The night set and Ling Xu decided to look for a place to sleep.
[You have entered the outer layer of the Deserted Forest.]
He went back to the outer layer because the beasts on the inner layer were stronger and he didn't feel like putting himself in unnecessary danger.
"I see a fire light in the distance, it should be a few hundred meters apart. Let's go and check it out."
On the fire camp.
"How on Earth did they get enough points to buy a skill and even an upgrade? Both of them cost several thousands of points."
"I think they may be a group that decided to share the points so they could advance faster than the rest. It is a good approach but personally I would never give my points to someone else."
"But even then, how can they get each one of them at least a thousand or even hundreds of points. We are already struggling to defeat the beasts after we entered the outer layer, and we can't return to the desert because the experience you get from the beasts will only decrease."
"If it wasn't for those bastards that killed Lin Yu we wouldn't be in this situation."
"I can't believe it either, if he was still here we wouldn't be struggling so much, he was the first of us to advance into the fourth stage of Blood Qi. I thought we would advance faster after he became stronger but who would have thought that we would suddenly be ambushed by another group of people, sight."
A small team composed of four people was talking freely as they expressed their anguish about their friend who died in the mission, they didn't even know if he would appear this time on Earth. After all, the tutorial mission may be the only time they had the chance to come back alive after dying inside.
They were a group of friends from work who were forced into the mission after going out together to have some drinks.
They continued chatting when Xie Sudin was alerted by something.
"Who is it?"
"Uh? He is just one person."
The other three looked at the direction the woman yelled at, startled that they didn't notice the man who was slowly approaching from the distance.
Maybe it was because that man had no aura surrounding him making them feel that he didn't even enter the first stage of the Blood Qi realm.
Xiao Die, who was the one to notice the man's lack of aura, was very careful as he didn't believe that someone without entering the Blood Qi realm could survive here alone.
"How can he hide his aura?"
As Ling Xu arrived, he saw a group of three men and one woman looking at him carefully. They were all at the third stage of Blood Qi and he felt the strongest aura coming from the woman, he guessed that she was about to enter the fourth stage after getting a little more experience.
Remembering the group he had been with his neighbor Mr. Sun, Ling Xu felt from their auras that this group was quite strong compared to them.
After noticing the woman's aura, Ling Xu realized that she seemed to hold a nice long sword between her legs.
He observed her figure which showed the appearance of an elegant woman accompanied by a pretty face. She remained calm the entire time since she noticed him coming at them and called him out.
"Who are you?"
She spoke calm with a cold tone normal for the situation they were in. After all Ling Xu was all alone in the night and she didn't think lowly of him.
"I have no ulterior motives, I just saw the fire light and hoped to find a place to stay for the night."
"Why are you alone?"
"Don't misunderstand, I separated from my team by accident while running from a pack of boars."
Xie Sudin nodded as she felt that what Ling Xu said was possible, she didn't completely believe him as they had just met so she decided to consult the rest of the group. Looking at the rest, she saw they had no problem with letting him stay for the night.
"You can stay for the night, what's your name brother?"
"Ling Xu."
Xiao Die asked him after seeing that Xie Sudin had made the decision to let him stay once she consulted him and the rest.
"My name is Xiao Die, the woman who first felt your presence is Xie Sudin our leader. And the other two are our friends Liao Li and Yuan Shi."
The night progressed smoothly as they continued to talk before they all went to sleep, Ling Xu stood quietly trying not to bother the group as they had their own conversations and he didn't know the details.
He was the first to go to sleep as he felt secure about these people's character and even if they tried to turn against him, they wouldn't be able to do much to him.
Ling Xu had already activated his Copper Skin Iron Bones skill before closing his eyes, and even before he did so, he felt confident that none of them were capable of breaking through his skin.
It would take someone in the seventh stage of Blood Qi and a high grade semi-treasure before they could even make a cut.
...
The third day begun and Ling Xu was already awake.
Standing up, he tidied up his clothes which had gotten dirty from the soil on the ground and he was ready to leave the group that allowed him to stay for the night.
"Are you leaving?"
Seeing Ling Xu about to leave she asked with one eye still closed as she was still asleep.
"I will try to find my team now, thank you for letting me sleep with you all. I hope you accept a small gift from me."
"What gif..."
As Ling Xu's image suddenly disappeared from her view she realized that he was hiding his strength. Because of his incredible speed and the dense forest full of plants and trees, it only took a few seconds for her to lose his sight.
Looking around she saw a corpse from a charged leopard which gave a strong feeling even after being dead for almost an entire day.
"He has hidden his strength so well, I never thought he would be so strong. I don't even know what strength this beast had before dying. It should have been at least on the fifth stage of Blood Qi."
Having met a tough boar in the fifth stage of Blood Qi before, she could already guess that when the beast was still alive it was at least as strong or even more. Considering that she barely had the chance to feel the aura from the beast before her group run away from it, being powerless as they had just confronted the group that killed their teammate and they were exhausted.
Two hours later, in the inner layer, Ling Xu had already eaten and was now ready to hunt for points.
He entered once again the jungle like forest and searched for places where black snakes lived.
It didn't take long for him to find a small hole between the bushes where he found a group of snakes.
"There should be at least a hundred of them!"
He yelled in his mind as he realized that he had encountered a bag full of points ready to take away.
There were black snakes with all kinds of cultivation as he observed that some were smaller than others, but the bust majority where in the 5th and 6th Stage.
As he looked further Ling Xu realized that what he was seeing looked more like a pool of snakes, he couldn't see the bottom but every time a snake moved there were even more below.
He observed that the ones below were of a lower stage and the ones above should be the adult snakes guarding them. Up until now the pool of snakes haven't realized that they were about to become Ling Xu's prey.
"Should I kill them in one go?"
Seeing the size of the hole, which was about three meters wide and long, Ling Xu was more than sure that he could do a powerful strike powerful enough to kill them all in one go.
Ling Xu's blood started to circulate faster and faster and his eyes gained that red color.
Suddenly, a strong pressure descended upon the snakes below which made them frightened in their place.
They struggled with all they had but this pressure was impossible to resist, and even if they could, they wouldn't be able to do anything as they had their offsprings below which activated their maternal instincts.
It only took a second for Ling Xu's blood to reach its peak as he jumped with his refined short sword and activated White Heavy Strike.
All of a sudden, a few of the strongest black scale snakes became able to move after desperately resisting, so they jumped against Ling Xu when an invisible air pressure descended upon them. They were the first to die as the pressure from the sword alone dismembered them.
[You have killed a Black Scale Snake (6th stage Blood Qi) +32 points.]
[You have killed a Black Scale Snake (6th stage Blood Qi) +32 points.]
[You have killed a Black Scale Snake (6th stage Blood Qi) +32 points.]
The messages started to appear even though the strike hadn't landed.
…
[You have killed a Black Scale Snake (6th stage Blood Qi) +32 points.]
[You have killed a Black Scale Snake (6th stage Blood Qi) +32 points.]
[You have killed a Black Scale Snake (6th stage Blood Qi) +32 points.]
[You have killed a Black Scale Snake (5th stage Blood Qi) +16 points.]
…
Seeing the result of his blood qi circulating without any restraints, Ling Xu was surprised. He saw the entirety of the hole where the pool of snakes were, full of blood with only a few remnants that hadn't turned into meat paste.
He then killed a few black scale snakes that seemed to have just returned.
[You have killed a Black Scale Snake (3rd stage Blood Qi) +4 points.]
[You have killed a Black Scale Snake (2nd stage Blood Qi) +2 points.]
After making sure that not a single snake remained, he started to see the barrage of notifications from the system. He counted the number of them and stopped after counting more than a hundred.
He counted dozens of kill confirmations of black scale snakes in the sixth stage and a hundred in the fifth.
Ling Xu called the system store to see how many points he had now.
[System Points]: 5.042
[Equipment]
[Pills]
[Special Items]
"I have gained almost four thousand points from a single group of snakes, this is amazing!"
Ling Xu entered the special items category when he realized that a new item had been added to the short list.
[You have spent 5000 points on Upgrade Skill (high grade).]
[You have used Upgrade Skill on Swift Steps (middle grade).]
He didn't even hesitate before buying the option to upgrade a skill form middle grade to high grade and then he instantly used it on the skill he most wanted to upgrade.
"I hope they were worth the use of my points."
Activating his upgraded skill, Ling Xu felt a difference as he tried taking a step and ended up advancing the equivalent to three or four.
When he was about to fall and tried to use his other leg to touch the ground his body suddenly turned in the air and he fell with his face to the ground.
"Cough! Cough! Cough!"
Full of earth in his mouth, Ling Xu realized that it wasn't as simple as its previous grade starting to have some difficulty using it.
Standing up he tried once again, almost committing the same mistakes with the only difference being in that he didn't fall with his face to the ground.