As he meditated, he didn't do what most people would upon their first kill.
They would normally try to ward off the feeling, sealing it deep within them. That was indeed a way to get used to killing, but the wrong way.
If one were to simply seal their own feelings deep within, there was bound to be a time when these feelings would resurface with full force, something that could lead even to that person's death.
Issei had understood all of this during his period of enlightenment. As such, he did something that most people wouldn't dare.
While sitting cross-legged, he continuously repeated the feeling he had felt at that time. The feeling of pain, the feeling of hollowness, how it felt to take a soul. To destroy the future and present.
He repeated it again and again, trying to experience it as most as possible. What Issei was doing was something that most people couldn't. He was forcefully getting used to killing.
Humans could only manage to reach such a high-position in the world, comparable to elves and vampires, because of their ability to adapt to diverse occasions.
Place a man in the desert? His skin will grow dark to withstand the sun, his body will start using water more efficiently, he will develop a resistance to sand..
What Issei was doing was exactly making use of the human's innate gift to adapt in order to grow used to killing.
As such, the more times he replayed the feeling, the last he felt it. He was gaining a resistance to the act of taking a life, becoming more and more resilient.
After seven hours, Issei finally opened his eyes.
They were no longer the same as before. In them, there was an extra glint of ruthlessness and coldness.
Shinso's words from before had greatly impacted him. He now made the decision to kill whoever deserved to die. He would no longer be lenient with his enemies!
Obviously, just that seven hours weren't nearly enough for Issei to develop complete resistance, although now he was much closer to it.
He understood that in order to be able to kill without batting an eye, to kill without remorse, to be ruthless, he would have to kill more and more. Only then would he be able to overcome the penalty of taking a life.
That was Issei's ultimate objective for the moment – becoming completely resistant to killing.
He now knew that in order to grow stronger, in order to reach the peak, one must be used to killing. His goal was reaching the peak in order to make Shinso proud, so, naturally, he would have to get used to killing.
Looking back at the body, Issei sighed. He then stood up and walked to the corpse of the person. Reaching down, he grabbed his cosmos sack.
Issei, obviously, wasn't the type of good guy who would let the person die with all their belongings. The guy was already dead, it wasn't as if it was going to be of use to him, right?
Even then, Issei didn't forget to profit from the situation.
Looking inside the cosmos sack, he found ten high-grade spirit grass, fifty middle-grade spirit grass and seventy two low-grade spirit grass.
Aside from that, he also found some medicines for treating wounds, a Nascent Profound Realm grade sword and some aphrodisiacs.
Keeping everything and throwing the aphrodisiacs away, Issei placed the new cosmos sack right on the side of his original cosmos sack.
Giving one last glance at the corpse of Wu Hai, Issei sighed.
He was already in Lightning Incarnation mode, since he entered it on the last battle and didn't bother to exit it.
(Read the author notes. This time they have important info that is crucial to the story.)
Lifting up his right hand, Issei condensed a ball of lightning. It was pure azure ball, with power of complete annihilation.
Casually throwing the ball towards the body, he walked away. Just as he took his third step, he heard the sound of the lightning colliding with something. Not even looking back, he calmly continued on his way.
On the place Wu Hai's corpse had been before, there were only black ashes. Soon after, a wind came and scattered it throughout the forest.
At that moment, there wasn't even the slightest proof that a murder just took place. Because of Issei's complete control over his lightning, that ball from before only affected the corpse. The grass the corpse was in wasn't affected in the least.
What better way was there to get rid of evidences if not completely destroying them? That was exactly what Issei did.
Although it didn't look like it, Issei knew that with his luck that some times seemed heavenly and some times back-stabbed him, there was definitely a chance that he would be implicated for that murder, although he didn't really know how.
As such, he wasn't about to take any chances and decided to simply make Wu Hai forever 'disappear'.
After walking for a bit, Issei once more continued his search for middle-grade spirit grass, only that this time he was much farther away from the areas that people stayed at.
At that moment, he was on the threshold of the territory of the middle-grade spirit grass. If he were to cross it, he would enter the area that the high-grade spirit grass lived in.
Looking around and not finding any spirit grass, Issei sat down and sent some lightning to the ground, calmly waiting for it to search the entire perimeter.
Just as the lightning was walking casually going around underneath the earth, it sensed something along with Issei.
Widening his eyes, Issei discovered that not too far from him, there were over a hundred and fifty energy signatures fighting!
Deciding to take a look, Issei headed to that location. It was on the high-grade spirit grass territory.
While taking cover behind a tree, Issei peeked at the scene before him.
A three meter tall huge plant-like thing, filled with purple thorns had its mouth open which was full of teeth. It was emitting an oppressing aura from its body, aura of the seventh level of the Nascent Profound Realm.
"That is Saint Spirit Grass!" Issei exclaimed in surprise in a low voice.
Saint Spirit Grass was an existence about high-grade spirit grass. Each of them had the potency of fifty high-grade spirit grass when refining it!
Furthermore, there were over twenty of them.
That meant that right in front of him was... the equivalent of one thousand high grade spirit grass, which was also equal to two thousand middle-grade spirit grass!
That was more than what Issei had collected in these past eight days. Such an amount, if he were to refine all of them, he would probably be able to breakthrough into the sixth level of the Nascent Profound Realm!
Furthermore, there were over two hundred high-grade spirit grass on the ground, which means four hundred middle-grade spirit grasses!
Looking at the situation, Issei was excited beyond precedence. He knew that he really struck it luck this time. Furthermore, his powers were specialized in taking on a large amount of enemies at the same time. It was as if this situation was tailor-made for him!
He then searched around the crowd of Saint Spirit grass and high-grade spirit grass, wondering who provoked their ire.
Much surprisingly, it was single person. Furthermore, it was a girl that seemed to be in the late teens with dark black in a short bob hair-cut and violet eyes.
Around her, the aura of the ninth level of the Nascent Profound Realm surrounded her.
Surrounded by hundreds of enemies, with a rapier in hand, she continued thrusting forward at the enemies, each strike killing at least one, but it was obvious that she was in a disadvantage and would soon fall.
Furthermore, there seemed to be water flowing around her, aiding her attacks, increasing their rage and potency.
Eyes widening, Issei recognized that water as the rank 5 martial skill, Water Fury!
As he looked at the young woman, he felt that he had seen her before. Not even a couple of seconds passed before his eyes widened. She was the young woman who was talking with Senior Brother Sa Ji back then!
Since she was talking with Sa Ji, Issei figured that she wasn't an enemy. Since that was the case, he didn't hesitate and jumped down, falling at the side of the young woman.
Looking at Issei, before she could even widen her eyes, she watched as he sliced at a spirit grass that was about to strike her back.
With surprise, she discovered that if Issei had not arrived, that blow could have severely injured her!
Looking back at the young woman, Issei said, "Need help?"
Strangely enough, her answer was another question, "It's you?"
"Hmm... you know me?" Issei asked as he struck at another incoming high-grade spirit grass, saving her again.
Looking at the young boy who had saved her life twice, Sona cursed. She didn't want to drag Issei into this. In her eyes, he would only end up as a burden for her.
"It doesn't matter. Just get away from here as soon as possible!" She exclaimed as she got back to thrusting at high-grade spirit grasses.
Sighing, Issei shook his head, "No can do."
"What?"
"You see, I'm rather interested on those Saint Spirit Grasses, so how about this? I'll help you deal with them and at the end, I'll grab all the Saint grade ones and you keep the high-grade ones. How's that?"
Sona widened her eyes as she listened to Issei's explanation. Did he truly think that he could deal with them?
"Hmm... so, do we have a deal?" Issei asked, his eyes narrowing as he once more killed another spirit grass.
Looking at Issei, Sona thought things over. She had wanted to know how strong Issei was and this was a golden opportunity! How could she miss it?
"Okay, we have deal," She said, the surprise no longer on her eyes, replaced by her usual cold glare.
Seeing that she accepted, Issei didn't hold back anymore. Dashing forward at the crowd of high-grade spirit grass, he started spinning as he killed spirit grass after spirit grass.
His movements were fluid and beautiful, as if he was calmly dancing. At the same time, his swords flowed around, sending cuts, slashes and stabs.
Dancing around the battlefield, bringing destruction wherever he went, Issei quickly decimated an entire crowd of fifty high-grade spirit grass in an astonishing speed.
The most surprising of all was that Sona didn't feel any fluctuations of usage of spiritual power, which meant that he was killing them with technique and strength alone.
Well, what she didn't know was that he had previously done a partial Lightning Incarnation transformation, removing the restrictions he placed on his fingers. As such, he was able to internally channel lightning into both swords who were at the tenth-level of the Nascent Profound Realm without Sona noticing.
Because of that, each strike that Issei sent would electrify the target internally, adding an extra layer of damage. Also, since the electricity only acted internally, Sona wasn't able to notice it. It was only because of that that Issei managed to kill one with each strike.
If he were to resort to techniques, it wouldn't be so useful, since Issei created his swords techniques with the sole purpose of fighting humans. They focused at striking at fatal and vital points, meridians and acupuncture points.
Such technique was useless against spirit grass, since their anatomy was completely different. Furthermore, if he were to resort to strength alone, he definitely wouldn't be able to kill them. After all, he only had the physique of an eleven years old who looked like he was ten.
There was no way he could compare his strength to practitioners of the same level who were in their late teens.
As such, only by relying on his lightning, Issei managed to bring forth destruction to the battlefield.
A monster.
There was no other sentence that could possibly describe Issei, aside from a monster.
As he walked through the battlefield, death followed. No matter what he faced, an army of high-grade spirit grasses or even Saint Spirit grasses, the result was the same – Instant Death!
Like a Grim Reaper that descended to the battlefield, wielding two beautiful sword like scythes, Issei forced his way through the enemy ranks, killing faster than you could blink.
Sona, although being on the ninth level of the Nascent Profound Realm, could do nothing aside from standing on the same spot, looking at Issei in a daze.
Her, with the status of the third best inner disciple, was flabbergasted to the point of not being able to move. Never in her life did she imagine that Issei was so...
Monstrous!
Only after Issei managed to kill most of the high-grade spirit grasses and Saint Spirit grasses did she break from her stupor.
Glancing at Issei in amazement once more, she took out her rapier and started to thrust forward at the scarce amount of enemies left.
Sadly, her killing speed was incomparable to Issei. During the amount of times she took to kill one, he killed seven. The difference was to too steep.
Looking at the difference in speed, her competing spirit was ignited. Clenching her teeth, she decided to go all out. She wasn't going to lose to an eleven years old kid now; that was tantamount to throwing your face away!
"Water Flowers Annihilation!" Sona brought her rapier forward, concentrating her spiritual power around her before using one of her best offensive martial skills, water dance, a rank 4 martial skill.
Immediately, like blooming flowers, water begun to appear around her in the air. They started with small drops, but as her spiritual power flowed into them, they grew bigger and bigger until it finally turned into lilies made of water.
Those lilies surrounded her, flowing around in circles a couple of times, before striking forward at the enemies, each one killing one.
Even while the lilies were being sent, a second wave of lilies came to life, charging forward. And so did the third, forth, fifth and sixth wave.
The battlefield was now drenched in water because of her barrage of attacks. Issei's part, however, was empty.
Because of the wind currents caused by his sword, the water drops couldn't even dream of making their way to his area. It was as if a tall mountain, that reached the heavens, was there, forever blocking their path.
They could only settle to falling on the area surrounding Issei, not managing to even come close to him.
The young genius, although seemingly fighting with all his concentration, had been focusing on Sona all along. Fighting like this was already engraved into his muscles and bones, his body moved almost as if on his own.
He was more interested in the fight between the mysterious girl and the spirit grasses. At first, she was simply standing on the same spot, but she soon became a barrage of attacks.
If that was all, Issei wouldn't have bothered with her. The reason why he was focusing on her was because of her martial skill, Water Flowers Annihilation.
Although it wasn't nearly as strong as his Four Ways Of The Lightning, which had evolved into the True Way Of The Lightning, it was still interesting. Issei saw that such a skill had potential and that the reason why it couldn't show it was because of its user.
Her comprehension of the skill was simply too shallow!
Issei, as such, was already thinking of ways to acquire that skill from her. To him, it was already wasted by being on her hands, so him learning it and showing its true potential would actually be an act of kindness.
Furthermore, that skill fitted quite nicely with his True Way Of The Lightning. He could use the water to increase the range and power of his lightning attacks. Furthermore, he could fuse his lightning balls with the water lilies, creating true killing weapons.
In his genius mind, thousands upon thousands of ideas surged by the second. But, most important of all, for them to come true, there was a prerequisite; getting the skill!
After a few minutes, the battlefield was empty, except for the two youths.
Issei was calmly looking at the battlefield as if looking at a treasure trove, eying all of the precious Saint Grade Spirit grasses lying on the ground. Thankfully, after being defeated, their size would decrease, becoming the same size as all other spirit grasses.
There wasn't even a drop of sweat on his forehead, and his breathing was calm. In fact, what he just did didn't waste his energy at all.
Because of spending so much time in his Lightning Incarnation mode, his body begun to adapt to lightning even more and also grew sturdier. Furthermore, his stamina increased by leaps and bounds.
Sadly, those changed were only interior. If one looked at his exterior, he still looked like a bashful little girl, something that annoyed him greatly.
Seriously, how come no matter how hard he trained, he would only get more feminine? What kind of twisted, sick, joke was this?
Was this a curse of the heavens? He could only wonder what kind of atrocities he committed in his previous life to deserve this...
But, still, Issei managed to calm down his anguishes. At the moment, he needed to calmly collect his spoils. He could always whine about his appearance later on.
Well, while Issei was looking like he just woke up from a good night of rest, it must be said that Sona wasn't really faring that well,
She was already sitting on the ground, circulating the spiritual energy inside her the fastest she could. During her fight, she spent a great deal of spiritual power to keep up with Issei's killing spree. Although she was currently drenched in sweat and devoid of spiritual power, to her, it was worth it.
At the very least, she could still keep her face. Because, if she had lost to an eleven years old kid with a cultivation lowers than her by four levels, how could she call herself a proud member of the Sitri family?
Sadly for her, the competition only existed on her mind. To Issei, he was just casually killing the spirit grasses, completely disregarding the fact that Sona was trying to keep up with him.
If he was to get serious, there was no way in hell that she would be able to keep up.
Never mind the speed of his swords, if her were to use the full power of his Lightning Incarnation mode, he could wipe out the entire battlefield in a matter of seconds.
Also, he could still use the poison withing the Sky Poison Pearl.
All in all, it could be said that Issei had many methods to 'clearing' out the 'trash'. If he so wanted, he could flatten the whole area.
Sadly, because of Sona, an eye-whiteness, he couldn't do so. He wasn't really prepared to reveal to the world how powerful he was. He would only do so when he was powerful enough to take the place of the number one disciple.
As Issei looked around the battlefield, his gaze came to rest on Sona.
Although it wouldn't be really hard to grab her cosmos sack with her on that state, he wasn't really willing to do so.
Although Issei was shameless, cruel and cold, he still wasn't about to steal from someone that did him no harm.
During his killing spree, he came up with a rather good plan. Since Sa Ji knew Sona, than it could be expected that he also knew her living quarters.
As such, Issei planned to ask Sa Ji for directions, go there at night and then find the martial skill scroll. According to his calculations, for him to remember all the contents of the scroll, it would take half an hour, give or take.
As such, he was confident that he would be able to just read it in her room, place it back on where he found it and go back to his room.
With that plan in mind, Issei didn't bother staying around that place any long. He then walked around and started to casually get his Saint Spirit Grasses.
After gathering all twenty of them, he placed them all in the Sky Poison Peal. He then turned to look at the meditating Sona, "Senior Sister, my job here is done. I have left all of the high-grade spirit grasses for you."
And with that, he started walking away.
"Wh-" Sona immediately opened her eyes the moment that Issei said that, "Wait!"
Halting his steps, Issei looked back, "What is it, Senior Sister?"
"Are you just going to leave like that?" Sona said incredulously. Even she, who was normally stable and cold, could not help but to be surprised. He arrived, said a few words, killed a bunch of spirit grasses, said a few more words, gathered his spoils and went away. Who the hell does that?
"What? Is there something I'm forgetting?" Issei said while looking at her puzzledly.
"Yes, there is..." Sona begun, but she then noticed that it truly was nothing that he missed. In reality, what she wanted was to talk with him a little and determine his personality.
His strength was above satisfactory, so all that was left was to check on his personality. If it was a good one, than she would immediately invite him to her group.
Looking around, Sona desperately tried to search for something that cold make him stay. That was when, from the corner of her eyes, she caught sight of something shiny beneath a small patch of grass.
It was a small, round, purple object, a bead. It was the same size as a pear, and it contained a high amount of spiritual energy.
Seeing that, her eyes widen considerably.
A Nascent Bead!
From all kind of medicines, beads were undoubtedly the cream of the crop (The best). Beads always possessed extremely high spiritual power inside them, something more than useful for cultivation.
Beads were separated in categories just like cultivation realms. Beads suitable for cultivators of the Nascent Profound Realm were the Nascent Beads, the ones suitable for cultivators of the True Profound Realm were the true beads and so on...
Of course, there wasn't a rule that Nascent Profound Realm cultivators could only refine (Refine will be used for when a cultivators eats a bead or medicine. They then 'refine' the spiritual power within them into their own.) Nascent Beads. It was just that the amount of spiritual power in a Nascent Bead was relatively similar to that of a cultivator of a Nascent Profound Realm.
If a cultivator of the Nascent Profound Realm, were, for example, to refine an Earth Bead, then he could probably jump into the True Profound Realm.
As such, the higher the level of the bead, the higher the increase in cultivation. But, obviously, there were limitations.
Just like medicines, constant use of beads could make the medicine stagnant in the future because the spiritual power acquired by refining the bead would not be really pure. Furthermore, before a cultivator can increase a realm, he must first comprehend the essence of the next realm.
For example, before a cultivator of the Nascent Profound Realm could step into the True Profound Realm, he must first understand the essence of the True Profound Realm. He must understand the change in his spiritual power and how it affects them. Only then could a cultivator make a breakthrough.
But, if one were to rely on medicines and beads, the situation would be different. The spiritual power of the bead or medicine would forcefully increase your cultivation, and even if you did not understand the following realm, you would still breakthrough into it.
At the start, you could use it to breakthrough the realms, and it is even possible to reach the Earth Profound Realm using that method. But, the problem was that, to breakthrough into the Sky Profound Realm, even if you used all the beads and medicines in the world, you had to understand the Sky Profound Realm.
And, how would one understand the Sky Profound Realm if he didn't understand the previous one and only managed to get stronger due to medicines? Because of all of that, if one overused the beads and medicines, their future would be limited and they would not be able to reach the Sky Profound Realm. They would forever be doomed to be an Earth Profound Realm cultivator!
As such, most cultivators only refined beads and medicines in moderation, being careful to stop when they were about to step into a new realm and only taking medicines when they fully understood the following realm.
Because of that, beads of extremely high-rank that could forcefully greatly increase one's cultivation wasn't truly valuable to the cultivators of lower realms that cared for their future achievements.
— Bab baru akan segera rilis — Tulis ulasan
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