The Cosplay Cultivator

The squad of four got several missions after they had returned, though these were usually simple tasks.

Tang Ze continued to try to meditate every single day - but it looked like frustratingly, he was still nowhere closer to breaking through to the first minor realm of Qi Condensation. His dantian was still barely developed, forget about the initial priming of his meridians that had to happen after that in order to advance!

Babies would usually remain in this state for several years, and as an outsider to this world, he had not been given that opportunity at birth.

Still, it shouldn't have taken him years to reach that level. There was a difference in a baby and an adult of course - he should naturally be able to reach that point of maturity much faster. Nearly everyone he asked about this told him the same.

However, even as he was told this, he couldn't but help feel that he was getting nowhere. What if this was like learning a new language - and it was much easier to do when you were younger? What if instead of getting to the initial realm faster than a child, he ended up taking longer - and was stuck like this for twenty or thirty years while everyone else moved way ahead of him?

Everyone told him that it wouldn't be like that, and that he was worrying needlessly. But, still seeds of doubt remained in his mind.

After all, he was the first such person they had seen. So how could they be sure about what was going to happen?

Even worse, what if he just couldn't reach that first minor realm at all? He was transported to this world from Earth, which meant that it was likely his body was still the same as that back on Earth. He looked the exact same before he had died, after all.

What if there was some biological difference between him and the humans of this world? What if that meant that he just couldn't cultivate? It had been a miracle that he hadn't fallen prey to some disease in this world that the natives were immune to, all things considered.

These seeds of doubt soon sprouted into a garden of weeds in his mind.

He kept working on the one thing he was somewhat good at which was making costumes - and by now had absorbed enough passive strength from a very strong character he knew, such that his physical abilities were now nearly on par with a Golden Core cultivator, even if he wasn't wearing a costume.

That was just how strong this character was in question - someone who was said to have the strength to break planets with ease, meaning even a fraction of a percent was still a huge boost to his strength. It would take him thirteen hundred years to fully absorb all the power from that character, but even fractions of fractions of a percent were of enormous help to him in the strength department.

If Tang Ru had tried to fight him now, there was no way that he would lose to her! Fighting someone like Elder He Xuan was another story altogether, though.

He also had several costumes made which didn't have very helpful abilities ordinarily, but which he kept in case they might be useful in a certain specific situation.

Unfortunately, he couldn't swap clothes in the middle of a fight - and usually there wouldn't be an opportunity to find a place to change in the middle of one either.

That got him thinking of other abilities that he would like to have. The issue was that they were not the good when it came to just having fractions of them, and so the best results would be if he could advance his cultivation so that he could have some form of resistance against most attacks that didn't involve physical strength.

He also couldn't really think of a costume to counter every single strange technique some Golden Core and nearly all Nascent Soul cultivators had, but by advancing in cultivation, such attacks would be less likely to affect him.

"Ah, looks like our luck has run out a bit," Zhang Long said one day, seeing what their next assignment was.

"Is it a tough one?"

"Not really that tough - but something that's going to be pretty annoying to deal with," Zhang Long said, sighing. "And more sad than even annoying honestly. Oh - but you just joined recently, didn't you Tang Ze? So you wouldn't know about this, but this job is to help take care of the sect's celestial beast for a day."

"Really?" Tang Ze said, a bit excited to see a phoenix in person. He had wanted to do so ever since he had joined.

And it turned out that he would keep wanting to see one even after the task was done, because this was certainly no phoenix.

"Zhang Long?" Tang Ze asked.

"Yes?"

"Why is our celestial beast a giant dog?" Tang Ze asked. It wasn't technically just a giant dog, it was a Komainu, a creature whose statues would usually serve as guardians to either temples or shrines back on Earth, and was actually a hybrid between a lion and a dog rather than just a dog. It was the size of a large truck, and had sharp fangs that protruded from its mouth. It was a living creature and not made of stone like the statues back on Earth - its fur was a striking bright blue color that stood out in the sunlight.

The others could sense a good amount of Qi from it, though Tang Ze couldn't.

"What else did you expect?" Zhang Long asked.

"I don't know - maybe a phoenix?!" Tang Ze snorted.

"Ha, phoenixes are way too powerful to be made pets of like this," Chen Yu said, as if this should have been obvious.

"So, why are we called the Rising Phoenix Sect again?" Tang Ze asked, feeling that someone had told him this at one point, but he couldn't remember what the answer was.

"The sect's founder was lost in a mountain range for days when he was a young child, and was starving and could not find his way out," Yin Tiang began. "Though, as he lost hope one night, a blazing inferno suddenly shot out of the earth, and he was able to follow its trail to a nearby village. Since then, he revered phoenixes, and hence our name."

Taking care of the celestial beast mainly involved scrubbing it clean - thankfully it was more cooperative than a regular dog in that regard. Feeding it wasn't too hard either, but Tang Ze couldn't tell what the 'sad' part was.

"Ah, there's something wrong with it," Zhang Long said when Tang Ze asked. "A lot of healers came to take a look at it, but they couldn't find anything wrong with him he just... isn't as he should be."

Tang Ze thought he could see a glimmer of sadness in the Komainu's eyes, though that could have very well just been his own sadness being reflected back at him. That was what he had thought initially, but no, for whatever reason, it was no long as active as it had once been.

Taking care of it was not really that hard, Zhang Long was right about that - but there was still something... off about it. It was not behaving like an animal should, and despite the effort of many people including the top veterinarians in the Raswatian Empire, no one could find anything wrong with it.

"Time to take it on a walk then," Yin Tiang said.

It bounded up happily at this, suddenly perking up, and Tang Ze launched forward.

With his new physical prowess, he could easily outstrip the other three. He hadn't actually been meaning too, but when the Komainu came bounding right behind him, tail wagging, he couldn't help trying to go even faster. He was egged on by the Komainu's joyful expression as it panted behind his heals.

This Komainu was said to have the powers almost equivalent to a Golden Core cultivator - though older members of its species could even reach strength that rivaled the initial minor realms of the Eternal Soul realm.

As such, it had no trouble keeping up with Tang Ze. And Tang Ze, for that matter, didn't mind running around at full speed. After all, most of the time, he had to restrain his physical capabilities, didn't he?

But now, out in the open field, he could run and jump as much as he wanted. He could clear most houses back home with a single leap, and could easily outpace a car.

In such a situation, who wouldn't want to go all out once in a while to relieve some stress?

Granted, he wanted to be sure that he wasn't tiring out the Komainu, but that didn't seem to happen.

He leapt over fields, charging towards the sky, and left large clouds of dust wherever he went.

"Hey! Tang Ze, wait up!" Zhang Long called out after him.

"Didn't you remember that we can't keep up with you?" Yin Tiang called out.

"Come back!" Chen Yu shouted out.

However, Tang Ze couldn't hear them anymore, and there was nothing the three of them could do other than watch and hope that Tang Ze didn't drift too far.

Tang Ze, for his part, was having the time of his life!

To finally be able to move unrestrained like this - to feel the wind whipping through his hair as he moved at speeds he couldn't have fathomed before back on Earth, all the while the Komainu kept following him, keeping pace with him, tail wagging frantically a new spark in its eyes.

After about ten minutes like this, Tang Ze took a pause. He had been worried he was tiring it out, but from the glint in its eyes - he got the feeling that it wanted to run around even more!

"You up for more boy?" Tang Ze asked. It let out a noise which he took to mean as 'yes.'

"Then let's run until both of us collapse!"

An hour later, the two of them ended up back where they had started.

Tang Ze had worked up quite a sweat from their excursion, though his smile fell a little as he saw the other members of his squad glaring at him.

However, their expressions changed as they glanced at how the Komainu was doing.

It had a new radiant sheen to its skin and fur, and the Qi around it had bolstered by quite a bit.

Many people had wondered what it was that was 'wrong' with the Komainu, and had been unable to reach an answer regarding the same.

The answer was that there was nothing really 'wrong' with it, so they had been unable to find anything to fix. Because there was nothing physically wrong with it- but sometimes, the answer was much simpler than what people realized. The Komainu required a large amount of exercise to stay fit - else, it wound up feeling like it had excess pent up energy within it. It was like a lot of dog species that needed abundant exercise in that way.

This had become an issue in the first place because of two factors.

One, only Qi Refinement stage and below cultivators took care of it. There were not enough Golden Core cultivators in the sect to be free to walk it around, and those would be the only ones who could keep up with its physical abilities.

Two, it had been raised since it was a pup within the sect, as such, it felt it could not run around on its own without having some of the sect members accompany it.

If it had been a wild animal, it would not care for such and run around unburdened and freely on its lonesome when given the chance. However, as a domesticated celestial beast which was still a young child at its age by the standard of its species, it could only feel reassured when there were humans by it.

If it didn't have humans accompanying it, it would start to feel very lonely and unsafe, like a toddler without its parents.

Tang Ze had been the perfect person to take care of both of these problems.