Ken smiled and left the place to complete his mission. He hummed an old song he heard in his former life as he imagined the results of his pills being consumed by an elite clan from the top 5 sects.
He was already scolded by his grandfather who told him that he tried to request two seventh-stage elders from the sect to take him as a disciple, but they watched him kill the boy from the Han clan and rejected him, saying he was too cruel.
The meaning was that he couldn't get free of the hold of his family, and he won't be able to get a sustainable stream of resources.
'I can earn a lot of Qi Stones by selling my service as an alchemist, but then my family will try to waste a large chunk of my time by forcing me to concoct pills for them. The only reason I have so much free time is that they think I can only make first and second-grade pills, which they can easily buy in stocks without feeling any pressure in their pockets.'
Since the option of earning money freely through his alchemy skills was taken away from him, his plan was to start chaos. Although it might take a while, he believed it should work.
'But it will take a while. I might have to offer my services as an alchemist in the sect. Even if I must sacrifice some of my time for my family, it will be their downfall when I do.'
From time to time, he would sense people fighting in the forest around him as he jogged in the habitant area of the turtles he was supposed to slay. The mission was to kill some turtles and bring back their shells for blacksmithing.
'I shouldn't avoid all those people. I'm running low on funds now; I should check if some of them got extra money on them.'
He took out his menacing silver mask and wore it before walking quietly to the place where he sensed a fight.
As he got close, he could see a group of 4 disciples work together to take down a third-rank beast. When he saw their plain gray robes, he sighed in disappointment and left them alone.
There was no need to take risks just to kill some poor outer disciples; he'd barely earn anything from it.
He checked out a few groups, but almost all of them were outer disciples; those were the poorest, and they had to take many missions to support their cultivation, which in turn slowed their cultivation down and kept them at the bottom of the power hierarchy.
'Finally. Although outer disciples, they're at least at the Core Formation Stage and are even from the top 100.'
The robes of the top disciples had a small decoration. There was a decoration for the top 100, top 10, and first place.
Although they couldn't be as rich as the third-stage kid from the Han Clan, they'd still have a good amount combined.
He watched the 4 disciples from 100 meters away, hidden behind a tree. Just like most groups, they also had an archer. Most of the groups that wanted perfect balance had an archer, and many disciples chose this weapon only because of the relative ease archers could find a team.
He easily sensed the archer with his Bloodlust Sense; it was nearly impossible to hide from it in the middle of the battle. The archer was exuding a strong killing intent while shooting arrows at the beasts.
They were fighting a group of wolves. The group had 3 fourth-rank beasts and around 50 third-rank ones. Although they were killing the weaker wolves steadily, the ambushes from the fourth-rank wolves forced them to remain vigilant and slow down their killing pace.
The Core Formation Stage was divided into four parts; low, intermediate, high, and peak. With each breakthrough, the feint colors on the core would turn stronger and clearer, increasing one's specialized Qi and affinity according to the core's attributes.
Although he didn't know their exact sub-stage, he didn't fear anyone from the fourth stage. By mastering so many Heaven-grade techniques to the Advanced level, he knew his core was as powerful at least as any peak fourth-stage cultivator's core.
In a few minutes, most of the third-stage wolves were dead, and one of the fourth-stage wolves had a large cut on its side, making it bleed continuously.
The disciples had a few superficial wounds, but overall, they were still in their peak form. They were just a bit tired from depleting a lot of Qi to protect themselves from so many wolves.
Ken kept watching silently without intervening; it was considered bad manners to steal kills or get involved in others' fights. It wasn't only a source of income, but also a way to practice their fighting arts.
Of course, it wasn't what made him watch quietly; he just wanted to see if he could learn anything from their teamwork.
'Time to join the party.'
Ken locked his vision on the archer who was 100 meters away from him on a branch and placed his hand on his sword's hilt.
'One Step.'
'Flash Unwind.'
With the recent upgrades, One Step wasn't limited to the ground anymore. Now, he could use it to move vertically as well as horizontally after achieving the Small Success mastery realm.
Boosted by Sword Qi, the distance he could travel rose to 150 meters.
He appeared instantly behind the archer and beheaded her silently. The sequence was so fast, that the archer's body didn't fall off the branch from the strike. The sword cut through her neck swiftly with a clean slash.
The head seemed still attached to her body, and Ken quickly manipulated some Qi to hold the archer's body on the branch without falling. He took the archer's storage ring and let the body drop softly on the ground without making any noise.
Without the archer's support, the rest of the party faced much more pressure from the wolves. Luckily, they could still handle it after reducing the wolves' numbers significantly.
Of the other three, two were using swords while the third held a spear. He waited for the right moment for them to be all next to each other.
Soon, they were fighting back-to-back as they were surrounded by the wolves without the archer's support.
"Cristine, why did you stop shooting?"
One of the sword users shouted to the archer but didn't get any answer.
'One Step.'
'Slash.'
He appeared in front of the man who was shouting since he was the least concentrated and performed Slash. At the Small Success mastery realm, he could still send out 3 slashes, but the special part about them was that those three were combined 3 slashes.
To put it simply, he could shoot 3 slashes, of which each was as powerful as his single slash in the Advanced mastery realm.
"AH!"
Three screams resounded in the forest as a large diagonal cut appeared on the torso of each of the disciples, nearly cutting them in half.
Ken quickly cut their fingers and grabbed their rings and disappeared with another One Step. The wolves were already wounded, tired, and angry at the disciples. Instead of chasing a new human, they chose to remain there and eat their next meal.
With the scent of the blood of the archer, Ken didn't need to worry whether the wolves would be able to find her body.
He checked the items inside the rings and transferred around 50,000 medium Qi Stones to his ring.
'Plundering others is the fastest way to make money.'
There were other things as pills and weapons, but he just burned all the pills and tossed the weapons on the ground around him. They were only fourth-grade weapons, so they didn't worth more than a few hundred medium Qi Stones if they were of high quality.
As for ores, herbs, and materials, he took them to himself for his alchemy and creating formations.
'Hmm, I feel another fight. But I can't be killing too many disciples myself, I should be smarter about it.'
With this thought, he left to find a pack of fourth-rank beasts. After jogging around for an hour, he finally found something.
'Hehe, this is interesting.'
What he found was a Dark Panther. The Dark Panther was a feline beast with amazing natural camouflage abilities. However, its bloodlust and killing intent couldn't be hidden from Ken's perception.
Although Ken lacked the common sense to judge its power correctly, just by seeing it hunt another fourth-stage beast he could guess it was at least comparable to a high fourth-stage cultivator.
Not only that, but it seemed to have a female companion which was just as strong as the male panther.
'I wanted a pack, but assassins could be better for this task.'
'One Step.'
Ken appeared instantly in front of the two large cats. They tried to get up quickly, but suddenly they were caught in a powerful bloodlust.
'Mind-Poisoning Domain – Paralyzing Mode.'
The two panthers whimpered in fear as they cowered and felt too afraid to fight back. They could see dreadful visions of a man with a sword in his hand; blood was dripping from the sword, and the ground was littered with corpses of their species.
They had the feeling of standing in front of the natural enemy of the Dark Panthers species.
"Kneel."
Ken gave them the order and patted the ground lightly with his foot. Fourth-rank beasts were much smarter than normal beasts. Although they couldn't understand his words, they got the gist of it.
They bowed their heads, letting them touch the ground as they tried to appear pitiful in front of Ken.
"Good kitties. Now follow me."
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