Restless Night

In the middle of the night, two figures could be seen walking through the forest. One of them was leading and the other was following a few meters behind.

"What are his intentions?" the one behind asked himself, recalling the sensation of having someone observe him while he was half asleep.

After going through the mission, Ling Xu still felt that he couldn't trust his back to his teammates since he barely knew them so he had a hard time falling asleep. It was even harder since some of them previously had a conflict with him.

"This is far enough." the man leading said, turning to look at him with an expression more serious than ever. Now, he couldn't hide his emotions as he showed a face full of anger.

You could hear a pin drop as both of them were in complete silence, making the atmosphere feel very heavy.

"Aren't you scared?" Xie Jian asked, surprised that Ling Xu didn't show any sign of panicking with a calm expression all along.

But he still didn't respond.

"Well, maybe you are scared after all." he said, seeing this new outer disciple not responding to his question. He thought that he might have been paralyzed with fear.

"Then let me ask you directly…" Ling Xu looked him in the eyes, waiting to hear what this heavy atmosphere was all about. "Was it you that was trying to force yourself with my brother's partner?"

"What?" staring blankly at the man with a serious expression that told that he wasn't joking one bit, he tried to process what he just heard. He never expected to hear this from his senior.

"Not answering won't change anything, so you should best admit your wrong and move on since she already has a fiancé." Xie Jian said, he then continued as he shocked Ling Xu even more. "You can't negate it since I have already heard from several disciples that you fought her in the arena."

"Is he referring to…" as Ling Xu made the connection, he realized that the person he was talking about was Sun Qinglan. He also got to know later that she was Lu Wenjie's fiancée, but since he didn't pay much attention to it he had already forgotten.

"Is this a joke?" he asked ironically since he didn't find it funny in the slightest. In fact, he was pissed.

Ever since he was brought to the Skyless Realm, he had several encounters with people who didn't know any better and provoked him one after another.

"This is too much." he said in a low voice.

"What?"

"I won't tolerate this anymore."

This time, Xie Jian could hear him as he felt a little ridiculous. Hearing the words from a junior disciple that he wouldn't step back anymore as if he could defeat him was unbelievable.

He had seen that his strength far surpassed his current level since he had managed to make an injury to the snake while the rest of the group didn't do anything or left a small scratch. But that didn't mean that he could defeat him, someone who is in the sixth stage Qi Refining.

Ling Xu's formless qi circulated very fast through his whole body as he took out his sword from his spatial ring.

The next moment, he disappeared from his place.

"Uhm?" it had been so fast that Xie Jian only noticed when he had already charged towards him.

The energy condensed in the sword and Ling Xu got close very fast.

"What are you doing?" Xie Jian asked infuriated, feeling that he wasn't taken seriously at all by this junior.

Ling Xu swung his sword, like a flowing stream rampaging continuously at his opponent, striking several times against Xie Jian's sword which had a fierce fire surrounding it.

Although his opponent was several stages lower, he couldn't keep up with him since after every sword he blocked the strength of the next strike would increase, overlapping the weight like a stream that came down the mountain.

After the first dozen exchanges, the slight difference that they had in strength had changed completely. Ling Xu's sword had accumulated so much power that Xie Jian could now be seeing retreating, taking several steps back.

Even his movement technique, which helped him increase his speed, barely served to retreat fast enough so that he would have enough time to block the next attack.

"How are you this strong? You are only in the first stage of Qi Refining." he asked with disbelief, not able to understand how he was showing a strength much higher than before.

But Ling Xu didn't respond as he was only focused on his next attack. Feeling the flow of his sword, he landed every strike with extreme precision.

"Ugh!" several scars and blood marks appeared in his opponent's body, receiving the full strength from Ling Xu's attacks that kept increasing. Now, the strength from his strike had doubled compared to the first one.

"That is enough!" he yelled in despair as he erupted with all his aura.

Ling Xu stopped for a second as he saw him use the same move that he used against the snake before. With an incandescent light coming from the fierce fire in the sword, Xie Jian prepared to use his strongest attack.

"So that's how it is going to be." Ling Xu responded accordingly, using his great success mastery in the Flowing Stream Sword technique to condense a stream of energy in his sword, increasing its strength to a whole other level.

With fire surrounding his feet, Xie Jian charged forward with great speed as his sword met Ling Xu's.

Boom!

Both swords met in the middle as they created an explosion that could be heard from afar. The result was more exaggerated than expected since the energies colliding contained opposite properties.

"What was that?"

On the other side, Xie Lan was the first to wake up as he heard the sound of the explosion which had even reached the place where they made the fire.

After retreating a few meters back from the collision Ling Xu advanced passing through the place where their sword met and a small crater could be observed on the ground.

He walked towards Xie Jian, who had fallen back twice as much as him and was injured as he had hit his back against a tree.

"Cough!" he threw out blood from his mouth.

"Now we can talk." Ling Xu said, feeling calmer than before.

"What is there to talk?!" Xie Jian said, flustered by the state he was put in by this junior disciple. "I already know who you are. Don't think that you will come out unpunished after forcing yourself into Lu Wenjie's fiancée, you may be stronger than me but he has a brother from the inner sect."

"You are getting it all wrong. First of all, where did you get that I have forced myself into sister Qinglan?"

"Uh?" hearing his question, Xie Jian was dumbfounded.

He was shocked after hearing his way of addressing her as his sister since Sun Qinglan rarely talked with male disciples and even less was she called sister by them since they all referred to her as senior sister in a respectful manner.

"Weren't you trying to take her when you fought on the arena? I thought that's what it was, since many fellow disciples told me that you fought there."

"That wasn't it, it was all a misunderstanding." Ling Xu was shocked since he never expected for such a big misunderstanding to happen. "But, who told you that I was trying to force her into me? You couldn't have thought that by yourself since you weren't there."

Thinking deeply, Xie Jian's expression started to change as he thought of something.

"I think I get it now." he said and then stood up with Ling Xu's help, who had offered him a hand after feeling bad about him for getting into such a state.

Seeing that they didn't need to continue with this meaningless fight, Xie Jian added. "Don't worry, junior brother. I will set this with the person responsible that lied to me and said that you only had ill intentions for a fellow sister from the sect."

"He should be talking about Lu Wenjie." Ling Xu thought, recalling the fight he previously had with him with the excuse of him humiliating his fiancé.

They then returned to the camp with the fire still on as they explained to the group that the sound of the explosion was from Xie Jian fighting a beast that he had discovered lurking in the shadows. After all, he felt shame from what happened.

…

After waking up, the group continued with their travel back to the sect and after a few hours they arrived without a problem.

The first thing they did was to go to the Affairs Hall as they claimed the reward from the mission where they needed to get the venom gland from a seventh stage Qi Refining snake.

"The reward from this mission was a hundred low grade spiritual stones." Xie Jian said as he started to divide the spiritual stones between the group.

Taking the biggest portion since he was the one to provide the information and to kill the beast, he took half the reward which was fifty spirit stones. The rest was divided between the other four.

"Is this for me?" he asked in surprise, counting in the pouch twenty low grade spiritual stones. "I thought we would each receive the same amount."

"I talked with the rest of the group and we all agreed that you were the second to contribute the most." Xie Jian added as the rest of his teammates nodded. Even Ma Dongpil agreed, though a bit shy since he felt very awkward after the fight.

"If it hadn't been for you injuring the beast and then giving me the chance to kill it, it would have been much more difficult to defeat."

After hearing his reason, Ling Xu also felt that it was right so he accepted it without hesitating a little.

"Then, I have somewhere to go." Yu Wenqian was the first to leave as she bid her farewell to the group.

The rest did the same as soon only Xie Jian and Ling Xu were standing there.

"Is there something wrong?" Ling Xu asked, seeing that he seemed to have something else to say.

"This is for you, brother Xu." he gave another pouch to him, containing another twenty spiritual stones. "Take it as a way to apologize for what I did last night." he said and then turned back and left after cupping his fists together.

"I was the first to attack though." Ling Xu murmured to himself, recalling how angered he felt last night and then suddenly charging at him. "But I can't say no now or I would seem ungrateful."

…

Back in his room, Ling Xu had in front of him the two pouches he got from the mission and the spatial ring that he had obtained from the night assailant, who he found out worked in the Affairs Hall.

"With the twenty spiritual stones I got from the mission plus the ones that Xie Jian gave me, I have a total of a hundred and seventy eight low grade spiritual stones."

As he took the spatial ring which he had forgotten in the past week, even though he could open it now that he was in the Qi Refining Realm, Ling Xu moved his qi and activated it as he could now see what was inside.

"Such a shame, I had hoped that he had a copy of his sword or movement technique." he said with regret. "Sadly, the only book he has is the Formless Qi Breathing manual."

Ling Xu realized why he didn't feel much difficulty while fighting him compared to Xie Jian since it was obvious that he didn't have a high mastery over the cultivation technique.

Choosing this breathing method made his strength lack in comparison to if he had chosen anyone of the other options. This was something that happened often since there were many disciples who were attracted by its advantages and didn't consider that the process of transforming their qi into formless qi and comprehending the manual was very difficult.

He then counted the items he found in the spatial ring as his face of disappointment changed, "At least he wasn't poor."

Finding three bottles of pills, he opened them right away, excited about what he would find.

The first two bottles contained qi refining pills, as he observed that the first one had five remaining, but they were low grade so he only felt a bit of emotion from it.

As he saw the second bottle, Ling Xu was very surprised. "I didn't expect him to have a full bottle of middle grade qi refining pills." he thought that it was strange for a person in the second stage of Qi Refining to have them since they were double the price and this type of resources should have been used right away as it would help him advance pretty fast.

"After all, he had the mission of killing menial workers so he must have earned a lot from the dead. Also, these could have been a reward from the person that gave him the mission."

The last bottle of pills contained three low grade qi replenishing pills, and apart from that there were also twenty two low grade spiritual stones in the spatial ring.

"Now, I have a total of two hundred low grade spiritual stones." doing a few calculations, he also counted the total earnings that he got from the night assailant. "Without counting the spatial ring, which I don't know how much it costs, I have earned from him fifty low grade spiritual stones."

He realized that he had earned quite a lot from him as he started considering calling him his benefactor instead of night assailant.