A Bountiful Harvest

Yi Xuan spent the next two days worrying.

When Shi Zhenghao finally stood before him again, Yi Xuan hurried over and examined his senior brother from head to toe.

Only after making sure his senior brother was unharmed did he ask, "How did it go? Did you succeed?"

Seeing how moved his junior brother was by concern for his safety, Shi Zhenghao was deeply stirred as well. Smiling, he brushed aside Yi Xuan's hands, which were still examining him, and said, "Don't worry. Even if you have no confidence in me, surely you have confidence in the thing you made yourself?"

Hearing his senior brother's words, Yi Xuan let out a long breath and nodded. "I really didn't have much confidence in the Barrett. I only tested it once, so the results weren't representative at all!"

Though Shi Zhenghao didn't know what Yi Xuan meant by "representative," he patted him on the shoulder. "You don't have to worry anymore. That thing you made, called the Bar... Bar... what was it again?"

"Barrett!"

"Right, the Barrett. It couldn't have worked any better. That old thing was waiting just outside Azure Cloud Sect territory to ambush me when I went out. But he never expected that I wouldn't have to leave Azure Cloud Sect territory at all. I stopped fifty li from the border!"

"Fifty li?" Yi Xuan made a quick calculation. That was roughly twenty-five thousand meters, well within the firing range of this immortal-cultivation version of the Barrett.

"Doesn't that mean the Evil Cultivator could have detected you with his Divine Sense too?" Yi Xuan asked curiously.

Shi Zhenghao nodded. "That's true, but this is Azure Cloud Sect territory. Even if that old dog was a Golden Core True Person, he wouldn't have dared unleash his Divine Sense and sweep it around Azure Cloud Sect territory at random. If he'd run into an Azure Cloud Sect expert, he'd have died without even knowing how!"

Yi Xuan nodded in agreement. "So you used the Barrett to severely injure him, then went over and killed him?"

Shi Zhenghao shook his head. "If it had really happened like that, would I be standing here like this? I would have at least suffered some minor injuries!"

Glancing at the curious Yi Xuan, Shi Zhenghao continued, "That old thing never noticed me aiming at him from fifty li away. The instant I fired, I saw his whole body explode through the scope. From his movements, I could tell he sensed the danger, but the bullet was too fast. He couldn't react in time!"

Shi Zhenghao burst out laughing, then took the Barrett from his Storage Bag and returned it to Yi Xuan.

Yi Xuan looked at the sniper rifle his senior brother held out, shook his head, and pushed it back. "It's yours! Since it's powerful enough to deal with a Golden Core True Person, I figure you should be able to use it for a long time. Oh, wait here a moment."

With that, Yi Xuan hurried back to his bedroom.

When he came out again, he had a small metal box in his hand. He went over to Shi Zhenghao and handed it to him.

Shi Zhenghao looked at the box in his hands, somewhat puzzled. Yi Xuan offered no explanation. "Open it and see!"

Shi Zhenghao opened the small box to find rows of 12.7 mm Barrett bullets neatly arranged inside.

Seeing his senior brother's astonishment, Yi Xuan smiled. "There are fifty bullets in there. I rushed to make them over the past two days. Use them for now, and whenever you run short, come back and get more from me!"

Shi Zhenghao beamed at Yi Xuan's words.

Yi Xuan watched him put away the Barrett and the bullets, then saw him take another Storage Bag from inside his robes and hand it over.

"What's this?" This time, Yi Xuan didn't refuse. He accepted it and sent his Divine Sense inside as he asked.

"I got it from that Evil Cultivator. What do you think it is?" Shi Zhenghao asked with a smile.

Yi Xuan had originally thought the bag contained some Spirit Stones his senior brother was giving him as thanks, so he hadn't paid it much attention.

But to his surprise, the Storage Bag actually belonged to the Evil Cultivator. Yi Xuan's interest was piqued at once.

He hurriedly sent his Divine Sense inside. Aside from pile upon pile of Spirit Stones, there was only a chest half as tall as a person. Yi Xuan estimated that there were at most fewer than ten thousand Spirit Stones. To the current Yi Xuan, that amount of money really didn't matter.

What he truly cared about now was the chest in the Storage Bag, so without another word, he took it out.

At the same time, he looked at Shi Zhenghao and asked, "Are you giving me everything in this Storage Bag?"

"What are you thinking?" Shi Zhenghao scoffed. "This is a Golden Core True Person's Storage Bag. Even if I gave you everything in it, would you know what any of it was? What I mean is, the Spirit Stones are yours. Then you can look through the other things and take whatever you can use. Leave the rest to me!"

Yi Xuan thought it over and understood what his senior brother meant.

Indeed, with Yi Xuan's cultivation at the Qi Refining Realm, there were many higher-end immortal-cultivation treasures, medicines, and manuals he simply couldn't use. Leaving them with him would be a waste of resources; it was better to let Shi Zhenghao deal with them.

So the two opened the chest and carefully examined its contents. In the end, just as Shi Zhenghao had thought, most of the things inside were of no use to Yi Xuan.

The one thing Yi Xuan was glad to find was five Soul-Locking Covers containing blank souls, the same kind Shi Zhenghao had given him before.

As for the other things, Yi Xuan was very interested in an Evil Cultivator's manual on soul refining that they found.

Unfortunately, no matter what he said, Shi Zhenghao refused to let Yi Xuan keep it. Even bringing up their master at the end did no good.

Yi Xuan understood his senior brother's concern. After all, although he needed blank souls, without the corresponding Evil Cultivator manual, he had no way to increase his strength through soul refining.

But if he had such a manual, Shi Zhenghao couldn't be sure Yi Xuan would be able to remain true to his heart.

As for Yi Xuan, he truly had no intention of practicing an Evil Dao cultivation method. He was simply curious about things of this sort that science couldn't explain.

Besides soul refining, Yi Xuan was also full of curiosity about some of the methods Evil Cultivators commonly used, such as corpse refining, nurturing gu, controlling souls, and so on. But Azure Mountain Sect was a righteous sect, after all, and it was simply impossible to obtain such things there.

After leaving the Storage Bag, along with the Spirit Stones inside and the five blank souls, with Yi Xuan, Shi Zhenghao left without looking back.

Though Yi Xuan didn't care about the Spirit Stones, the five blank souls could indeed be of tremendous help to him.

But Yi Xuan had yet to decide exactly how to use the five blank souls, so he could only put them into his own Storage Bag.