In a corner of the desert.

Yu Tong led the five people of the Blood Sect to sit quietly on the sand dunes, as if waiting for something. 

The brightly red dressed Yu Tong’s slender lily-white hands clasped an ocarina, as she pursed her plump red lips and gently blew into it. 

However, surprisingly no sound was heard from the ocarina. 

Several miles away, Ghost Sects’ Mo Xi, with a similar looking ocarina in his hands, had his ear against the instrument as if trying to hear something. 

He seemed to distinguish a certain direction by hearing the sound coming from his ocarina. 

A long time later, under his leadership, the Ghost Sect’s four other disciples had arrived at Yu Tong’s resting place. 

By that time Yu Tong had long finished playing the ocarina. 

“How did your fight turn out?” 

After Mo Xi had arrived and finished instructing the four others to sit down, he went over to Yu Tong’s side and looked deeply at her, with eyes br.i.m.m.i.n.g with unruliness. 

A deep desire was hidden in the depths of his eyes. 

“The Lingyun sect’s trials took place in the desert; they were trying to capture and kill an Earth Lizard. And as they were fighting the Earth Lizard we killed off two of their people and after they had finished fighting, we were able to kill another two.” Yu Tong coldly stated, “The Lingyun sect still has six people alive, although at first… we should’ve been able to finish the task and kill them all.” 

“Was there an accident?” Mo Xi frowned. 

“Right at a crucial moment, the Ling Bao Court’s people rushed over.” Yu Tong snorted, “Ling Bao Court’s people came from the glacier region. Since you weren’t able to finish them off, we were defeated and forced to retreat.”

“Yu Tong! When we were inside the glacier region, not only did we encounter the Ling Bao Court’s people, we also b.u.mped into the Grey Valley’s team!” Ghost Sect’s Du Kun shouted. 

If Nie Tian was present, he would instantly be able to identify the speaker, Du Kun, as the guy who had posed as a Grey Valley disciple. 

Mo Xi waved his hand, motioning for Du Kun to not interrupt, before replying: “Grey Valley had a total of ten people, we killed eight, and all that remains is Yuan Feng and his younger cousin who both managed to escape. Regarding the Ling Bao Court, we killed one person. Unfortunately we used up too much time trying to kill Yuan Feng and ended up not having enough energy left to handle everything properly, which led to us failing to exterminate the Ling Bao Court. 

“Ah.” Yu Tong indifferently replied back. “Today the Ling Bao Court and the Lingyun sect merged together; I also noticed that they have already set off for the volcanic region.”

“The Black Mist Palace is currently hunting in the volcanic region. We need to move on and strike them as soon as possible before the other group gets to them and merges with them.”

Mo Xi thought for a moment before stating: “The Lingyun sect currently has six people; if Grey Valley’s Yuan Feng and cousin merges with them, that’s eight people. The last time Du Kun spotted the Ling Bao Court, they had altogether thirteen people, and after killing one of them, they are now down to twelve.” 

“In the case that they don’t have other casualties, the Ling Bao Court added together with the Lingyun sect and Grey Valley sect, have altogether twenty cultivators.” 

“Our two sides put together, only amounts to a mere ten people.” 

Finished speaking, he began to smile, before he began to laugh maliciously, “Of these twenty people, a lot of them don’t have any battle experience. As long as we catch up to them, it should be pretty easy to eliminate all of them. 

As he spoke, he rubbed the finger bone parts on his neck. 

Yu Tong glanced at him, and found that the bone necklace around his neck seemed to have gotten longer in length. 

This implied that in the glacier region, he had killed and taken fingers off of many of his peers. 

“The Ling Bao Court has a kid called Nie Tian in it. Would you happen to know his origins?” Yu Tong suddenly asked. 

“Nie Tian?” Mo Xi shook his head. Uncertainly, he said: “Never heard of him. What’s the matter, why are you paying attention to this person?”

“He injured me.” Yu Tong’s eyes chilled.

Mo Xi looked at her oddly, “With your strength, even Ling Bao Court’s An Ying can only be like a plaything in the palm of your hands. But a trivial, no named, kid can unexpectedly hurt you? Are you sure you weren’t just being careless?”

Yu Tong’s cold face had no response. 

“I have a bit of an impression of this Nie Tian.” At this moment, Du Kun softly began to speak. 

Mo Xi and Yu Tong both looked at him. 

“I wore the Grey Valley’s uniform and intermixed myself amongst the Ling Bao Court. I wanted to take the advantage of the fact that they weren’t prepared. But, as I began to prepare to hit and kill them one by one, it was this Nie Tian that realized that something wasn’t right and began to take actions against me. At that time, if it weren’t for him making trouble, I at the very least, could have killed three Ling Bao Court brats.”

Du Kun’s eyes narrowed, as they were filled with a ruthless light. 

“This Nie Tian… is a bit interesting.” Mo Xi faintly nodded, making sure to record the name in his heart, as he turned to Yu Tong saying: “Wait until we catch up to them; I will capture that Nie Tian brat and then let you use your blood refining art to refine his blood, and help you vent your anger.” 

“Towards the people I want to kill, I will use my own efforts and won’t trouble you.” Yu Tong wasn’t grateful at all.

“Haha! I don’t care about what you want, at any rate, I’m also aiming for that Nie Tian. If I get to him before you do though, I’ll capture him. When the time comes and you don’t want him, then I will rip him to shreds.” Mo Xi laughed loudly.

“Let’s go; don’t waste time. Let’s leave the desert before they do and stop them, so that they won’t be able to merge with the Black Mist Palace. 

……

At this time, somewhere else in the desert was Nie Tian, who was about to start eating and drinking a lot again. 

When Yuan Feng and Yun Song had arrived, their group had begun their journey and by now, two days had pa.s.sed. 

During these two days, everyone had been hastening onward at a fast pace, while dramatically shortening their rest periods. 

They wanted to leave the desert as soon as possible and enter the volcanic region to meet up with the Black Mist Palace’s Zheng Bin and the others. 

So, since there wasn’t enough time to cultivate, Nie Tian’s plan to enter the eight Lianqi level within ten days through the use of the Earth Lizard’s meat, unfortunately, seemed a bit too difficult to achieve. 

After finally sitting down to rest, Nie Tian naturally wouldn’t want to waste any time, so immediately, he started to take out the processed Earth Lizard dried meat and begin eating it at the fastest speed possible. 

Only after eating as much as several tens of jin of meat and feeling that his body had reached its limit, did he stop. 

And without delay, he started operating his Lianqi tactics. 

While operating his Lianqi tactics, his spirit sea was remoulding and the energy that wasn’t quickly absorbed by his spirit sea had once again dispersed into his flesh and blood. 

And again, his whole body became burning hot, with sweat pouring out from his pores. 

And just like last time, mixed within the sweat, that poured out of his body, was muddy filth. 

A moment later, he opened his eyes and as expected, using his spirit sense he discovered that his spirit sea had expanded one-tenth more.

He also spread out his spiritual power like the last time, with him in the center, discovering that his spiritual power’s coverage range had increased from a seventy meters to eighty meters radius. 

“The change this time isn’t as big.”

Frowning, he carefully began to recall specific details, feeling that the energy within his abdomen seemed to be weaker than last time. 

“Energy contained within the spirit beast meat should be steadily decreasing. Freshly killed spirit beast meat is most abundant in energy, and it’s energy is also the most easily a.s.similated.” 

“After a spirit beast dies, the energy within its flesh should dissipate little by little as time pa.s.ses by.” 

“When we converted the spirit beast meat into dried meat, a bit of the energy within the flesh must have also been lost.” 

“...”

As if he was painstakingly doing an investigation, Nie Tian searched for the root cause of it all. 

In fact, back at the glacier region, he had already felt that the spirit beast meat’s energy was gradually decreasing with time. 

However, because they were in the extremely cold and freezing glacier region, the spirit beast meat had all along preserved its freshness, making the energy loss much less obvious. 

In the desert, he clearly noticed that the rate of energy loss of the spirit beast meat was much faster. 

Also, when everyone had turned the spirit beast meat into dried meat, it seemed to make the rate of energy loss even faster. 

After managing to roughly figure out what was going on, he looked at the several hundreds of jin of Earth Lizard dried meat that he was shouldering and suddenly felt some distress.

He became aware, that in order to maximize the use of the Earth Lizard meat to enhance his own strength, he must eat up the meat in the fastest way possible. 

In addition, he needed to stop and cultivate day to night. 

Only in this way, could he process all of the Earth Lizard meat and get his cultivation level to the eight level in the shortest time possible. 

The more time pa.s.sed, the less benefits he would be able to obtain from the Earth Lizard’s meat. 

And yet, right at this moment, both An Ying and Jiang Ling Zhu (the two heads of the group) wanted to leave the desert as soon as possible to hurry and merge with the trail takers of the Black Mist Palace. 

Neither of them were interested in slowing down and waiting for him to finish cultivating. 

Either he would have to leave the group and find a remote place in the desert, while bearing the risk of being found by the Ghost or Blood sect, practicing day and night to break into the eight level as soon as possible, or miss out on this once-in-a-blue-moon opportunity for his own safety and stick with the big group of people from start to finish. 

His face changed erratically as he contemplated for a long time, before suddenly standing up to say: “Ladies and gentlemen, I am so sorry but I will no longer continue to go with you to the volcanic region to search for those of the Black Mist Palace.” 

……

Translator: It was the Log Hut
Editor: Sietse
From XianXiaWorld