Qiu Ye managed to sell off the pelt with a bonus for being mostly intact. With her katars equipped and her new knight grade armour, she was more confident in hunting. The Blood Fields were just behind the forest, about an hour away from the gates of Iron Forest Sanctuary.

Qiu Ye laid in the grass while Winter scanned the fields for targets, she realised simply using wind with her arrows allowed them to speed up, increase the drill and also home in on targets. Because of her control over the arrow, she was able to send it back to herself so she didn't retrieve. Turns out as long as she only used one element at a time, the simple steel arrow didn't shatter on contact. There was still wear and tear but much less.

As soon as Winter notified Qiu Ye of a beast, she shot an arrow and retrieved the body. When she started using the knight beast bodies as bait, baron beasts started coming out. Even though it's only rank difference, the beast's strength is almost doubled. Qiu Ye could no longer take out the birds with a single arrow and had to sacrifice arrows by using both wind and lightning, then finishing them off with a quick slice with her katars.

Knight Experience increased

Knight Experience increased, Knight Beast Soul obtained

Baron Experience increased, Baron Beast Soul obtained.

After hunting for the entire day, the blood field became a literal blood field. Bodies were littered everywhere and Qiu Ye was down to only a few arrows. She obtained two Baron beast souls and 4 Knight Beast souls. Qiu Ye was over the moon, she managed to obtain a Knight class Bow and a Baron class arrow. She would've liked it to be the other way around but it was much better than the equipment she currently had. The other Baron beast soul turned out to be a pair of shoes which greatly increased her speed and agility. The other three knight beast souls were a pair of wings, a pet and a feather shield.

With all the gear equipped, Qiu Ye couldn't decide whether she looked intimidating or ridiculous. Along with the horned dire wolf armour, she had a small circular shield on her arm. In the middle was a red gem and golden feathers spreading out from the centre. It was incredibly light and comfortably strapped to her left arm. Even though the size of the shield was quite small, the actual area it protected was large. She experimented by letting a few birds swoop down and attack her, as soon as they got close to her, the red gem lit up and the shield glowed gold as a large golden transparent barrier appeared in front of her. Even other Baron class beasts crashed into the barrier without leaving a scratch.

The wings and boots both helped quite a lot, her speed practically quadrupled and she was able to fly. In her past life, she reached this stage of growth when she was in her twenties. Yet now in her mid teens she was already sporting Baron class equipment. The progress she was making was great, she finally felt like she had time to breathe.

The bow and arrow were both extremely impressive. The bow didn't look so powerful, it was a simple hunting bow with gilded engravings in the limbs. But in Qiu Ye's hands it felt like it was tailored for her. She didn't need to use much strength to draw the string back yet the power was higher than her compound bow. What was even more impressive was the unique power he bow had. As soon as she released the arrow, it scattered into 5 separate heading towards the same target. This worked with both the beast soul arrow and normal arrows. Each arrow was just as real as the other. The bow essentially quintupled the power. The arrow was slightly less impressive and fancy. It was simply extremely sharp and durable and Qiu ye could re-summon it any time she wanted as long as it didn't break. She would have loved to have several beast soul arrows so she could rapid fire them but they were already rare enough.

Now the pet was less than desirable. It was a simple red bird with a small and fat body. Pet beast souls weren't worth much due to it's high maintenance. They had to be fed quite a lot before their combat mode were activated. The only upside to pet beast souls were that they could be evolved to go up ranks while other beast souls could not. Problem was that how much the pets needed to be fed were absolute unfeasible and expensive. Qiu Ye fed the bird all the meat from the birds as she couldn't carry them back anyways. She wasn't happy one of the baron beast souls was wasted on being a pet but Winter seemed to like it a lot. She even named the bird Archimedes.

After devouring food more than 10 times it's body mass, the bird rolled onto it's back and Qiu Ye put it back into her soul realm. Since her soul was directly connected with her will, all her beast souls also appeared in Elysium. Winter was happy to finally have company, she played with the bird a lot.

Even with her new gear, Qiu Ye wasn't confident she could get out of a scrap with a Viscount level Beast relatively unscathed. For now she had to train and build up her arsenal of skills. She was going to spend the rest of the week hunting during the day and training in Battleground at night. With the money she earned, she bought special herbs and fruits to soak in and increase the speed of her training. While modern medicine was impressive, Qiu Ye's knowledge of alchemy far surpasses the knowledge of the current world. Within no time, Qiu Ye finished training the second tier of Eternal Pulse Sutra.

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"Autumn? What's this new training?"

"Well now that we're in the second tier of Eternal Pulse, we might as well train the actual complete manual."

"What do you mean?"

"Eternal Pulse Sutra is a part of a larger group of Sutras which reinforce the body. It's the most useful and has the fastest training speed which is why I chose to train with it at the beginning. But now that we have the time and resources, we might as well do the whole thing."

"What's the whole thing?"

"Longevity. It's kind of a custom manual I created."

"You made it?"

"Well I just combined sutras which reinforced specific bits of the body into a complete thing which reinforces the entire body. I couldn't practice it in my past life because it needed the Fractured Sky Sutra to bind the skills together but now we can train it. It's basically a forced evolution of the human body. Along with the heart, the brain, stomach, kidney, lungs and bones are reinforced. There's a problem though."

"Yeah?"

"Well remember how uncomfortable it was when our heart basically tore itself apart and rebuilt itself after each tier?"

"Yeah, kinda hard to forget."

"Well imagine that but 6 times over. The other organs will catch up with the heart before it reaches the end of the third tier then they will evolve at the same time. Also, it needs more time and more energy. But the effects will be astounding."

"This feels like cheating."

"Not like anyone's stopping us."

"Fair enough."

Before the alternate week ended, Qiu Ye managed to become a knight rank fighter and breaking through to tier two of Longevity. It was just as advertised, Qiu Ye's body went through a complete evolution. Her hair, nails and teeth fell out and regrew. It felt like her entire body was being torn apart and built up again. She puked black sludge for hours. Qiu Ye handled it alright due to her built up pain tolerance. Winter however, didn't handle so well.

"Winter you alright?"

"Urgh, this sucks."

"Honestly I didn't know how much you would feel indirectly but it seems like quite a bit."

"Yeah Yeah, shh. I'm just gonna lie down for a bit."

Qiu Ye made sure everything into water proof trash bags since it was going to be difficult explaining where it came from. She then burned it all at an industrial incinerator.

Before it was just her skin, now everything about her seems more healthy and smooth. Her curly black hair was soft and silky, her teeth pearl white. If she was attractive before, she was now undoubtedly beautiful. Even her bones seemed to have shifted to be sharper. She looked slim but that was simply because her muscle and flesh was much denser than normal. She was still fit but deceivingly so.

And now just like Eternal Pulse Sutra did, she was able to run it passively without having to recite it over and over again. It required a lot of energy however, Qiu Ye secretly snacked on the jerky she prepared to make sure she could continue practising Longevity.

Weeks flew by, Winter studied and Qiu Ye practiced. Classes were boring as usual, but Winter seemed to be getting something out of it. During a geography class she asked Qiu Ye.

"So we've been exploring the Universe for years now right?"

"Yeah I guess, but proper war ships stocked to travel out of our home galaxy are still in development."

"So do you find out where the in-between is in the galaxy in the future?"

"Not before I technically died. We only started going far enough to find proper forms of life that aren't plants or bacteria."

"Do you happen to remember how those war ships worked?"

"Unfortunately I left the military before they started being used plus I'm no

engineer."

"So where did you find this Ancient Devil guy?"

"5th level of the in-between."

"5th? We don't even know much about the 4th level and you've been to the 5th?"

"Trust me you do not want to be at the 5th level. I trained for half my life there conquering the 4th level and evolve to be accepted into the 5th just to have all my beast souls and gear stripped away from me. I had to practically start from zero while being hunted by beasts strong enough to destroy deity level beasts on the forth floor as a basic beast."

"Right that sounds insane. So how are you going to prepare to defeat the Ancient Devil this time?"

"In my past life, I relied on using gear and beast souls for strength. Until I was promoted to king level strength, I used very minimal power that came from myself. This is why I'm training in Longevity and creating skills that I can rely on when everything is torn away from me."

"I guess that makes sense, but how strong can you get with just your body and skills?"

"Honestly, not enough. Which is why I'm going to train like crazy before my spiritual body is made on the 3rd floor. With a strong spiritual body, I will have a trump card to survive on the 5th floor. Then when the spiritual body evolves to strengthen my bloodline, I will be able to go toe to toe with the Ancient Devil."

"Sounds easier said than done."

"You're right, what will be interesting though is how a spiritual body is formed when two souls in habits the body. Do you think we both get a spiritual body?"

"Guess we'll find out."

Qiu Ye sat in her room going through her newly obtained beast souls, with longevity running, her body had baron level strength so she was able to take down Viscounts and get a few beast souls. Unfortunately the world of the in-between was cruel, the increased risk didn't result in increased reward. While she got a baron beast soul after taking out about 50 of them, she only got 2 Viscount beast souls after wiping out an entire nest of them. She was incredibly happy though, as she practiced swinging the weapon around, she grinned ear to ear.