Departure

After thinking it over, Huo Ling still restrained his urge to leave.

Judging from what had just happened, although these walking corpses were led by the Corpse King, perhaps due to its influence, they no longer feared the sunlight.

But as long as he did not go inside and provoke them, these walking corpses should remain as harmless as before.

There were still quite a few war lizard corpses on the road, and this time, Huo Ling was in no hurry to leave.

He chose another safe spot and prepared to see whether any fleeing war lizards would return to collect the bodies.

After quite some time, just as Huo Ling was beginning to feel sleepy from waiting, several war lizards appeared in the distance.

Sure enough, Huo Ling had guessed correctly. These war lizards likely understood the habits of the walking corpses.

The few war lizards returned to the battlefield and cautiously glanced twice into the mall. After confirming that there were no walking corpses at the entrance—

They went back the way they had come and brought more war lizards with them.

They gathered up the corpses of their kin. Yet aside from their own dead, the corpses of the slain walking corpses were their true objective.

This time, the war lizard tribe had lost a batch of its people without gaining any prey. How could they possibly accept that?

The war lizards' main task was to carry all the walking corpse bodies back. As for the corpses of the fallen war lizards, they only took some of them.

From the high-rise building, Huo Ling watched as the war lizards hoisted the walking corpse bodies one by one and headed into the distance.

After considering it, Huo Ling decided to carefully follow behind them and take a look.

After all, he had now discovered a second kind of creature in this city besides goblins.

Huo Ling trailed far behind the war lizards, spreading out his mental power to scout the surroundings in advance and guard against any watchful war lizards.

Though Huo Ling kept his distance, he was not worried about losing them.

The traces left by this group of war lizards were still quite obvious. They had carried away many walking corpse bodies, along with some war lizard corpses.

These bodies were bound to drip blood along the way. However, to avoid leaving blood trails, the war lizards had specifically left several tribesmen behind to clean them up.

This was also how they prevented the walking corpses from being drawn by the scent of blood at night and finding their tribe.

But though the bloodstains had been wiped away, the marks left on the road while cleaning them were still obvious.

Thus, Huo Ling followed them all the way. After some time, he finally found the war lizard tribe.

However, Huo Ling did not dare get too close. Once he knew the tribe's direction, he chose to return the way he had come.

His current strength was not enough to deal with this war lizard tribe. Now that he knew where it was, he only needed to avoid this area in the future.

When the morning sunlight spilled down once more, Huo Ling awoke from meditation.

His recent meditation had benefited him immensely. His strength was already close to the peak of the apprentice rank, but breaking through to the Black Iron rank would still have to wait.

He summoned his status panel and took a look.

Name: Huo Ling

Mental Power: 9.9/9.9

Mana: 99/99

Skills: Dark Breath Meditation Method Zero-Rank Spells: White Bone Fangs, Ashen Mist, Touch of Fatigue, Lesser Defensive Armor, Lesser Eye of Surveillance

Potential Points: 41.5

Ever since he had watched the war lizards get slaughtered by the walking corpses during the day, Huo Ling's hunting expeditions had become exceptionally cautious.

After that, he only dared seek out small groups of corpses, groups with merely dozens of walking corpses. Such small groups would not contain Black Iron-level walking corpses, making them relatively safer to hunt.

After every hunt, Huo Ling would continue meditating, spending all his Potential Points to promptly increase his combat power.

He had originally wanted to obtain a few more zero-rank spells from Teacher Li, but after thinking it over, he gave up.

After all, they were not close. Asking favors of others always wore away at their goodwill, and for now, these spells were enough for him.

Ever since his mental power and mana had accumulated to 9.9 and 99, he had temporarily stopped meditating, afraid that he might accidentally break through to the Black Iron rank.

The reason was that when breaking through from apprentice to Black Iron rank, some inheritances allowed one to choose certain magical materials, or even powerful organs from certain creatures.

They could be absorbed into the body and gradually digested, strengthening one's power.

Aside from Black Iron-rank inheritances, Silver-grade meditation methods and above all possessed such secret arts, and each secret art required different materials.

The Dark Breath Meditation Method had such a secret art as well. Once Huo Ling's mental power reached 9 points, he successfully unlocked it.

Seed of the Bone Graveyard

The name of this secret art was rather unique, and so were the materials it required. Huo Ling could not obtain them for the moment, so his plan to break through to Black Iron was put on hold.

This secret art required three main materials: a Lesser Dimensional Stone, a Netherworld Flower, and River Styx Water.

Besides those, there were more than ten supplementary materials, a mixed bag of all kinds.

Such as: bones, graveyard soil, tombstone fragments, coffin fragments, rotten flesh... and so on.

Fortunately, none of these supplementary materials were precious magical materials. Instead, they were simply rather bizarre.

One night, Huo Ling went to the cemetery outside Stone Creek City and got them all in one go. Other than feeling on tenterhooks the whole time, afraid of being discovered by the gravekeeper, everything else went smoothly.

As for the main materials he needed, Huo Ling had already found them in the Southern Heaven University marketplace, but they required academic credits to purchase.

There was nothing to be done about that. He could only wait until school started before successfully breaking through.

Fortunately, it would not be many more days. School was about to begin, and over the past few days, Huo Ling had been hunting walking corpses around the area, accumulating some Potential Points.

Once school started, he could use those Potential Points to break through and gain a head start over everyone else.