Chapter 114: Pack of Wolves
Agonizing howls reverberated through the entire forest; thick scents of blood permeated the forest’s air. On the ground, one could see the corpse of a Sabertooth Blood Wolf scattered into pieces. Upon closer inspection, the body was still dripping blood; it must have recently died.
Following a small animal trail, there were more and more Sabertooth Blood Wolves' lying on the ground, one after another. Some were lying in stacks while others were lying with space between them.
Every corpse lacked its beast core, and all of them seemed to have been cut straight through by something sharp and in multiple times at the same time.
The further down the animal trail the more corpses one could find. Eventually, some of them even had their beast cores left within the corpses. The further down the trail, the heavier the air was with the stench of blood; it was even flowing on the ground, making small puddles.
One howl after another cried out. Some in agony, others with fighting spirit. One thing was certain, though, there was a whole group of beasts in front, and these beasts were battling something fierce.
This something was Xu Min. Currently, he was cursing under his breath. He had seen one Sabertooth Blood Wolf and decided it would be the first enemy he would slaughter for his mission. Then he realized too late he was on their territory. As soon as he had slain one, another two would appear.
Xu Min was not one to give up. By the time he realized that there was simply too many wolves around him, he was already surrounded with no way to retreat.
Killing the first twenty was done by only using his wind domain after which he took the beast cores. As the group of wolves reached the hundreds, he no longer had the freedom to do whatever he pleased. Instead, he unsheathed his sword and relied on both Ye Ling and Cao Cao to assist him in battling against all the wolves.
One hundred wolves turned into two hundred wolves, and two hundred wolves turned to three hundred wolves. The pack of wolves was so massive that Xu Min felt his skull go numb.Nevertheless, he had no other option than to keep battling.
Demonic beasts also use a kind of energy. This energy was swallowed whole by Xu Min's sword equally to how it devoured the energy of elves and fairies.
In spite of this, Xu Min was careful with how much energy he would absorb. He remembered how he had entered a frenzied berserker stance before when he needed to battle all those human cultivators within the Immortal Valley Rankings. However, now he wished to avoid that occurrence for as long as possible.
He did not know how long he could handle the berserker stance. He knew it took a hard toll on his body and that at some point he would be incapable of holding on. The longer he held off, the better it would be.
Xu Min swung his sword in rapid succession. Countless piercing shrieks could be heard as the sword cut open the wind and slashed through the bodies of the beasts.
Not only this, the wind within the forest had consistently increased in strength from a soft and gentle breeze to a wild and ferocious gale.
One wind blade after another descended on the wolves. Their bodies, although strong, could not handle the sharpness of the wind blades and were chopped into pieces. Xu Min's sword was constantly dancing in the air, slashing and chopping wolves into pieces.
It was not only Xu Min who was going all out, but Cao Cao as well was soaring through the sky, landing on one wolf after another. He would bite them through their skin and allow for his poison to enter their bodies, instantly killing them.
Cao Cao was currently the weakest of them all, but his killing was the cleanest. One bite and the five-star Warrior beasts would die instantly. While it could not kill the sixth-star warrior ranked wolves, it did petrify them, paralyze them and ensure that they could no longer move. This then allowed for the wind blade to chop them into small bits without any problems.
Ye Ling was also still a five-star beast, and he was equal to the Sabertooth Blood Wolves, meaning he could only fight one at a time. Nonetheless, Ye Ling was ruthless too; he had benefitted greatly from following Xu Min. He had been gifted medicinal pills and treasured herbs. His strength could rival that of the sixth-star beasts, even so, he could only take one at a time.
As he killed his enemies, he would instantly swallow their beast cores.
Beast cores worked somewhat the same way for beasts as it did for Xu Min to absorb the energy of other experts.
He would be able to replenish the energy he had in his body while at the same time he would become stronger and stronger. Unfortunately, it required some time to refine this energy.
Seeing that no more beasts appeared, Xu Min was ecstatic. He finally gave up on his hesitation. The sword in his hand started humming, and flames appeared all over his body.
So far Xu Min had done all in his power to preserve his energy and rely on the wind domain. This reliance on the energy from nature did not drain his Qi reserve. Now that he decided to give up on being calm, Xu Min let go of all his energy and started absorbing energy greedily.
Before he had mainly focused on defense and killed those who jumped at him, but now Xu Min focused on offense. His entire body was bared in front of these beasts. Many of them attacked him in groups. Some launched themselves on his back of him, and others bit his arms and legs, trying to slow him down, destroy his body or injure him.
Although Xu Min managed to kick them off his legs, throw those on his back off, and smash the ones on his arms into trees, he was still injured. He had small wounds all over his body. His robe was torn into pieces, and blood soaked his cloak.
Nevertheless, these injuries were nothing compared to the injuries that the Wolves were taking. His offense had become frightening. Wolves died one after another under his relentless attacks. No one had the power to truly go against him.
The more wolves that Xu Min killed, the more baleful his aura became, and the swifter his killings became.
The wolves started to hesitate on whether or not they should attack. Some even turned around and tried to escape. The pack of wolves which had been around a thousand at the start was now only a few remaining. Even the leader of the pack had lost its life in Xu Min's hands.
Standing back, panting hard, Xu Min looked at himself only to find his body littered with wounds all over. His clothes were only rags, and they were soaked in blood. As well, there were wounds of various degrees of damage spread across his entire body.
Not only him, Cao Cao and Ye Ling were also filled with wounds all over, but Xu Min was extremely happy when he saw that both of them were fine.
He quickly got three pills from the storage treasure and put one in his mouth while tossing the other two to his companions. These pills did wonder. They stopped the wounds from bleeding and slowly started healing the wounds.
While the pill could not fully heal the more severe wounds, it made the ones decent enough for the bloody crew to regain their combat ability.
"Let us get all the beast cores before we leave," Xu Min decided, "You can take as many as you can eat, but leave the rest for me. I want to exchange them for contribution points," he declared. The two beasts nodded their heads before they greedily started slicing open the heads of the wolves to extract their beast cores.
The two, Ye Ling and Cao Cao, were greedily absorbing one core after another until the point they no longer could consume even one more core. Their bodies burst with energy. They needed to sit down and refine this energy they had consumed and merge it with their energy so that it was no longer just a foreign energy that had penetrated their bodies but an energy which belonged to them. Once they refined and merged the energy, they could command it without problems.
Xu Min had also absorbed a high amount of energy during the battle, but most of it had already been used during his berserk offense against the wolves. The energy left over was possible to be refined while he was still moving around and picking up one core after another.
In the end, Xu Min ended up with four hundred and twenty-seven beast cores of either the fifth or sixth ranking. This was a handsome reward which would be able to make it possible for him to gain quite a lot of contribution points.
Having finished what they came for, the small group of three quickly left the battleground and entered the forest. They were on the lookout for a place to bathe and clear their skin or fur of the coagulated blood. Xu Min also wished to change his clothes as the rags he was wearing could not be considered to act as any covering.
It did not take long before Xu Min found a small stream. Together with his companions, they jumped into the chilled water and washed all the blood off their body. The few gaping wounds that were left behind stung as the cold water touched them, but the pill had truly changed quite a bit, and the wounds did not bleed any longer.
"Who goes here?" A voice suddenly sounded out as Xu Min had dressed. He turned around and saw behind him a whole group of elves standing irately staring at him.
"A mere human dares to enter the Immortal Valley when the Immortal Valley Rankings are over?!" the leader asked with disgust in his voice. "Don't blame us for being impolite, but breaking the rules laid down by the guardians can only lead to death!"
Having spoken, the young elf rushed forward as spiritual energy condensed in his hand to a beautiful sword. Upon seeing this, Xu Min just sneered as he opened up the force of the wind domain.
The soft wind turned fierce, the wind blades that appeared were sharper than any sword, and the attack that Xu Min unleashed could rival any of the fairies he had met so far.
"Is this a way to treat your fellow student?" he yelled at them. While the other elves instantly stopped, the one at the front completely disregarded Xu Min's words and continued his advance.
Xu Min had only had one lesson in spiritual energy, but that lesson had focused on the defensive use of spiritual energy. The energy erupted from his body and laid itself like a massive shield in front of Xu Min.
Seeing spiritual energy being controlled by a human shocked everyone. They were stunned;, even the advancing man was silent as he stared at Xu Min.
"Who are you?" he asked dumbfounded. Xu Min, who finally made them retract some of their hostility, just shrugged his shoulders.
"I am a new student at the academy, and I happen to be the personal student to Miss Mu Jianyao."
Xu Min could have avoided mentioning his master's name, but he wished to make these kids understand just how stupid their actions were. Thus, to do so, he needed to borrow her name to pressure them.