him right up to the threshold, ignoring the warning sign outside the door. “Senior Brother, don’t follow me. You can’t go in here.”
After a pause, he added, “I’ll be in there for two days this time.”
Qin Zheng found this awkward junior of his increasingly likable.
Grinning, he stepped right past Qin Su and directly into the Third Tier Room. Once inside, he strolled around proudly.
Qin Su froze, momentarily unable to comprehend what was happening. Then he remembered what Qin Zheng had said yesterday and hurriedly followed him inside.
“How could you have reached Third Tier so quickly?” he asked, confronting Qin Zheng.
Qin Zheng shrugged. “I don’t know. It just happened all of a sudden.”
He then began looking around the place with curiosity—it was his first time here.
The Third Tier Room was somewhat similar to the Second Tier one. Three of the walls were lined with barrier gates.
Each barrier gate led to a corresponding cultivation space.
These gates were labeled as Third Tier Beginner, Third Tier Intermediate, and Third Tier Advanced.
A cultivator could enter the gate matching their level or any below it, but not above.
Qin Zheng smiled at Qin Su. “Junior Brother, what stage are you at?”
“Mid-Third Tier,” Qin Su replied.
“Oh~” Qin Zheng nodded knowingly and declared, “Then I’ll train with you!”
Qin Su muttered, “Only if you can get through that gate.”
He looked up at the cheerfully grinning man in front of him and couldn't help but feel the current Qin Zheng was entirely different from the one who used to bully him.
The contrast was too drastic.
Qin Zheng looked at the gates on the wall. “We’ll find out if I try, right?”
“Finally, a new junior brother?”
Just as Qin Zheng was about to take action, an irritating voice rang out behind them.
Qin Zheng turned and greeted Qin Ke, who had just entered, with a mischievous smile and a wave. “Senior Brother, hello!”
Qin Ke stared at him for a long moment before shouting, “Qin Zheng! How could you possibly be here?!”
“No way! You must’ve used some kind of cultivation-enhancing medicine! I’m going to tell the sect leader!” he said, turning toward the door as if to leave.
Qin Zheng made a silly face at Qin Su, then called out, “Senior Brother~ Don’t bother. If Master hadn’t personally tested my cultivation, even I wouldn’t have known I was Third Tier.”
Qin Ke turned around and glared at Qin Zheng, furious but with no outlet for his anger.
He ended up turning his back and pointedly ignoring him.
Qin Zheng didn’t care. He was only here to stick with Qin Su anyway.
“Can we start now?” Qin Su said. “This mission is a bit harder. We only have two days.”
Hearing Qin Su speak, Qin Ke finally turned around and nodded.
To Qin Zheng’s surprise, his junior brother could actually handle the ever-proud Qin Ke.
That only fanned the flames of Qin Zheng’s determination.
He saw Qin Ke and Qin Su standing together in front of the Third Tier Intermediate barrier gate, apparently about to enter for cultivation. Qin Zheng quickly trotted up to them.
Qin Ke looked at Qin Zheng disdainfully. “Go away. The beginner gate is over there. You don’t meet the level for this one.”
Qin Zheng ignored him, smiling as he stood next to Qin Su. Looking at his junior brother, he said, “You never know until you try, right?” With that, he stepped toward the gate.
As soon as his foot passed through the barrier, his entire body was pulled in and disappeared.
Qin Ke was so angry at the sight, he looked like he wanted to glare a hole through the gate.
When he came to his senses, he found himself in a forest with no sense of direction. The ground beneath his feet was soft and loose, covered in an unknown thickness of fallen leaves. The air was thick with the heavy scent of decaying leaves and rotting wood. All around him were enormous trees, too big for one person to hug, and the canopy above blocked out the sky, casting a gloomy shadow over the forest.
Qin Zheng glanced behind him. The barrier gate was just about a meter away, floating in midair.
Soon, Qin Su and Qin Ke also emerged from the gate.
As soon as Qin Ke landed, he looked at Qin Zheng standing before him, let out a snort, and said nothing more.
Qin Su surveyed their surroundings and said, “This time we only have one type of medicine left. We already searched the outer ring thoroughly last time, so it looks like we’ll have to go deeper into the forest.”
Qin Ke nodded in agreement.
“Eh?” Qin Zheng looked at Qin Su in surprise. “We’re here to gather medicinal herbs? I thought we were cultivating?”
Qin Su glanced at Qin Zheng and said, “Master said this cultivation mission is to find medicinal herbs, so it’s killing two birds with one stone.”
Qin Zheng looked at the ground, where tree roots protruded, but everything else was buried under leaves—he couldn’t even see a single weed. He asked doubtfully, “Are there many medicines in this forest?”
“Not many. But this forest is heavy with demonic energy, so some herbs can only grow here.”
“Oh~” Qin Zheng nodded in understanding.
Qin Su suddenly looked at Qin Zheng and hesitated before instructing, “Although your cultivation level meets the requirement, you haven’t learned enough spells yet, so be careful. There are monsters in this forest.”
With that, he stepped forward into the deeper woods.
Qin Zheng hurried to follow. Watching Qin Su’s back, his eyes narrowed into a slit, and he cheerfully asked, “Junior Brother still cares about me.”
“But why are there monsters here?”
Qin Zheng directed the question to Qin Su, but Qin Ke nearby sneered and said, “No matter how high your cultivation is, you don’t know anything.”
Qin Zheng proudly replied, “I have Junior Brother Qin Su protecting me.”
Qin Ke looked disdainful. “As a senior brother, letting a junior brother protect you? That’s unheard of.”
Qin Zheng impatiently scratched his ear. “Congratulations, you just heard something you never thought you would.”
After the two finished their quarrel, Qin Su slowly began to explain, “The books in the archive mention that originally humans, cultivators, and demons coexisted in this world. But decades ago, the demons tried to annihilate humans and cultivators to take over the world. They failed and were sealed off from the human world by the Mountain God of Yujing Mountain. Many demon souls that died in that battle didn’t manage to return to the demon realm. To prevent them from harming the world, cultivators captured and imprisoned those souls in various places.”
Hearing this, Qin Zheng felt that the decades he spent at Tianque Sect had been wasted—he hadn’t even known about such things.
“Are these monsters’ cultivation levels similar to ours?”
Facing the unknown, Qin Zheng started worrying about his safety, as his current path was drifting far from his past experiences.
Qin Su nodded. “The monsters were divided into different barrier areas based on their cultivation levels by the ancestors, so we can handle the monsters here.”
The three of them stepped quickly through the soft carpet of leaves deeper into the forest.
Gradually, miasma began to appear around them.
Qin Ke warned, “Junior Brother, the miasma will only get heavier inside. It seems we didn’t prepare well enough this time.”
Qin Su stopped and took a small bottle from his pocket, pouring out two black pills and handing them to Qin Ke and Qin Zheng. “These are to counteract the miasma.”
Seeing that Qin Su hadn’t forgotten him, Qin Zheng happily took the pills and swallowed them.
After Qin Su saw that they had taken the medicine, he turned to continue moving forward.
Qin Zheng quickly blocked his way. “You haven’t taken any medicine yet.”
Qin Su glanced coolly at Qin Zheng. “I’m not afraid of the miasma.”
“Ah?” Qin Zheng turned to look at Qin Ke. “Really?”
Qin Ke reluctantly gave a grunt in agreement.
Seeing that Qin Su wasn’t bluffing, Qin Zheng stepped back.
They had only taken a few steps when a figure appeared within the miasma ahead.
Qin Su stopped and whispered, “There can’t be humans in this forest. If there’s someone here, it has to be a monster. If they don’t attack us, we’ll pretend we didn’t see them.”
The three stood quietly as the figure slowly approached through the miasma.
As it got closer, they could make out the shape clearly.
It was a person wearing a tattered cloak, slowly stepping out of the miasma. Judging by the figure, it seemed to be a woman.
She seemed surprised to see humans here and paused, observing the three of them, then continued walking slowly forward.
Confirming that the person had no hostile intent, Qin Su gave the order and the three moved forward.
Qin Zheng suddenly asked curiously, “Have you ever seen a real monster?”
“Wasn’t that just now?”
“I mean their original form.”
“The original form of monsters is just like humans.”
----------
If you like my translation, please support me by buying me a coffee:
0 comments: