44 - One rule

After going back into the forest, Su Tao went to sleep and when he woke up the next morning, he started to focus on the misty ripple body skill.

He ended up taking a total of two days to memorize this skill, which surprised him. However, the contents weren't nearly as in depth as the flowing bolt arrow anyway, so he was able to memorize it this quickly.

After memorizing it, he started to practice using it.

He was surprised to find that it seemed to be slightly intuitive to him on how to use it, allowing him to completely master it to the highest level in only a week even though he shouldn't even be able to reach that level at all because of the quality and density of his inner energy being too low to do so.

However, he was extremely happy with this result since it meant he was now much stronger than before.

But instead of continuing to mess around with the misty ripple body, he worked on the spark step skill, which could greatly increase his speed.

Currently he had no use for this skill unless he was fighting because of his desire to hide his aura. However, would still learn it since it was something that would help him dramatically when he was fighting.

Of all the things in the world speed was one of the most annoying things to counter, and it sometimes couldn't be countered at all, which was obviously extremely useful.

As such, he spent a while on spark step. Of course, he did not stop cultivating during this time, and he managed to increase his inner energy in every aspect just a little bit.

He would occasionally go around and shoot several arrows with the flowing bolt arrow skill while running using the spark step.

This would not only increase his proficiency in both of these skills, but he would also get better with his bow skills as well.

After all, he had merely learned in the endless grassland. He hadn't actually spent a lot of time working on shooting while moving, which was obviously much harder than standing still.

He ended up doing this for a total of another week, and he managed to train the first level of the flowing bolt arrow to perfection, which he considered to be time to move on to the second level, meant for middle tiers.

As such, he then worked on the second level of the flowing bolt arrow.

He worked on it for a total of another week. When he succeeded, the arrow now had six lines of lightning as opposed to the previous four.

The power had also increased a bit as well, but so had the instability, which made it take about twenty shots to make sure that the arrow wouldn't be destroyed when he used the skill as opposed to the first level's four or five

It had also increased the power from one and a half times to almost two times his normal power. This meant that he would likely not meet any issues when killing peak tier rank four beasts, and if he were to meet a stronger one, it was likely that he would only require minimal close combat, if any, to kill it.

Such strength was comparable to a stronger high tier one star silver rank warrior, which was incredible considering that he only just broke through to the middle tier.

As for his normal strength with the crackling fist skill, it was comparable to a slightly weaker high tier one star silver rank.

Of course, this would be considering the fact that the opponent didn't use a skill or technique.

Most one star silver rank warriors would not get a skill until they were at the high tier since they were just too expensive otherwise, and no one was capable of getting money as fast as Su Tao was, and they would also experience many times more danger than he did even if they were capable of doing so.

Most people would only get a few skills in their lifetime of a higher level, so it was quite uncommon to find someone with a skill like Su Tao. As such, he judged the strength of people based on this system.

But he was a very precautious person, so he would of course always overestimate his enemies and underestimate himself in order to give him the best chance at victory. After all, in this world, arrogance would do you nothing except get you killed quicker.

In this way, he tried to appear extremely arrogant to others in order to get them to underestimate him, using this system of how people figured things out for his own advantage while disadvantaging others even though the strength of each person never changed.

One such example of unparalleled arrogance was the young master of the city, who was arrogant enough to think that every woman in the city was his plaything just because everyone was afraid of his father.

Doing the things that he had done earned him the ire of nearly every single person in the city, and there were many people who wished very much to kill him. One such person was Su Tao, and the young master did not know just how bad his life would be if Su Tao caught him.

With his new misty ripple body, he figured that he would be able to fight against those at the high tier on even ground, and that he would likely not receive much damage from inner energy. This meant that only physical damage could injure him, and that his only threat was something like a knife or sword.

This was because the specialty of the misty ripple body was to absorb the inner energy of an enemy attack and distribute it over a larger portion of the body, ultimately making it deal less severe damage unless the quality and density of the inner energy was just too high, in which case it would only make it worse.

Su Tao at this moment was equivalent to a stronger high tier one star silver rank warrior, which was incredible, and something that had likely not happened in the city of silver sparrow in the past hundred years.

Even someone like the city master's daughter wasn't as strong as him at the same tier, although she was not much weaker. After all, she had nearly unlimited access to the skills of the City Master's collection, and these skills were also of much higher level than something like the skills at the Su family.

He then decided to go get some resources that he needed. He no longer cared to find his own resources since they would no longer help him, so he went to kill some beasts and get some in the city. But he didn't put much time or effort into it at all, which meant he only got about ten to fifteen gold pieces for it, but that was more than enough for some resources.

He ended up spending all his money getting those resources, leaving him with nothing.

He then went back into the forest and spent the next six days cultivating with the resources he bought, and he used them all up.

Some of these resources were on the level of the water moon lotus and the charred wood, so he made a lot of progress considering his unnatural absorption speed and the extreme effect that these resources brought to him.

He found that the effect of these resources was several times the effect that it had on others, and he was able to use this energy several times better to refine his inner energy much more effectively and much faster than others.

As such, he was able to get his quality and density as well as purity of his inner energy to the level of an average high tier one star silver rank.

He was now quite strong, and he was well on his way to getting his goal complete of killing all those he hated.

He had goals to complete, promises to keep, and people to kill. He had long ago decided that he would not allow anyone to stop him from achieving his goals, and if they should kill him, he'll kill those people in the next life, and if he should be killed again, then he would do it in the life after that.

As he realized what day it was, he quickly got back to the city and handed back the misty ripple body after killing some beasts and selling them.

He ended up killing a total of a hundred peak tier beasts, and he kept the whole bodies of thirty of them while he pelted the rest, allowing for maximum profit based on the space on the sled. As such, he got a total of one bronze note and thirty gold pieces for it.

He was only able to get so many beasts because he had already moved much deeper into the forest. He had gone so far that he was on the border of where the rank five beasts lived.

After all, this level of beast was only rare in a lower level place like the Su family, and he could find many of them just by moving into higher leveled places in the forest.

As such, when he got to the city, the day was nearly over. He was not concerned though. He always returned these books one day early just in case there were some unforeseen situations that he couldn't have predicted.

He then returned the book and went back into the forest under the greedy eyes of others. This time, he had not bought anything, and there were some people that were greedy enough to try to follow him into the forest, and they were led by a peak tier one star silver rank.

But about an hour after following Su Tao into the forest, they realized that he had stopped and was now facing straight at them.

The group was a total of about ten people. They were made up of one peak tier, three high tiers, and seven middle tiers.

This group of people had agreed to work together and split the profit based on contribution. This obviously benefitted the strongest, but nobody cared since it was a sizeable amount of money that even the smallest bit of would save them a lot of time and effort.

However, they were destined to fail as Su Tao drew his bow, not only putting in the power of his lightning inner energy, but also the power of his right eye, and a very large amount as well.

The amount of his right eye's power had increased quite a bit, and he was now capable of producing one and a half hits at the level of a two star silver rank.

As such, he instantly used just a bit less than the full amount that he could in one arrow to try to kill the peak tier. After doing that, the rest would fall on their own.

As the arrow flew through the air, it created a faint whistling sound and a faint crackling sound as well. However, these were only barely perceptible and it didn't really matter.

The peak tier looked at this arrow with disdain and put up his arm to block it with a barrier of bright red inner energy not only covering his arms, but also covering his chest.

However, when the arrow hit his arms, he instantly lost control of the inner energy in his arms and the arrow pierced straight through, only losing a bit of its power.

Then, the arrow pierced through his inner energy barrier on his chest and pierced straight into his heart. He didn't even understand how he died at this moment.

Su Tao didn't dare to continue to use his right eye's power because he wanted to have a lifesaver just in case.

Honestly though, he was surprised right then. He realized that his control over the power of his right eye was extremely crude, and that he was relying purely on it's inherent power this whole time rather than controlling it.

However, he put this thought aside as he fired a volley of arrows at the group.

They were still quite far away, and they hadn't even reacted to the death of their leader yet before they were assaulted by this constant rain of arrows.

Right away, three more people died while the rest all lost their previous courage, finally realizing that he had a reason for having his reputation.

Instantly, all their courage failed as they fled in fear. They had obviously noticed that he was going slowly on purpose and that he knew they were there, but they simply thought he was just being arrogant by allowing them to keep up.

However, it was at this moment that they realized it wasn't because he was arrogant, but because he didn't plan to let a single one of them get away, and it filled them with fear.

However, during their rush of fear, they forgot the number one rule of dealing with bow specialists: never run away.