Chapter 7

While waiting for night to fall and for the Fanged Pandas to return to their caves for the night, Shin Long had quite a bit of time on his hands. And a new feature to his cultivation technique he'd unlocked today that he wanted to check out.

So he sank into a cross legged position atop the tree he had retreated to while he went about subjugating his new demon spirit and began to cultivate. Sinking into his soul realm and building up his power. If it weren't for the massive foliage of leaves within the tree hiding him from view, the bright red aura with green crackling lightning bolts running through it that encased his form would have drawn everything within a miles radius towards him.

The strength of an army, was its soldiers. Each soldier within an army added extra strength to it. the War God cultivation technique didn't just stop at adding the power of demon spirits to the users. No, that would be far too simple. Because, while difficult, it was possible to do something similar without it, granted that only applied to the soul force and gaining the full power of subjugated demon spirits was incredibly difficult.

No, the new ability he'd unlocked today upon subjugating a demon spirit, was a technique known as 'Growth Of The Army'. Simply put, it was linking with the tamed demon spirits within the soul realm and increasing the speed of cultivating as if there were multiple cultivators nurturing one single soul realm.

Of course there was a bit of a draw back. The user didn't gain the full cultivation to themselves, and half of what they'd cultivated would be added to the power of the demon spirits within. But in the end, that was a minor gripe all things considered when taken into account how beneficial that was when it came to summoning his demon spirits to fight for him. The stronger they got, the better.

And while he cultivated, Shin Longs mind wandered. With the Fanged Panda corpses, he could make a Spotted Tiger demon spirit tonight. That line of thought actually reminded him that he still had the materials of the few Spotted Tigers he'd run into over the past few days while hunting Horned Sheep.

He had four of them. Depending on how strong the soul force of their demon crystals were, he could just use one of them to make into a demon spirit.

And he was so very close to breaking through to the silver star rank. He might even break through from the Spotted Tiger demon spirit alone, and if not, he would definitely do so in the next few days.

Which brought the demon spirit he most wanted to the forefront of his mind. The Charring Lizard, the lowest ranked dragon demon beast. As a dragon, of the lowest tier or not, it would have the massive potential all dragon demon beasts had. Dragon demon beasts had naturally higher growth potential than all other demon beast races.

There was one position free in his cultivation technique. While he could be considered the 'god' or 'king', there was another special position available. The 'general'. It was the only demon spirit who's form a war god cultivator could take on, and they couldn't switch out of it like a normal cultivator and replace it with another demon spirit.

He had access to all his demon spirits abilities whenever he desired, but only one could become his right hand and strongest spirit. It might have been impatient of him, but Shin Long thought that using the Charring Lizard demon beast as his main spirit would be his best bet in the long run.

Both because it was a dragon spirit, and because the growth rate of all his demon spirits fed into his main spirit, increasing its growth rate further. He didn't want to go for a stronger dragon spirit, simply because any other dragon spirits were gold rank and above. And he'd need to reach that level to subjugate them in the first place.

But going for his general spirit early, as soon as he reached the silver rank, meant he could cultivate its power for longer and by time he was a gold rank, it would most likely surpass any of the gold rank dragon spirit by leagues and bounds.

The only problem was that, they were in general worth around two hundred thousand demon spirit coins at the cheapest. But, he had a plan for that.

Shin Longs thoughts whirled for three hours while he cultivated. And when the Fanged Pandas finally all retreated into their abode for the night, he let the aura of qi around his body dissipate and he stood up, red and green eyes glowing with power, piercing through the darkness of the night.

"Now then, let's get a move on." he hummed, cracking his neck and then jumping down and heading out into the open plains filled with Fanged Panda corpses. Better be quick before whatever Spotted Tigers prowling about came down to munch on the bodies themselves.

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After butchering the corpses of the Fanged Pandas and grabbing the materials he could use - The fur, claws, fangs and demon crystals - Shin Long returned to the tree he'd been cultivating in.

"That should be enough to get me what I need to make a demon spirit," Shin Long mused. "Now let's see what I've got to work with." With but a thought, his spatial ring glowed blue and moments later, four small white crystals appeared in his palm.

The demon crystals he'd harvested from the four Spotted Tigers he had run into while hunting Horned Sheep.

Shin Long concentrated his qi into his palm, and one by one, ran his energy through the crystals, inspecting their output. "Poor and poorer," he scowled in annoyance as two turned out to be subpar, "Ooh, this ones decent." The next one was double the strength of the first one. It would make for a pretty decent demon spirit.

He was just about resigned to using it, when he ran his qi through the last one and his eyes widened and a grin spread across his face, "...And my luck continues!" he laughed. Because the last one, was almost double the strength of the one he was almost set on using!

With this one, he didn't need to bother going to hunt down any more Spotted Tigers. While it wasn't a perfect one, it was close. About a nine out of ten on the quality scale.

Depositing the crystals inside his spacial ring once more, Shin Long decided to get a move on back to Glory City. He was too excited to pace himself. He may very well break through to the silver rank tonight.

Bouncing from tree to tree, his speed increased even further through subjugating the Fanged Panda demon spirit and his cultivation for the last few hours, Shin Long made nearly record time on his blitz back towards the city.

As he was nearing the entrance, he jumped over a large clearing, and his eyes caught sight of a bright, cyan blue glow below him.

Curious, he turned as he landed and peered down into the clearing bathed in the cyan blue glow of a soul force and light from the moon.

"Oh, from the looks of it, they're nearly about to break through to the Bronze Rank." Shin Long noted. He looked closely at the person in the middle, their body nearly completely hidden from view by their soul force.

His eyes widened slightly in interest when he caught sight of a young, beautiful face, framed by long, shimmering orange hair. "Xaoi Ning'er?" Shin Long hummed in interest.

Well, wasn't she dutiful. Out here cultivating at this time, in the training area. He frowned though a moment later and looked up at the moon for a moment, "Why's she out here?" he wondered. Females produced Yin Qi more abundantly than males. And cultivating under the moon light was a method for increasing the production of Yin Qi.

And Yin Qi was better for snow wind demon spiritualists, and from what Shin Long knew, Xaio Ning'er and her family didn't use those types of cultivation.

Too much of which, that could lead to Arctic Disease. Odd that the heiress of a top tier noble family would be doing something so silly. It should be common knowledge for them considering Shin Long had come across the information in the public library opened for commoners to learn about cultivating.