The moment the sun officially crested the peaks of Mount Cang, the relative safety of the night ended. Jiang Yi forced himself out of his bunk, his stomach twisting in knots. The intense hunger had progressed to a persistent nausea, threatening to compromise his feigned exhaustion.
He knew he couldn't just sweep stairs today. He needed to move, to act, but Luo Feng's morning patrol was unavoidable.
As expected, he had barely started sweeping the main courtyard when a familiar, menacing figure appeared, flanked by two other outer disciples, including the slightly bruised and clearly infuriated Chen Tao.
Luo Feng sneered, kicking a pebble with the toe of his boot. "Well, well. Look who decided to show his face. You were late for roll call last night, Jiang Yi. And Steward Ma says you bruised his hand."
Jiang Yi immediately dropped his broom and bowed low, his body shaking slightly—a calculated display of subservience and weakness. "Senior Brother Luo, please be lenient. I was clumsy, I slipped down the embankment and only just recovered. I wouldn't dare strike an Elder."
Chen Tao stepped forward, his eyes burning with suspicion. He grabbed Jiang Yi's shoulder. "Where were you around midnight? Did you see anyone near the North Tower?"
"The North Tower?" Jiang Yi repeated, feigning ignorance. "I... I don't go near the North Tower, Senior Brother. I was asleep in my bunk. I haven't left the servant courtyard since yesterday's chores."
Chen Tao's grip tightened, searching for any ripple of Qi, any sign of physical strength. He was a Second Stage Body Tempering cultivator, stronger than Jiang Yi, but he was searching a weak, malnourished servant. He found nothing but brittle bone and muscle that felt like it should snap.
Luo Feng chuckled, pulling Chen Tao back. "Stop it, Chen Tao. You lost your Qi blueprint to a smart rogue, not this waste. Look at him, he can barely stand. He couldn't even climb a set of steps without falling, let alone breach Elder Fang's seal."
They left, convinced by Jiang Yi's flawless performance of weakness and the physical evidence of his severe fatigue. The only problem was the fatigue was genuine.
Jiang Yi picked up his broom, his breath shallow. His window of opportunity was small. He needed high-grade Qi, and he needed it now, before the hunger turned into a fever that made him incapable of cultivating.
He decided on his target: The Outer Disciples' Qi Refinement Hall.
This hall was used primarily by disciples in the early Body Tempering stages. They weren't powerful enough to draw much ambient Qi, so the hall was furnished with several Low-Grade Spirit Stones, set into the floor to slowly release energy into the air. Crucially, disciples who had exhausted their own stones often tossed the depleted 'husks' into a refuse box outside the hall, assuming they were worthless.
Jiang Yi knew better.
He waited until the late afternoon, when the hall was mostly empty during the shift change. Using his access as a cleaner, he slipped into the hall's storage room.
The refuse box was exactly where it should be. Inside, dozens of stones lay scattered—mostly cloudy, dull husks of what were once vibrant blue Spirit Stones. They looked spent.
Jiang Yi took out the jade scroll he had stolen, unrolled it, and placed the jade sheet on a dusty workbench. He then pulled out the most important component: his own body.
He focused on the Minor Flow Convergence Array's principles. The technique wasn't about creation; it was about efficiency—the ruthless extraction of every last drop of Qi.
He gathered four of the dullest stones and placed them in a rhombus pattern on the floor. He took a few shards of discarded iron and placed them as minor stabilizers at the four points of the rhombus, just as the blueprint dictated.
This was a scavenger formation, crude and temporary, anchored by his own body acting as the 'Collection Artifact.'
He sat in the center of the rhombus, closed his eyes, and initiated the Minor Flow Convergence Array.
In his mind's eye, the azure mark in his palm flared with desperate intensity. The mark didn't try to draw Qi from the world; it drew the formation itself from his memory, projecting the complex structure of interlocking runes onto the ground.
The four dull stones began to hum, faint blue threads of residual Qi—energy too minute for a normal cultivator to notice—leaking from their cloudy surfaces.
The Azure Sphere's purification technique kicked in instantly.
Instead of passively drawing the energy, the formation created a slow, agonizingly small whirlpool that sucked the faint blue threads into Jiang Yi's body. The sphere's embedded power refined the energy, not just purifying it, but condensing the nearly worthless residual Qi into drops of usable azure liquid.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
It was excruciatingly slow, but it worked. The tiny drops of energy collected in his empty dantian, providing the bare minimum to quiet the worst of the hunger. The nausea subsided, replaced by a manageable ache.
After two hours, the four stones had faded entirely, crumbling into inert white dust. Jiang Yi had managed to gather just enough Qi to stabilize his 1st Stage Body Tempering core.
He quickly disassembled the crude formation, scattering the white dust and returning the iron shards to the floor. He rolled up the jade scroll, the formation technique now fully ingrained.
It will sustain me for another day, maybe two, he thought, leaving the storage room silently. I can't use that hall again. I need a source that hasn't been picked clean.
He realized the true advantage of the Sphere and the Array: he didn't need fresh Spirit Stones. He could scavenge what others threw away. He was a waste disposal unit for cultivators.
He needed a bigger trash pile.
As he swept the final, empty stairwell of the evening, his eyes drifted toward the heavily forested ridge that separated the Azure Cloud Sect from the surrounding Wildlands. It was a place for advanced disciples to venture for herbs and rare beasts, but also where failed expeditions often discarded broken tools and drained, high-grade Spirit Stones too powerful to be left in the inner sect.
The Deep Woods. Risky, but the rewards—the waste there—will be far greater.