Chapter 149 - Loot. + author's word.
No time to celebrate!
Xin grabbed the hag's frail corpse and swiftly retreated, ignoring the triumphant sensation surging from within. The plant monsters buried nearby hissed ominously, yet by the time they opened their mouths to shoot thorns at him, he had already leaped behind the mossy stone, and by the time they uprooted themselves to chase, he had long disappeared behind the bushes.
It's done! Done! Xin panted heavily, his eyes wet from excitement. I fell a Condensation stage master, and I did it alone!
But what now?
Xin scanned the area of the hag's lair from afar. The vinemen didn't seem to be pursuing him, but instead shambled around in circles, as if agitated. Remnants of the demoness's human qi still lingered within them, but with the soul connection severed, her conditioning waned like a morning dew under the summer sun. In just a few hours, the vinemen would be fully autonomous again.
He stared down at the mutilated corpse at his feet. The only remnant of its head was a mushy lower jaw, three rotten teeth lodged in its inflamed gums, and a white, plaque-covered tongue dangling sporadically from the throat, no upper jaw to contain it. Soon, the bark skin armour covering the hag's body cracked open like a withered insect's cocoon, exposing a pitiful, malnourished elderly body, its skin loose and winded.
What's that? Xin picked up the demoness's wrist. A red line of ink was tattooed around her vein, surrounded by scarring, moving along her arm meridians and covering her whole body in crimson ornaments.
Blood awakening ritual! Curses. It takes at least ten living mortals to perform even a basic version of it, and for what? To add a secondary element to her core?
Xin spat on the ground.
She'll never harm anyone again, master, we made sure of it! What's done is done, there's no point in grieving now.
Careful, beast. If you think like that, you might get too intoxicated by serving justice, shedding other parts that made you whole. And once you make yourself into a living instrument, you are one misstep from becoming a demon yourself.
The beast didn't respond.
Xin retreated further and checked the surroundings to ensure he wasn't being followed, then prepared to loot the demoness.
"Fuck, her smell is unbearable," he cursed and rubbed his nose. "Was she shitting in her bark armour?"
Likely, master. If I may, her soul emanations are as disgusting as her odour, and the state of her meridians… I wonder how she was alive in the first place.
"Blood cultivation comes at a price, it's not just a spook story for righteous neonates." Xin pressed his finger against the hag's core. Time to open it up.
Master, you've done it before, with the mantis yaoguai, correct?
"Yep, but that one was pure wood element. This one is dual, should be much harder. But I've also improved since. Hush, let me focus."
The gentle method of using a bit of the victim's blood and imitating the emanations of their qi flow wouldn't work on a blood path core — at rank one, Xin wouldn't be able to replicate such strong blood element resonance.
Hard way it is.
Justice Claws! Xin's fingers exuded a majestic white glow once more, a subtle silhouette of Baihu's claws around them. In one brutal move, he buried his fingers into the hag's belly and tore her core out. Dark brown in colour, it looked as if it was made of condensed snot.
Xin squeezed the solid sphere in his grasp, trying to pierce it with his pointing finger's nail. It resisted for quite some time, yet after a minute of tensing and releasing, a small crack finally formed. Condensation stage cores were remarkably durable, even when countered directly by an anti- wood and blood path method at a peak of rank one in power, it took considerable effort to damage this one.
Hiss. Tiny vines sprouted from the core, and it began leaking bubbly blood, the hissing becoming eerily cat-like.
Master, careful! Our and core's qi are bonding, we need to get rid of it!
"Of course."
Vine style, expansion throw! Xin calmly hurled the core at the nearby yellow pine and jumped back, hiding behind another tree.
Bang! The core exploded, manifesting its internal space in a three-meter square around the impact point. The ground soon turned to puddles of sulfuric, rotten blood and dark, ugly vines. A huge lump of flesh-like bark lay there, resembling a sack coated in translucent slime. Was this where she stored the valuables to protect them from her core's toxicity? Likely.
Xin also noticed a few small objects fall to the ground. Dao shards!
Wait a second, this can't be it! Xin looked around the area that was just manifested, confused. It's not even underwhelming, but outright pitiful!
The radius of the demoness' realm was nearly half of what he expected, which meant that the volume of it was many times less than he anticipated! Even if the hag's core wasn't of high quality, it couldn't be THAT bad! Back in Tealstone, Master Xiaodan covered a much larger area with his realm manifestation…
Right. The demoness likely planted a significant part of her realm somewhere in her lair or garden to aid in material cultivation and reduce upkeep. Her qi pool would be diminished, and she'd have to reinforce that area with her human qi from time to time, but the wealth gained would more than compensate for it, allowing her internal landscape to flourish.
Planting one's realm outside of combat was illegal in the Empire, and the license to do so had to be obtained from the capital. Even then, such a procedure was only allowed on dedicated sect grounds. The demoness was a dead woman walking anyway, of course, and didn't mind adding one more death sentence to a list of dozen.
Xin circled around the manifested realm, scanning it carefully before finally stepping in. With his Celestial Vigil active, he searched for the dao shards on the ground.
Thorn arm dao shard, rank two.
Shaped like a finger-long thorn tree stick with bark-like webbing where it branched, it was a cheap and popular method among rank two wood path masters. Xin considered it bottom-tier, but just being rank two would be enough to fetch it for a decent price.
Barkskin dao shard, rank one.
This one looked weirdly dry compared to those that Xin had seen before, likely because it was refined to sacrifice durability for cheaper sustainment cost. With her rank two qi intensity, it would still trump most rank one methods, and as she had a strong blood path healing method, she likely chose to neglect her defenses. A logical decision, yet one that led to her early demise.
Limb growth dao shard, rank one.
This shard resembled a mummified stick beetle, but was elastic to the touch. The demoness likely used it to help her transformation into a tall plant monster, but preferred not to use it in hand-to-hand combat. Xin wondered why. Bad qi control, perhaps?
Having collected the dao shards, Xin picked up the fleshy looking bag. It pulsated as he touched it, and smelled of stomach acid. He then decided to get back to the hag's corpse — the air in the manifested realm was toxic, and he even shed a few tears as if someone was cutting onions.
Now that he was done with the core, he could focus on the piece of loot he had long desired…
Mercurial Snake ring! Xin quickly pulled it off the hag's pointing finger and examined it closely.
It was a worn out old piece of jewelry, lacking any artistic refinement, made of an enchanted iron alloy Xin didn't know the components of. Its outer circle had two little protrusions — a snake mouth on its outer side, where the missile was launched from, and one on its back, likely where it was fed.
Its inner circle was much more intricate. Thin, multi-coloured stripes of enchanted metals coiled around, creating a complex formation, all coalescing around a tiny engraving, saying…
"Five Elements Transition sect"!
What? Xin's eyes widened, he couldn't believe what he was seeing! Is she a former member? Or did she kill one of ours for it?
It's possible, but unlikely.
Our sect is around a hundred years old, and we're the biggest supplier of cultivation artefacts and dao shards in the North. We could have sold this artefact to anyone. She probably obtained it from a trader or another demonic master. But what does this mean for me? Xin fell deep into his thoughts.
A simple conclusion soon struck him — I should sell the ring elsewhere! If I bring it to the sect, the former owner can come out of hiding and claim it for themselves! In fact, someone prone to plotting like Lady Meiling could fabricate evidence of having owned it and confiscate it from me, only paying a meager "finder's fee"! Our previous reports of the hag mentioned her ring, so once it comes to light that I killed her, questions about it will arise!
Before selling it, I should remove the engraving just in case, to ensure plausible deniability. I'll claim it was worn out and unreadable when I found it if anyone asks…
Xin remembered how the sect sabotaged Rui Ming's breakthrough — with allies like that, he could never relax or lower his guard.
He then turned his attention to the fleshy sack — time to loot it.
He cut it off with his nail, its "flesh" feeling like a peeled grape. The sack oozed transparent tree juice when spread open, and it gave way to two smaller, slime covered bags, this time made of leather.
Heavens, this is tedious! Hope the loot is worth it.
Xin opened one of the leather bags, revealing its contents—a dozen fist-sized rhizomes of light green vines. Hm, what are these for?
Wait, how do flytraps reproduce? They usually pollinate, but if I'm not mistaken, they can also spread through offshoots. If that's the case, these tubers are baby vinemen! And by the looks of it, they aren't corrupted with blood qi just yet! Xin's heart raced excitedly, this is amazing! If I had a method to control these creatures, I could get my own troop of them!
Not so fast. This takes time, effort and resources, and controlling the creatures directly also strains one's soul. Doing something like this in this forest would also attract attention, and meeting someone like the four-eyed owl once again doesn't sound like an enticing prospect.
And it would also be impossible and pointless to raise these outside of this forest. Shit. What do I do with these, then? Should I just refine them into materials? Eh, let's just keep them for now.
Xin put the "babies" into his bag of holding, hoping they wouldn't spoil before he returned to the sect, then opened the second bag.
This one was filled to the brim with cultivation materials, mostly of wood path, but also some water and blood path reinforcement materials. No spirit stones, and nothing too fancy — still, this batch would be enough to feed the new dao shards for a few months, and some unsuitable materials could be made into pills and elixirs. Most blood path materials would go to waste, though, as Xin didn't know where to sell or how to utilise them.
Xin sighed, this was certainly better than the Young Mantis's loot, but he was left underwhelmed. At least Erdeni and his future kid were safe now. Or safer, to be precise.
***
Several hours later.
Woodcutter's Downswing! Xin's meteoric sword fell another vineman shambling around, its severed head hitting the ground. After resting and consuming diluted materials to help resist the area's qi drain, Xin had started clearing out the remaining plant monsters. Without the demoness, they no longer cooperated, wandering aimlessly, and it was also evident that their physiques were irritated by constant blood path infusions, leaving them unable to sustain themselves off earth alone. Starved and crazed, they stumbled through the glade, triggering the demoness's traps, only to be ambushed and slain by Xin.
The young hunter had never felt so beaten — his muscles were sore, body cold and mind fuzzy with sleep deprivation. He almost fell asleep when meditating, but his fear quickly snapped him back to reality — which he was grateful for. It's not over until it's over.
After the fourth monster killed, Xin realised he was pushed to his limit. He could just risk it and go to rest in the demoness' lair, but a brighter idea popped up in his mind.
If the vinemen are hungry, why not just feed them? He sneaked up to one of the creatures, the one closest to the hag's lair out of those remaining, and threw it a gift — a small cloth pouch, wet with water and filled with soul drain moss, a leftover material from when he was refining the white tiger totem.
The creature approached the pouch, curious, its feeble mind failing to register that someone had thrown it in the first place, picked it up and ate it without second thought. Moments later, it planted its roots into the ground and started hibernating again!
It worked! And it's not just sated now, its soul is severely strained, it'll likely be days before it recovers! These creatures will eat anything qi active of matching element, Xin noted to himself.
He quickly disposed of the remaining creatures in a similar manner — dry spiral corals, grave fungus dust, shadow sponges — all the former refinement materials were put to good use, sending some plantmen hibernating, a few dying outright. Emboldened, Xin entered the hag's lair.
First, he collected the remnants of the hag's skull and face, shoving them into a bag of holding, trying not to vomit. Hopefully, it would help persuade the bounty master not to reduce the bounty.
No chance, master! You've blown her to pieces!
"Well, I had to! Any other way would be too risky. Let's try and enter that root now."
Xin felt the totem nodding.
The massive root had sealed itself shut, and Xin tried tapping it with a wood qi infused finger to make it open up. To no avail.
Master, we'll have to break it open.
It was Xin who nodded now.
He unsheathed his meteoric sword once again, infused it with metal qi and raised it above his head.
Woodcutter's Downswing! Woodcutter's Downswing! His second hit tore a huge hole in the "sphincter", and after a few minutes of tedious slashing, he had made an opening large enough to crawl inside. Anxious of the root coming to life and squeezing him to death, Xin first lit a lantern and illuminated the damp inside of its hollow.
He saw a small straw bed, with a worn out linen pillow, a shoddy looking wooden desk, with alchemy materials scattered around, some of them still half-product, and a small cauldron to its side, a subtle green smoke emanating from it.
Celestial Vigil.
Wait, what's with these subtle earth and heaven qi emanations? And that bulge under the green foam, it can only be a condensed quasi-core!
She was refining a dao shard here! And a rank two one at that!
***
Author's word (writing here as at least 2 people complained about comments not working properly):
I'm still working on this book. Wanted to post this future chapter as a treat, as I felt it was unfair to deprive the audience of Xin looting the demoness as they wait for the new chapters. I am busy preparing for the Royalroad release, which is a high priority given the problems I am having with WN.
In no particular order:
People struggle with basic functions of the site - comments don't display, people can't vote or comment, my readers complained about not getting notifications on new chapters etc.
Wn also reposted my book on a sister site without my consent which I am pissed about.
My RR release is going to be improved, as I'll use everything I learned writing this book to improve it once again (no significant plot changes, only minor edits) and present it better (better cover, better blurb, better promotion).
I also wrote a post talking about my struggles with this book. While its title makes it look like this book "failed", it's just me clickbaiting. In my mind, it's a success as I enjoyed writing it greatly.
https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgressionFantasy/comments/1ihhyct/why_my_book_failed_and_why_its_okay/
I really enjoyed experimenting with different genres and writing styles, and I hope it's evident that I improved as a writer in later chapters. If you've read this far, thank you. Stay tuned, I'll be back, I promise.
https://discord.gg/Nvj7yPJr4q - in the meantime, come join my discord.