Ran into a Ghost

Ever since Bai Ye obtained the panel, only seven or eight days had passed, yet life seemed to have been fitted with a motor, unable to stop.

One thing after another leaped into his life, leaving him nowhere to hide.

During every workout, Bai Ye thought about how to train more effectively and how to develop better in the future.

But time constraints meant there were many things he simply could not make.

In the end, his growth period was still too short. He was too weak right now, not even past puberty.

Take a stamping machine, for example. Did he not know how enormously beneficial that thing would be for training? But whether it was waiting for the approval paperwork or finding someone to modify it, neither could be done in a short time.

And once he got all that done, the money spent on purchasing and modifications would drain most of what he had. His living funds would become insufficient again. It was not as though there were no ways to make money, but legitimate methods were either troublesome or took time.

Just getting a stamping machine was already this difficult. Better training equipment, such as voltage devices, mustard gas, or even directly trying to swallow a nuclear reactor—all these cultivation methods required money.

Getting money would be easy too. He could simply sell the Purple Mist Divine Skill. With its trait of only losing at most twenty percent when directly passing on the skill, he could let those people with companies and capital handle it.

As long as there were enough people, producing martial arts masters overnight would not be a problem. This had enormous market value.

The problem was, with Bai Ye's current strength, where he could not even beat Spider-Man, how could he dare show his wealth? And who in Marvel could he trust?

Tony Stark, before becoming Iron Man, was a decent enough person to trust. But as a key target of Serpent SHIELD's attention, Crossbones would probably lead a team to knock on his door that very night.

In a world where mutants formed the backdrop, who knew how many freaks Hydra could bring out?

This was also why Bai Ye was keeping as low a profile as possible. At the very least, he would only dare negotiate with those people once his three-dimensional stats reached Spider-Man's level. Otherwise, he would have no confidence at all.

If Bai Ye had money right now, he would not stop Peter from leaving. He might even act like some rich tycoon and give him a few million as a parting gift to win his loyalty, recreating that motivational-soup move where even those who betrayed him could receive millions.

Unfortunately, ideals were plump, while reality was skinny.

"Bai, I followed what the manual said and successfully stored a thread of it in my Dantian, but this True Qi is too weak."

While Bai Ye was training, Smith, who had been sitting cross-legged in the corner without making a sound, spoke up.

Bai Ye glanced at him. Covered in blood, he set down the lump of iron in his hand and nodded. "Mm. Turn your back to me. I'll pass you a strand of True Qi and test it out."

As a living advertisement for his future negotiations with the gym owner, Bai Ye planned to give Smith a beginner benefit equivalent to logging in and receiving a ten-day experience package. He also wanted to see just how effective the so-called skill transmission mentioned by the Gentleman Sword was.

"Bai Ye, you're going to pass your skill on to me?" Smith's eyes widened. Having thoroughly memorized Bai Ye's handwritten notes, he naturally understood what skill transmission meant.

"Stop talking and turn around. I'm passing the skill on to you," Bai Ye said flatly.

It would take Smith an entire day to cultivate merely a strand of True Qi, but for Bai Ye now, it took only ten minutes.

Soon, Smith sat down cross-legged in excitement. Bai Ye stood behind him and, through his clothes, slowly sent the internal energy in his body into Smith's Meridians.

As Purple Mist True Qi entered his body, Smith immediately calmed his breathing and began circulating the internal energy according to the cultivation method.

In three minutes, he had completely converted Bai Ye's internal energy, leaving only eight strands behind, while Bai Ye completely lost the source of that strand of internal energy.

"So this is skill transmission..." Bai Ye closed his eyes and felt the missing internal energy in his Dantian. There was nothing particularly extraordinary about the whole process. It was even rather ordinary.

Peter watched with great interest and asked, "Bai, can I learn this internal cultivation too?"

"Sure, but you can't pass it on to anyone else this year. After that, do whatever you want." To ensure the scarcity of internal energy, Bai Ye reminded him.

Very soon, Peter began reading the notes Bai Ye had given him during breaks while helping Bai Ye train.

As a genius whose mental stat had already reached 1.6 before his mutation, he quickly memorized the entire manual, intending to try cultivating once he returned home.

Out of gratitude toward Bai Ye, Peter kept helping him train until eleven at night before leaving.

After everyone had gone, Bai Ye waited until all of New York had fallen into the night, then, as usual, dragged out the Sulfuric Acid and began washing away the traces on his body.

Then, beneath the cover of night, he began following his memories and sneaking into the homes of those gangs to carry out cleanup work.

Now, all of New York was on edge because three gangs had been wiped out, every one of them on high alert.

This time, Bai Ye went directly to one of their homes, only to find it empty. He encountered only a few armed guards deliberately left behind inside the residence.

After finding nothing, and with the mindset that he was already here anyway, Bai Ye visited another location. It was still a trap. Clearly, all those gangs had learned their lesson.

Under the night sky, Bai Ye walked along an uninhabited, remote path toward the gym.

Cool gusts of wind blew along the way, creating an eerie and terrifying atmosphere. Most of the streetlights cast dim, yellowish light due to age, shining on Bai Ye's mostly healed acid-burned face and making it seem as if he had wandered onto the set of a horror movie.

"Rustle, rustle..."

As he walked, Bai Ye's senses picked up the sounds of insects, lizards, and other small creatures crawling and brushing against the grass and vegetation.

Then Bai Ye suddenly froze, because he smelled the faint scent of blood drifting through the air.

Having killed people often over the past few days, he could clearly detect the vitality within that bloody smell. It was definitely fresh blood that had only just flowed and had not yet coagulated.

Was someone just killed nearby? Bai Ye guessed.

Of course, he was not particularly alarmed. Counting both directly and indirectly, the number of people who had died at his hands was nearly enough to earn him the achievement of killing a hundred people. A mere murder case was nothing.

Since he could not hear any heartbeats nearby, Bai Ye guessed that the killer had already left. Just as he was about to investigate, a sound suddenly came from his side.

Crack!

A sound like a rotten branch snapping beneath someone's foot came from the bushes. Bai Ye turned his head and shouted, "Who's there?!"

A tall woman with cold, striking features stepped out of the bushes. Looking at Bai Ye's acid-burned face, she wore a wary expression. "What kind of monster are you?"

She had originally planned to ambush and kill Bai Ye outright, but after seeing his face, her legs had nearly gone weak with fright. What sort of demon or monster had such a terrifying appearance?

As Bai Ye looked at the cold, beautiful woman before him, whose face was filled with wariness, his eyelids twitched slightly. Part of the bloody smell was coming from the woman's mouth.

I really did run into a ghost. As Bai Ye and the cold, beautiful woman stared at each other, they both thought the same thing.