The Rock Bear before him had a full thirteen hundred years of cultivation. Killing it would not be easy for Jiang Che.
Half an hour earlier, Jiang Che had suddenly discovered a Rock Bear with five hundred years of cultivation and several with ten years of cultivation inside a cave. Following the principle of never passing up Skill Points, Jiang Che had killed them all.
Then he had lit a fire outside the cave, making soup with the little ones and skewers with the big one. He had never expected that halfway through his meal, the mother bear's mate would return-and so would the cubs' father.
The thousand-year Rock Bear had discovered its home was gone, and the culprit was still eating its wife and children. Just like that, the Rock Bear had chased Jiang Che relentlessly for half an hour.
Rather than retreat, Jiang Che advanced, holding the Blue Silver Longsword in a reverse grip with its tip tilted upward.
A Water Blade flew along the ground, severing the tendon in the Rock Bear's left ankle.
For the past half hour, Jiang Che had been fighting a running battle with this Rock Bear. By now, wounds large and small covered its body.
The bear lurched sideways. Jiang Che seized the opening. "Second Soul Skill, Water Tribulation Blue Silver Blade!"
Watery light gathered into a blue line along the blade.
"Water Blades in a Line!"
The blade fell.
The bear's head rolled three times before stopping.
[Ding-!] [Defeated a thirteen-hundred-year Rock Bear. Gained 15 Skill Points.] [Current Skill Points: 655]
Water Blade Slash was Jiang Che's self-created Water Blades in a Line, developed from Water Tribulation Blue Silver Blade. Its principle was simple, summed up in one word: speed.
As long as he slashed fast enough, he could link five Water Blades into a single line, making it five times as powerful as a Water Blade swung individually.
After finishing off this Rock Bear, Jiang Che continued roaming the outskirts of the Tianyun Mountain Range.
Although these were still the outskirts, he had ventured deeper than before. Most of the creatures he encountered here were hundred-year soul beasts, with the occasional thousand-year soul beast.
Jiang Che walked along the bed of a dried-up creek, the pebbles grinding and crunching beneath his soles.
A sudden rustling came from the dense woods to his left. A string of gray shadows darted along the tree roots.
Jiang Che flicked his Blue Silver blade. A Water Blade chased after them, shearing through two trees. Three gray shadows leaped out between the severed trees: three Long-Tailed Iron Rats.
Hundred-year soul beasts.
Jiang Che needed only three slashes. The Water Blades sliced all three Iron Rats in half, and their bodies fell into the grass.
[Killed 104-year Long-Tailed Iron Rat soul beasts ×3. Gained Skill Points: 15.] [Current Skill Points: 670]
Jiang Che noticed that the trees here stood farther apart. Large stretches of earth had been trampled firm, resembling a path worn by some large soul beast over many years.
Fifty meters away, a palm-sized, dark gray bone fragment was embedded in the surface of an Ironwood stump beside the path. The tree had been dead for who knew how many years.
The bone fragment was half buried in the bark, its edges smooth, as though someone had polished them with a tool.
Jiang Che walked over and reached out to pry it loose.
The moment the bone fragment shifted, the ground collapsed.
Jiang Che reacted fairly quickly.
The instant the ground gave way, he rolled backward and drove his Blue Silver blade into the earth to halt himself.
But the collapse covered a far larger area than he had imagined.
The entire ground within a thirty-meter radius sank at once. The dead stump plunged underground along with chunks of earth. The soil beneath Jiang Che's feet split, and he fell.
The bone fragment from just now seemed to be someone's tail. It swept swiftly past Jiang Che and returned to the cave below.
Jiang Che reacted extremely quickly, activating his Blue Silver Emperor Soul Bone Skill.
His falling body instantly stopped in midair.
Before him lay an underground cave.
The opening that had collapsed overhead admitted the last traces of daylight, illuminating the cave walls.
White bones.
Densely packed white bones formed slopes stretching from the cave walls all the way to the bottom.
The soft things Jiang Che had struck just now were several recently dead soul beast carcasses, their flesh not yet fully rotted.
Among them was the corpse of a recently dead Demon Wind Wolf, roughly a thousand years old.
"Fuck! What the hell is this place?"
"That thing just now was a Corrupt Scale Black Tortoise. Judging by how thick its tail was, it should be a thousand years old."
Soul beasts of this kind mostly preferred living in dark caves. They often left their tails exposed outside to lure enemies in, making them fall to their deaths inside the caves.
"You motherfucker, trying to screw me over!"
Without a flight skill, a fall from this height would have left him half crippled.
The cave extended downward, its width varying.
At its widest, four or five people could walk abreast; at its narrowest, he had to turn sideways to squeeze through.
Every few meters, fruits of that same dark gray color were embedded in the cave walls. They varied in size, the smallest only as big as a fingernail.
Although Jiang Che did not know what they were, he still pried out a dozen or so and put them in his System Storage.
The farther down he went, the stronger the smell of blood became.
He rounded a bend, and the cave suddenly opened into a domed chamber.
A mountain of bones stood on the ground at its very center, the skeletons of all kinds of soul beasts mixed together. On top lay an outrageously enormous skeleton.
The bone mountain was moving.
Jiang Che saw the bones trembling slightly, as though something were breathing in the middle of the pile.
A crack opened in the bone mountain.
A claw reached out through the gap.
It was covered in scales, its five toes hooked, each claw like a short dagger.
It gripped the edge of the bone mountain and slowly pushed the entire pile aside, revealing what lay beneath.
It was a soul beast with a serpentine neck and a tortoise's body. Its neck extended a full three meters from its shell, and two curved horns grew from its head.
Most of the scales on its body had fallen off, exposing dark red muscle beneath. A massive wound ran down its abdomen from top to bottom, with a dozen or so of those dark gray bone fragments embedded inside.
It was clearly badly injured, and the injury was recent. Blood was still seeping out.
"Injured? It probably fought some powerful soul beast."
If his guess was right, it had fought the Demon Wind Wolf outside and suffered these severe injuries as a result.
The Corrupt Scale Black Tortoise raised its neck, locking its two slit-pupiled eyes onto him.
It moved very slowly, its tongue emerging from its mouth and curling through the air, seemingly identifying Jiang Che's scent.
Then it moved.
Its speed far exceeded Jiang Che's expectations.
Its three-meter neck shot forward, two rows of serrated teeth interlocking in its gaping mouth.
Jiang Che rolled on the spot. The tortoise's head brushed past his shoulder and snapped at empty air, tearing up the entire patch of ground where he had just stood.
As he rolled, Jiang Che swung his blade. Five Water Blades shot out together, all striking the exposed neck muscles of the Black Tortoise.
The Water Blades cut through the skin but were stopped by a layer of fascia underneath, leaving only five white marks.
The Black Tortoise retracted its neck, and the patterns on its shell lit up with a dim glow.
The ground began to shake. Broken bones rattled down from the ceiling of the bone cave.
Jiang Che seized the instant the Black Tortoise drew its neck back and hurled his Blue Silver blade with a backhand throw.
The blade spun through the air toward the Black Tortoise.
Deep inside the exposed wound, right in its center, lay the weakest part of the injury. The scales had not yet fully regenerated, making this the bull's-eye for his attack.
The Black Tortoise's agonized cry shook dust loose from the cave ceiling.
Its entire body lunged forward, its shell crushing half the bone mountain. Its flailing neck smashed deep pits into the cave walls.
Jiang Che seized the opportunity and used his Second Soul Skill again. Another Blue Silver Longsword appeared in his hand.
He aimed at the gap where the base of the Black Tortoise's neck joined its shell and plunged the blade inside.
The long blade drove in.
The Black Tortoise's neck stiffened for half a second, then drooped limply. Its head struck the ground and went still.
[Ding-!] [Killed a fifteen-hundred-year Corrupt Scale Black Armor. Gained 15 Skill Points.] [Current Skill Points: 685]
Jiang Che braced his hands on his knees and panted for a good while before sitting on the bone mountain for a short rest. Having found nothing else of value in the cave, Jiang Che turned his gaze back to the Black Tortoise.
"I heard this shell is worth a fortune."
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