Not long before Ren Qingquan arrived at the last mountain.
Ren Qingchen has almost finished his third round of hunting. As the amount of food and harvested ingredients he could bring is limited, Ren Qingchen needed to waste some time going back and forth between his chosen hunting ground located southeast to the sect and the Martial Spirit Sect.
After spending 2 whole months going back and forth twice, he finally already collected 98 kill counts from the ferocious beasts. Actually, the amount of beasts he killed is much more than that. But due to some accident, several ferocious beast hearts got slashed and became unusable. Not only that, some of the beast heart is too big for the air tight container he brought which makes it unable to be preserved.
Now, Ren Qingchen only needed to kill a ferocious beast at Martial Grandmaster realm or two Martial Master ferocious beasts and he could finally return to the sect and focus on training for at most one week to increase his realm to Martial Grandmaster.
Because during his two months of hunting, Ren Qingchen also never stopped training. When the sky darkened, he started training and before the sun rose he also started another round of training. Coupled with the martial arts technique he specially chooses which have incredibly high training speed without sacrificing combat power nor foundation. Right now, he has already achieved the ninth stage of the Martial Master realm and is infinitely close to the Grandmaster realm.
Continuing his travels, Ren Qingchen sensed the existence of several ferocious beasts through a vital energy sensing skill he had. Quickly, he started to activate his stealth skill and ran toward the source of vital energy he sensed. Choosing a high ground, he could see a group of wolves traveling around with two giant 2 meter wolves standing at the front of the pack.
'Damn it, there are two Martial Grandmasters and at least three Martial Masters. Let's retreat.'
Silently retreating from this pack of wolves, Ren Qingchen quickly used his movement skill and vital energy sensing skill to choose another suitable target.
Skipping the Martial Apprentice stage ferocious beast that will only make his bag full, Ren Qingchen quickly locked onto a Martial Master level vital energy nearby seemingly escaping from something at fast speed.
Activating his stealth skill, he ran toward the place that Martial Master needed to pass. Hiding behind a group of trees while circulating his blood energy and preparing an ambush, Ren Qingchen immediately slashed his sword toward the target upon hearing a stepping sound and the rustling sound from bushes.
*Ding!*
The sound of metal collision could be heard when Ren Qingchen slashed his sword. What stands in front of him is a girl wearing white full body armor running for her life. With a pale blue hair that is in a mess with some leaves sticking at random places and a red face from overexerting her blood energy.
Looking at the familiar person, Ren Qingchen called into her.
"Third Princess?"
Luckily, he quickly suppressed his blood energy when seeing his target. Otherwise, Third Princess might get at least a heavy injury from his slash at her current condition.
"Ren Qingchen? Quick! We must escape from this place."
Looking at her panicked face, Ren Qingchen tried to calm her down.
"Please calm down for a moment and circulate your blood energy slowly and try to explain what is going on. If you continue to overexert yourself like this, it might damage your body and destroy your path forward."
Slowly calming down, the Third Princess started her explanation.
"Sorry to make you see such an embarrassing thing. Actually, when I tried to hunt at a place nearby, I suddenly heard a massive explosion-like sound. When I climbed into a tall tree trying to see what was going on there, I saw a massive snake fighting against an extremely huge bird. From the destruction they caused on the surroundings, they seem to be at least at Martial Saint realm or perhaps even Martial Lord realm. They fought from one mountain to another, quickly moving toward the direction I am at. In panic, I ran toward the approximate direction of the sect."
Hearing the Third Princess's explanation, Ren Qingchen doesn't feel afraid and instead feels excited. Afterall, during the fight between two experts of the same realm, a loss-loss situation is extremely common. If the winner of that fight actually got greatly weakened, he could just use some of his trump card and achieve a leapfrog double kill. With this kind of achievement, Raising his status in the sect will be a breeze and he could move forward with some of his plans.
"Then, let's escape from this place but don't run too far away. If the conditions permit, we should try to see whether we could try to kill the winning Martial Saint beast that has been greatly weakened from fighting."
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"You are insane! We are only Martial Masters. Just their sneezing is enough to make us dead several times over."
*Boom*
*Caw caw caw*
While they were arguing, they could hear a massive explosive sound coming from a small mountain nearby accompanied by the sound of fleeing birds. They could even sense the trembling ground from such a long distance.
"Let's escape."
Without any more nonsense, Third Princess started another round of escape. But, this time she ran together with Ren Qingchen.
Soon after they could also hear a vague wolf howl.
'It seems the wolf pack I met just now met with an accident.'
When they already ran quite a distance from that mountain, a consecutive booming sound could be heard.
*Boom*
*Boom*
*Boom*
They continued to hear that sound for several minutes before it suddenly came to a stop. Stopping from curiosity, both of them climbed toward a nearby cliff and looked into the distance.
As both of them have no skill that grants enhanced vision. They couldn't see the suspected battle between two Martial Saint beasts. But from the surrounding tree that fell one by one and occasional landslide, it seems the battle is still intense. Seeing that, both of them continued their escapade for another hour. Until Ren Qingchen called to a stop and continued the talk about his plan to be the oriole and took advantage of that ferocious beast's weakness to kill it.
This time, the Third Princess agreed. Compared to the first time she saw it, the turmoil caused by their battle has indeed become much weaker.
When there was no more movement from that place, for several hours, both of them returned to the place they first met. Looking for a tall tree to climb and look at the location of the Martial Saint beast's battle, both of them became wide-eyed.
(๏_๏)
The Third Princess is the one to first break their silence.
"Are we in the right location?"
"Well, from the surroundings, we are indeed in the correct location." he answered by pointing at his surroundings.
Glaring at the now beautiful flat plains where the mountain should have stood, both of them fell into silence once again.
"Then, where is the small mountain nearby?"
"Maybe it got destroyed during their battle?"
Actually Ren Qingchen couldn't even believe he actually said that. Afterall, even a moron knows after those landslides and falling trees, what welcomes them should be a scene of carnage instead of beautiful plains.
The Third Princess used her usual ultimate technique -Looking at someone as if they were a moron- at Ren Qingchen.
"How about we go to the place where you saw both of those Martial Saint beasts fighting? We might have found a clue there."
"I agree."
With the Third Princess in the lead, both of them ran for another ten minutes toward another mountain. Upon arriving nearby both of them didn't detect any fighting sound at all. Climbing a high place, all they could see was a ruined mountain landscape with many fallen trees and messy stone piles caused by a landslide.
Looking at these scenes, both of them sighed in relief instead. Compared to the previous weird scene of a mountain turning into a plain, this scene of ruins is much more pleasing to the eye.
Upon entering the ruined area, Ren Qingchen constantly activated his detection skills.
After walking for several hours, it finally detected a massive source of vital energy. Telling the Third Princess to wait there for a moment, Ren Qingchen quickly walked toward the source while activating his stealth skill at full power.
Looking ahead, Ren Qingchen could see a snake with deep gash on one of its eyes eating the corpse of a giant bird.
Walking toward the snake, Ren Qingchen poured some liquid into his sword. With this, as long as his sword would pierce the scale of that snake, his special liquid poison could easily kill this Martial Saint ferocious beast.
When the snake took another deep gulp at the bird, Ren Qingchen immediately struck and slashed toward a wounded area on the snake and immediately retreated far away.
It immediately hissed in pain before convulsing after several minutes passed. Not long after, the snake stopped moving, making sure it is absolutely dead by activating his sensing skill and throwing a throwing dagger toward the snake's remaining intact eye. Ren Qingchen finally called the Third Princess over.
"I have killed that snake using my poisons. As I got this information from you, how about we share the loot in half?"
Third Princess stared at the snake for a moment before staring at him as if lost in thought.
"Alright then. I will remember this favor."
Collecting the heart from both ferocious beasts, Ren Qingchen then proceeds to harvest the precious parts on those beasts like their claw fang and poison sack while helped by Third Princess. He then divided the loot in half and gave one part to the Third Princess.
With that, both of them immediately ran back to the sect. During their travels, Ren Qingchen and the Third Princess are lucky enough to collect several more ferocious beast hearts and precious plants.
Upon arriving at the sect, Ren Qingchen and Third Princess immediately went to the exchange hall and traded the ferocious beast hearts they collected. After some appraisal, without getting questioned at all, both of them got several thousand worth of sect coins mostly from the Martial Saint beast heart. Ren Qingchen also received an additional mark on his disciple badge which meant he already fulfilled the requirement of killing 100 ferocious beasts and could advance to the inner sect upon advancing to Martial Grandmaster realm.
Both of them then proceed to move toward the mission hall as the mission hall also does the job of information gathering from the disciples. They told the person in charge about the weird event they see today, especially the mountain turning into plains and about how a Martial Saint beast has entered the outer area while fighting. The person in charge there finished writing their statement and collected it together with a pile of paper containing other miscellaneous information that will be sent to the information gathering team for inspection later. After being told they will receive an announcement about their reward at a later date, both of them left and separated.
With this, Ren Qingchen could finally start his possibly one week long training to quickly reach Martial Grandmaster realm. Before starting, he purchased some precious plants to be turned into medicine. While at it, he also collected some medicine that will be used to craft a medicine to get the medicine peak master's approval to be his successor.
Entering the sect's training ground, Ren Qingchen started to practice his technique. The next time he comes out from the training ground will be when he advances to Martial Grandmaster.
***
Meanwhile, after removing another mountain from Endless Mountain. Ren Qingquan is happily looking for another victim.
This time, his target is to quickly reach Martial Saint realm~