35 - Return

Today was Su Tao's birthday.

He could not help but reminisce on his life so far.

In a matter of one year, his life had changed so much that it was safe to say that it altered the course of fate and destiny for the entire city where he grew up.

He was not his old self, and the him from a year ago would not recognize him at all.

But now, he had been given a chance at revenge, a chance to rise above those he hated. He would not squander it. He couldn't let this chance pass him by. He had to get stronger.

He refused to be stuck at the bottom of the world, and he now had the ability to achieve that.

As he thought this, he found a tree and sat in it. Then, he took out a small piece of wood from his bag. (I forgot to mention when he left the city that he brought a bag)

This piece of wood was completely charred and had splinters going every direction from its ends. It looked like this piece of wood had exploded.

In reality, this piece of wood was from a tree that had been struck by lightning recently and Su Tao had just happened to see it get struck and get it right away. There had been a storm yesterday, and he got it then.

Since it got struck by the natural power of lightning, it was on the same level as the water moon lotus, but he obviously couldn't directly eat it since it was a piece of wood.

As such, he used the indirect method of holding the piece of wood in his hands and trying to interact with the lightning aura in it and absorb it.

As he did so, a small stream of golden Qi floated out from the piece of wood and into his hands. However, this Qi contained a faint yellow glow around it. This was the power of lightning from the wood kind of like the cold flow of energy from the water moon lotus.

As Su Tao directed this energy into his dantian, he allowed his lightning inner energy to absorb this weird power instead of using it to break through. This was an extremely crude method of increasing the quality, quantity and purity of his lightning inner energy.

As this energy got absorbed by the lightning inner energy, it not only grew denser, it also seemed to glow brighter and was a more pure yellow color than before.

Su Tao continued to absorb this energy for half a day before it was gone. When he was done, the lightning inner energy was weirdly enough at the same quality and purity as the watery inner energy, which he found odd.

The lightning power in that piece of charred wood was about as strong as the water moon lotus, but Su Tao had absorbed it through a less efficient method and after the inner energy was already formed, making it less effective. However, the quality and purity still reached the same level as the watery inner energy?

This did not make the slightest sense to him, but he ignored it since he had no way to get an answer without messing around for a long time.

He then spent a while absorbing the rest of the lightning resources that he had. Since he wasn't using them to cultivate, they were absorbed much faster and he managed to use all of them over the rest of the day.

When he was done, the lightning inner energy was completely comparable to the watery inner energy, which he found baffling. But he ignored this and moved on. After all, he would find out later why this was happening.

For now, all he wanted to do was make sure that the two types of inner energy were equal in strength. As he had done that, he could move on.

For the rest of the day, he messed around with methods to better conceal his aura.

The next day, he went looking for resources and beasts that he could kill.

He ended up killing a total of two somewhat valuable high tier one star silver ranked beasts with the help of his eyes' power, and he also found some normal resources, which he put in his bag.

Then, he started his return to the City of Silver Sparrow.

Because of the fact that he had reached the silver rank, he couldn't continue to just be in the woods for this time. He needed to get techniques, skills, and methods to refine his inner energy. On top of that, he needed to get some weapons if he could, preferably a bow and a knife.

On top of that, he needed to get a battle resistant robe, which was just a robe made of higher quality material that wouldn't damage as easy. He noticed that he had a habit of having his shirt burned off, and he wanted to avoid being eventually stripped naked by burning clothes.

He obviously wouldn't care if he got stripped naked due to the trial of his left eye, but he would still rather not have it happen.

Because he was dragging two beasts with him, it took him about one day to reach the City of Silver Sparrow. He had never thought he would be back here so soon, yet here he was.

Because those that were trying to kill him had to do so in the dark, there was not nearly as much danger involved in being here now that he was at the silver rank. He would only meet danger if an elder of the Su family themselves came, which they wouldn't due to the risk of him escaping.

If they tried to kill him and failed, he would announce it to the public, and the actions of that elder would be directly slapping the face of the City Master. They would be lucky if they could escape death at that point.

Su Tao was also not worried about people tracking him into the forest because he now had the strength to deal with most people below the two star silver rank, and if he could not get rid of them, he could make sure that they could not track him by erasing his aura.

It was foolproof as long as he kept his guard up the entire time he was in the city.

As for those at the third silver star, he did not believe that they would throw away their pride to attack a junior even if nobody knew about it.

With these thoughts in his mind, Su Tao approached the border of the Su family's territory and brazenly walked right in past the guards. He was dragging with him the corpses of two high tier one star silver ranked beasts. He was not aware that no one could even sense his aura at all.

As soon as the guards noticed him, they immediately sent someone to report this to the elders, but they did not stop him coming in. After all, they could not stop a member of the family from entering no matter how much the elders of the family didn't like him.

The best they could do was send someone to quickly report this. They had no idea that the two beasts he was dragging were high tier since they were not at a high enough tier to sense the aura they gave off. They felt it odd that they couldn't sense Su Tao's aura, but they paid it no mind.

As Su Tao walked into the Su family, he quickly gained a lot of attention. At this point, there was nobody that didn't know about him. Although the green and purple tattoos were gone now, they could still easily recognize him from his eyes and his snow white hair.

After all, tattoos could be removed, and they might have been temporary tattoos when he got them and was trying them out for when he wanted them permanent. At least, this was the train of thought of those people that saw him.

Su Tao managed to quickly reach the center of the Su family, and he went directly to the higher level market within the family. This was where people at the silver rank sold and bought resources.

A few people saw him go into there and shot him looks of disdain. However, oddly enough, not a single one of the people at the silver rank that were there stopped him. This confused those nearby at the bronze rank, as they didn't understand why they didn't stop him if he wasn't at the silver rank.

However, to those in the market that saw him, he was dragging two beasts that they either couldn't sense the aura of, or they could sense that they were high tier beasts. This meant that they were very strong no matter who sensed them or who didn't.

Also, not a single person there was capable of sensing Su Tao's level, which made all of them wary and not dare to underestimate him.

Su Tao then entered into the middle of the market and went before a certain shop. He had seen this shop long ago and knew that it was for selling dead beasts to.

Su Tao dragged them in front of the shop to the attendee of the shop. He then picked them both up and threw them onto the counter in front of the attendee. The attendee was surprised when he saw that it was just a boy that brought these beasts, but there was nothing he could do except buy them.

"A common hog and a silverback python, both at the high tier in mediocre condition. You can get ten silver pieces each for these." The attendee said after looking over them.

Without hesitation, Su Tao responded. "I'll take it."

He knew that this was not a fair price, but there was no getting this attendee to raise this price as he had seen this from his facial expressions. It also simply didn't matter to Su Tao.

The attendee thought that Su Tao simply didn't know the actual values of these beasts, so he just made the trade with a sly smile.

Then, Su Tao went to another stall under the disdainful gazes of everyone nearby. They knew that Su Tao had just gotten ripped off and were silently mocking him for it.

However, Su Tao just ignored them and continued what he was doing.

He went to the other stall and sold his resources that he had found for another forty silver pieces. This meant that he had a total of sixty silver pieces now, which was enough to get what he wanted.

Although the poisonous woman did not have a lot on her, she had a total of one gold piece and forty silver pieces with her, which meant that Su Tao had the equivalent of two gold pieces.

The conversion of the money was simple. The lowest level was bronze pieces, then silver pieces, then gold pieces. After that was bronze notes, silver notes, and gold notes. Each level higher was worth one hundred times the one below it.

In other words one hundred bronze pieces was one silver piece, one hundred silver pieces was one gold piece, and so on.

Su Tao then went further into the Su family near the core of the family and entered into a weird building that had the words 'Martial Library' on the front of it.