One fled, the others pursued, racing for over a hundred miles.
Because talismans consumed very little spiritual power, and because Zhou Xun had taken a mid-grade Qi Recovery Pill the moment he activated them,
his spiritual power remained abundant even now, with little depletion.
The tall, thin cultivator, however, had used up more than half his spiritual power.
Operating a flying artifact consumed an enormous amount of spiritual power. What was more, the Flying Shuttle carried two cultivators, making the burden extremely heavy and multiplying the expenditure.
If the tall, thin cultivator had not been at the Qi Condensation Sixth Level, he would have run out of spiritual power and fallen long ago.
After flying a hundred miles, the Flight Talisman's power gradually ran dry.
Watching the two bandit cultivators relentlessly pursuing him from behind, Zhou Xun knew that simply running would likely not be enough to escape.
He immediately descended into the dense forest below and put away the Flight Talisman.
The terrain within the woods was complicated, and visibility was obstructed. Those two were only in the Mid-Stage Qi Condensation and had not awakened divine sense.
But for Zhou Xun, who possessed divine sense, this was his home ground.
Very soon, the two men followed him down as well.
At that moment, Zhou Xun unhesitatingly pulled out the Ice Spike Talismans and Fireball Talismans he had purchased in advance.
More than a dozen of them, all thrown out in one go.
"Second Brother!" the tall, thin cultivator shouted urgently at the sight.
Because cultivators in the early and middle stages of Qi Condensation had extremely poor aerial combat abilities.
The tall, thin cultivator was already at his limit just controlling a flying artifact, with no attention to spare for anything else.
Fortunately, another cultivator was aboard his Flying Shuttle.
The short, fat cultivator took out several talismans, activated them, and threw them before himself.
In an instant, several shimmering blue light shields stood before them.
"First-rank high-grade Light Shield Talismans!"
With several loud bangs, more than a dozen spells struck the light shields.
Most of the spells were extinguished, but the light shields could not hold out and shattered.
Only two fireballs passed through the shields and struck the short, fat cultivator.
Light flickered between brightness and darkness as a curtain of light automatically appeared, blocking the two fireballs. The spell shield on the short, fat cultivator's robe had activated.
"Kill him!" The short, fat cultivator was terrified, his heart still pounding with lingering fear, before rage surged up within him.
At this time, the tall, thin cultivator also controlled the Flying Shuttle down to the ground.
The two flipped down. After putting away the Flying Shuttle, they had barely raised a shield artifact in front of themselves and prepared to search for Zhou Xun's trail.
Whoosh! Whoosh!
Two sounds of something slicing through the air rang out.
One large and one small streak of black light tore through the air, flashing toward the two men like lightning.
"Dodge!" The tall, thin cultivator shoved his brother aside and dodged away.
But he was still too late. One arm was severed in midair.
The shield artifact was like paper mache, unable to block it for even an instant.
Just as the two brothers breathed a sigh of relief, the two streaks of black light unexpectedly curved around and returned on their own.
At this sight, the brothers were scared out of their wits:
"A late-stage cultivator!"
What kind of existence had they provoked?
"Run!" The two fled in different directions without so much as exchanging a word.
But how could flesh and blood compare with the speed of artifacts?
With a wet pfft, the flying blades entered flesh.
A streak of black light passed through each man's head, killing them on the spot.
"As expected of something forged to the standard of a high-grade artifact. Its power is truly astonishing!" Zhou Xun remarked.
He then gathered the spoils and used two fireballs to burn the corpses to ashes.
Afterward, he quickly departed.
A day later, Zhou Xun successfully returned home to Red Leaf Square.
Only then did he have the leisure to inspect his spoils.
"Storage Pouches!"
Zhou Xun took out two drab gray pouches.
They were precisely the items he had obtained from those two bandit cultivators.
At the same time, he had also obtained a strange little banner and a peculiar translucent mask from the two men.
The little banner was not large, only palm-sized. Zhou Xun had obtained it from the short, fat man.
When they had flipped down from the Flying Shuttle, the man had taken it out from his Storage Pouch. But before he could activate it, Zhou Xun had killed him.
On the banner's surface was painted a creature resembling a Ghoul Child, vivid and lifelike, as though it were alive.
Zhou Xun slowly injected spiritual power into it, but the little banner did not change in the slightest.
"Could it be a special artifact?" Zhou Xun guessed.
Special artifacts differed from ordinary common artifacts. They often required special cultivation techniques or items to wield.
And the power of such artifacts was often far greater than that of ordinary artifacts.
"Fortunately, I acted early. Otherwise, it would truly have been hard to say who would emerge alive!" Zhou Xun thought with immense relief.
He set it aside, then picked up the mask.
This was what had remained after he burned the corpses with Fireball Arts. He did not know which of the two it had belonged to.
To emerge completely unscathed from Fireball Arts, it had to be a rare treasure.
Zhou Xun held it in his hand. It was neither metal nor jade, yet it had a slick, smooth feel, as though he were touching a young maiden's pretty face.
"It's actually like a real person!"
After pondering for a moment, Zhou Xun put it on his face.
A cool sensation spread over him, then vanished.
There was not the slightest sense of a foreign object on his face. He could not feel its presence at all, as though he had never worn the mask in the first place.
It truly was a strange marvel!
Zhou Xun slowly injected spiritual power into it and sent his divine sense inside. He immediately detected three auras lingering within the mask.
Zhou Xun's heart stirred, and he selected one of them.
The mask shifted, and Zhou Xun's face became that of the tall, thin cultivator he had killed.
Even the aura of his spiritual power was nearly identical.
It was as though that tall, thin cultivator had come back to life.
This was actually a mask that could alter one's face and disguise one's identity.
As long as one approached someone, the mask could use it to collect that person's aura. The more it collected, the more realistic the imitation became.
If the person was killed before the mask was used to collect their aura, the imitation would become even more perfect.
Even someone a major realm higher would find it difficult to notice without careful inspection.
"It truly is a fine treasure. With this thing, my actions will be much more convenient in the future!" Zhou Xun thought to himself.
He then gave this treasure a name—Thousand Faces.
Having examined those two treasures, Zhou Xun looked forward even more eagerly to the two Storage Pouches that remained.
These were two low-grade Storage Pouches. They only required spiritual power to operate, making them extremely convenient.
Their drawback, however, was that they could not recognize an owner. Anyone could open them.
Zhou Xun opened the two Storage Pouches and took out all the treasures inside.
After counting them one by one, he found more than a hundred and twenty spirit stones, three bottles of Qi Nourishment Pills, nine mid-grade talismans, three low-grade artifacts, and several volumes of cultivation books.
Besides those, there was also a jade box, as well as the flying artifact Zhou Xun had coveted intensely—the Azure Light Shuttle.
As special artifacts, flying artifacts allowed Qi Condensation cultivators to possess the flight ability normally reserved for Foundation Establishment Realm cultivators.
Their forging materials were relatively rare, and their prices were correspondingly high.
Even a first-rank low-grade flying artifact sold for a price comparable to an ordinary high-grade artifact.
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