Cultivation Struggles of a Lowly Fox

9 more weeks passed, as Aiko finally finished all 86 parts. Now she just needed to assemble 70 of those parts together, which took her another 7 weeks.

Beast Cores(54%->55%): 20,000 (52,060)

Aiko was very happy with the progress and she even got the chair part from Mei, who was in a strange mood.

Aiko was not in the mood to tease or find out about what happened, since she was looking forward to the finished Massage Chair.

Aiko took 2 weeks to assemble everything properly, as some parts were misaligned and would jam together, so Aiko had to tweak everything slowly over time until it worked.

She just needed to finish the padding so that the chair was not as hard and difficult to sit on.

At this point, everyone was looking over to Aiko and wondered what those parts were used for, but they didn’t speak out about it since they didn’t want to disturb her.

Aiko hummed as she put together the makeshift padding for testing purposes.

She then looked at Mei with an odd expression.

’It’s time for my revenge...’ Aiko thought. She had not tested the Massage Chair yet and Mei was powerful enough to be a good experi- *Cough* guest, that would test it out for her.

”Come sit in my chair.” Aiko patted the padding and beckoned Mei. There was just something so sinister about how Aiko patted the padding and smiled at Mei.

Mei shivered, but she didn’t back away, as Aiko took so many months to build this thing. She did not want to make Aiko sad.

Mei gulped. She sat on the chair with some lingering fear. The others looked at her in curiosity and wondered what kind of sinister contraption this was.

Aiko powered it with a single Spirit Stone, as it did not have a control panel to operate.

The chair hummed.

Mei stiffened as the parts moved, but... it didn’t feel all that bad? ”This is not bad-” She nodded, but froze soon after as the contraption was still speeding up.

”Oh...” Aiko stared blankly as it did not stop at a simple message.

The whole chair soon rocked and Mei who lost her footing was glued to it.

Her words turned incoherent as the sound coming from her turned into vibration from the Massage Chair.

Aiko slightly panicked as it did not have a power button to turn it off. She panicked, running around the room to find the tweaking wrench.

Meanwhile, the chair was jumping from side to side from the vibration and movement and soon it looked like the chair was chasing the tired duo of Umbra Fox and Blood Fox.

Everyone yelped in their own way as one party was chased by a chair, another party was looking for a way to fix it and the third party was melting on the Massage Chair...

Finally, Aiko found the tweaking wrench, but when she looked around the Massage Chair was nowhere to be seen!?

Aiko panicked again and rushed outside.

*BOOM*

The forest shook as there was a loud bang coming from it.

Aiko rushed towards that direction to find a few toppled trees and a Massage Chair that lost all of its power and a few parts.

Mei was like a melted puddle near the chair, unable to stand up as every muscle in her body turned into jelly.

Mei noticed Aiko’s approach and glared at her.

Aiko hid the tweaking wrench behind her avoided Mei’s eyes and whistled innocently, but her heart was pained as the chair had to be repaired again and a few additional changes had to be implemented...

...

They returned to the room. Surprisingly, the Blood Fox helped the Jade Fox move her back without uttering a word of protest.

Aiko thought that they would be like fire and water, but they worked quite well together...

Aiko moved the chair back to her small testing site to disassemble when she was grabbed by the Blood Fox and dragged in front of Mei.

”Why are you running away?” Mei smiled devilishly.

”I’m sorry.” Aiko apologized, as this whole situation was unexpected and out of her control...

Needless to say, she was scolded for many, many hours...

...

Mei sighed, looking at the crestfallen Aiko and stopped her scolding. She then thought about a devilish plan that they could implement once this prototype was properly tweaked and she could use this thing for rehabilitation purposes.

’I have never expected that my pained back and shoulders would be alleviated so much after a single use...’ Mei stared at the ’Massage Chair’ with a strange glint. The more one dabbled into their field, the more their muscles stiffened.

There were a few ’massage parlours’ that would take care of those needs, but those usually weren’t Cultivation-related, so it was difficult to relieve the Cultivator’s muscles as they were much harder and packed with Qi.

’Qi...!’ Mei suddenly had an epiphany when she browsed her body with Divine Sense. She noticed that clumps of Qi that were usually in her body were also dispersed. She didn’t know if it was due to the shaking or the erratic Qi flow from the Massage Chair, but she was not hurt.

’That won’t be the case for others...’ Mei narrowed her eyes. She survived this because her body was shielded by her Divine Sense and Water Qi, otherwise she would probably be disabled.

’If we could tweak the output, we could sell this as a service...’ Mei thought. Earning money through Pills was fine, but she had to work for it, but the way this thing was built, both robust and easy to maintain, allowed for a lot less work compared to the Pills.

...

Aiko was fixing the chair slowly when Mei sat next to her.

Aiko flinched because Mei reprimanded her just a moment ago and she was worried that she would continue.

”Can you adjust the output?” Mei asked, but her gaze was sharp.

Aiko gulped. ”It should be possible, but I need a way to store Qi in order to do that.”

She didn’t want to power it with her Beast Core Energy, as that would mean someone else would have to power it for her if she wanted to have a massage. It was better to just use Spirit Stone as the fuel and store that Energy for steady release.

Mei nodded lightly. ”I will talk with a few Inscription Cultivators about this and you keep working on it.”

Mei stood up, wobbling away in a strange way.

The Blood Fox and Umbra Fox looked at Mei with strange gazes, but they couldn’t voice their opinions as they feared Mei’s scolding.

...

Aiko sighed and continued working on it, waiting for Mei to return with good news. Surprisingly, it did not take all that long of time for Mei to return.

”Here are a few Inscriptions that can store Qi, research it well.” Mei said lightly, but before Aiko could say anything, Mei already wobbled towards her bed and plopped on it.

Aiko could not disturb her rest, as she would hate it herself if someone disturbed her when she needed to rest.

Aiko yawned. Those tails looked delectable and she would love to sleep on them, but she couldn’t. Not when Mei was so on edge with her, because of that failure.

Aiko turned towards the Inscription and read them. She now could read about 30% of the Runic Language, so she was able to decipher most of them.

’This is just a bunch of incoherent bullshit!’ Aiko slapped the paper quietly in front of her. ’The efficiency of those Inscriptions is less than what you would get from directly powering it!

Aiko was upset as those Inscriptions were unusable in this instance. She needed something more concrete and something she could control it with.

’Let’s do the control panel first, since the input can’t be adjusted for now.’ Aiko thought.

The curiosity and fear of the ’Massage Chair’ was slowly rising in the team. They were curious how they would end up and fearful that they wouldn’t be able to live through it...

...

Aiko designed the control point, she thought about it for quite some time and ended up with a single plate with turning buttons that are marked with the intensities. These are not connected to the ’storage’, but they are connected to elaborate Qi Gathering Inscription. The more you turned the button, the more Qi gathering Inscriptions were connected and working at the same time, giving it a higher output.

Aiko was not very pleased that she couldn’t come up with a Qi Storage solution, but she couldn’t help it. There was just not enough knowledge about it...

Mei was overlooking Aiko, curious about her progress, when she saw that monstrosity of an Inscription and she choked.

It was not about how large it was, but how many Qi Gathering Inscriptions were written on it and tied together.

”It might cause Qi atmosphere deficiency.” Mei warned.

”I know.” Aiko likewise was not optimistic about it, but she already had something in mind. ”Why not use that Array, the one which extracted the Qi out of things? Can’t we put Spirit Stone inside and replenish the ambient Qi with it?” Aiko asked, hoping for salvation with this thing.

Mei thought about it for a while. ”It’s very inefficient.” She didn’t like that idea since it would cost them a lot.

”I think we should be fine up to 3rd ’gear’.” Aiko said slowly. ”That’s about 1/10th of the strength it displayed with the Spirit Stone.” Aiko slowly nodded.

Mei thought about it. ”Are you sure? I don’t think it will be that easy...” She didn’t believe it wouldn’t cause any ambient Qi issues.

Aiko shrugged and continued working on the control panel.

...

A week had passed and Aiko had finished with the tweaks alongside the control panel. This one was much more fun than anything she had done before, as she had to come up with her own little Inscriptions on the fly for certain things.

”Mei it’s done!” Aiko smiled.

Mei’s lips twitched, if only she was able to exert that much enthusiasm towards Alchemy then she would be happier, as it would ease her work in curing Aiko.

Aiko was not aware of Mei’s inner devilish thoughts and polished the control panel so it looked a bit nicer to the eye.

’Since she ’harmed’ me. I can use this opportunity to make her learn more about Herbs.’ Mei thought and smirked at Aiko.

Aiko shivered for some reason, but when she looked around, there was only Mei inside the room.

’It couldn’t be from Mei... I apologized and I am even obediently listening to her.’ Aiko shook her head and placed the control panel in front of Mei.

”It’s done.” Aiko smiled lightly.

”Good. Since you have finished, you can return to learn more Herbs while I get someone to test this.” Mei smiled ’gently’.

Aiko stiffened. ”But there is a need for a fixer if something goes wrong.” Aiko tried to wiggle her way out of this but was immediately shut down by Mei.

”That is alright, you can learn Herbs in the meantime before they arrive.” Mei smiled generously, but Aiko was already crying inside.

’This heartless mean Fox!’ Aiko had a betrayed expression, as if someone had stole her candies right in front of her eyes.

Mei gently stroked Aiko’s hair. This was truly soothing on her nerves.

”Make sure that everything is in order, as the guest won’t be as generous as me if it malfunctions again.” Mei smiled like the devil and Aiko sobbed at her inevitable fate.