The group moved as fast as their pace allowed through the valley. It was not as quick as Yin Hu would have liked, yet it was a compromise he had to make considering the promise he made early on to the girls and Zhong Da. They took stops every single day to cultivate and meditate upon the Greater Dao. Yin Hu would allow them to pause for a few hours during the end of the day before sunset so they could gain as much as they possibly could on their journey in ways that did not directly correlate with cultivation itself.It was a path he needed to explore more thoroughly for both Jun and Shui eventually, his only progression path he considered so far revolved on them cultivating to higher stages.Yin Hu, on the other hand, made sure to take advantage of the stops in their hasty travel to drink tea with his new best friend. He would pull the tree out from his spacial rice bag and set it on the ground to spread and stretch its roots. Then he would offer it a quick meal of the Superior Qi Stone, before finally offering it a cup of tea that it so enjoyed. Yin Hu would sit under its canopy and just relax.He recognized that the white orb of flames that lit up the distant night sky with a subtle, pale glow was not going anywhere.It probably had been there for hundreds, if not longer, of years before his arrival and would remain there hundreds more long after he had gone to it and figured it out. Nothing had affected it so far. He doubted that anyone would be in the area any time soon to mess with it. He hadn’t seen a single person or large living creature except by sheer accident in the case of the warg and Zhong Da and his wife.Both of those incidents resulted in the affected persons joining their little group and adventuring with them.Yin Hu also noticed that the tree no longer attempted to greedily suck at his Qi without permission. Maybe it had learned its lesson while being stuck in the rice bag for so long. He couldn’t help (...)