Was Being a Bandit Really This Profitable?

"Huh?!"

I really have to thank him?

Bai Jin'er tore her gaze away from the cultivation manuals with difficulty, looked at Chun Xiaobai, and said blankly, "Thank you... Great King."

"Mm!"

"You're welcome!" Chun Xiaobai waved magnanimously. "I told you, stick with me, and as long as your Great King has a mouthful of meat, you'll always have a mouthful of soup!"

"Go on, take this soup and drink up!"

Bai Jin'er's pretty face flushed.

I'm a proper disciple of the Azure Cloud Sect. How did I become a bandit's lackey in the blink of an eye?

"All right, all right. Fatty, go next door and copy out the Outer Sect Disciple Genius Ranking for me."

"Yes!"

Fang Yuan cupped his fists, then led the still-bewildered Bai Jin'er into the courtyard pavilion and spread the twenty-odd cultivation manuals across the stone table.

"Come on, Junior Sister Bai, you pick first!"

"This..."

Bai Jin'er hesitated.

She hadn't looked closely earlier, but now she saw that even the lowest-grade manuals on the table were middle-grade yellow tier. Those cost three hundred contribution points each in the sect.

There were even several top-grade yellow tier manuals, treasures worth over a thousand contribution points apiece!

The twenty manuals together would cost roughly fifteen thousand contribution points!

In spirit stones, that would probably be around twenty thousand!

This fellow... just gave them away?

Were bandits... all this rich?

Seeing that she wasn't moving, Fang Yuan took three of the five top-grade yellow tier cultivation manuals from the table and gave them to her, then casually picked out seven ordinary manuals.

"Here, Junior Sister, take them! Cultivate whichever ones suit you, and sell the rest at the market outside the sect."

"I reckon these manuals are worth seven or eight thousand spirit stones!"

When Bai Jin'er still stood there without moving, Fang Yuan picked up the ten manuals, thrust them into her hands, and urged her.

"Junior Sister Bai, now that we've accepted him as our Great King, we need to do our jobs properly."

"You should know that this casual reward from the Great King would sell for at least ten thousand spirit stones on the Black Market!"

"We could slog through sect missions for ten years and still not necessarily earn that much!"

His words finally brought Bai Jin'er to her senses.

That's right!

For disciples like them, at the fifth or sixth level of Qi Refining, an ordinary mission only paid ten or twenty spirit stones.

Of course, some paid two or three hundred, but most of those were missions where nine died for every one who survived.

Yet Chun Xiaobai had casually given her ten cultivation manuals worth nearly ten thousand spirit stones...

Was... was being a bandit really this profitable?

Even a quiet female disciple like her was starting to feel tempted.

"Hahaha! I'm rich!"

Inside the cultivation room, Chun Xiaobai sat on the floor, gazing at the little mountain of treasures before him. His grin stretched practically to the back of his head, and his eyes narrowed to slits.

His roaring laughter made Bai Jin'er roll her eyes in the distant pavilion.

"That big shot on the ranking really was one fat sheep!"

Chun Xiaobai made a rough count and found ten thousand spirit stones alone, over fifty bottles of pills, various strange materials, and a dozen wooden boxes containing spirit herbs.

"Treasure-Seeing Dharma Eye, activate!"

Chun Xiaobai activated his Divine Eye and swept his gaze over everything.

Of the treasures before him, ninety-nine percent glowed yellow. Only three wooden boxes gave off a faint green light, but its intensity was nowhere near that of the box he'd obtained from Cheng Haoxuan yesterday.

Still, having some was better than having none.

"I'm hungry. Let's put something in my stomach first."

He picked up ten bottles of pills, pulled out their stoppers, and poured them all into a large bowl. Cradling it in his arms, he stuffed handful after handful into his mouth as though eating candy.

After finishing the bowl of pills, he let out a satisfied burp.

The pills tasted a little bitter, but once they were in his stomach, his whole body felt wonderful!

He could also feel that not only could he refine the Origin Qi inside the pills, but his body could absorb their medicinal power to strengthen his physique.

His current strength of six thousand jin was entirely thanks to these pills.

Once he'd filled his stomach, he counted and sorted the mountain of treasures before him, packing them into Storage Bags.

Suddenly, he discovered that Cheng Haoxuan's Storage Bag couldn't hold any more.

"I'll have to get a Storage Ring sometime."

Even the smallest Storage Ring had ten cubic meters of space, whereas a top-grade Storage Bag only had five. A middle-grade Storage Bag like this one had just two.

After grumbling, he dumped everything out and put the pills in a separate Storage Bag.

He placed the weapons, the talismans he couldn't understand, and the cultivation manuals into another Storage Bag.

He stuffed the remaining odds and ends haphazardly into the last Storage Bag.

When he had time, he would find a pawnshop and pawn all this useless "junk" for tangible spirit stones.

With that dealt with, Chun Xiaobai looked at the full ten thousand spirit stones before him. Without another word, he took out five thousand, preparing to break through to the fifth level of Blood Refining in one go!

"Crack! Crack! Crack!"

Now that his cultivation had risen, his hands were stronger too.

He slapped the pile of spirit stones a few times at random, shattering them all.

Then he plopped down on the Spirit Stone fragments, activated his Divine Eye, and began circulating the Martial God Art.

"Hum!"

Outside, Fang Yuan and Bai Jin'er, who were copying the Genius Ranking in the pavilion, suddenly froze. They felt every pore on their bodies open involuntarily.

"This... such dense Spiritual Qi!"

They hurriedly looked toward its source and discovered it was coming from Chun Xiaobai's cultivation room.

"What is the Great King... doing with those spirit stones?"

With their cultivation, they could tell at a glance that this Spiritual Qi came from spirit stones.

Once a spirit stone was crushed, its Spiritual Qi would escape. Most people absorbed spirit stones little by little.

But this surge of Spiritual Qi had clearly been released from a large quantity of spirit stones, yet no one was absorbing it. It was simply being allowed to disperse. Wasn't that a complete waste?

The two looked utterly bewildered, unable to make heads or tails of it.

Moreover, they could sense that this was no small amount of Spiritual Qi. It had to come from at least two thousand spirit stones.

"Junior Sister, stop staring! This must be the Great King rewarding us. Hurry and absorb this Spiritual Qi before it goes to waste!"

Fang Yuan hurriedly reminded her.

"Oh, right!"

The two immediately sat cross-legged and seized the moment to cultivate.

Meanwhile, sounds like surging rivers rang out from within Chun Xiaobai's body as the Martial God Art tempered his blood essence.

Half an hour later, he had absorbed all five thousand spirit stones.

He checked his cultivation and discovered... it had barely advanced a tiny step.

"What the hell!"

Chun Xiaobai's face immediately darkened.

This cultivation burned through way too much fucking money!

He counted on his fingers and finally arrived at a staggering figure: breaking through from Fourth Blood Refining to Fifth Blood Refining would require a full fifty thousand spirit stones!

"Holy mother!"

And this was only going from Fourth Blood Refining to Fifth Blood Refining!

What would it take to break through from Blood Refining to Meridian Refining?

Fortunately, absorbing those five thousand spirit stones had increased his overall strength considerably.

He could feel that with his current Fourth Blood Refining cultivation, he should be able to crush someone like Zhao Wuyuan.

However, he was probably still a little short of handling a ranked big shot like Shi Lei, who was at the eighth level of Qi Refining.

That little gap was Spirit Techniques.

After all, he had yet to see any of those fellows truly use a Spirit Technique.

That was also why, when he dueled them, he avoided clashing head-on and instead resorted to sneak attacks, distractions, and similar tricks.

His main concern was that his opponent might suddenly unleash some overwhelming move that blanketed heaven and earth, leaving him unable to fend it off.

He had tried cultivating those manuals. Some low-level martial techniques were usable after a single reading, but their destructive power was pitiful. They weren't nearly as satisfying as a casual punch.

Other arts, however, were completely impossible for him to cultivate.

For example, he'd spent ages following the incantation for a low-grade yellow tier Fireball Technique. Forget a fireball-he hadn't even seen a single spark.

"Right, I should cultivate my Divine Sense!"

He turned his hand over and took out a copy of the Spirit-Sensing Art, the Azure Cloud Sect's standard Divine Sense cultivation art.

It could only be cultivated after reaching middle Qi Refining.

He was at the fourth level of Qi Refining, just the right time to cultivate Divine Sense. Once he had it, he could release it when he "opened for business."

He would know every movement within ten li, making fat sheep much easier to find.

"Mm, it'll come in handy when I'm 'working overtime' later!"

Besides, there was something in his head. He had to develop his Divine Sense and take a proper look at just what treasure was hiding in there.

Chun Xiaobai sat cross-legged and immediately began silently reciting the incantation.

"Here we go!"