Mountain Runners

Hao Erge screamed. The enormous spider was already scuttling toward him at breakneck speed, its two massive fangs spread wide!

Wu Haishan still had another trick up his sleeve, one he had prepared for Xu Yuan.

But a quick glance around showed that Xu Yuan had vanished into hiding somewhere.

What a sly fox!

Wu Haishan had no time to worry about him. The best thing to do now was escape first.

Saint Aunt valued him because of that one dose of medicine. But he was, after all, a Nine Streams Pill Cultivator, and Pill Cultivators had a few tricks of their own.

This "Outer Pill," for instance, had been refined from a spider-like evil creature.

At that moment, he still had another Outer Pill palmed in his hand. It was a life-saving treasure granted by his sect, and it contained a single slash from a Seventh Stream Martial Cultivator!

Wu Haishan turned the Inner Fire in his belly into two trails of flame and attached them to his legs. When he activated them, his speed multiplied several times. He crashed through the villagers with a rumble and, in the blink of an eye, reached the village gate.

The gate stood wide open. Wu Haishan was just about to escape when he silently swore: Once I get out, I'll report this to the society. Next time, I'll bring an army and wipe out every last living thing in this village!

Suddenly, a huge shadow spread its wings and flew from the dead old tree in the village. It was several times faster than Wu Haishan with his flaming trails!

In an instant, the shadow caught up with him. Wu Haishan shouted angrily, "Just what I was hoping for!"

He launched the Outer Pill from his mouth!

The pill soared into the air beneath the morning sun, its surface gleaming like metal. With a boom, a terrifying blade aura blasted out of it!

The shadow had not expected Wu Haishan to have such a trick. In the split second he had, he could only take the slash head-on.

Clang!

With a thunderous crash, the shadow stumbled to the ground, but its movements were entirely unhindered. A flash of dark, gleaming steel—

Pfft—

A common mountain woodcutter's knife sank deep into the place where Wu Haishan's neck joined his shoulder, nearly cleaving his upper body in two!

Sparks hissed from the wound, burning his blood dry and filling the air with a stench.

Wu Haishan's eyes bulged with terror. His Adam's apple bobbed twice, and he managed two garbled sounds before dying with regret in his heart.

Old Mountain Runner pulled the woodcutter's knife from the corpse.

He was still wearing the cloak made of countless feathers. Nearly a third of them had been severed by that slash!

His yellow crystal glasses had tilted askew, too. From his hiding place, Xu Yuan could just make out that Old Mountain Runner's eyes were nothing but whites!

Old Mountain Runner straightened his glasses, wiped his knife clean, then glanced back toward Xu Yuan's hiding place before walking away without a word.

The villagers swarmed over and divided up Wu Haishan's corpse.

That was the village's rule: whenever trouble arose, the Mountain Runner handled it.

The villagers took care of the cleanup.

As soon as Wu Haishan died, the enormous spider stood frozen in place.

Its two massive fangs were only a foot from Hao Erge's neck.

Hao Erge let out a string of croaking cries. "Tang Sishenzi, help me—!"

The woman from the house where Old Chen, the Martial Cultivator, had stayed the night came out. With a few swipes of her long, slender hand, she sliced through the spiderweb and peeled Hao Erge out of it.

Old Chen and the others were also "taken care of" by the villagers.

Xu Yuan emerged trembling, held up the various goods in his hands, and forced out a smile. "I really am a traveling peddler. Let's keep trading."

By midafternoon, Xu Yuan had finally traded away all the goods he had brought.

A pile of mountain goods now stood beside him.

There were plenty of good things in it; once he took them out and resold them, he could get ten times what they were worth.

But Xu Yuan could not feel happy about it at all.

The villagers haggled over every little thing, so Xu Yuan had no choice but to bargain back and forth with them.

He wanted to make the trades quickly, to let the villagers decide what to exchange and get out of there as soon as possible.

But he kept feeling that a pair of eyes was watching him from behind those yellow crystal lenses.

Xu Yuan did not dare reveal the slightest crack in his act!

If he did anything that made him seem unlike a genuine peddler, that blood-drinking woodcutter's knife would split his neck open the very next moment!

By the time he was done, it was already too late to leave the mountains, so he had no choice but to spend another night at Jiao Erbo's house.

Seeing that he had done such "good business" all day, Jiao Erbo raised the lodging fee by ten coins. Xu Yuan paid without even a stutter.

Xu Yuan did not sleep that night. More than half of the mountain goods were medicinal herbs and ore, so he took them as "Bait/Food" and refined them with the Inner Fire in his belly.

One of the various cultivation methods, "Bait/Food," simply meant "eating."

Just not the way ordinary people ate.

Most ordinary people who ate these things would die.

The cultivators of the Seven Great Gates all consumed different things as "Bait/Food." Pill Cultivators had the broadest range.

They ate anything—the Inner Fire could refine anything.

But Xu Yuan had no one to guide him now. Whether he pursued the Fate Cultivator path or the Pill Cultivator path, he could only feel his way forward alone.

So when this "Bait/Food" entered his stomach, he could only refine it by sorting it into categories.

Herbs with similar medicinal properties went into one category, and he refined them into a pill.

The ore was simple: he mixed the gold, silver, copper, and iron together to make a "Gold Pellet."

But the ore in Ghost Witch Mountain was unusual, far superior to ordinary ore from outside.

At last, Xu Yuan took out a gray-black Outer Pill.

A closer look revealed that it resembled a piece of poor-quality amber, with a spider sealed inside.

This was Wu Haishan's Outer Pill. The mother and daughter next door had taken possession of it.

Xu Yuan had paid a "steep price"—three kitchen knives in all—to get it from them.

The other Outer Pill had contained a single slash from a Seventh Stream Martial Cultivator. It could only be used once, and then it disappeared.

Xu Yuan washed this pill clean, swallowed it, and refined it with the Inner Fire in his belly. Then he made it his own.

The spider inside the Outer Pill was an evil creature. Someone had captured it and refined it into an Outer Pill.

Xu Yuan estimated that the spider was about as powerful as a Nine Streams cultivator. The person who had refined it into an Outer Pill had to be at least Eighth Stream.

But since the spider itself was not very powerful, the Outer Pill was only at the Nine Streams level.

After cultivating all night, Xu Yuan felt that his Pill Cultivator level had finally reached Nine Streams as well.

The standard for a Pill Cultivator to "Enter Stream" was to condense five "pills."

Xu Yuan had just sorted his ingredients by type and refined more than ten.

Not one of them was very powerful, but he had enough of them.

When his father was alive, he had told Xu Yuan plenty of tales about the Seven Great Gates. After his father passed away, his stepmother had also explained them systematically a few times.

The standard for rising from Nine Streams to Eighth Stream was to condense one's own "Inner Pill."

None of the things Xu Yuan had refined so far counted as a true "Inner Pill."

A Pill Cultivator had to be exceedingly cautious when condensing an Inner Pill!

For instance, Xu Yuan had absolutely no idea what kind of Inner Pill he should condense. He would need to spend more time honing his skills along the Pill Cultivator path before he could find his direction.