8 Chapter 8 – First Battle (1/2)
In the past two days, he exhausted the remaining Demon blood pills and elemental resources he had to reach the peak of fourth stage. He got low on food stock he had too.
In body purification stage, it gets harder as you progress in stage. When you pass through a stage, the impurities expelled out of your body are not completely expelled. Some of them get settled in blood, muscles and meridians. So further you progress in stage, more impurities will be settled on impure body parts that is yet to be purified, and that is the reason you will need a lot of resources to progress further in late stages. When it comes to him though, he needs a mountain of resources considering his seven phases elemental roots.
He then thought back to how fast he consumed all the pills he took form the dead cultivators. It would take them at least two months to absorb all the pills in to their body for any normal cultivators, but he took only seven days to absorb all of them.
”It might be due to his high ranked elemental roots” he thought.
Maybe he can directly take the blood of demon beasts. ”Lets test it first with the blood of low level demon beast, and I can also use the demon beast meat for food. Moreover, I need more practice with Blazing flame fist in a fight” He thought to himself and finally decided to go deep in the forest instead of going to Qinglu city.
This forest forms the outer layer of Snowcape Demon Mountain, and also forms the northern border of Qinglu city's supervised domain. Snowcape demon Mountain is filled with demon beasts. He found from his memories that as you go up the mountain, the environment becomes harsh and the demon beasts also gets stronger. And there is also a rumour that at the top of the Snowcape Mountains, a demon beast of Qi Sea stage lives and is the king of the mountain.
He collected his thoughts about the details he knew about the mountain, and looked at the snow tiger lazily lying down in the distance. It goes out once in the morning and evening every day and comes back with a dead demon beast and consumes them. Apart from that, it just lazily lay around all day ”what a relaxing life” Zhu Xuan thought.
He walked towards the snow tiger and spoke respectfully ”Senior, I'm leaving. Thank you for allowing me to stay here and let me practice.”
Snow tiger looked up and transmitted a simple message, ”No problem. Take care and don't disturb me anymore.”
Zhu Xuan smiled kindly. Even though the snow tiger acted like he is a disturbance, he felt grateful towards it. He realised the snow tiger was at least in the initial stage of Qi gathering stage, considering the fact no other demon beasts came to look for trouble with him even when the tiger was out him. It let him live instead of killing him, and let him stay nearby it for him to practice cultivation. So he was sure it was kind towards him though he was clueless of the reason behind it.
He said his goodbye to the snow tiger and moved further north, deep into the mountains. He travelled for half a day when he heard a sound of something moving towards his direction.
He tried to move slowly towards a big tree nearby and hide behind, but he stepped on a branch which made a light sound. He suddenly turned and ran towards the tree and hid behind it and looked towards the direction of the sound. Few minutes passed, and he heard no sound anymore from the direction.
He was wondering whether whatever came towards him left, when something hit him heavily from behind. He flew few meters from the impact and fell upside down on a tree and fell down to the ground.
He got up, bleeding on the side of his head; he shook his head to clear the dizziness he felt and tried to steady himself. He was about to look back when he suddenly heard a sharp sound from behind him. Instinctively, he rolled around few meters and steadied himself, and turned towards the direction of the sound.
He saw a Black serpent with ferocious looking dark green eyes. It is easily 15 meters long and with a thickness of young adult's body. It is a ninth level demon beast. It moved towards him and swished its tail fast towards his head. He rolled away again awkwardly and stood up back again.