39 - Flowing bolt arrow

After Su Tao killed the group that was following him as he left the city, he checked their belongings.

One of them was a middle tier one star silver rank, which meant that he had better stuff than the other two. However, it was still not much, just one gold piece. The other two had about fifty silver pieces each, so he now had a total of two gold pieces.

However, this was not what interested him.

Within the bag of the middle tier one star silver rank was a small wooden box. Within the box was a small blue pill. Su Tao was extremely happy when he saw this pill, because it was perfect for him.

'Water spirit pill!' He thought to himself excitedly.

This was a precious pill that used the most important parts of water elemental resources, and they were refined into a pill by an alchemist to make a pill that would have an incredible effect on the person that used it.

Either this middle tier cultivator gained this pill through luck, or he had sold everything he had and spent his entire life's savings on this and was saving it for when he wanted to break through to the high tier and make lots of progress towards the two star silver rank.

Even high quality resources like the water moon lotus could not be compared to this pill.

The water spirit pill was probably worth about ten to twenty water moon lotuses. It was not something that an average middle tier one star silver rank cultivator could possess. It was obvious that he most likely got it from some fortune he found.

The person that used a spirit pill had the ability to break through about 10% of the barrier to the two star silver rank, which was an incredible effect. This was equivalent to someone cultivating for years on end only in a couple days.

The effect was also incredible for those at the two star silver rank, and it was even popular among three star silver ranks as well. This could show its value

For someone like Su Tao, it would likely have an even bigger effect since he already had immense talent as well as a potential that was now even stronger than his talent.

This was an incredible fortune for him, and he would definitely use this later on.

He could not help but thank this dead body in front of him for such fortune. Then, without any shame whatsoever, he burned the bodies and went on with his day.

The wooden box that the pill was in was a special box made for pills to preserve their power as well as prevent it from leaking out. As such, there was not much aura that came from the box at all, and it was all indistinguishable from the aura of the woods.

Su Tao then went to another part of the woods and found a spot to sleep.

When he woke up in the morning, Su Tao took out the book for the flowing essence technique and memorized it. It took about half an hour to memorize, and Su Tao then began to refine his watery inner energy with it.

He also took out the spark step skill and memorized that. It also took about half an hour.

However, although Su Tao knew the spark step skill now, he still couldn't use it yet since his lightning inner energy wasn't pure enough. This was one of the requirements of the skill, which meant that he wouldn't be able to use it right now.

He just got the skill since it could increase his understanding of how to use the lightning inner energy and it was also cheap. However, he found something weird again.

'This spark step skill is also incomplete, and it has the same warning at the end of it as the crackling fist skill. Could they be by the same author?' Su Tao thought to himself curiously.

'Perhaps they were made by the same author, and he completed the skills later, with them being a higher level?' He guessed. This seemed to be the logical answer, because if that wasn't the case, then that meant that the author was dead or unable to continue perfecting this technique.

He figured that they were probably by the same author since they were quite similar in the method of manipulating the lightning.

However, he put this thought aside and just continued to refine the watery inner energy with the flowing essence technique, while he refined the lightning inner energy with the basic lightning refinement technique.

In another two days, he had managed to make some progress, and his inner energies were denser. The purity had gone up a bit, but the main difference was in density. As for quality, that was something that was already quite high, and it wouldn't improve much for a while.

During this time, Su Tao had used the lightning resources that he had gotten from the market to help with his lightning inner energy while the watery inner energy had a higher tier technique for refining it, meaning that it could keep up.

Although he had made progress, it was nowhere near enough to get close to breaking through to the middle tier one star silver rank.

However, he figured that for reasons unknown to him, his quality of inner energy was really high, much higher than a normal low tier's inner energy. However, this was just the starting quality of his inner energy.

He could not help but be excited for what the final quality of it would be if this was just the starting point.

The next day, Su Tao hunted beasts again and took them into the city. This time, he managed to get about twenty high tier beasts, of which some were more valuable than the others. He ended up getting a total of ten gold pieces for these beasts.

He then went back to the martial arts library. By now, Su Tao's hunting record had already spread through the Su family, so the old attendee knew how Su Tao was getting his money. He could not help but be curious as to how Su Tao was able to hunt all those beasts.

In reality, everyone was curious about this. Because even if Su Tao realistically had the strength to kill these beasts consistently, he wouldn't be able to find so many so fast.

They didn't think he would go as deep into the woods as he had, but they had considered it. However, that still didn't explain the number. Even if he went into the areas that had peak tier beasts, he shouldn't be able to get so many.

However, Su Tao had his eyes, which was the number one reason that he was able to find so many beasts. Without it, he would at most be able to find a couple each day and they wouldn't be that strong.

This was because beasts often had instincts that helped them avoid danger. On top of that, they had evolved to avoid things with a purer aura, which meant that they would run away from most people once they sensed them nearby. But they couldn't escape from Su Tao.

This was because even though Su Tao couldn't directly see their tier, he could see that they were physically stronger than the rest of the beasts and he sorted them from there based on some other factors.

In short, Su Tao had better luck hunting than an entire team of hunters and much better speed as well, making him able to acquire an insane amount of wealth insanely quick. He was born for hunting.

Normally, people would have to work for a few weeks, months, or even years to get the skills that he had gotten, but he had gotten them in only a few days.

However, he just continued on with his day, going into the martial arts library. As he went in, he went straight up to the second floor. He then started to browse through the books again.

After all, he hadn't looked through them all yet, and there might be some other ones that interested him. He had the money to afford an average high tier rank four skill at this time, so he would certainly get something good.

As he scanned through, he found another few books that caught his interest, but they were all too expensive for him to get right now. The water elemental techniques had a higher demand, making them more expensive. As for the lightning techniques, there were only a few of them.

He wanted to get something to improve his defense, but it was not common for middle tiers to be able to use inner energy across their body, which meant that there were not many techniques below the high tier that used water elemental inner energy to defend the body.

One such skill was the misty ripple body, a peak tier defense skill that used water elemental inner energy to improve the barrier across the body and spread the damage dealt evenly.

However, Su Tao couldn't afford this right now, especially so because it was more expensive than normal skills since it was something that had a bigger portion of people that would be able to use it.

Water elemental inner energy was far more common than lightning. It was more researched, had more techniques, and was easier to improve in all aspects. Most people that had water elemental inner energy had naturally higher precision than those of the same tier based on the nature of water.

For this reason, it was far more common to see people with water elemental inner energy to be able to spread the inner energy across their whole body, and it was at least half of those at the peak tier that could do so.

For this reason, the misty ripple body was highly popular among those people, therefore increasing its price.

Su Tao continued to search around for a while, until he suddenly came upon a skill like what he wanted.

"Absorption technique: Use water elemental inner energy to make a barrier across the body. This barrier blocks the majority of attacks and allows the energy that does get through to sink further into the body, dealing less damage. Top middle tier rank four technique. Requires high precision."

This absorption technique was basically a simple version of the misty ripple body, but it didn't have nearly as much effect as the latter.

Since the demand for this skill was very high, the price of it was six gold pieces, three times the average. Su Tao found this price exorbitant, but it was just the rules of supply and demand. The higher the demand for something of lower supply, the more expensive it was.

The martial arts library had multiple copies of each book, but they were still limited in number and only a few of them were able to be rented for a certain amount of time. Those books could be renewed at a lower price, but most people would try to avoid this since they didn't usually have the money to do so.

In every way except the paying for renting of the books, this was just a normal library.

Su Tao then took the absorption technique and was about to leave, but then something caught his attention. In the far corner of the room was an inconspicuous old book, but its title caught Su Tao's attention.

"Flowing bolt arrow: Use lightning inner energy to make an arrow from a bow fly faster and increase its power significantly. Numbing effect on the target struck. Slight chance to damage or destroy arrow if control is not high enough. Limit peak tier rank four skill. Extreme precision required. Power depends on tier of user. Warning: error will result in irreparably damaging your weapon."

Su Tao could not help but yearn for this skill. It was perfectly suited for him, and it even had variations for lower tiers.

Currently, he could use lightning inner energy in his arrows to make them stronger and faster with the numbing effect. However, that was just the inherent abilities of the lightning element, and it naturally could not possibly compare to a skill specifically made to enhance these traits.

However, he was shocked when he saw the price tag of it.

"Flowing bolt arrow: one bronze note."