Within the Secret Realm, just like Xiang said, it was a scene of absolute chaos and bloodshed.
Many cultivators belonging to various rivaling forces fought among each other, killing others for past grievances and resources.
Rogue cultivators, without any backing, used this opportunity to strike at unprepared targets, such as the young masters and ladies of various clans and sects to steal their resources.
One such scene was taking place right now as a group of three people and one teenager who was probably around twelve or thirteen years old were surrounded by a dozen rogue cultivators.
“Hand over everything you have, and maybe we will give you a quick death.”
The sheer arrogance in the tone of the rogue cultivator was enough to ignite the fury of the three adults, but they held their tongues as their master had not permitted them to take any action.
The teenager in question stared at the large group with amusement.
“And what if we don’t?”
“Then, you will suffer a lot before you die.”
“Is that so? Why don’t you show me?”
The teenager’s dismissive words greatly angered this group of rogue cultivators.
In the outside world, rogue cultivators like these people would never be able to even look at descendants of powerful clans and disciples of the sects due to the sheer difference in status.
This caused most of the rogue cultivators in the world to harbor hatred and jealousy towards those born into such positions or those born with talent.
They believed that should they have the same resources as these people do, they too would be just as powerful, if not more. A thought that was based on pure fantasy and not facts but one that everyone harbored due to their inferiority.
As such, opportunities like these, where the proud young masters and ladies of the clans and sects are on the same playing field as them, were rarely passed up by many rogue cultivators who took out their hatred and sick thoughts on these members of the upper echelon of their society.
Of course, this matter was known by everyone on the continent, including the leaders of these powerful forces. Then, why don’t they do anything about it? The answer is very simple.
If their heirs and chosen successors can’t even overcome something as inferior as rogue cultivators with barely passable martial arts, techniques, and resources, how could they lead their forces in the future?
Such is the thought process shared by every leader of the various forces on the continent.
Again these thoughts are also well known to the rogue cultivators, fueling their anger even more.
Ironically, this way of doing things had been the downfall of many young masters and ladies of various forces in the past. In fact, this particular group of rogue cultivators had recently committed various heinous acts toward a group of disciples from a well-known sect of the empire. Their men were tortured to death while the women faced and even worse fate.
The teenager sniffed the air for a bit before his face twisted into a feral expression, causing his bodyguards to stiffen in fright and quickly move away from their master, knowing that there was going to be a serious bloodbath.
“All of you give off a substantial amount of resentment. I smell the blood Qi of hundreds of curses on you. You must have killed and humiliated a lot of people recently, right?”
The blood Qi is a type of Qi that is different from Demonic Qi or elemental Qi. It is a type of Qi that is formed from the resentment of the victim of a murder. A type of curse that is born from the very Heavens due to unjustly killing people, especially mortals.
Most of the time, this type of Qi can be easily ignored by everyone since every cultivator in existence has killed someone without reason at some point. It also does not help that the blood Qi can only linger for a few years at most before natural dissipation.
However, most orthodox cultivators of famous forces don’t like others to know just how much blood Qi clings to their bodies. They hate it when their clean image is tainted by exposing the quantity of needless murders they cause. It is also the reason why artifacts that suppress and hide the blood Qi of cultivators are so popular across the continent.
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Aside from exposing the nature of a cultivator, blood Qi causes little other effects other than making the tribulations of a cultivator stronger should they try to break through while their blood Qi still exists on their bodies. This is why most people won’t care much about its existence.
However, this particular teenager is not just an ordinary Orthodox cultivator.
The words of the teenager caused the rogue cultivators to become even more resentful.
“Just for those words, you will be the first to-“
The leader of the rogue cultivators could even complete his words before the roar of a tiger resounded in the area filled with Metal Qi, heavily disorienting the rogue cultivators as their weapons started to shatter under the frequency of the sound waves that were modified with Metal Qi which attuned the sound waves to the specific frequency of the different metals that made up the various weapons.
An awe-inspiring feat.
However, the rogue cultivators only felt terror as they instantly recognized the move.
The teenager did not give them time to respond as his body flashed gold with Metal Qi before he disappeared with a burst of speed.
While the speed was not that impressive in reality, the hypnotizing movements and postures that mimicked a stalking tiger caused the cultivator's heart to chill in instinctual fear.
“The Steel Prowl? And that roar, the Metallic Roar? Y-You! You belong to the Royal Family!!”
The teenager smirked at those words.
“Correct. I am Baihu Jianxiao, the crown prince of The Baihu Empire.”
The reveal of his identity caused the rogue cultivators to go pale as they directly kneeled in front of him.
“Y-Your Highness!! Please spare us-”
“No”
The cold words uttered by the child caused the rogue cultivators to feel a chill as they saw his cold gaze move across their forms.
With his identity revealed, they knew for a fact that even if they were to combine all of their powers and try to attack, they would all die tragically.
The tale of the crown prince attaining his position through a brutal duel with his half-sister despite being a major realm lower than her in cultivation was something that everyone had heard at some point in the last year.
With that said, there was only one thing they could do at this point.
“Run!”
The group instantly scattered in the four directions, hoping to confuse the teenager long enough to escape with their lives. Praying to the Heavens that they would not be the ones to be targeted by this monster in human form.
Unfortunately, the teenager had foreseen their actions.
He simply nodded toward his subordinates who shot forward at his signal, easily surpassing the speed of these rogue cultivators with their superior techniques and rounding up the closest rogue cultivators.
As for those who escaped, Baihu Jianxiao gave a bored expression before shooting forward with another one of the Royal Family’s techniques, The Golden Tiger’s Hunt, which allowed him to use the Metal Qi to cut through the air, lowering his body’s air resistance and increasing his speed.
Within minutes, he hunted down and killed all the rogue cultivators with his own hands.
“Your Highness, take this.”
One of his subordinates handed him an artifact to wash away the blood from his clothes which the prince took and cleaned himself, yet, his expressions were still held in a frown.
“These people must have been truly despicable if the Heavens only pushed a day or two’s worth of blood Qi onto my body despite killing more than a dozen of these people.”
His bodyguards did not say anything as they too agreed with their master’s words.
The intensity of blood Qi and the duration that it clings to a person is directly proportional to the number of unjust killings performed by the cultivator. However, just like everything else in existence, the Heavens balances these acts of killing in its own way.
Cultivators who perform unjust killings towards other cultivators gain a large amount of blood Qi that lasts for at least a year. Those who kill mortals without reason end up gaining blood Qi that lasts for at least a decade.
Since people like these don’t care much about this blood Qi, the Heavens made it so that anyone who kills such people with potent blood Qi on their bodies would not be affected much and would not gain much blood Qi.
Effectively, the Heavens promoted the act of killing those with excess blood Qi, turning it into a sport. This is also one of the many reasons why the various cultivators of the continent don’t like others to know the amount of blood Qi in their bodies.
It is also the reason why these cultivators don’t dare to show themselves to the Royal Family of the Baihu Empire.
The Baihu Empire’s Royal Family practices a Heaven-Grade Cultivation Technique known as The Golden Tiger’s Dominion Art. A cultivation art with the elemental affinity of Metal.
One of the side effects of using this technique is the ability to smell the various types of Qi present around the user. The higher the proficiency of the user in the technique, the larger the radius that the user can smell and the wider the range of Qi that they can detect in the form of smells.
Baihu Jianxiao shook his head in amusement and turned towards his bodyguards.
“Let’s go.”
With those words, the group started heading deeper into the secret realm, intent on completing the mission assigned to the prince by his father.
And just maybe, find the man with the purest smelling Qi that the prince had ever seen. The man who had secretly tried to probe his group before entering the realm. Unfortunately, he did a poor job of hiding his intent from the sharp senses of the Prince, resulting in the prince spotting him as they entered the realm and accidentally catching a whiff of his Qi.
The Prince grinned in anticipation as his hands itched with his urge to fight.
He wanted to see just how it was possible for someone to have such pure Qi, free of any taint or ill intent. He wanted to understand how such a person led his life.
And most importantly, he wanted to fight such a person to see how he stacked up compared to someone so unique in terms of power.