Re-entering the Mountain Range

Most of Qingshan Town's residents were mercenaries, so the inn's conditions could not be called good. The room contained only a bed, a table and chairs, and a pot of tea. But compared to the cold cave and rock walls from the past few days, it was infinitely better.

The silent night passed quietly. When dawn had barely broken the next day, Ling Li opened his eyes from sleep. He walked to the washbasin and splashed several handfuls of cold water onto his face, easing some of his drowsiness.

Morning was when all things awakened, the best time for cultivation. Ling Li had also tried cultivating Dou Qi while practicing his blade in the cave, but his physique did not seem suited for direct cultivation.

Of course, that might also have been because Ling Li lacked a suitable cultivation method. After advancing to Dou Zhe, a cultivator's advancement speed would become much faster. This involved two things: medicinal pills and cultivation methods. These two treasures could only be used after becoming a Dou Zhe. The miraculous effects of medicinal pills needed no explanation, and even the lowest Yellow-tier Low-grade Cultivation Method could directly double a cultivator's cultivation speed!

A night of sleep had eased Ling Li's exhaustion. The feeling of having his body clock disrupted truly was unpleasant, leaving him with a weariness that no amount of rest seemed able to shake off.

After a simple breakfast, Ling Li left Qingshan Town to practice his blade techniques outside town. It was a habit he had developed through years of sword practice.

Ling Li's so-called rest did not mean having fun in Qingshan Town. Rather, it meant using a regular routine to set his disrupted body clock right, ensuring that he would be in peak condition when he entered the Monster Beast Mountain Range to train again.

Ling Li's plan was simple. He practiced blade swings in the morning, tempered his physique in the afternoon, and slept at night before repeating the process the next day. Aside from roughly eight hours each day spent eating and sleeping, he spent all his remaining time swinging his blade and training his body.

Ling Li's physique was quite unusual. No matter how exhausted he trained himself the day before, after one night's sleep, he would be perfectly fine the next day. The results of his training were naturally especially apparent. His appetite, however, was terrifyingly large—so terrifying that his wallet could not bear it...

Still, because Ling Li's fatigue would completely vanish by the next day, he could clearly feel himself growing stronger. That was also why he could keep going.

Five days later, morning.

"The inn stay is up too. Looks like it's time to enter the Monster Beast Mountain Range again. Being broke is really hard. If I had money, wouldn't it be wonderful to eat a few monster cores every day?" Ling Li sighed as he looked at his empty money pouch after finishing his training.

Ling Li had originally had thirty Gold Coins left. That amount would have been enough for an ordinary person to eat and drink well for a year, but with the way Ling Li ate and drank, even with only one meal a day, his food expenses came to six Gold Coins. In just five days, all thirty Gold Coins had been spent. Fortunately, as long as he had food to eat, the energy he used as a reserve had not been consumed.

This time, I need to kill a few more monster beasts and raise my strength as quickly as possible! Ling Li thought.

It was not as though Ling Li had never considered robbing other mercenaries of their Gold Coins. But the mercenaries here seemed even poorer than he was. As for their gains from entering the Monster Beast Mountain Range, they would often squander them all as soon as they returned to Qingshan Town, leaving no savings behind. After all, no one could say for certain whether this would be their last return.

He swiftly got to his feet, checked the items in the System Space, and made sure nothing had been left behind. Then Ling Li left the inn and headed toward the Monster Beast Mountain Range.

There were many mercenaries in Qingshan Town. Beneath the fiery morning sun, they gathered in groups of two and three. Some were shouting for companions to enter the Monster Beast Mountain Range with them. More people meant the profits would be divided among more hands, but it also meant greater safety.

"Little brother, heading into the Monster Beast Mountain Range? Want to form a team with us?" As soon as Ling Li reached the town entrance, a burly mercenary approached and asked.

"No need." Ling Li waved him off.

The mercenary said nothing more. He merely gave Ling Li a strange look, shook his head, and walked away to seek out other potential teammates.

When the other mercenaries saw that Ling Li was preparing to enter the Monster Beast Mountain Range alone, they first examined his clothes. Upon discovering that he had nothing valuable on him, they looked away and stopped paying attention.

Entering the Monster Beast Mountain Range alone at such a young age—he probably would not meet a good end. If he had been carrying money, they might have considered following him and picking up whatever they could afterward. But Ling Li clearly did not catch their interest.

The mercenaries of Qingshan Town could roughly be divided into three types. The first were lone wolves like Ling Li, preparing to enter the Monster Beast Mountain Range alone. Of course, such mercenaries generally would not venture too deeply into the mountain range, unless they had absolute confidence in their strength.

The second were tightly organized mercenary groups. Qingshan Town was small, and there were only three such groups, each with around a hundred members. Most of them were one- to three-star low-level Dou Zhe, though some had not yet reached Dou Zhe and merely possessed high-level Dou Qi. They were a mixed bunch, but the leaders of all three mercenary groups were Dou Masters. They could be considered among Qingshan Town's strongest forces.

The third type were the mercenaries constantly calling out at the town entrance. They recruited other mercenaries to form temporary teams. Such teams generally disbanded immediately after completing a single mission, so their coordination and mutual understanding naturally could not compare to trained mercenary groups.

Ling Li ignored the mercenaries' gazes and left Qingshan Town directly, returning to that cave. He did not know whether first-tier monster beasts were simply too weak or whether he was too strong, but at the very least, after gaining beginner-level blade mastery, every first-tier monster beast he encountered had been felled with a single slash.

Perhaps first-tier monster beasts also had star ratings like humans, and the ones he had encountered were all low-star first-tier monster beasts.

This cave was located in the outer region of the Monster Beast Mountain Range and was not particularly far from Qingshan Town. It could be reached in two or three hours, and the monster beasts active in this area were relatively weak.

After taking out the items he had purchased from the System Space and making a simple arrangement, Ling Li sat beside the crude bed and looked at the map in his hands.

"If I go another one hundred and twenty li west, I might encounter second-tier monster beasts. With my current strength, if monster beasts truly have star ratings, dealing with low-star first-tier monster beasts won't be a problem. I can probably manage one mid-star beast, but two or more would be difficult. High-star ones are untouchable. If I average out this area, I can go at most another forty li deeper. That's enough!" Ling Li thought. To attract business, the mercenaries in Qingshan Town would display their levels on their chests. Though Ling Li had never fought them, he could clearly sense that even a difference of one star made the aura emitted by those mercenaries much stronger.

How exactly did Xiao Huohuo fight across realms? Especially that time with Pan Hanfeng—he dared to fight at the Dou Spirit level, yet at Peak Dou Wang, he could effortlessly kill Han Feng, a Peak Fighting Emperor, on the spot. Could it be that alchemists really are just weaklings? No, that can't be right. If that were true, those lofty alchemists would most likely be raised in captivity as medicine slaves.

Speaking of the Monster Beast Mountain Range, it stretched for a hundred thousand li and was divided into outer, middle, and inner regions. The farther inward one went, the stronger the monster beasts became. First- and second-tier monster beasts occupied the outer region, third- and fourth-tier ones the middle region, while the inner region was a place only fifth- and sixth-tier monster beast kings could inhabit.

However, the radius of those fifty thousand li was not divided equally among the outer, middle, and inner regions. The stronger the monster beast, the larger the territory it occupied. Thus, the inner region had the fewest monster beasts yet occupied more than half of the Monster Beast Mountain Range. The middle region came next. The outer region, which contained the most monster beasts, was less than five hundred li wide, and it was also where most mercenaries operated.