After a whole hour of cultivating this technique, the surrounding area was inundated with this nearly toxic stench, it was honestly hard to breathe and would bring tears to the eyes of most, even inhaling air through your mouth was difficult as the smell was so strong that you could taste it.

When Edrick opened his eyes again, he was greeted by darkness, his entire vision covered by long black hair, pushing all that extra growth aside, he stood up and stretched his limbs, they cracked with satisfactory sounds, it was odd, Anoteros was already feeling stronger and more agile, the instincts and stealthy nature of the mountain sasquatches felt awfully close to him right now as well.

‘Mmh, guess Gang was really hitting the nail right on the head, that technique must be exceptionally suited for me…’ he ought to consider acquiring a variety of ape and monkey cultivation techniques then, if he could use them all with that sort of efficiency, it would simply be exceptional.

He had just practised for a single hour after all, even though one was likely to feel like a lot of progress had been made when cultivating for the first time ever, it was clear that this session had been particularly good, the stench and growth of his hair was way beyond what the manual described as ‘average’.

The hair already present on one’s body were supposed to grow, especially those one the head, and places such as the armpits, nether region, and chest were also supposed to experience great growth, but Anoteros, he had just straight up turned into a sasquatch, one whose fur was a dark as the night instead of brown, on top of being much longer, but a sasquatch nonetheless, only the upper portion of his face and special tool were spared, everywhere else was ripe with hair, even his backside, which even a sasquatch would have mostly uncovered.

He rubbed his chin.

“You two, what do you think, should I keep the beard and moustache?” he usually kept himself clean shaven as he felt that a beard or such would really make him look like some sort of wildman that wandered the hills in search of people to feast upon.

But since his facial hair had grown so much, he debated what to do with it.

“Hum, aherm… Perhaps you could try for a little while? W-What do you think Linmin?”

“I believe Lord Edrick does not need to hide his features, he is handsome as he usually is”

Both of his wives were covering their mouths and noses, they hadn’t moved in spite of the smell assaulting them, and the look in their eyes told Edrick that they were feeling curious about his current predicament.

“What is it with that look? If you have something you want to say, go ahead” he smiled, already knowing exactly what was on each of their minds.

Fanqia was just feeling curious about how it would feel, whilst Linmin, despite retaining a good poker face, was going wild inside of there.

“Lord Edrick… Have you… Have you ever heard of playing ‘roles’ while in the bedroom?”

“Like, the unsuspecting maiden is attacked by a sasquatch in the mountains?” 

“…Perhaps…”

“In any case, maybe you two should begin thinking about beginning to cultivate as well, you know? You’re my wives, so I am certain you’ll perform very well” running his, currently most hairy hand, across their faces.

Although it would probably be great to do it in his current state with them, today was a busy day, he was not only going to be cultivating many more times, but now that the month had concluded, it was also time to settle something else.

For the majority of the month, his days would go fairly similarly to one another, wake up, train, visit Hui, read, train, visit Hui again, and he would be learning from Ku Xing just before that second visit to the librarian on the four days of the week that she would teach him on.

Today, he did not visit Hui during the usual time before noon, instead, he focused on training for nearly the whole day.

Although his performances with Mountain Sasquatch Body were truly excellent, he heeded to instructions and did not train for more than one hour during his first session and instead switched to Guardian Hippopotamus Physique, it would also allow him to see if he truly had the kind of talent needed to practise more than a single technique at once.

The sitting position that was recommended was also to simply sit down cross-legged, it was pretty much the standard when dealing with cultivation, although, whilst one was also required to join both hands together, it was by placing one flat palm against the other here, prioritising as much skin contact as possible as the energy circulation required for this technique was somewhat harder to pull off.

In truth, Guardian Hippopotamus Physique could either be very simple, or very complicated, as it was a method that was rather permissive in how it was done, one needed to start from their belly button and that was the only obligatory step, after that, you had to guide the energy flow into your skin and flesh alone, but you didn’t have to form an actual circulation like with Mountain Sasquatch Body, in fact, it was more effective and faster to branch out from the initial point into as many ‘rivers’ as possible and had them all join back across from the bellybutton, on your back.

But controlling many flows at once was rather demanding, one could also opt out for a circulation detailed in the manual, but Edrick wasn’t a coward, and he took the harder alternative, mostly because it would yield better results.

As he began doing just that, still looking like a certain big-footed cryptid, he could feel his skin grow odd, it felt as though it was wet, or rather, as though water was flowing upon his bare skin without quite getting it wet like it should.

It also felt as though his lungs were expanding well beyond their normal sizes, which was not an effect that was described in the manual, but it did not hurt, so he knew that his lungs weren’t truly increasing in size, it was but an impression caused by the practise of this cultivation technique.

Another hour seemed to pass in the blink of an eye.

At least, this technique didn’t cause physical changes or a release of a foul smell, so he looked the same as when he started.

‘Mmh… Weird, am I also well-attuned to this technique or the creature it is based on?’ being aligned with an ape when a human was basically also an ape made a certain amount of sense, at least if humans in these worlds also evolved from apes…

But being aligned with hippos was another story, especially being aligned with both at once seemed rather odd.

‘Well anyways, might as well keep going until tonight…’

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep