Taking Stock of the Spoils

"Truly formidable! As expected of lightning spells, whose power surpasses all other arts. With such might, it could almost rival a Tier 3 Spell among ordinary Five Elements Spells!"

Atop the sandy slope, Zhou Yang stared at the sand bandit corpse that had been blasted into charcoal, his face full of amazement.

He had long heard that Lightning Spells possessed astonishing power, that among spells of the same tier, few could stand shoulder to shoulder with lightning arts in might. Only now, having seen it for himself, did he understand that lightning arts had earned their great reputation not through empty boasting.

Yet while Lightning Spells were immensely powerful, they were likewise the most difficult among all spells to cultivate.

Generally speaking, only cultivators whose Spiritual Root attributes included both wind and lightning could learn Lightning Spells with relative ease.

Cultivators like Zhou Yang, whose Spiritual Root attributes leaned toward the Five Elements Attribute, could still learn Lightning Spells, but the difficulty would be more than ten times greater than for cultivators with Wind and Lightning Attribute Spiritual Roots. Even if they succeeded, the spells they cast would be far weaker than those cast by cultivators with Wind and Lightning Attribute Spiritual Roots.

For this reason, although many cultivators coveted the power of Lightning Spells, fewer than one in a thousand were truly willing to waste vast amounts of time on them. They were exceedingly rare.

And to turn a Lightning Spell into a talisman, not only did the Talisman Master need an extremely profound grasp of spells and talisman-making techniques, but Spiritual Materials containing the power of wind and lightning also had to be used as the vessel.

Because the requirements were so harsh, lightning talismans sealing Lightning Spells had always commanded prices that surpassed all other spirit talismans of the same tier. At times, they even sold for the price of talismans of a higher tier.

Even so, they were usually priced but unavailable. Whether one could buy them depended on luck.

The Tier 2 High-grade "Lightning Strike Technique" talisman in Zhou Yang's hand had been given to him by the Old Clan Leader, Zhou Minghan. Before Zhou Yang descended the mountain, Zhou Minghan had specifically handed it to him as a trump card for self-defense.

When he gave him that rare lightning talisman, the Old Clan Leader had specifically warned him not to use it lightly unless he had no other choice.

Who would have thought that less than a month after leaving home, he had already used up a talisman Zhou Minghan had treasured for decades?

"What a waste! If I'd known the lightning talisman was so powerful, letting that fellow go would have been no great loss!"

Remembering the incomparably solemn expression on the Old Clan Leader's face when he handed over the lightning talisman, Zhou Yang suddenly felt somewhat regretful.

Sand bandits deserved to die, but using such a precious Tier 2 High-grade lightning talisman just to kill one sand bandit was a loss no matter how one looked at it!

But what was done was done. Regret was useless now. He could only stare at the sand bandit corpses on the ground, half consoling himself and half hopeful, as he muttered, "I hope the Storage Bags on these three fellows give me a pleasant surprise. Otherwise, I'll have lost all the way to my grandmother's house today!"

Strictly speaking, this was the first time he had killed anyone in both his lives. And he had killed three at once—cultivators, no less.

Yet perhaps because of the education he had received since childhood, he felt no aversion toward fighting and killing. Nor did the sand bandit corpses on the ground cause him any discomfort.

Back at Clear Duckweed Mountain Oasis, those miners bitten to death by Gold-Eating Rats had been the truly miserable ones. Many had not even been left whole corpses. Though that sight had made him feel somewhat sickened at the time, he had not suffered any particularly adverse reaction.

After all, cultivators had spiritual power protecting their bodies and were immune to all illnesses. Even if psychological reasons caused physical discomfort, they could swiftly suppress it by mobilizing their spiritual power.

Shaking his head and refusing to dwell on such trivial matters, Zhou Yang tidied up the corpses of the two sand bandits on the ground. After confirming that nothing had been overlooked, he burned the bodies to ashes with a single blaze. Then he used the Earth Evasion Technique to burrow underground and searched the corpse of the sand bandit he had ambushed and killed with the Armor Piercing Dagger. Only then did he return to the tent beneath the sandy slope in satisfaction to take stock of his spoils.

Rogue Cultivators were unlike sect cultivators and Family Cultivators, who had fixed cave residences for storing their belongings and did not need to worry about their nests being swept clean while they were away.

For the vast majority of Rogue Cultivators, only carrying their entire fortune on their persons made them feel secure. Thus, while their Storage Bags might differ in capacity, the spaces within were always packed to the brim.

Therefore, Zhou Yang had not found three Storage Bags on the three sand bandits, but ten.

Of those ten Storage Bags, three had a capacity of one zhang, six had a capacity of five chi, and one had a capacity of three chi.

Once he opened all ten Storage Bags, he found them crammed with all sorts of miscellaneous items. From gold cups and jade bowls used for eating and drinking tea to oxhide tents and jujube-pearwood beds, everything was there.

But the most numerous items were Golden Pearl Rice and frozen demon beast meat. The three sand bandits seemed afraid of starving to death in the desert. The Golden Pearl Rice and demon beast meat each carried was enough for one person to live on for three to five years!

"No wonder the elders of the Lineage always sound strange and disdainful when they speak of Rogue Cultivators, even mockingly calling them the beggars and vagrants of the Cultivation World!"

"Carrying every pot and jar on their bodies, along with heaps of spirit rice and beast meat—aren't they exactly like beggars and vagrants?"

Looking at the Storage Bags stuffed full of mortal objects that were of little use to cultivators, Zhou Yang found it both amusing and profoundly disappointing.

He had hoped to find some valuable goods in these Storage Bags to make up for the several Tier 2 High-grade spirit talismans and the lightning talisman he had wasted. Now, it seemed that hope would be difficult to fulfill.

Rogue Cultivators were Rogue Cultivators. If they had substantial fortunes, they would not have fallen so low as to become sand bandits—though not just anyone could become a sand bandit either.

Still, however small a mosquito leg was, it was still meat; however unappetizing a bean bun was, it was still provisions. After thoroughly searching all ten Storage Bags, Zhou Yang did find several cultivation treasures that were worth looking at.

Among these treasures, low-grade spirit stones were the most numerous, numbering two to three hundred. There were also several bottles of first-tier and second-tier spirit pills for various purposes, worth an estimated hundred or so spirit stones.

Then Zhou Yang found several second-tier spirit talismans that the three sand bandits had not had time to use, as well as artifact-forging and pill-refining materials that the bandits had apparently robbed from somewhere and had not yet had time to dispose of.

If these materials were not refined into artifacts and pills, they would only be worth ten or twenty spirit stones. But Zhou Yang himself was an Artifact Forger, while his father was a pill refiner. If properly utilized, their value could multiply several times over.

The three sand bandits' Storage Bags also contained eight low-level cultivation techniques, several books of cultivation insights and annotations, and two cultivator travel journals recording strange tales and anecdotes from the Cultivation World. Zhou Yang looked through them and found that six of the eight techniques were already collected in the Zhou Lineage's Scripture Depository Cave. The remaining two could earn him twenty low-grade spirit stones in compensation if donated to the Lineage.

Calculated carefully, if he added in the several Second-tier Artifacts seized from the sand bandits and the value of the ten Storage Bags themselves, he had actually recovered his costs purely in terms of value—and even made quite a profit.

"Murder and arson earn golden belts; building bridges and paving roads leave no corpses behind. The ancients truly did not deceive me!" Zhou Yang sighed and decided to take back what he had said earlier.

Rogue Cultivators might be poor, but even a broken ship still had three pounds of nails!

The three sand bandits were, after all, Late Qi Cultivation cultivators who had been in the robbery business for years. They had still accumulated some wealth.

If he did not count the life-preserving spirit talismans and life-saving pills given to him by his elders, his personal fortune might not have exceeded theirs by much.

Even looking at the entire Zhou Lineage, excluding the two Foundation Establishment Cultivators Zhou Minghan and Zhou Xuanhao, only those elders at Qi Refining Layer Nine could steadily surpass these three sand bandits in personal wealth.

After taking stock of his gains, Zhou Yang burned all the useless miscellaneous items in one fire. He then packed the remaining useful items into two large-capacity Storage Bags and hung them at his waist. The other empty Storage Bags were strung together with a rope and hung in the sacks on the Sand Camel Beast's back, ready to be tossed into a Lineage shop for disposal once he reached White Sand River Oasis.

Being a Family Cultivator came with this benefit: as long as treasures acquired outside had clean origins and did not involve cultivators from other lineages or sects, they could be sold through the Lineage's shops. One only needed to pay the Lineage a five-percent handling fee after the sale.

If it were Rogue Cultivators instead, no matter where the treasures in their hands came from, once they brought them to shops in the market to sell, they could forget about getting normal prices. At the very least, they would have to lower the price by thirty percent before they could successfully sell them.

If they were unlucky or inexperienced, and took stolen goods robbed from—or even picked up from—lineage or sect cultivators to legitimate shops for sale, and someone recognized the origins of those goods, not only would the stolen goods be confiscated, but they themselves would be seized by the market's law-enforcement cultivators for interrogation. Once murder and treasure theft were confirmed, their little lives would be finished on the spot.

For these reasons, when Rogue Cultivators found spiritual treasures outside, they would sometimes rather waste a great deal of time setting up stalls in the market's street-vendor district and sell slowly than go to shops and let others suck their blood. Only when they truly could not sell their goods and desperately needed spirit stones would they grit their teeth and go in to be butchered.

But Rogue Cultivators also had to pay spirit stones to the market's managers for staying in the market. Once they remained too long without selling their goods, their final outcome was still to obediently submit to being butchered.

So being a Rogue Cultivator in the Cultivation World was truly a bitter, miserable existence.

Zhou Yang was very glad that he was a Family Cultivator. Though the Zhou Lineage was no great lineage, compared to the Rogue Cultivators at the bottom of the Cultivation World, he at least had the Lineage behind him and would not be exploited too harshly.

The fierce battle with the three sand bandits had not taken Zhou Yang much time. Taking stock of the spoils from their bodies, however, had consumed most of the night.

By now, dawn was beginning to break. After finishing his inventory, he did not linger where he was. Instead, he packed away the tent, mounted the Sand Camel Beast, and continued on his journey.

Thank you all for your comments. I summarized them and found that most of what you were worried about was the same as what I was worried about. Writing according to my own ideas will not cause any problems. As for the so-called poisonous point of a golden finger, it should not count as poisonous now, because Qidian readers are mature readers who understand why authors give protagonists cheats.

What everyone worries about most are those old, clichéd routines from ancient webnovels: the protagonist obtains a high-tier divine artifact and the inheritance of a great expert, then slaughters everyone in every direction, Foundation Establishment killing Golden Core, Golden Core destroying Nascent Soul... In truth, everyone is overthinking it. Later in this book, once the protagonist's cultivation reaches Golden Core, Nascent Soul, and beyond, with all kinds of fortuitous encounters behind him, perhaps he will have the strength to wrestle with the big shots. But fighting above his level as easily as eating and drinking will definitely be impossible. Rest easy—I'm an old bookworm too, and I know which plotlines disgust everyone...

All right, the issue has been resolved, so I will not spoil which approach I used... Finally, please give me some recommendation votes, hehehe... The standalone chapter has already been deleted.