All the steps that Li Feng had planned worked out perfectly. It did not take much effort to manipulate the mind of one of the supervisors and he was made to thought that Li Feng had entered the mine to work just like always. And to not create any discrepancy with the records, Li Feng had also given him 1000 spirit stones to add to the record which was enough to buy him 20 days of time while Li Feng would also get the maximum amount of sect contribution points for those days.
After all the preparations were done, Li Feng silently sneaked out of the mine. With Yue's Phantom World and his Xuanwu's Great Isolation, avoiding the eyes of all the foundation establishment realm elders was not hard. Then after safely sneaking out, Li Feng followed the map and travelled toward the southeastern direction.
Before leaving the mine, from the supervisor they had controlled, Li Feng had also gotten a simple map of the area. The special map that marked the location of the cave abode did not have anything else marked on it except for the rivers and mountains. So having a regular map was essential for traveling to that place.
According to that simple map, on the way, there existed a small Market created by rogue demonic cultivators and Li Feng was planning to visit that place first.
He used a technique called "True Blood Traversal" to travel and it was extremely fast. This was a fundamental movement technique of the Blood God Divine Scripture so Li Feng did not need to practice it separately. Just cultivating with the Blood God Divine Scripture was enough to master this move. Not only that but this move used almost no spiritual energy. So it was extremely suitable for long distance travels.
That way in less than 6 hours, Li Feng managed to reach the market mentioned in the map. For this market to exist within the territory of the Blood Sea sect, it definitely had someone strong behind this. But Li Feng did not bother too mucn about it as a Qi gathering realm cultivator like him would not be able to attract any attention from someone that strong.
...
Before entering the market, Li Feng had changed his looks and was disguising himself as a level 5 Qi gathering realm cultivator. Looking around, he found that most of the people he could see were at low grade of Qi gathering. Middle grade ones were extremely rare and he found no high grade Qi gathering cultivators on the road.
Not only that but most of the low grade cultivators' aura was weaker compared to the sect disciples of the same level. It looked like, the "Malevolent Blood Art" was a cultivation technique of quite a high grade.
Li Feng did not mind the cautious glaces of the crowd and started to browse the items. As this was a market for the demonic cultivator, most of the items on sell were demonic in nature. Some of them even badly disgusted Li Feng. For example, someone was selling the preserved embryo of a female whose mother was impregnated on an auspicious day. One might think a disgusting and terrible thing like this would not be famous but that was not the case. Many demonic rituals needed something like this, so it was a desired high grade item in this Market.
Li Feng was not really interested in something like this and instead he was checking if he could find an item that could be upgraded with a higher grade card. But even after walking around the Market for quite some time, nothing like that showed up.
But still he find a few items that he found interesting. For example there was a flower called Red Whispering Bloom which could provide a large amount of blood for a mid grade disciples. It was a valuable cultivation resource for cultivators of the blood path. And even for cultivators of other ways, this flower was a valuable healing medicine.
This would not be effective on Li Feng who was already at the peak of Qi gathering realm, but he was sure that the upgraded version of this flower could provide him with a good amount of blood qi. So he ended up buying this flower for a hepty sum of 180 spirit stone. The seller was asking for 300 spirit stones but Li Feng managed to bring down the price with burgaining.
Other than that, he also bought a few kilos of demon beast meat, three types of pills that was essential for all cultivators who explored dangerous areas and a set of low grade array setting tools. Li Feng wanted to buy a higher grade one and even had enough spirit stones but unfortunately, this low grade array tool was the best one that could be found in this market.
But still Li Feng was satisfied with his purchases. By using regular upgradation cards on them, all those items and materials would became even more useful to him.
Li Feng had several thousands of spirit stones with him but he needed to spend one only to buy so many things. The reason for that was because, he used one of his regular upgradation card to turn a low grade spirit stone into a high grade one, which was more than enough money to buy all the things Li Feng needed.
After he was done shopping, Li Feng did not stay in the Market area and left immediately.
...
After getting a bit away from the Market, he suddenly stopped in his track and spoke up.
"Fellow daoist who had been following me. Please show yourself and explain. Hiding is useless as I am already aware of your presence."
As soon as Li Feng said this, a mocking laughter was heard and a man suddenly came out of the ground. He looked quite old and malnourished. His body did not have much meat and his bones were visible. Anyone looking at him would think that he was an old man.
But Li Feng was able to sense his vitality and judged that this man was only about 70 to 80 years old. A Qi gathering realm cultivator could easily live up to 120 to 150 years, so this man still had a few decades of his life left. So he was not too old for a cultivator.
Seeing the greedy look in his eyes, it was clear to Li Feng why this man was here. The amount of money he had spent in the market was not much in his eyes but it looked like for rogue cultivators, even that little spirit stone was too much.
Affirming Li Feng's speculation, the thin man spoke up in a bone chilling voice -
"Young friend, it looked like you're quite rich as you even have a high grade spirit stone. Hehe, don't you know, having too much wealth is a sin in the cultivation world. Be wise and leave all your things behind for the me. I will take care of them on your behalf. But if you're unwilling, hehe, who knows what will happen to you ?"
Li Feng understood from where the confidence of this man was coming. He was a 7th level cultivator and his showm level was only 5th. So it made sense that a high grade cultivator like this thin man did not care about a mid grade cultivator like him. But that would be the biggest and last mistake of his life.