45 - Barred out

As the group ran away from Su Tao in their instinctive fear, they forgot the one rule of dealing with archers: don't run away.

Very quickly, they all had died. But Su Tao knew his issues wouldn't end here.

It was certain that, now that people were openly following him, there were certain to be people who would track those people and come later to report the situation.

If Su Tao died, the elders would reward those people in secret. If he hadn't, then those people would likely be alive and able to keep track of him. Thus, there would inevitably be people here in only a short while, at most a few hours.

However, if they found the dead bodies, which they inevitably would, even if they were burned, the elders would accuse him of killing a group of people of the Su family.

He was well aware that there was no way out of this, and the bodies would not have their aura fade for quite a long time, meaning that he could not just hide them.

As for the death of these people, the elders would inevitably accuse Su Tao, and because he came out unscathed, he would be accused of attacking them first, which gave them grounds to punish him.

Even if he did have evidence that they attacked him first, the elders would just ignore it and say that it wasn't true. After all, the court system in this world was run by the strong, and although it was said to be fair, it really wasn't in the slightest and it all came down to the opinion of the strongest.

This meant that he wouldn't be able to go back into the city anymore, which impeded him in his progress by a significant amount.

Of course, he obviously didn't need to go into the city at all from this moment on. It was just annoying because it would seriously slow him down.

But Su Tao put this thought aside as he quickly left this area, his aura quickly fading away.

However, it took another long while before the aura of his right eye's lightning power faded away.

But after it did, he once again had the attribute of having no aura whatsoever.

By now, people had already found the bodies and reported back to the elders, who, just like Su Tao assumed they would, put out a arrest or kill order throughout the city under the account of murder.

In this case, even the city master couldn't protect him due to the fact that he didn't have a viable reason to, and him favoring Su Tao wasn't enough. At least, it wasn't in the eyes of others, and it would earn the city master the ire of all those that hated Su Tao.

This world was a complicated one, and although trickery was often plain to see and obvious to all parties involved and uninvolved, it couldn't be avoided due to the fragile balance of relations and power in the world.

One such example of unfairness was Su Xue. She had been forced against her will into a wedding with Su Long, and she could do nothing about it due to the fact that it was arranged by their parents.

(This was implied earlier in the story if you didn't figure that out already BTW)

Her father had gone behind her back to do so, and she couldn't escape from it unless both she and Su Long agreed to stop the wedding.

This was the case for Su Long as well in that he couldn't cancel the wedding on his own unless Su Xue also agreed, but he obviously preferred it this way since she couldn't escape him and he would inevitably end up with the one he wanted, even if she didn't want it herself.

Su Tao hated the way the world worked, but he couldn't change it. Only strength mattered in this world, and he would never be able to change that even if he was the strongest being in all of existence, because that, itself, would be ruling with strength.

As such, he accepted that this was the way things were and decided to just undo all the results of these injustices.

But for now, he simply found another part of the forest and went to sleep.

When he woke up in the morning, he started to cultivate earnestly, fueled by his anger towards these elders that thought they could control him and stop his rise.

His soul had already been remolded. Both literally and figuratively, his mind was different from before. He had been changed into the abomination, a mix of holy and wicked, an existence that shouldn't be possible.

He had already decided that he would show no mercy whatsoever towards those who dared to get in the way. He would pay back any damage done to him a hundredfold.

He would pay back his humiliation a hundred times over unto the elders who barred him from going into the city.

At this point, it was essentially impossible for those looking for him to find him, and it was due to the fact that he was on the border of the area where the rank five beasts lived. No person except an elder of higher strength would dare to venture here.

This was because rank five beasts were not like rank four beasts. They all had mostly or completely pure elemental inner energy and physical strength and also had defense that was far stronger than a human cultivator.

They were also slightly smarter, being able to make basic decisions such as how to attack and when to escape.

Rank five beasts were the turning point for beasts, and from that point on, a beast was typically stronger or on the same level as a cultivator of the same level in almost every way rather than just in physical aspects.

The only thing that they couldn't even get close to matching at that point was intelligence.

Su Tao did not dare to venture into the rank five beasts territory, and he would only do so once he was comparable to a second silver star cultivator himself.

Su Tao honestly believed that he would easily be able to get into the city and do things, but he knew that anyone he saw would turn him in to the elders. As such, there really wasn't any point.

He was quite bored with cultivating, but there was nothing to be done. He didn't want to leave the city yet even though he could very easily do so.

This was because, anywhere he went, he would be regarded as a genius and people would try to recruit him left and right.

And if he somehow ended up joining a force, he would be constantly watched at all times, but the same would still happen even if he didn't join a force since people would like to keep an eye in case an opportunity came to recruit him.

Such troubles truly were not worth cultivating a bit or even a lot faster. He was already extremely fast on his own even without resources or skills of a higher level.

This was why he had not just left already like Li Lan had. Her goal was to be recruited by a force able to contend with the Yin Moon Sect.

As such, he just peacefully continued to cultivate in a tree in the middle of the forest.

After another month of cultivating, Su Tao realized that he was once again coming upon a limit for the quality, density, and purity of his inner energy.

As he expected, it would only take him two months to break through to the high tier from the middle tier, just like from the low tier to the middle tier. He didn't know why this was the case, but it was, and he wouldn't dare to complain since all it did was help him.

Within this final day, he was able to smoothly reach the absolute limit of the middle tier, and his inner energy was just like before, at the limit of a normal person's high tier in quality and purity, and it was at a normal person's peak tier in terms of density.

Then, the next day, he broke through smoothly, reaching a normal person's peak tier in terms of strength while only being at the high tier himself. He was now capable of exerting the full power of all his techniques.

During the month that he was cultivating, he managed to reach maximum proficiency in his flowing bolt arrow skill's second level. As such, he immediately began to work on the third level, which now had eight lines going down the arrow instead of six.

However, he was disappointed to find that he would not have enough arrows if he wanted to learn how to use the third level without destroying them.

He didn't worry about this previously because he could just go into the city and get some more arrows, but he couldn't do that now, meaning that he had a limited amount of arrows available to him.

As such, he was incapable of working on the third level for now, and he was stuck at having his power only doubled. However, this still was incredibly strong, and he wouldn't complain about not being able to get any stronger.

He only wished that he knew how to make weapons. Alas, he had no clue how to even start, let alone make something that he could test his skill on, so he did not dwell on this very much.

He had managed to increase his proficiency in spark step to the maximum, and he was able to more than double his speed, and he was very happy with this.

Of course, it couldn't get any stronger than this since it was just a high tier skill, and he was already as strong as a normal peak tier one star silver rank, which outclassed this skill.

Su Tao generally spent his time getting stronger and training his skills, of which all of them had reached the maximum level except for his flowing bolt arrow, which required excess arrows for him to test with that he currently did not have.

Others would find his speed of learning impossible to understand, but for him everything seemed normal to get all these skills to this high of a level this quickly.

Of course, this was all owing to the precision that came with his eyes, and the mental speed that came with it, allowing him to process information many times faster than other people. Because of that, he could learn extremely fast.

Paired with his extreme cultivation speed, he was extremely fast overall. But he knew that it was all due to his eyes, which were his miracle come true.