7 The Terrifying Plan of Elder Zhu and the Nut Experiments (2/2)

Having reached the great circle of Shinsoo Gathering, he naturally knew how to use divine sense and soon he put away his command medallion.

”I have to go, my master requests my presence back at the Affairs Pavilion. I will see you soon Sister Shin, I wish you well.”

Shin Sumi unlocked the gates and looked at the young man leave in a hurry. She had learned so much information that she needed time to fully process it.

One thing was clear though, she had to make progress on her cultivation quickly.

She still hadn't felt even the tiniest ambiant Shinsoo, but the new version of her definitely couldn't quit.

Remembering how easily she had been bullied a few days earlier by Chu Erlong, Shin Sumi decided to spend the whole afternoon cultivating.

”She made fun of me for being a low level disciple. Once I successfully cultivate, with the ressources upgraded by the little nut, my cultivation should advance by leaps and bounds. Then when I go out with my green robes, we will see who will want to follow who.”

Shin Sumi put away the wooden box containing her new robes in the dresser. She picked up a high grade spirit stone from her bag of holding and began her breathing exercises.

***

A few days later, Shin Sumi still had made no progress. No matter how hard she tried and how much she bathed in the Shinsoo enhanced waters of the pond, she still couldn't feel any Shinsoo around her.

She had now used all of her high grade spirit stones supply.

”I still have two more weeks to wait until I can go back to the Cultivation Ressources Pavilion. Even with the best kind of materials, is it really impossible for a mortal without talent to cultivate ?”

She had spent a good amount of time thinking for the last few days, especially about the little nut.

Shin Sumi still had no idea what it was, if it was some kind of fruit or more like an animal.

She wanted to study the nut a little bit more but for some reason it was nowhere to be found. Her wrist was clear and the leaf pattern wasn't showing.

”If only I knew how to call it out...” she thought, but she couldn't find any way other than wait.

She prepared food with the spirit plants that she still had stacked under her bed.

The last recipe she hadn't tried from the newcomer's manual was some kind of soup using the bamboo-like spiritual plant.

In the fields the plant was called Green Arrow Stalk but her version of it was a bit more yellow and almost translucent.

She was cutting the stalk open when a dozen of small pea sized seeds fell out from her hands.

Her spiritual plant was full of seeds !

Not even a second had passed when Shin Sumi's wrist flashed and the leaf pattern appeared.

The little nut appeared instantly, gobbling up the dark seeds.

Using her reflexes without even thinking, Shin Sumi managed to snatch the nut in her palm. With the other hand she carefully cupped the seeds.

The nut was biting her, not too hard but in an imploring manner, as if it really desired to eat all the black peas.

Shin Sumi put all the seeds in the bag of holding before finally releasing the nut on the table.

The nut rolled around for a bit, but there was no seed to be seen anymore so it simply stayed unmoving.

”Now little nut, be patient. Time for some experimenting.”

A strange smile was on Shin Sumi's lips as she was recalling all the tests she had thought about for the past few days.

Now that she had an inkling on how to summon out the nut, the first thing she did was experiment with how to control it.

The first step was obviously understanding how and were the nut went when it touched the leaf pattern on her skin.

Unfortunately, Shin Sumi's knowledge of cultivation and the Immortal world was too shallow.

The only thing she learned was that the nut could only disappear when it was on contact with the leaf pattern.

Wrapping her forearm under a tight piece of her robes, she now was sure that the nut couldn't vanish like it would normally.

It was a really hard to do, mostly because the nut was sentient and although quite low, had a certain level of intelligence.

As soon as it understood that she wanted to keep it away from the leaf symbol, it furiously tried to roll against her skin, wriggling and biting.

***

It took fully two hours for the nut to finally calm down, and Shin Sumi's arms were covered by tiny circular biting marks by then.

Shin Sumi then took out a few black seeds from her bag of holding.

As soon as they were out in the open, the nut started rolling uncontrollably again, doing its best to reach the seeds.

Whenever Shin Sumi would put away the seeds, the nut would move for a bit in incomprehension and then settle still on the table.

As if it was a magnet for valuable resources.

Shin Sumi went out in her courtyard to pick a few pea sized rocks. They were very similar in aspect to the seeds, which is why she was doing this experiment.

Laying down a handful of seeds mixed with rocks on the table, it didn't take long for Shin Sumi to observe the behavior of the nut.

Looking really close at the scene, she saw the nut rush to the pile. In only a few breaths of time, only the rocks remained behind.

Shin Sumi previously thought that despite it's appearances, the nut was some kind of a small animal. But now that she had observed it up close, it became apparent that the grey sentient ball didn't have a mouth, nor any orifices.

Whenever it was eating, the seeds would simply disappear upon touching its surface.

Waiting for a few minutes, Shin Sumi fed the nut a few more seeds at regular intervals.

Following a whole five hours, the nut had eaten almost all the seeds.

The only thing that Shin Sumi could then do was to wait to see results.

Because she had been asleep the last time, she didn't know how long she had to wait for the nut to spit out the seeds.

After patiently waiting at the table for almost an hour, Shin Sumi soon became tired of simply waiting in front of a dead nut and decided to bathe.

Another idea of hers was to take the nut into the water. She had never done so before and it would be interesting to see if the waters would be enhanced !

Holding the nut while she disrobed, Shin Sumi jumped into the pond once again. In the Dark Sky Starry Sect she had explored so far, her private pond and its two carps was definitely her favorite place.

The nut didn't seem reluctant to be submerged and in fact was as still as before. It only flared back to life for a second when Shin Sumi quickly took out and then put away another seed.

It only lasted for the briefest of moments but the nut still had time to leave a few bite marks on her delicate white skin.

Being held underwater for that long reinforced the fact that the nut wasn't some kind of animal and had Shin Sumi thinking.

”Maybe it's just a sentient vegetable.. After all it came from that tree stump in the forest, with all of the wisps...” she recalled.

Shin Sumi hadn't been in the pond for long before a tickling sensation started spreading throughout her body. She didn't have time to react before the sensation receded in no time.

It was very strange but when she looked down at her body, distorted by the undulating spring water, she quickly understood.

”The bite marks on my arms have all vanished ! Did the water heal me ?”

The courtyard she had been gifted with definitely wasn't a normal place. Even without the high grade spirit stones refining the atmosphere, the place had a dense Shinsoo concentration.

It was entirely possible that the healing effects were due to the pond only, Shin Sumi wouldn't have known since she never hurt herself after she arrived in the sect.

But another wild guess slowly formed into her mind. Lifting her hand that was still holding the nut, she looked at it with a complicated expression.