Counting the Spoils

Whoosh!

Lu Lin's diving momentum did not lessen. Savage Elephant Charge circulated once more, his qi and blood surging as they condensed into a gigantic blood-colored elephant that slammed ferociously toward the young cultivator in the pit!

"A mere mortal martial brute... don't even think of slaying an immortal!"

Madness flashed through the young man's eyes. He suddenly waved his hand and sent out three talismans.

The talismans burned to ash in an instant, transforming into three crimson blades that tore through the air, howling as they slashed toward Lu Lin!

This time, Lu Lin did not dodge.

A cultivator's methods were strange and endlessly varied. If he gave ground again, there was no telling what secret art the other man might use to escape.

Once he fled into the high skies and leaked this matter, Lu Lin would inevitably fall into endless flight from then on.

He had to ride this one burst of momentum and kill him completely.

He drove the qi and blood throughout his body to the limit. Vast power erupted with a boom as both fists struck out in succession, meeting the crimson blades head-on.

Boom boom boom!

With three explosive blasts, Lu Lin broke through the obstruction like rotten wood before a crushing force, and his thunderous, ten-thousand-jun punch continued blasting toward the young man!

The Spirit Turtle Shield above the young man's head trembled madly. Cracks rapidly spread across it until, with a mournful cry, it finally burst apart, scattering into seven or eight fragments that flew in all directions.

"No, I am an inner disciple of the Blood Baleful Demon Sect—"

The young man roared in terror, but before he could finish...

Pfft!

Lu Lin's fist had already smashed heavily into his skull, and the young man's head burst apart like a watermelon.

Huff—

Lu Lin let out a long breath of turbid air.

Finally dealt with.

This cultivator really had been hard to kill, with tricks emerging one after another. Lu Lin had seized every advantage and launched a sneak attack, yet the fight had still been this difficult.

He moved slightly and could not help sucking in a cold breath. A wound more than a foot long had been left on both his shoulder and his waist, deep enough to see bone, blood pouring out.

They had been left when he had forced his way through the talisman attacks just now.

The other party's attacks had been incomparably sharp. His protective qi and blood were like empty decoration before them, torn apart with ease.

If not for the fact that his qi and blood far surpassed martial artists of the same level, and his flesh was tough and resilient, he would probably have been cut in two long ago. Fortunately, his cultivation had already reached the ninth layer of Body Tempering. With a slight circulation of qi and blood, the muscles around the wounds contracted, immediately stopping the bleeding.

Without the slightest hesitation, he reached out, and the storage pouch at the young man's waist fell into his hand. With a slight thought, he put it into the inner space of the Martial Dao Melting Furnace.

Immediately after, his figure flickered as he collected the scattered fragments of the Spirit Turtle Shield and the White Bone Spike nailed into the tree trunk one by one.

"This corpse..."

Lu Lin was frowning when a faint tremor suddenly came from the ground.

An Underworld Blood Beast was approaching.

Instead of being alarmed, Lu Lin was delighted. He stood still beside the young man's corpse without moving.

The next moment...

A scarlet long tongue shot out from underground like lightning! Lu Lin's body swayed slightly, and he lightly avoided it.

An Underworld Blood Beast over ten meters long broke out of the earth, bit down on the young man's corpse, and dragged it underground.

"Perfect. Saves me the trouble of destroying the body and wiping away the traces."

The corners of Lu Lin's mouth lifted slightly.

He had been worrying about how to handle the corpse. If he left it alone and it was discovered by the demon sect cultivators, it would not be hard to tell from the wounds that he had died at a martial artist's hands, and future trouble would be inevitable.

This way, everything was clean and neat.

He used Spirit Cat Step, easily shook off the Underworld Blood Beast's pursuit, and vanished into the depths of the dense forest.

All along the way, he restrained his aura and advanced carefully in concealment. Fortunately, he did not encounter any other demon sect cultivators.

Half an hour later, Lu Lin found a hidden mountain cave and flashed inside.

Inside the cave.

With a thought, the storage pouch appeared in his hand.

"I heard this thing requires spiritual power to open, and martial artists can't use it... How should I open it?"

Lu Lin examined it carefully for a while, then tried to mobilize his qi and blood, slowly pouring it into the pouch.

Immediately, a powerful resistance came from the pouch, preventing his qi and blood from seeping in.

"This should be the spiritual power imprint left behind by the original owner. As long as I erase it, I should be able to open it."

Lu Lin fully urged his qi and blood onward. Like a great river surging, it battered the storage pouch in an endless stream.

Sizzle, sizzle, sizzle...

Two kinds of energy clashed fiercely on the pouch.

Clearly, the spiritual power on the storage pouch was far more condensed and higher-grade, like solid iron, standing firm and unmoving.

But Lu Lin's qi and blood were vast and surging, endless and unceasing. Under his continuous assault, that spiritual power imprint was finally worn away bit by bit.

Another half hour passed, and the spiritual power imprint on the storage pouch completely dissipated.

Lu Lin turned the mouth of the pouch downward and gave it a gentle shake.

Clatter...

A pile of items fell to the ground at the sound: bottles and jars, wooden boxes, talismans, magic artifacts, tokens...

Lu Lin first picked up that token.

On one side of the token, the words "Inner Sect" were written.

On the other side were the six characters: "Yu An, eighth level of Qi Refining."

"This should be that young male cultivator's identity token. This person was an inner sect disciple of the Demon Sect, only his cultivation was actually just at the eighth level of Qi Refining."

Lu Lin murmured, and this made his heart feel somewhat heavy.

The eighth level of Qi Refining was already so difficult to deal with. One could well imagine how terrifying the strength of ninth-level Qi Refining, tenth-level Qi Refining, and even those immortal cultivators known as geniuses would be.

His strength was still far, far from enough.

Reining in his thoughts, he put the token into his inner space. Lu Lin then opened those medicine bottles. Inside were three different kinds of pills, twenty-two in total.

He touched them with his hand to sense them and discovered that only one kind of pill contained spiritual energy and could be exchanged for cultivation time, but one pill could only be exchanged for two years.

He guessed that this should be a pill used by Qi Refining cultivators to improve their cultivation, similar to spirit stones.

The other two kinds were very likely used for healing injuries or detoxifying poison.

"In the future, I'll need to find an opportunity to learn about the pills of the immortal cultivation world. Their healing and detoxifying pills should be usable by martial artists too."

Lu Lin thought to himself.

The main purpose of healing pills was to regrow flesh and reconnect bones; in that regard, immortal cultivators and martial artists were no different. And since they did not contain spiritual power, they would be harmless to martial artists.

"Exchange!"

With a thought, the ten pills containing spirituality turned into powder, adding twenty years of cultivation time for him.

The wooden boxes contained spirit stones: sixty Low-grade Spirit Stones and more than one hundred and fifty Inferior Spirit Stones.

There were also five assorted talismans and two magic artifacts. If the White Bone Spike and the shattered "Spirit Turtle Shield" were counted, then there were four in total.

Clearly, the White Bone Spike and the Spirit Turtle Shield were of a higher grade, while the other two were lower-grade. This could be seen from the cultivation time they could be exchanged for.

After a little consideration, Lu Lin decided to exchange all the magic artifacts and talismans for cultivation time.

In any case, he could not use them, and the features of magic artifacts were obvious. Once exposed, they would easily invite disaster.

As for the spirit stones, he planned to keep them for the time being.

As one magic artifact and talisman after another turned to flying ash, Lu Lin gained another sixty years of cultivation time. Added to the twenty years from the pills, he obtained a total of eighty years.

These treasures of Qi Refining cultivators were far inferior to Foundation Establishment-level ones. To have such gains was already not bad.

At this point, his remaining cultivation time reached one hundred and fifty-seven years and two months.

"Should I improve Iron Elephant Body?"

Lu Lin weighed it for a while, but still decided to put it off for now.

Without Bone-Protecting Pills, forcing his way through purely with time was too poor a bargain.

Even if he dumped more than one hundred and fifty years into it, at most it would let Iron Elephant Body break through to the seventh level, and the increase to his strength would be limited.

He planned to return to the Blood Baleful Demon Sect, then head to Blood Baleful City to purchase a batch of pills, such as Blood Qi Pills, Tendon Refining Pills, Bone-Protecting Pills, and the like.

With the assistance of pills, the cultivation time would be greatly shortened. At that time, the spirit stones he had kept would come in handy.

Putting the spirit stones and storage pouch back into his inner space, Lu Lin walked out of the cave.

At this moment, in the Underworld Blood Beast King's lair.

Elder Lin's face was ashen, and the spiritual power around him surged wildly, forming a terrifying pressure that pressed down on the surrounding Qi Refining cultivators like a great mountain, making their whole bodies tremble until they almost fell to their knees.

"Immediately summon everyone here to gather! I'd like to see just who ate a bear's heart and a leopard's gall, daring to privately swallow the Skull Underworld Flower!"

Elder Lin squeezed out each word through his teeth, his voice containing towering fury.

"Yes, Elder!"

The Qi Refining cultivators felt as if they had received a great pardon and scattered in all directions to pass on the order.

"Junior Sister Chu, I'll trouble you to supervise. No one is allowed to leave the Four Underworld Mountain range."

Elder Lin said coldly.

His fury had already reached the brink of eruption.

He had exhausted his schemes, paid a tremendous price, and joined hands with Junior Sister Chu to kill the Underworld Blood Beast King. Who would have thought that when he arrived, he would discover that the Skull Underworld Flower had vanished without a trace!

Clearly, someone had secretly plucked the peach.

How could he possibly endure this?