Chapter 32: Beast Cores

The bold aura emanating from Huang Xue’s body slowly retracted, as several cultivators turned to look in his direction in awe.

Seventh...Jie Hai stage!

When Huang Xue’s thick aura came rolling over, even several inner disciple students felt pressured. Only the stronger cultivators were able to fare better, but the feelings of disbelief could be traced within their widened eyes as they collectively looked at Huang Xue.

Upon discovering that the white robed youth was actually a freshman, those same individual’s eyes widened until it was as round as saucers.

Du Qianxin and Ji Xiong had a similarly shocked expression on their face as they looked at Huang Xue, while Mei Hua looked on with calmness; her eyes flickering once previously when she initially felt the pressure.

“To think that there was a monster among this year’s freshmen group…seventh stage of Jie Hai and being under the age of twenty...formidable, formidable!”

“That is Shen Huang Xue, right? As expected of a Heaven Root talent…”

“That pressure just now was even able to suppress me, a sixth staged Jie Hai practitioner! I fear, this Huang Xue’s battle potential may be greater than what it seems on the surface…”

Murmurs and discussions rose among the crowd. Everyone began conversing about the arrival of the new student, Huang Xue. Those who have already met the former before in the Sect all had excited and revered expressions on their face when they looked Huang Xue. That’s because although they may have seen or talked with the latter before, they did not know his cultivation level.

After the students passed the examination, they headed directly up the stairs; thus, they were not present when Huang Xue’s talent was revealed. Only a very small number of people who tested after Huang Xue and passed, knew this.

And for the ones who had only heard rumors of him, they now know about the terrifying cultivation base of the white robed youth before them.

Standing a few feet behind the two factions, Yang Chen had an obvious frown on his face as he coldly stared at Huang Xue’s back. Being apart of a major power that was equivalent to the Shen clan, Yang Chen did not fear Huang Xue as much as the other students. Even if the other party had a higher cultivation, Yang Chen did worry much about it. He had his powerful clan behind him!

Just as he was about to speak out to say something to Huang Xue, a brief windy gale picked up for a moment before an elderly man appeared on top of a thick tree branch.

Overlooking the students crowded around the edge of the forest below, the elder had a hard light in his eyes as he silently surveyed the surrounding. Wearing a long blue robe and having a head full of gray hair, the fifty years old elder had an air of strictness and pride around him.

When he appeared, the students below immediately recognized him. Saluting the elder, they called out in a respectful voice:

“Greetings to the Tenth Elder!”

Over the course of a month, the new disciples had come to understand about the various dealings of the Sect, and its important figures within.

The tenth elder nodded as his eyes passed through the students standing at the forefront of the crowd. A satisfied expression could be seen growing faintly on his face. When the elder’s eyes landed on Huang Xue’s body, the elder’s expression changed into that of pleasant surprise.

“Seventh stage of Jie Hai...it seems old thirteen did not lie. Our Sect has accepted a truly good seed this time.” The tenth elder thought as he stared at Huang Xue for a while before moving on.

Seeing that everyone below was no quiet and paying their full attention to him, the tenth elder cleared his throat before saying in a hoarse voice, his voice projecting over the field:

“New disciples of the Six Ocean Sect, this old man here is Liu Zhong. I want to congratulate you all once again for being accepted to our school! For this year’s freshmen competition, I will be in charge of it.”

Looking over the students below with a smile, he continued: “This year’s competition is very simple. At the other end of this forest behind me, there is a portal setup. The first person to pass through will become the freshman champion, and the gate will allow up to the first four participants to go through. Afterwards, the portal will be closed.

Also, throughout this large forest that was created by the Sect, there are numerous evil beasts lurking along with precious herbs. For every Beast Core that you collect and hand in to the school, it can be exchanged for one Contribution Point that can be later use to purchase various arts from the Sect’s treasury.”

Liu Zhong pointed to the forest as a faint light of shrewdness glittered within his eyes: “Furthermore, the portal leads to our Six Ocean Sect’s Underwater Treasure Palace! The treasury has five floors to it, with the higher the floor containing greater martial techniques and secret arts.

Usually, the treasury is reserved for elder-figures and core disciples, however the Great Elders have decided to open up this opportunity for this year's new students! Only the first person to enter the portal will be teleported to the second floor of the treasury. Those who come after will sent to the first floor. You may all choose any one item from the repository!

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On top of that, the freshman champion will be awarded an additional one thousand Qi stones. The others will receive three hundred Qi stones each. Now, are there any questions?”

Excitement was buzzing among the freshmen as they discussed the prospects of being able to choose from Six Ocean Sect’s treasury hall. Being a major sect, it goes without saying that the items and secret arts found in their treasury would be astonishing. Even being able to peruse and select something from the first floor of such a place would prove to be very beneficial!

Even the upperclassmen around had on a longing and envious expression. This was reward that not even they had the chance to enjoy after all these years...

Glancing over the eager cultivators below, Liu Zhong waited for a while in silence before he once again spoke: “Alright, since everyone seems to understand, then I shall hold you guys off no further. Let the freshmen competition...begin!”

The moment Liu Zhong’s words fell, all the students below immediately began madly rushing into the forest; each one fearing to be the last one to enter. However, as figures after figures streamed into the forest, Huang Xue could be seen walking leisurely into the forest. On his face, there was any lack of panic or even urgency.

Earlier, when he had purposely released his aura to intimate the crowd, he had also sent out his divine sense to pursue the surrounding.He also hid himself among several different locations in the large crowd, however, besides discovering some hidden upperclassmen further away, Huang Xue did not sense any reaction from the Star Decree stone on him...

“With my destined disciple not within this group of freshmen, could it be that I’ll have to start looking at the upperclassmen?” Huang Xue thought as he walked deeper into the forest. Now that he knew his destined ones were not within the crowd, this freshmen competition had lost most of its meaning to him. Besides getting a decent placing, he was not in any hurry to compete at all.

Moreover, with his divine sense, Huang Xue had noticed that at the end of the forest where the portal resided, there were at least three powerful evil beasts guarding it. And with the level of young cultivators here, Huang Xue was certain it would take them quite some time to break through, if even at all!

And as expected, before two hours were up, screams could be heard from the end of the forest. Then, all was quiet.

Soon, a certain news went circulating around the participants that said there were actually three powerful evil beasts at the ninth stage of Jie Hai guarding the portal. Those who were weak had already perished or heavily injured in their attempt to sneak through.

Fortunately, it was said that the three beasts were restricted by several chains with symbols on them. They could move within ten meters radius from the portal. Otherwise, if these three evil beasts were allowed to roam freely, who knows how many unsuspecting freshmen would have already met their end.

With the obstruction of the powerful beasts, many cultivators then decided to turn their attention into gathering the precious herbs and beast cores in the forest. Even if they could not take a place at the competition, they could still hope to come out with some benefits at least.

Before long, many of the freshmen began to focus on hunting the weaker evil beasts in the forests.

Huang Xue leisurely walked through the forest as he headed towards the other end of the forest. As he walked, three shadows darted out from the nearby thickets and confronted him.

Huang Xue’s steps slightly paused as he looked at the three ugly evil beats in front of him. The three resembled each other, seemingly looking like overgrown black wolves. Their eyes gleamed with killing intent and their body was covered in thick black fur that was as hard as metal. Besides being nearly two meters tall, the other strange thing about these wolves was that they had six eyes on top of each other, rather than the typical two eyes, causing them to give off a demonic feel.

“Black Steel Wolves...a mid rank 1 beast actually dares to block my way?” Huang Xue mused as he walked on.

In this martial world, evil beasts were given Ranks to differentiate their battle strength and potential. These ranks are further broken down into low, mid, and high. For example, a low rank 1 evil beast is generally equivalent to the strength of an early Temporal Di practitioner, while a mid rank 1 will have the strength of a mid-Temporal Di realm. A high rank 1 beast would be the same as a late Temporal Di practitioner.

However, typically beasts of the same realm as a cultivator are stronger than the latter due to the former’s beastly instincts honed through countless challenges in the wild. A cultivator would seldom attack a beast of the same realm as him/herself.

The three black steel wolves seeing that the human in front of them was not only fearless but had actually dared to continue forward, their eyes instantly became red with rage as they charged towards Huang Xue. Powerful jaws opened as they aimed to clamp down on their next meal!

The black steel wolf in the middle was quickest, and was just about to tear apart Huang Xue’s throat, when a folded up white fan appeared out of nowhere in front of it. The fan had appeared simply too fast, and so the beast could only look with confused eyes as the fan lightly tapped on its forehead.

*Splat!*

The demon wolf’s head exploded at that moment. At the same time, a cloudy red marble-like ball appeared from its disintegrated head and fell down to the ground. This was the black steel wolf’s beast core.

Huang Xue’s eyes gleamed with a strange light as blood flew up in the air. A faint glow of excitement and coldness could be felt within his pupils.

“This feeling…it has been quite some time since I last killed...if I can return back to my post as the Imperial Commander, I would be able to resume my battles…” Huang Xue thought as he flicked away the blood on his fan.

This was another one of the reasons why Huang Xue wanted to return back to the Jade Heaven Land. Being a god who cultivates several Daos, he often required fighting against several other deities in order to master a path. The more he fought, the more danger he is in, the more perfect his Dao becomes and the stronger his strength ends up!  As such, hunting down evil and sinful gods became not only his duty as a commander, but apart of his dangerous training menu for himself!

The two black steel wolves that were about to leap towards Huang Xue as well, suddenly paused in their steps as they looked on with confusion. They were not intelligent beings and could even be said to possess little to no sentiments. However, the sudden death of their ‘comrade’ had made it difficult for them to process the forecoming danger.

Without bothering to pick up the beast core, Huang Xue stepped forward and immediately lashed out two fan attacks. Before the remaining black wolves could react, their head had already exploded into mush, leaving two other cloudy red beast cores on the ground.

Huang Xue looked at the beast corpses for a moment before he continued moving on.

“Low quality rank 1 beast cores are useless for me. I’ll just let the others have it. And before reaching the Tian realm, I should not touch any those demons’ beast souls, lest I draw too much attention from other powerful cultivators.” Huang Xue thought as he entered deeper into the forest.

Just as his figure faded into the dense thickets, several people appeared in the area where the three black steel wolves were killed. One of them quickly went forward to collect the three red beast cores on the ground.

“Three low quality rank 1 beast cores! And he just left it here…” The boy in plain blue robe said as he looked longingly at the cores in his hand.

“Haa...what are you being surprised for? While these beast cores may be precious to us, to someone from the Shen clan, I have no doubt they will have several hundreds of those! This is what it means to come from a wealthy and powerful family, got it?” Another man in blue robed said wryly to the younger boy as he turned his head towards the direction, where Huang Xue disappeared into.

Four other cultivators stood silently on the side, glancing eagerly at the three cores in the blue robed youth’s hands. In total, there were six of them, and they had been following Huang Xue in a group for a while back now.  

“Let us hurry and catch up to him. As long as we don’t offend that Huang Xue, we should be able to follow his direction and safely get through the deeper parts of this forest!” The older youth in blue robed said as he walked towards Huang Xue’s direction.

“But elder brother, why does that person hide his cultivation aura? If he does that, wouldn’t he attract more beasts instead…?” The younger youth in blue robe asked as he followed his older brother.

The older blue robed youth paused before he turned around to look at his younger brother with a wryly look on his face. “How the hell am I supposed to know why? Let’s just go!”

Without another word, the six of them proceeded to follow after Huang Xue.

Naturally, Huang Xue had already noticed these people following him. But since they did not bother him nor came with ill intentions, he had left them be and pretended ignorance...