When Yin Na finally put away the magical brick, he was still standing at the square of the Yellow Fox Sect at the exact same spot he had killed Deng Ping. He had been standing and patiently listening to Deng Tai Fan’s pill recipes for 12 hours.
The sun of the early dawn was beginning to climb up. The morning birds have begun their chirping, and with the birdsong began a fresh breeze of morning air.
Any ordinary cultivator, to say nothing of a mortal, would be exhausted after a day’s worth of assaulting and slaughtering an entire Sect, and on top of that, be expected to stand and listen to an old geezer talk for hours without rest?
Yin Na was not only not the slightest bit tired, he was even invigorated.
“When I am in the pursuit of benefits,” said Yin Na. “I don’t need food, drink or even air. Benefits are the only sustenance I need!”
Yin Na turned his eyes dispassionately from the corpse of Deng Ping to the treasury building of the Yellow Fox Sect.
When Yin Na stepped foot into the Yellow Fox Sect treasures and relics building, he felt as if any fatigue had dissipated instantly.
“It would seem that some Yellow Fox Sect members escaped with their lives, as well as with a few of their most valuable treasures they could carry,” said Yin Na. “However, these survivors are few and they obviously couldn’t take everything.”
Yin Na made a rapid mental assessment of the situation.
“If any of Yellow Fox Sect’s higher ranked or Immortal cultivators were present, they would have arrived today to stop me and Deng Peng from annihilating their sect, so that means the ones who escaped saw our combined power and were too weak to stop us.
“This means I don’t need to worry about making my escape from the scene of the crime immediately. As for any survivors notifying those stronger Yellow Fox Sect cultivators…”
With a will of his mind, Yin Na summoned a large spirit hound from his void ring. The spirit hound was nearly ethereal to the touch, having no real color other than a murky shadow and an emerald green dot on its forehead. It had slim, preening ears, and a long, muscular body. Despite being nearly see-through to the touch, the “dog” possessed a noble and dignified air, and barked dutifully upon seeing Yin Na.
“Good dog,” said Yin Na. He waved his hand, and the severed head of a Yellow Fox Sect member floated into his hand.
“Find all the Yellow Fox Sect survivors who left here, today,” said Yin Na as he let the hound smell the scent. “Kill them, and if you are unable to do so otherwise, notify me.”
The hound barked to show immediate understanding, then quickly split into two, four, eight, sixteen, thirty-two, sixty-four, then finally 128 hounds!
The groups of hounds then disappeared in a flash, all in different directions, in their relentless pursuit for any stragglers of the Yellow Fox Sect.
“Ethereal Hound!” smiled Yin Na. “It is more intelligent than even solid beast dogs, knowing almost always exactly what the owner wants, and is able to make its own judgment regarding how to divide itself to track and hunt down its targets. Unlike most surveillance or tracking beasts, its strength is so great that it can kill most cultivators under Core Formation stage with ease, so that it wouldn’t require my help.
“But in the event that a group of Surveillance Hounds does encounter a cultivator it cannot kill, its third eye on its forehead will flash, and I will be able to see through its point of view. I will rush over there to finish the job, or make my escape, whichever becomes necessary.
“It hasn’t even been a full day yet. By my reasoning, the only Yellow Fox Sect members to have escaped should be those below Core Formation level. Those mediocre cultivators wouldn’t have developed the ability to fly, unless they procured mounts. They won’t get far!”
Yin Na smiled with satisfaction.
“Alright, time for me to begin looting the spoils!”
Meanwhile, several li away…
A Yellow Fox Sect member ran on the main roads that lead away from her once-prospering Sect, down the mountains.
It had seemed like she was running for days, even though it hadn’t even been 24 hours since her entire sect was annihilated by two lone cultivators. Feet bleeding, clothes tattered, face streaked with tears, she cried at the injustice of the Heavens.
“Demonic!” she cried. “They were demonic cultivators! How could two mortals, even if they’re cultivators, bring down an entire sect?”
She felt hypocritical and self-loathing at her words, for the former great Yellow Fox Sect were a Demonic sect themselves!
“Their power,” she said. “The massive power and techniques they wielded couldn’t have possibly belonged to users of the righteous sect!”
The cultivators Deng Ping and Yin Na were both relatively unheard of, but they had clearly made their assault on the Yellow Fox Sect with careful preparation.
During the chaos of battle she had heard vaguely that the cultivator Deng Ping was on a “quest for vengeance,” but it didn’t matter now.
A cultivator at the Ensoulment level would possess enough firepower and strength to blow away a small kingdom, and Deng Ping was no exception, with his brute force sword techniques and crazed passion at killing. However, it was his long, dark-haired companion, with his endless array of techniques and treasures which came from that ring he was wearing that really made an impression on her.
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The multi-colored explosions, and those swarms of ethereal hounds, and on top of that, the memory of those dark, soulless eyes and the expressionless face he wore while killing her brothers and sisters made her scalp tingle on end.
“Deng Ping, Yin Na,” she said with grit teeth. “I will cultivate and avenge my Sect with your deaths!”
But there was not any weight behind such a promise. Her strength as a fighter was weak, at the beginning level of Core Formation, and the only treasure she took from the Yellow Fox Sect Treasury during her escape was one that had no combat ability.
“Quick, we must take the treasures we can,” her sect brother had shouted. “The higher-level ones, we can only hope they can’t unlock, if us lower-leveled ones touch them we’d be killed by the protective spells and backlash!”
In her panic, she could only accept one trinket her sect brother had shoved in her palm at the moment.
“Take this, the Butterfly Bouquet!”
“I haven’t even learned of its function,” she cried. “Yet brother just forced it unto me and told me to flee!”
While she was making her escape, five other butterfly-shaped flowers had grown from the stem she was given had grown, looking like a complete flower bouquet instead of just a single stem.
“Perhaps I’ll be able to learn its function now that it’s day again and I can see?” she thought. She slowed her run a little, as she turned the butterfly flowers around in her wrist.
Suddenly, she heard a terrifying bark that she knew all too well. A loud, angry bark that did not sound like it came from a beast of this world.
“No!” she screamed. “NOOOOO!”
A single Ethereal hound descended upon her like an eagle hunting a rabbit.
She never did learn of the function behind the Butterfly Bouquet.
Meanwhile, back at the Yellow Fox Sect…
The pill collection’s most valuable pills were gone, with only the most rudimentary and basic of medicinal pills left behind. Most of it was of little interest to Yin Na anyway, now that he had the Jade Block to experiment with pill recipes. He collected everything into his void ring regardless. Rather, of far more value to him were the plenty of alchemy ingredients at his disposal.
Yin Na’s void ring was an immortal artifact, it was unheard of for a mortal cultivator such as himself to be carrying such a priceless treasure. It enabled him to store many items into another dimension the size of a small warehouse.
Yin Na had accumulated many treasures and material benefits over the course of his cultivation journey, how else was he able to combat and annihilate the Yellow Fox Sect with only another cultivator as support? This void ring was among his most treasured possessions, for it allowed him to hoard even more benefits!
In no time at all, he had stripped the Yellow Fox Sect’s entire pill and ingredient collection.
“Thanks to the energy and medicinal pills I’ve consumed, I’ve just gotten started,” smiled Yin Na.
“Now, I’d like to test the effectiveness of this brick that I got from Deng Ping.”
Yin Na walked over to a weak, level two silver-colored pill furnace that he hadn’t bothered collecting into his void ring. He quickly retrieved a fistful of Pink Rootless Flowers, and Soul-Clearing grass from the depths of the void. These were two ingredients that were part of a recipe for making the Ensoulment pill.
Activating the fires of the furnace, he haphazardly tossed what should have been really expensive and hard-to-gather ingredients into the very cheap, poor-quality furnace. If there were any other cultivator around to witness this, they would be losing their mind over the wastefulness of Yin Na’s pill concocting! He might as well be wasting such valuable ingredients into an ordinary fire.
But thanks to his recent looting of the Yellow Fox Sect treasury, he had more ingredients than he could possibly need.
“The smell, color and overall qi concentration from the pill furnace is by all means bad,” observed Yin Na. “Even the most dull cultivator would be able to conclude that the emerging pill out of this furnace would be a terrible one, if one even forms.”
Then, Yin Na’s eyes flashed. The pill furnace was thirty seconds to completion! With a twist of his wrist, he threw the Jade block out of his void ring into the furnace. It settled into the flames silently, without complaint, as it needed the password to reawaken the imprisoned soul of Deng Tai Fan.
At once, the flames of the furnace turned a proper shade of blue, and the smoke turned into a pleasant, almost tea-like odor.
Sure enough, a pill emerged from the top of the pill furnace, a perfect little Ensoulment pill!
“Excellent!” exclaimed Yin Na. He let the pill roll around in his palm, examining it with his qi sense.
Just at that moment, the one Ethereal Hound by his side barked. Yin Na pocketed the pill and activated his qi sense.
“Oh, it seems that the hound has killed one of the stragglers. A weak core formation cultivator, eh? Good job, hide the corpse if it’s on an open road and take any treasures on her person back to me.”
The single hound that he was communicating with barked in his vision happily, then proceeded to carry out its orders.
A few li away…
Another Yellow Fox Sect member ran with all her might.
“What the-?” something made her slow down her run.
She looked down to observe that one of the butterfly flowers from the bouquet that brother Han Song gave her had turned brown, then fell away like a real dead flower.
“Brother Han Song gave me one stem from the flower bouquet, and it grew into six. He never told me the purpose of this treasure, what could the wilting of one of its flowers mean?”
She was dehydrated, sleep-deprived and all-around exhausted, but still mentally alert despite the horrid day’s events.
“I don’t have time to waste thinking, right now I must flee to the nearest other Sect, be they demonic or righteous,” she thought. “Ensoulment cultivators can fly; they can cover the ground I ran in a day in just minutes, especially if they have a mount.”
She shuddered to think what she’d do if one of the enemy cultivators who slaughtered her sect caught up to her. Especially that long-haired, black individual with all the treasure weapons and scrolls.
“Would I even be able to defend myself when the time comes?” she asked, looking at the other treasure she was holding in her other hand.
This was a patterned, ornately-decorated stick with a large golden bell attached at the end.
“A legendary-level treasure, Fox Calling Bell,” she said. “It was one of the weapons of the great Immortal Da Ji of the Yellow Fox Sect, when she was a mortal cultivator… will my inheriting it save my life when the time comes?”
Bark! Bark!
The Yellow Fox Sect member gasped. It appeared that that time had come all too soon!