Inside the carriage.
Lu Xuan stared at the Martial Artist squad seated across from him for several seconds before spitting out two words through clenched teeth.
"No need."
Team up?
He had no use for that.
Going solo could save him a lot of trouble.
Besides,
With Future Mail, he could avoid choices that would certainly lead to death. There was no need to add dead weight.
Most importantly,
Lu Xuan was a renowned Ghost Face Martial Artist in the Wilderness.
"Good ambition."
Scarhead took out a Storage Ring and tossed it to Lu Xuan. "Meeting is fate. I have some things I don't need here. Take them."
"Why?"
Lu Xuan swept it with his Psychic Power.
He found nothing amiss. They were all common resources: monster meat, low-level spirit herbs, and various rare materials.
Their total value was still around a hundred thousand.
But he couldn't figure out why the other man was giving him these things.
Was he trying to harm him?
Or was he simply helping?
A female Martial Artist with one jade-like leg crossed over the other covered her mouth and giggled. "Hehehe~ Little brother, you look too young. What our captain means is that the Wilderness isn't as wonderful as you think. Take these things and go back."
"Don't throw your life away."
"That's right."
Another Martial Artist took a puff of his cigarette and said, "With your strength as a Fourth-order Martial Artist, going to the Wilderness without a team won't necessarily earn you more than this."
"You know that's not what I'm asking..."
Lu Xuan was about to say something else when the hovercar suddenly jolted and came to a halt.
Ding--!
The doors opened, and the Martial Artist squad rose one after another.
Scarhead walked over to Lu Xuan, reached out, and patted him on the shoulder. "I've met plenty of young people like you."
"I used to be the same as you."
"You're about the same age as my son. You must have parents at home too. Go back early with this harvest."
With that,
Before Lu Xuan could reply, the entire Martial Artist squad leaped out of the cabin and vanished into the Wilderness.
"Interesting..."
Lu Xuan gave them another look. "There are Martial Artists like that in the Wilderness too. I hope you stay safe."
He shook his head and sat back down.
Some people really were sentimental and willing to help others.
He didn't think much more about it and looked toward the virtual projection.
At last, the hovercar stopped again.
The doors opened.
Lu Xuan stood at the doorway, feeling the blood-charged cold sweeping toward him. He took out the Ghost-faced Monkey mask and fastened it over his face.
"Don't disappoint me."
He pushed off with both feet and leaped into the mist-shrouded Wilderness.
Several days passed in the blink of an eye.
Clang!
A flash of blade light swept past.
The Red Horned Wild Boar King's head and body parted.
Blood blossomed, splattering across the icy ground and steaming into waves of white mist.
Lu Xuan bent down and gripped the boar king's red horn with all five fingers. With a slight exertion, he snapped it off.
Warmth flooded his palm.
Lu Xuan felt faintly pleased.
After putting away the red horn, he lowered his head and swept his gaze over the surroundings. Fresh blood flowed into a river, while the corpses of the Red Horned Wild Boars piled up like a mountain.
The scent of blood rushed into his nose.
It was as if flames were burning inside his chest again, scorching and seething.
"Fifth-order Intermediate Monsters are no longer my match." Lu Xuan's voice was slightly hoarse. As his gaze shifted, he looked into the distance, where clouds and mist gathered as if some giant beast were about to emerge.
"All my Martial Skills have also reached the entry level. By my calculations, the beast tide should break out soon."
Over these several days,
Lu Xuan had not slacked off in the slightest.
He hunted monsters during the day and cultivated Martial Art Manuals and Martial Skills at night.
Although his strength had not broken through, his foundation had grown much more solid.
Ordinary Fifth-order Martial Artists were already no match for him.
"Before that, I have to master a defensive Martial Skill."
During this period, he had focused solely on slaughter.
He had tempered his offensive Martial Skills and hadn't had time to cultivate defensive ones.
When the beast tide arrived, without sufficiently tough defenses,
a Fourth-order Martial Artist would be trampled into meat paste in an instant.
One had to know that even the smallest monsters in the beast tide were comparable to heavy trucks.
Even a light collision could leave a low-level Martial Artist bedridden for a month.
But now...
Lu Xuan gathered the monster blood on the ground, his figure leaping among the ruined buildings.
Before long,
he appeared deep within a forest.
Before him was a blood lake reflecting the moonlight.
"I've finally gathered monster blood with all five attributes."
My Golden Spear Never Falls was focused on tempering the body's strength in its early stages. Its opening required spiritual objects of the five elements to temper the body.
Five-element spiritual objects
were difficult to find.
So Lu Xuan had thought of a method: using the blood of monsters with the five attributes to temper his body.
Blood vitality itself was a special existence.
Even the blood vitality of ordinary people and animals could provide a considerable boost when swallowed, let alone the blood of monsters that had mutated and gained attributes.
Its power was comparable to that of a spirit medicine.
"Hah!"
Lu Xuan stripped off his combat uniform and walked naked into the blood pool.
"I hope I can break into the first layer."
He calmed his mind and circulated his Martial Art Manual.
The blood vitality in the pool displayed five attributes. As the Martial Art Manual circulated, they gathered toward Lu Xuan's body like trickling streams.
They did not enter his body. Instead, they formed a membrane around him.
Then the attributes in the blood vitality spread and intermingled.
Bang, bang, bang! The five attributes collided, producing a violent reaction like ten thousand needles stabbing into Lu Xuan's flesh.
Lu Xuan's skin and flesh tensed, and every hair on his body stood on end.
At that moment,
he felt as if he had leaped into a river three feet deep in ice. Countless shards of ice battered his skin, making every hair on his body contract violently. His heart began its final start-up, and his mind instantly lost the ability to think.
An indescribable feeling of dread surged up.
He hurriedly circulated his Martial Art Manual.
Guided by the Spiritual Energy in his body, the power of the five attributes began pounding every inch of his flesh.
At times Lu Xuan felt icy cold; at others, he seemed to be deep in a sea of flames, a swamp, or a blade mountain... His skin cracked and healed, his flesh was severed and regenerated. His entire being was trapped in a prison of torture, undergoing extreme punishment every moment.
Time passed bit by bit.
One minute.
Twenty minutes.
Three hours...
The blood vitality in the pool gradually faded.
Boom!
At last, accompanied by a muffled roar,
Lu Xuan's body shook, and waves of energy blasted outward, sending the pool water soaring several yards high. The trees within dozens of yards trembled violently, while trees as thick as an arm snapped on the spot.
His vast blood vitality rose into the sky like a pillar.
It startled the surrounding Martial Artists and monsters.
"What happened? Has an Awakened Level monster appeared?"
"Such a powerful blood-vitality fluctuation. Could some heavenly treasure have emerged?"
"Whatever it is, let's go take a look!"
"..."
Lu Xuan had no idea what kind of commotion he had caused.
At that moment, he only felt that he had grown stronger again.
"My Golden Spear Never Falls is less a Martial Skill than a body-tempering Martial Art Manual. While raising my defenses, it actually boosted my blood vitality another level and directly helped me break through to become a Fifth-order Martial Artist."
Boom! Lu Xuan threw a punch, and his blood vitality shook the air.
The trees ten meters away were crushed on the spot.
His fist force tore through the air. Fifth-order Martial Artist!
"Now I have at least some ability to protect myself against the beast tide."
"Hm?"
Just then,
under Lu Xuan's Mental Power perception, he discovered quite a few auras closing in from all around.
"What happened... Could there be a treasure here?"
He quickly changed into his clothes and put on the Ghost-faced Monkey mask.
He had just prepared to hide when Martial Artists appeared behind him.
"Looks like someone got here before us."
Lu Xuan extended his Mental Power to probe them.
There were three people in all.
The speaker was a woman in a moon-gray, tight-fitting combat uniform. Her long legs were like bamboo joints, and she held a blade in each hand. Her alluring figure slowly emerged from the dense forest.
Beside her were two male Martial Artists whose auras were far from weak.
One wore mechanical armor, while the other was bare-chested, his muscles hard as iron blocks.
Seventh-order Martial Artists!
"Friend," the female Martial Artist saw that Lu Xuan had his back to them and showed no reaction. She licked the blood from her blade with the tip of her tongue and spoke in an alluring voice:
"Our Dark Night Squad has always valued harmony. I wonder if you would be willing to part with the opportunity you obtained here?"
"We're willing to pay."
"Oh?"
Lu Xuan glanced back. The Ghost Face cast a cold gaze over the three of them as he sneered, "How much are you willing to pay?"
The terrifying Ghost Face struck straight at their souls. The three of them felt an icy chill sweep over them, their hair standing on end.
They unconsciously took a step back.
"Th-the Ghost Face Martial Artist?!"
The Ghost Face Martial Artist's name was as thunderous as a drumbeat.
He was an unscrupulous Rogue Cultivator who specialized in plundering other people's opportunities. No one had ever seen his true face.
But everyone knew one thing: this man had wiped out an entire squad of advanced Martial Artists—and they had been Martial Artists from the Monster Potion Company.
Most bizarre of all, he could control objects from a distance.
He killed without leaving a trace!
"Oh~ Is my reputation really that great?"
Lu Xuan slowly turned around, the long blade in his hand reflecting a cold gleam.
Almost at the same time,
countless figures appeared around the blood pool, powerful blood-vitality force radiating from their bodies.
They were all Fifth-order Martial Artists or higher!
"The Ghost Face Martial Artist?"
"How could he be here? Wait, could it be that he had already seized the opportunity here?"
The crowd was bewildered and suspicious.
Yet no one dared step forward and speak.
Lu Xuan's expression gradually turned grave as well. He thought, Could my breakthrough have caused some strange phenomenon, making these fellows believe a treasure had appeared?
"Tsk!"
This was troublesome.
"Everyone!"
The dark-night female warrior suddenly spoke. "The opportunity must have been seized by Ghost Face. Even if we all attacked at once, we wouldn't get much of the benefit... But don't forget, the Monster Potion Company and the Xu Family have issued a kill order for him. Whoever captures Ghost Face will surely be trained by the two families into a blood-and-qi martial master!"
As soon as these words were spoken,
the dense forest fell into a brief, eerie silence.
Soon, that stillness was shattered by a surging murderous aura, and all the dozens of martial artists present revealed a trace of greed.
Before you continue