After giving Qila'angsi his instructions, Gulanxiu began cultivating where he stood. The Immortal God's corpse lay in a secluded spot, and the Baleful Qi was extremely dense there. Under normal circumstances, no cultivator would come by, so it was perfectly safe for Gulanxiu to cultivate.
Gulanxiu sliced open his arm again and absorbed the Bloodfall Crystals into his body, one after another. In just a few hours, he had absorbed all two thousand or so Bloodfall Crystals he'd obtained from the Immortal God. What frustrated him was that the Green Bud still hadn't changed at all. The energy in those two thousand-plus crystals was a mere drop in the bucket compared to what the Green Bud needed.
Just then, Gulanxiu spotted another uninvited guest with his Heaven's Eye. He looked up toward the top of the canyon and saw a disheveled man descending from above. Gulanxiu immediately noticed the man's vacant eyes. They held nothing but murderous intent and madness—not the slightest trace of emotion.
"A Blood Demon!" Gulanxiu thought.
The Blood Demon spotted Gulanxiu at the bottom of the canyon and charged at him with a spear. Gulanxiu casually swung his axe, cleaving the Blood Demon—and his Core Nucleus—in two.
"So the Baleful Qi really does make you forget what fear is! A Domain Lord at the third tier dares attack me?" Gulanxiu picked up the Blood Demon's storage gear and began searching it.
"What a pauper! He's got only one Bloodfall Crystal!" Gulanxiu scoffed. He was about to cut open his arm and resume cultivating when a thought suddenly struck him.
"These Blood Demons were cultivators who came to the Ancient God Ruins to take risks. They came here to temper themselves so they could fuse with Bloodfall Crystals, but in the end, they couldn't withstand the Baleful Qi. They went mad and became trapped in the Ancient God Ruins." Gulanxiu muttered to himself, his eyes growing brighter.
"That means every one of them has at least one Bloodfall Crystal on them. And if they were corrupted by the Baleful Qi, they must not have been strong enough to withstand it, which means their average strength shouldn't be that high. Once they become Blood Demons, they instinctively head toward places with dense Baleful Qi. And because they're controlled by murderous intent, they instinctively kill every living thing they encounter!" Gulanxiu pieced it together, growing more excited with every word.
"In other words, I'll run into Blood Demons as long as I head toward places where the Baleful Qi is dense. Few cultivators go to those places, and I have the Green Bud protecting me, so I can ignore the Baleful Qi. Those cultivators can't." Gulanxiu grinned as he spoke.
He had it all figured out and had come up with a plan: hunt Blood Demons!
Gulanxiu had never wanted to slaughter indiscriminately on Bloodfall Continent. In his eyes, the humans living there were no different from the humans in the universe. If he killed indiscriminately just to seize their Bloodfall Crystals, how would he be any different from the people he hated most?
Gulanxiu could kill an opponent in the Giant Axe Battle to survive, but he couldn't slaughter innocent people who had done him no wrong just to take what belonged to them.
That was why he had never found a good way to obtain large numbers of Bloodfall Crystals. But after arriving at the Ancient God Ruins, he finally saw a way forward. Blood Demons were living beings, but in a sense, they had already died the moment the Baleful Qi corrupted them and turned them into Blood Demons. Gulanxiu felt no qualms about hunting them.
For the next hundred years, Gulanxiu roamed among the Baleful Qi Vortices throughout the Ancient God Ruins. During that time, he encountered hundreds of cultivators and thousands of Blood Demons.
Gulanxiu deliberately revealed only the strength of a Cosmic Level 9 cultivator to bait his prey. Most of the cultivators who spotted him attacked.
Thanks to the advantage of his Heaven's Eye, Gulanxiu was never successfully ambushed. He could even avoid powerful Realm Lords in advance. Nearly every cultivator who dared attack him was slain.
The cultivators who trained in the Ancient God Ruins were mostly Cosmic Level and Domain Lord Level. Realm Lord Level cultivators were rare. With Gulanxiu deliberately choosing his targets and countering ambushes, few cultivators could withstand even one of his axe strikes. In the end, they almost all became his spoils.
As for the Blood Demons he encountered, Gulanxiu killed most of them as well. Their strength varied, but the vast majority were Domain Lords or Cosmic Level cultivators, with only a tiny number at Realm Lord Level.
The frenzied battles brought Gulanxiu a great harvest. In those hundred years alone, he obtained more than a hundred thousand Bloodfall Crystals. To his surprise, most of them hadn't come from cultivators or Blood Demons. He'd found them at the centers of Baleful Qi Vortices.
The mad Blood Demons instinctively headed toward places with dense Baleful Qi. Most of them were Domain Lords, with a lifespan of only one hundred eras. When two Blood Demons met, they would fight each other, and the one left alive wouldn't collect the spoils. Few cultivators could enter places where the Baleful Qi was dense. Over time, each Baleful Qi Vortex accumulated a sizable treasure trove—one Gulanxiu could conveniently claim, since he was free to enter and leave the vortices.
Of the more than a hundred thousand Bloodfall Crystals Gulanxiu obtained, ninety percent were picked up, while less than ten percent came from killing.
What Gulanxiu didn't know was that powerful Immortal Gods from the Immortal Temple came to these Baleful Qi Vortices every so often to collect the remains. However, their visits were hundreds of millions of years apart, which was why Gulanxiu had gotten the chance to pick up the scraps.
That was only natural. Even a Peak World Lord's will usually couldn't withstand boldly entering a Baleful Qi Vortex the way Gulanxiu did. Only powerful Immortal Gods could possibly ignore the Baleful Qi and move freely through the vortices. The Immortal Temple had no reason to hurry; coming by every few million years was enough.
What frustrated Gulanxiu was that absorbing more than a hundred thousand Bloodfall Crystals still hadn't changed the Green Bud at all. It only made him all the more glad he'd decided to gather Bloodfall Crystals himself.
If he'd relied on the Chaos True Spirits in Chaos City to make the Green Bud bloom, who knew how many he would have needed? The Chaos City Lord would surely have discovered him, and he would have wasted who knew how much of his cultivation time in Chaos City.
Of course, Gulanxiu hadn't neglected his cultivation over the past hundred years. Constant battles and insights, combined with the improvement in his comprehension, had allowed him to fully master the Giant Axe Chaos Tablet's Second Axe. Since he practiced the Three Axes into One style, he was now capable of passing the Sky Bridge's Seventh Layer.
But Gulanxiu hadn't attempted the Sky Bridge yet, so nobody knew how strong he was—except Barbarian Hammer King.
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