Summary

After sensing that quite a few people had set their sights on him, Zhou Feng immediately chose to return to his room.

The more he knew, the more he understood just how dangerous Bitter Bamboo Peak truly was.

First of all, there were definitely quite a few senior brothers and sisters on Bitter Bamboo Peak who had successfully cultivated the Three Demon Devouring Arts.

And judging by the Demon Devouring Art's bizarre rate of advancement, it was very possible that everyone on Bitter Bamboo Peak was at the Qi Condensation Realm.

The two people he had hunted before might have been the weakest on Bitter Bamboo Peak.

That was why he had succeeded so easily.

With that in mind, staying indoors and waiting for the Martial Arts Tournament to arrive might be a good choice.

But his current realm was still a little too low.

"Only the Qi Gathering Realm?"

Zhou Feng worked hard to circulate the Demon Devouring Art, absorbing the sparse spiritual energy around him.

He was still somewhat dissatisfied with his cultivation.

This Martial Arts Tournament gathered the elite disciples of the entire Inner Sect. Those at the very top were definitely in the Qi Condensation Realm.

As someone who was only at the Qi Gathering Realm, he was still far too lacking compared to those elite disciples.

Under such circumstances, it would be extremely difficult for him to secure a good ranking.

"Should I take this chance to hunt once?"

Zhou Feng considered whether he should hunt tonight, then devour a Demon Devouring Gu and make another leap in realm.

If he could devour a senior brother in the Qi Condensation Realm,

it would not be impossible for his cultivation to soar directly to the Qi Condensation Realm.

But doing so was extremely risky. Senior brothers or sisters in the Qi Condensation Realm

were absolutely battle-hardened and practiced all kinds of secret arts and techniques. Their combat strength was on an entirely different level from the small fry he had hunted before.

"The key is to catch them off guard!"

Of course, it was not as if there was no chance at all.

As long as he caught them by surprise and severely wounded them first, his chances would be much greater.

So, for the first time, he began to take stock of his own advantages.

The greatest help to him naturally came from his Passive Skills.

After constantly obtaining Passive Skills during this period, he had actually accumulated quite a few.

Level 2 Gluttony, Old Skin, Self-Healing Physique, Natural Affinity, Immunity to Poison, Underwater Breathing, and Long Life Person were all growth-oriented support abilities.

They provided little benefit in ordinary combat.

Then came the combat-type Passive Skills.

Combat Instinct, Bone Plating, and Full Charge Slash. There were only three Passive Skills that directly enhanced combat strength?

Zhou Feng counted carefully and realized that he still had too few combat-type Passive Skills.

Moreover, two of those three combat passives were opening-move passives.

Once Bone Plating and Full Charge Slash were triggered, they required a long time to recover.

Simply put, they had very long cooldowns.

The only combat-type Passive Skill that could remain active throughout a battle was Combat Instinct.

Although he acquired Passive Skills at a decent pace, the skills he received were far too random.

They could not instantly raise his combat strength by much.

It seemed that he would need to find a way later to see whether he could speed up the acquisition of Passive Skills.

Previously, he had obtained one Passive Skill every so often.

And the interval had never been particularly long.

So Zhou Feng had never paid much attention to how he might speed up the acquisition of Passive Skills.

What he knew so far was that continuously absorbing spiritual energy could moderately speed up the progress bar on the Skill Panel.

But that required a huge number of spirit stones, and he did not have nearly that many.

Earning spirit stones might become one of his important goals later on.

Having reviewed his Passive Skills,

the next thing was the techniques he had mastered.

Zhou Feng was currently cultivating the Demon Devouring Art, and the Gu insect within his body had also transformed into a Demon Devouring Gu.

But his understanding of the Demon Devouring Art was still extremely shallow. As for using the Demon Devouring Gu mentioned in the art to enhance his combat strength,

he had not mastered that at all.

After the Demon Devouring Art came the Three Demon Devouring Arts of Bitter Bamboo Peak. Of the three arts, only Demon Devouring Armor had reached the introductory stage.

He had not even entered the introductory stage for the other two.

"My cultivation time is still too short!"

There was nothing Zhou Feng could do about that.

After all, he had cultivated for far too short a time. Things like techniques needed time to accumulate.

Even at the fullest count, he had been cultivating for less than half a year.

To go from an ordinary mortal to the Qi Gathering Realm in half a year, he felt that his cultivation speed was already extremely fast.

"Lastly, my weapons!"

By the end of his review, all that remained were the weapons he commonly used.

The first was lime. After entering the Inner Sect, the sand and dirt he had used before had been replaced by lime.

This lime had been quite useful when his realm was low.

But now that he was above the Qi Gathering Realm, protective spiritual energy could directly block such low-level tricks.

For example, Zhou Feng himself only needed to raise Demon Devouring Armor, and any amount of lime would be useless.

Bitter Bamboo Peak had Demon Devouring Armor, so the other peaks likely had their own corresponding defensive measures.

Thus, lime was no longer useful.

Next were some poisons. After becoming the backer of Qian Shang and his daughter,

he had also obtained some ordinary poisons.

After all, the shop operated by Qian Shang mainly dealt in all kinds of poisonous insects.

Extracting poison from poisonous insects was perfectly normal.

Among them, the most useful was probably a poison called Soul-Bewitching Incense.

This poison had a powerful hallucinatory effect and did not distinguish between friend and foe.

Even someone in the Qi Induction Realm would be slightly dazed after smelling Soul-Bewitching Incense.

However, its drawback was that it volatilized extremely easily. It had to be used right in someone's face; once the distance increased, its effect became much weaker.

For precisely that reason, Soul-Bewitching Incense was not particularly expensive on the market.

It had to be used right in someone's face, and it affected friend and foe alike. Wasn't that ridiculous?

If you used Soul-Bewitching Incense right in someone's face and left both people mentally dazed, it was the same as not using it at all.

Moreover, Soul-Bewitching Incense was a joke to Inner Sect disciples of the Five Poisons Gu lineage.

The Five Poisons Gu in their bodies could already ignore most poisons, and they themselves were the true experts at using poison.

Yet despite all those shortcomings, it was an extremely useful item for Zhou Feng.

The reason was that he possessed the Immunity to Poisons passive.

The effects of Soul-Bewitching Incense did not affect him in the slightest, so he could use it directly in someone's face.

Only his opponent would be affected, while he would remain completely unharmed.

As for the effects being insufficient and only causing a moment of daze, that was not much of a problem.

That was exactly the effect he wanted.

Soul-Bewitching Incense paired with the Full Charge Slash passive, along with Bone Plating for defense,

could fully carry out Zhou Feng's life-for-life strategy.

Just imagine it: once a battle broke out,

he would use Soul-Bewitching Incense right in his opponent's face, instantly leaving them dazed.

Seizing that opportunity, he could strike hard and, with Full Charge Slash, deal his opponent a devastating blow.

Even if the opponent recovered the next second and tried to counterattack, Bone Plating would negate more than half the damage.

That way, he would naturally hold an enormous advantage.

Because his opponent would have no idea that Zhou Feng would do this. That information gap would lead them to respond incorrectly.