37 - Followed

Su Tao went to the market after getting some skills from the martial arts library. He had no clue that he had made the old peak tier attendant very curious about him by doing so.

In the market, he went to a weapons shop and started to browse through the weapons.

In the end, he ended up spending twenty silver pieces to buy a bow, another twenty for a knife, and twenty to buy a bunch of arrows and a quiver.

He now had forty silver pieces left, of which he used ten to buy a few robes that were more suited for a silver rank and a bigger bag than the one he had. It could also slightly block resource aura from escaping.

After all, the one he had was just grabbed randomly in a hurry when he left the city the first time. He also got some general tools like something to start a fire.

He then spent one on a sled that he could drag beasts on. It would make moving them to and from the city much easier. After all, he now had to rack up a bunch of money so that he could buy the stuff he needed from the martial arts library.

With another one, he just paid for some general information on everything that had happened since he left the city almost eleven months ago.

When he looked at the information that the person gathered, Su Tao got a little bit angry. Half a year ago, the young master of the city had mysteriously vanished, and nobody knew where he went. The City Master did not issue a search, so some people think it was arranged by him.

On top of that, the City Master's daughter had managed to reach the middle tier two star silver rank while still at sixteen years old. She was about to turn seventeen, but she had broken through nonetheless.

On top of that, it was known now that Su Tao was extremely abnormal and that people were wary of him. The City Master had punished the elders that had tried to assassinate him, and someone had successfully killed a top genius of the Huo family, one of the top two families.

The last piece of news made him happy, because the one who killed his mother was from the Huo family, so he was happy to see them suffer a loss like this.

However, he was more frustrated that the young master had vanished. Although he had his father guarding him here, at least Su Tao knew where he was, but if he was gone, then Su Tao couldn't kill him even if he was a three star gold rank.

But Su Tao quickly calmed down and put this thought aside. He it didn't matter right now since he wasn't strong enough to kill the young master anyway. He would surely have higher ranked people protecting him, and Su Tao could not deal with them.

Then, with the remainder of the money, Su Tao bought some lightning resources since they were much rarer than water ones which he could just find in the forest.

Su Tao then went back into the forest without hesitation and without making any attempt to hide himself from the guards. After all, no one under the two star silver rank could kill him unless they countered him, and two star silver ranks couldn't attack him in the light and it would be too obvious if they left right after he did.

But as Su Tao was leaving the boundary of the Su family, he noticed that a group of three people were looking at him, so he quickly scanned and found them. They were hiding about a quarter mile away from Su Tao and they were following him as he went along into the forest.

Normally, the people tracking him would be outside of the range of ten miles that he could see, but since his body had no aura, it was impossible for them to track him that way. As such, they had to stay within the distance they could see him from.

But Su Tao acted as if he hadn't seen them and walked deep into the forest. He just went to the spot that he had been in before since he had already gotten everything he found valuable in that area.

There was no harm in allowing them to know that was the area where he went even if one reported back. He would just move later to a different part of the forest if that happened.

Very soon, Su Tao reached the area where he had been cultivating before, and as he did, he saw that one of the people following him was about to leave.

'Now's about the time.' He thought to himself with a small chuckle.

He then took the bow that was slung over his shoulder, nocked an arrow on it, and shot it towards where the people were hiding. They were not expecting to be found, much less shot at, so they panicked when they saw this.

The person that was planning on going back to report instantly stopped in his tracks. Everyone in this world knew that it was nothing but suicide to run away from an archer, even if they were weaker than you.

Because of the extreme distance, Su Tao was not able to hit them, but they knew that if they turned to run, they wouldn't see the arrow coming at their back, which would result in their death.

At this point, Su Tao had put down his bag and the sled and was simply walking towards the group of three at a leisurely pace. He had slung the bow around his back, but they knew that he could take it off and fire an arrow in only a moment if he wanted to. After all, he also had a reputation for being incredible with the bow.

This bow was much higher quality than the ones in the bronze rank training area, but it was not at the quality of the bow that Su Xue had loaned him. It was simply average.

But even despite the distance and the fact that they had dodged the arrow that they saw coming their way, the arrow still managed to come extremely fast and almost hit one of them. There was a very very faint glow of yellow around the arrow, and sparks would form on the metal tip from time to time.

Su Tao was quite happy with the performance of this bow, and he knew that these three could not possibly escape now. Of all the disciplines in this world, archery was quite feared due to its ability to trap someone into a fight. This was true even up to the gold rank.

Of course, Su Tao didn't plan to kill them with the bow. He just wanted to show them that they couldn't escape from him. He wanted to test his strength now that he was at the silver rank.

Then, he quickly ran over to where they were. They were astonished to find that Su Tao was faster than they were, which meant that they truly couldn't escape him.

Of course, this was Su Tao testing out his full speed with his lightning inner energy spread through his legs. He was quite happy with the result.

When he got close to those who had followed him, he couldn't help but laugh in his mind. All three of these people were only low tiers, which meant that they could not possibly pose a threat to him.

Let alone three low tiers, he had even defeated three middle tiers and a low tier as a three star bronze rank and with only half the energy of his eyes. He could only imagine what he could do now that he had broken through.

But he was also disappointed. He hoped that he would at least have a chance to find out his strength. Alas, these people were just too weak.

As such, once he saw them, he instantly charged at them with his whole body except his fists glowing with a watery blue barrier. At the same time, his fists glowed with a chaotic yellow barrier of lightning.

Not even a minute later, the three people were dead. They did not even stand a chance against Su Tao even without using the power of his eyes or his black heart. He could not help but be extremely happy with this.

He had expected that these three wouldn't be a match for him, but he did not expect to win and kill them just so easily.

His inner energy was stronger than theirs, and he also had the rare lightning type that had powerful offense.

On top of that, even the hits that they had managed to land on Su Tao weren't able to break through his inner energy barrier and the energy that seeped or passed through barely did anything to him before being isolated and dissolved by the black blood or flushed out by the watery inner energy.

He normally wouldn't let them get hits on him, but he wanted to test his strength, so he let them hit him on purpose.

Even as a bronze rank without using the power of his eyes, normal low tier and middle tiers were not able to land many hits on him due to his skill and reaction speed. He wouldn't find it easy to kill them without the power of his eyes, but he could certainly defeat them.

Now, he didn't need to rely on the power of his eyes at all. Merely with his inner energy, these people were certainly no match for him, and they were swiftly killed.

Of these three people, the items on them were not very good. Each person only had about fifty silver pieces on them, which added up to one and a half gold pieces.

It wasn't much, but it would save him a bit of time.

Then, Su Tao went back to his bag and the sled and got something out of it. It was a piece of flint. He then dragged the sled and the bag on top of it near the area where the bodies were.

Then, he went over to the bodies, broke some branches off some trees, and set them on fire with the flint and his knife he had bought. Then, once the fire was roaring in a small clearing, Su Tao tossed the dead bodies on top of it.

The smell of burning flesh permeated the air, and it brought a horrible stench with it. However, this faded after about thirty minutes, and the bodies were nothing more than piles of charcoal in the shape of a body at the end.

He did this in case the family elders found these bodies and tried to blame it on him since his aura was on them. After all, Su Tao preferred to not have any loose ends.

Anyone else would think that he was remorseless for doing such a thing, but he didn't care in the slightest.

After all, he harbored hate for the entire Su family, so he would not hesitate to kill anyone from it, and he would have no mercy when he did so. And when he did, he preferred to leave no traces behind.

He then moved to another area of the forest, putting the bag over his shoulder and dragging the sled with him. Then, he hopped into a tree and took out the books he had taken from the martial arts library.

Of them, the book of the highest quality was by far the crackling fist. However, he decided to put this skill aside for a little while and work on the other ones before trying it. After familiarizing himself with the power of lightning more, he would look into it.

He then took one of the books from the first floor from the pile and opened it.

"Basic water refining technique: The most basic refinement technique for refining water element inner energy. Only usable until middle tier. Bottom of the low tier. No requirements."

He had taken this book because a bottom level technique was better than nothing for now. He would upgrade it once he had the money to, which would happen sometime soon.

He then read and memorized the contents of this book. After all, it was just the most basic technique, so even normal people could memorize it without much effort, let alone Su Tao who had a much faster mind than normal people.

Then, he started to use this refining method while taking out and reading another book. After all, he had a much faster mind than other people, and even other people would be able to multitask and cultivate and read at the same time, and some even had the ability to do even more at the same time.

"Basic lightning refinement technique: The most basic refinement method for lightning element inner energy. Only usable until the high tier. Low tier. Medium precision and control required."

Su Tao was weirded out. The basic elemental refinement techniques for almost every element were available on the first floor, but the lightning one was stronger and of a higher grade than the water one, which he found weird.

However, it made sense after a moment since lightning was more powerful and it wasn't easy to refine.

Like this, he started to cultivate both his inner energy types.