Two months later.
In the east of the Xuanhe Kingdom, an intense chase was currently taking place: a late stage Qi Building righteous cultivator was pursued by an early stage Core Formation and a mid stage Qi Building ones.
"Quick, senior sister, he's trying to reach the Jang clan's territory, block the way!" Baotian shouted.
"You dare order me?!" Zi Moyan replied jokingly. "Well, then, you better be just as quick"
Both Baotian and the one he was chasing both stopped right in their tracks, narrowly avoiding being burned by the circle of fire that had risen around them. Baotian looked back at her, venom in his eyes:
"Why don't you warn me even later next time, so I get a nice tan?"
Zi Moyan shrugged:
"The mere, weak junior brother begged this Core Formation queen for help isolating him and his opponent, I generously granted your request and you're still there complaining! Hmph, insolent"
Baotian smiled and rolled his eyes before focusing on his opponent. The latter, though in a fighting position, was clearly struggling with panic, not confident in his chances of winning.
'Ah, that won't do if he's not giving it a minimum of struggle' Baotian thought.
He quickly thought of a solution:
"I won't lie and tell you that senior sister will necessarily let you go if you defeat me" he said. "But don't you think it's more likely for you to survive if you only have to deal with me first? Even if you only manage to defeat me before your life ends, it'll still be one less demonic cultivator, right?"
He created a sword out of blood essence:
"So you better give it your all!" Baotian shouted as he rushed toward his forced opponent.
The latter, seemingly moved to a certain degree by his words, also started to use his own spells. Quickly, water droplets materialized around him, and started spinning, emitting a sharp sound. Then, each at the same time, they all rushed forward with the speed and power of bullets. Baotian, maneuvering in the air, managed to avoid most of these but had to block one with his sword, which left a small crack on it.
Smiling, Baotian kept approaching, using his other hand to create a large blood scythe and cut forward with it. The righteous cultivator, this time, used a basic water spell to create a larger amount of water, and then manipulated the flow to wrap it around the scythe, forcing it to deviate from its trajectory and miss him. Using the opening it had created in Baotian's defense, he quickly created a few more droplets and fired them on his weak side. Baotian, decisive, quickly abandoned the scythe and backed down, but his forearm was still pierced by two droplets nonetheless.
"Argh" he groaned painfully.
Zi Moyan, seeing this, was ready to intervene, but he stopped her with a movement of his hand.
'It's faint, but I can feel it… I can feel my Qi Cube spin!'
Grinning, he resumed his attacks. He was already slightly outmatched when he had both arms in a good state but now, with one of them injured, he was clearly getting pushed back. Still, he remained calm, pressing forward. The righteous cultivator, seeing this, felt his heart fill with even fiercer rage: why was he the one they chose? Why were they doing this to him? Why were demonic cultivators disregarding life so easily!?
"I will make sure you die today… no matter what!"
The fight kept going on, and Baotian's body was progressively covered in injuries. Individually, these weren't much serious but, put together, they were getting more and more serious.
Baotian, once again, created a blood scythe. Since his valid hand was already holding a sword, he had to hold it with his injured arm.
"Demonic filth, can't you learn?" the righteous cultivator snapped.
He was going to kill him. He definitely was. As he repeated this to himself, he prepared to use the same move as before to counter. However, Baotian suddenly… threw the scythe forward?
Immediately after, he rushed at him. Frightened, the righteous cultivator fired water droplets in his direction again, but Baotian blocked it with his injured arm, which as a result ended up perforated several more times. Clenching his jaws, he slashed forward with his sword, and his opponent prepared to deflect it again.
Only for Baotian to drop the sword as well, fly past him, and catch the blood scythe with his valid hand.
"Damnation!" the righteous cultivator exclaimed.
Both he and Baotian turned around, but the latter was a split of second faster. His upper half separated from his lower half, the righteous cultivator could only bitterly look at Baotian as both fell to the ground. Baotian, exhausted, went to the ground as well. He looked at the mutilated corpse, feeling his heart ache, and began extracting its heart essence. It was a process during which he usually looked away, but recently, he just kept watching as the blood drained, and was compressed into heart essence.
It wasn't that he was indifferent, or that he took some sick pleasure to do it. Instead, he just watched the chilling process to remind himself that his actions were horrible. If there was one thing that scared Baotian, it was to start considering such things as 'normal'.
'If I did, then I… would I even still be me?'
His dark thoughts were interrupted by Zi Moyan, who quickly landed beside him, and emptied the cultivator's storage bag before destroying his remains, ensuring it wouldn't be found by a Jian clan cultivator. As she and Baotian began to quickly transfer the loot to their own storage bag, she asked him, worried:
"Are you alright? You seem like you just took a bath in a pool made of spikes" she said.
"I guess so…"
"You should have used your move, uhh, 'Shooting Blood Dancing Armor'? Or at least the owl' bow, you wouldn't have ended in such a state"
She carefully avoided using the name 'Golden Owl Bow'. Baotian shook his head:
"You know I can't do this" he replied. "My talent is already not that high, and in addition to that I lost twenty-five years of lifespan in the Purple Sky Village. I need to use every possible means to speed up my cultivation. Aren't you the one who said one should take risks in the present to ensure the future?"
"Ahh, daring to use this senior sister's words against her…"
Zi Moyan sighed, defeated. Baotian, as he took a few pills to heal his arm, quickly switched the topic:
"Besides, it works just fine! During the fight, I felt my Qi Cube spinning several times and now, I feel like I've gotten a bit closer to making it stand. Isn't that good news?"
"Ahh… I guess so"
That was the cultivation formula to reach the late stage of Qi Building: making the Qi Cube stand on a corner and remain this way. While cultivators often underestimated the usefulness of this process, it was actually the most essential step in the process of turning the cube into a Spirit Core. Beyond just making the cube 'stand' on a corner, doing so indefinitely symbolized the stability of the cube in the middle dantian, necessary to advance to the next step.
"Doing it the orthodox way, it would likely take me thirty years at least, but if I get to fight more enemies like this, I can do it in less than a dozen years!"
Indeed, demonic path cultivators often advanced faster to late stage Qi Building. The reason was that, at this stage, there was a shortcut to make the cube stand on its corner: fighting to the death. By fighting to the death, the strain put on the mind, body, and spiritual energy causes one's Qi Cube to begin 'spinning'.
From then on, it was actually simple physics that one could perfectly understand without needing to be a transmigrator: a cubic object would typically remain standing on its corner while it spun on itself. Even though it would fall back the moment it stopped spinning, the sensation would remain, greatly helping with the next attempts.
That was also the reason for which Baotian did not use the Shooting Blood Dancing Armor nor the Golden Owl Bow, to make the fight closer and push his limits. And of course, he also did that so he wouldn't become completely dependent on them like he had been inside the Void Hurricane.
"Matter of fact, I could probably cut it down even more if I could find more appropriate opponents, but this guy and the one before were the only isolated Qi Building cultivators we could find in two months"
He sighed:
"Well, that can't be helped, most Qi Building cultivators are aware of the methods and stay hidden or in groups before reaching the grand perfection stage, to avoid becoming 'practice targets'. Ah, I should have fought more people during the Void Hurricane's battle…"
"Ba Ke… Baotian… Urgh, junior brother, I almost had to drag you while we were escaping from how tired you were, if you fought any more people you would be dead meat right now"
Baotian rolled his eyes, knowing she was right but still muttering about her 'lack of faith'.
"Anyway, we're done looting the storage bag, so let's escape quickly" Zi Moyan continued. "We're almost there, if we're fast we can arrive before the end of the day. Have some nerve, lazy junior brother!"
Baotian, cursing internally, followed her as she started to fly:
"Yes, my dear, definitely not annoying senior sister!" he said, flying just far enough to stay out of slapping reach.
It was Zi Moyan's turn to roll her eyes.
Slap!
'Ouch… I may… have underestimated the Core Formation stage's speed' Baotian thought, rubbing his reddened cheek.
Several hours later, as night was falling, the two of them arrived in front of a small mountain. Zi Moyan, flying to a certain height, threw eight very weak fire balls at it, at regular intervals.
"Now, we wait" she said as she landed back beside him.
They waited for a good twenty minutes and, just when Baotian was starting to lose patience, parts of the mountain moved, revealing a cave. Zi Moyan, seeing this, flew up to the cave and, a second later, he followed. As they entered, the entry of the cave disappeared behind them, causing Baotian to look back for a moment.
'Well, senior sister doesn't seem to be panicking, so it shouldn't be ba- agh!'
He almost shouted as he saw that, in the half second where he was turned around, a man had appeared. He had this look of a well-groomed man in his early sixties, and his calm and courteous expression made him seem easy to trust. Baotian felt his heart nearly stop, but managed to calm down a bit:
"I… This junior greets senior Bai" he said, bowing his head. "It's an honor"
Bai Zisheng, Zi Moyan's direct superior in the demonic path's organization, nodded:
"This senior is just as honored to meet one of our path's young talents, I truly hope we will be able to cooperate in good and friendly conditions" he said. "Now, I am sorry to pressure you, but some unexpected news arrived a few weeks ago, and I do believe it might interest you, so would you please follow me to discuss it around a nice cup of tea?"
Bai Zisheng, at the Core Formation late stage, was much stronger than them, and wouldn't really need to bait them into a trap if he wanted to hurt them. Even so, for some reason, Baotian felt reluctant to follow this man anywhere. Nonetheless, he still forced himself to go, along with the other two.
'I wonder what this news is' he thought as he got deeper into the cave.
As he looked at Bai Zisheng's back, he still couldn't get rid of his ominous feeling about him.