System Store

Settling his mind, Ling Xu's eyes changed as he viewed the red deer as his prey. The deer heard a rustle of wind and the next second Ling Xu was already in front of it, it was completely shocked, left unable to move as Ling Xu's speed frightened it.

It took just a swing of his sword as he killed the beast with a clean cut.

[You have killed a Red Deer (5th Stage of Blood Qi).]

...

Four hours later, Ling Xu stopped hunting as he had been hunting nonstop, the time he didn't kill the beast was when he was running trying to find them faster.

"This progress is too slow, I don't even know why I am doing this. After searching for hours I killed dozens of red deer but the experience gained was barely 10%."

Frustrated because the time and effort it took to make this progress was extremely slow compared with his cultivation technique mastery which increased his refining speed to a terrifying level.

"I wouldn't mind if I gained a skill, but why have they not dropped once after killing so many of them. Is it that after the tutorial, they have stopped dropping skills?"

Ling Xu decided to delve deeper into the forest as he felt that the outer layer had nothing for him to gain.

After encountering several red deer and occasionally a few boars as he entered their territory, Ling Xu looked at the mission panel.

[Map]: Lonely Forest

[Mission]: Survive 1 week

[Participants]: 963/1000

[Progress]: 0 days, 23 hours

"I wonder how many people will remain at the end of the mission if there are already several who died even before the first day passes."

...

Ling Xu stopped walking as he looked in front of him. Just a few meters in front, he observed a thin layer of light that delimited the terrain.

He first tried to pass his hand through it. Once he saw that there was no problem, he entered successfully as a new message appeared.

[You have entered the inner layer of the Deserted Forest.]

"Finally! The strength of the beasts in the outer layer was far from enough to make me sweat. If I encounter stronger ones I can at least gain more experience and maybe even get a reward."

[You have survived for a day in the Deserted Forest.]

[You have unlocked the store where you will find everything you need to survive and become stronger.]

[Turning on the sacrifice mode you won't be able to gain experience but you will get in return points from the store.]

"What? So, there was such a thing, maybe that's why I haven't gained almost anything until now."

Not caring about the idea of not gaining more experience, he called for the store panel excited about what he would be able to obtain from there.

[Equipment]

[Pills]

[Special Items]

"Let's see what pills I can buy first."

[Blood Tempering Pill (low quality 1st grade)]: 50 points

[Blood Replenishing Pill (low quality 1st grade)]: 50 points

[Blood Condensing Pill (low grade 1st grade)]: 100 points

[Wound Ointment (low grade 1st grade)]: 70 points

In the pills category he saw a short list of pills, they all started at low quality first grade and at the end of the list there were even high quality first grade ones. Every increase in quality increased the pill's price significantly.

Reading their descriptions, Ling Xu learned about new pills as he had only heard about the blood tempering pills which he got as a reward, and the blood replenishing pills which were mentioned in a post he read about the rewards a person had gotten.

The blood tempering pill increases the circulation of blood qi and the refining speed of the body. The blood replenishing pill recovers the blood qi of the body. The blood condensing pill is very helpful for breakthroughs and it helps condense blood qi and increase its purity, although it has a limited effect and after a few pills are used it won't help anymore. And the wound ointment helps the healing of superficial injuries incredibly fast and to close wounds.

"If I ever need a pill I would have to buy high quality first grade ones as those are the only ones that could have an effect on me. Even then, once I step into the eight or even ninth stage of Blood Qi, their effects will increase even more. So unless I really have to, I should save up the points I gain for the other categories."

He then entered the equipment store which had weapons and armors with different qualities.

[Spear (low grade semi-treasure)]: 300 points

[Long Sword (low grade semi-treasure)]: 250 points

[Blade (low grade semi-treasure)]: 230 points

…

[Black Steel Sword (high grade semi-treasure)]: 3000 points

[Overbearing Blade (high grade semi-treasure)]: 3000 points

[Azure Spear (high grade semi-treasure)]: 2500 points

Going down the list, Ling Xu saw a few weapons that were to his liking, but he decided to not buy any of them as he was already very comfortable with his refined short sword which already had the highest grade the store provided.

He felt very attracted to the black steel sword but felt like it would be pointless and just a waste of his points. Even though its range would be higher, with Ling Xu's current strength and use of his short sword, he didn't have a problem using the one he already had.

He then passed on to view the armors that were also listed as he set his eyes on a few high grade armor and equipment pieces which would increase his defense greatly. But he didn't give it much thought as the amount of points he had was cero and he was already very curious about the last category.

Expectant, he entered the special items category eager to see what it would bring.

[Random Skill (low grade)]: 3000 points (10)

[Luminous Stone (low grade)]: 1000 points (100)

[Upgrade Skill (middle grade)]: 3000 points (10)

Shining with greed, Ling Xu's eyes were open wide as they looked at the precious items he could be from the special items category.

"This is amazing! I can't believe they are now selling the skills and even an option to upgrade them. I really want to buy them all."

He wanted to get every one of these items as they all were very good options that could enhance his strength significantly, but he calmed down very fast after seeing the prices they had.

Ling Xu still didn't know how hard it would be to acquire that amount of sacrificial points but he knew that if they were already this expensive, it would be a difficult task to acquire one of these special items.

So he set the goal for now to obtain at least one skill from the store.

"This upgrade skill option looks extremely useful, but I don't need because all my skill are at least middle grade."

And finally, he discarded the idea of getting luminous stones to upgrade his equipment as he was already very happy with the ones he had.

...

A few minutes later, he saw an imposing yellow leopard with what looked as a subtle electric current flowing all over its skin.

Its eyes remained sharp and had an electric current on them too.

"Roar!!!"

Ling Xu stroke while the iron was hot and charged before the other one did after trying to intimidate him and seeing no response.

He arrived in front of the leopard almost instantly, without giving it time to react as he pierced his refined short sword into the beast.

But after he touched its skin he saw something strange, the leopard suddenly moved very flexibly avoiding the attack making the short sword slash into the air.

He felt confused as he had seen that the leopard was about to be slashed and its reaction was slower than his speed.

His short sword had even touched its skin before it suddenly moved and changed its body posture to avoid the attack.

Either way he had complete control over the situation as his eyes could see everything, so after the leopard avoided, he made another two slashes.

But this time again the leopard managed to avoid it at the last moment. It only managed to leave unscathed as Ling Xu wasn't even going with half his strength, but it still surprised him how it had the ability to avoid the attacks in such a way.

He then used the movement skill to go even faster than before as he didn't plan on taking any longer observing it.

Slashing from the side, Ling Xu detected any small change from the beast's movement using his Enhanced Synapsis skill which greatly increased his processing speed.

The beast that just a second ago felt confident in its dodging ability suddenly felt a chill down its spine as it felt that the attack that was coming didn't stop and followed its avoiding direction.

Seeing the electric current on its skin breaking apart, Ling Xu understood right away that it had something to do with the leopard avoiding his sword. He figured it out as once the current on its body broke, Ling Xu saw that the leopard couldn't dodge as before.

Without its ability, the leopard didn't have any chance as it was cut in half.

[You've killed a Charged Leopard (6th stage Blood Qi).]

[Do you want to activate the Sacrifice Mode?]

"Yes!"

It didn't take a second for him to decide on it as he had no problem with not gaining any experience in the mission. After all, he was very eager to have the chance to buy a few armor pieces and the random skill.

[You've killed a Charged Leopard (6th stage Blood Qi) +32 points.]

The previous message that confirmed his kill appeared once again, but this time it showed how many points he had gained from killing the leopard.

"Counting the way the experience I gain increases depending on which stage the beast is at, it seems that the system for gaining these points is the same. Every increase in the beast's stage the quantity of points I can acquire doubles."

He felt hopeful as he felt like he was completely capable of gaining enough points to buy the armor and skills.

"At first I thought it would be extremely difficult to have the chance of buying all the things I wanted from the store but seeing this I may be able to. Only yesterday I killed dozens of red deer alone which would have been able to increase my points to almost a thousand."

And that was considering that they were beasts in the 4th and 5th Stage, so if he now killed only stronger beasts, he would get to double the points he could get.

As he checked the points in the store change from 0 to 32 he stop dilly dallying and started running trying to encounter every beast he could before the day ended.

He maintained a speed at which he felt comfortable while advancing several meters after every step he took.

It was noticeable that Ling Xu's current power was way over what a normal human was capable of.

Even the rest of the survivors on the map could who had already entered the Blood Qi realm couldn't compare to him. Ling Xu had already assumed that he was one of the strongest in the world as he had never heard any news about someone even reaching the fifth stage of Blood Qi on Earth.

And if you took his Blood Thread Transformation technique into consideration, which condensed his blood qi and made it stronger than before, you could say that his current speed wouldn't be achievable even by someone who managed to reach the same stage as him.

Ling Xu had left his blood circulation speed at the speed it normally went before he had started and completed the second stage of the Blood Thread Transformation technique. But even then it was stronger than before as it was condensed after completing the third stage of it.

Still, he decided to let his circulation speed increase a little as he wanted to make faster progress and he decided to run even faster.

...

Ling Xu met for the next ten minutes more than ten current leopards in the sixth stage of Blood Qi. Even though he already got more than 300 points, he felt that it was far from enough.

When Ling Xu entered the middle layer, he noticed a big change. As he progressed the size of the trees went as far as several dozen meters high, and the area of the layer was actually bigger than the outer one.

Ling Xu realized that it would take a while longer to reach the next layer if there was compared to going from the outer layer to the inner layer.