The grand elder that met with Yun Jhin finally reached the Long Empire and questioned some of the people with a higher cultivation base that didn't mature enough to get into Yun Jhin's 'tournament'.
Those people didn't know much besides that their emperor was a dragon caterpillar, they also didn't see what happened at the capital so they couldn't say for sure what happened. Yun Jhin made sure to take care of all the eyewitnesses before he left.
While the grand elder was frowning trying to get any leads on Yun Jhin, Yun Jhin was making contact with the first city in the middle regions.
The city stood at the border of the entrance of the middle region so it was pretty poor compared to the ones at the center, however, the difference between continents could be seen the moment Yun Jhin entered the city, it wasn't much different from the Long Empire's capital!
The capital of a lower continent was only equal to a border city in the middle continent!
Yun Jhin wasn't surprised by this, the difference between continents would always be enormous no matter the planet he would be on, this was how things were meant to be, the weak remained weak while the strong got stronger.
Even if people that had less talent were born in the upper continents they would still look down on the talented people from the lower continents and scoff at them, this is how most silk pants young masters acted, most of them were weak trash with a great backer.
Yun Jhin strolled around the city using his ki transforming technique to morph into a humanoid form then he hid his draconic features with a brown cloak.
The dragon caterpillar wasn't up to date with the information about the dragon planet, if he got it right it had been almost 500,000 years since his last life, most of the people he knew would have died by now and the draconic planet and it's people weren't that warm to Yun Jhin in the first place.
Yun Jhin went to a booth where he could buy information of today's happenings and a planetary map, even though the planet environment shouldn't have changed, it has been almost 500,000 years.
The man at the desk was dozing off when Yun Jhin woke him up by punching his desk, the man got up frightened as he looked at Yun Jhin's cloak and he said:
"Dear customer, what would you need?"
Yun Jhin went directly to the subject and asked for a planetary map and the current happenings around the planet, the man chuckled as he opened a drawer below his desk and took out a map and a jade slip.
He pointed to them and said:
"20 middle-grade spirit stones or 200 low-grade ones."
Yun Jhin threw 200 low-grade spirit stones on the man's desk as he took the jade slip and map, he took a good look over them to make sure they were genuine then he nodded at the man behind the desk and left.
The man started to count the spirit stones and after finding out they were all genuine as well he sighed, there were times he was fooled and he had to hire some people from the Assassination sect.
Yun Jhin found himself a nice restaurant where he ordered some food and wine then he opened the map and examined it thoroughly, even though some places changed and some were erased much didn't change.
As for the news that happened recently, there had been a tournament in the upper continent which let the mixed-bloods join the main clans depending on their talent and battle power, Yun Jhin frowned as he looked at the date, it had happened 3 weeks prior and the winner was already announced, this was a golden opportunity for him that he missed!
Yun Jhin shook his head as he continued reading news, even though he missed an opportunity that meant he just had to create one himself!
The news said that had been an increase of mutated cultivation beasts that went out of control nearby and that mercenaries could join the extermination operation handled by the Zither Sect.
There was also other news regarding royal and imperial clans of the middle regions along with which sects recruited these times of the year, Yun Jhin skimmed trough all of the information before he destroyed the jade slip and burned the map, he didn't need them anymore as he memorized everything.
Then the food came and Yun Jhin enjoyed himself a little bit, even though people at his cultivation base didn't need to eat food as they could live by breathing ki. From the Ki cultivating stage and above bodily needs ceased to exist, meaning you didn't need to eat drink or defecate.
But that didn't mean people would stop eating and drinking, for them, food was merely eaten for enjoyment, Yun Jhin was a big gourmet in his previous life as he ate countless rare animals and humans with different constitutions, of course, some of them weren't eaten for taste.
After finishing his food Yun Jhin got up from his table and left the restaurant, he visited some other places inside the city such as the herbal store and the auction house, to break through further in his cultivation he needed to either massacre a lot of people, which he couldn't do yet as there should be peak 9th stage King realm experts in the middle continents.
Or find rare herbs that he could concoct into pills, or by an accumulation of eating a lot of pills, accumulation was the longest type of cultivation that Yun Jhin didn't enjoy at all, he was always a man of action that wanted the best and fastest way to reach immortality, however, he realized in his countless lives that slow and steady wasn't wrong as well.
While Yun Jhin was visiting the city and buying herbs, the grand elder of the border sect came back to the sect and met with the voluptuous woman from before, he kneeled to her and said:
"I have failed the Zither Sect, young lady please punish me!"
The woman frowned as he looked at the grand elder and said:
"You haven't found anything? Anything at all?"
The grand elder remembered the peculiar meeting with the draconic expert at the mountain and narrated it to the woman, the woman frowned as he listened to the man's story, and then she said:
"I thought you were a smart man Grand elder Mu Gong, the draconic expert should have been the dragon caterpillar! He should have escaped from the Long Empire in fear of their backer from the middle regions!"
The man looked at her with a questioning gaze as he said:
"But your excellency, you should know that the Long Empire didn't have any backers..."
The woman frowned as he looked at him and said:
"I wondered if your cultivation base was the only reason you became a great elder in our sect and your words right now made me realize that it was."
Mu Gong coughed awkwardly as he waited for the woman to tell him what she meant by that:
"You see, while I do know that they don't have a backer how would the dragon caterpillar know? Just use your damn small brain that's filled with muscles and poisonous incantations you damn fool!"
The man scratched the back of his head as he looked at her and said:
"Suo'er you should know that your uncle isn't the tactical type."
The woman now identified as Suo shook her head as she said:
"Actually it's my fault that I sent you, whatever, he should have escaped by now and entered the middle regions, we can't find him anymore, he might even have a backer and it would be dumb for us to make an enemy out of him."
Suo shook her head as she waved her hands and made the grand elder leave her alone. She looked down at a jade scroll as she thought:
"A dragon caterpillar heart should be able to save father, even though it wouldn't be as effective as a dragon heart, we could never get a dragon heart..."
Killing dragons was strictly forbidden on the azure dragon planet, anyone who killed a dragon would get marked with a curse from the Dragon Emperor and had his whole bloodline, sect, and friends annihilated!
However, mixed-bloods didn't have the protection of the Dragon Emperor, the draconic monarch didn't care at all about the offsprings of the dragons that weren't pure-blooded, of course, most humans still feared of killing anything with dragon blood.
But some bold humans killed a mixed-blood once secretly and found out they didn't get cursed so, from time to time traveling mixed-bloods would disappear.
In the end, draconic organs, scales, claws and everything from a member of the draconic race was valuable to humans, they could create weapons armors pills and other things with their bodies, they might even derivate new techniques from their bones and breakthrough their cultivation bottlenecks, even life-saving medicine could be created with dragon hearts.
***
Yun Jhin left the city as he flew further inside the middle continents, there he found a gigantic forest that was called "Giants Forest" it was a relatively simple-looking forest if you ignored the trees that were thousands of meters long, it was a forest that was inhabited by the giant tribe.
Yun Jhin went to this forest for one reason, giants had way more ki in their flesh and blood and they were scorned by both humans and dragons, their gigantic stature made the dragons think that they were challenged and they were feared by the humans due to the same thing.
Yun Jhin knew that even though he couldn't attack humans and dragons, he could still attack and devour the tribes that were hated by both parties. While they thought he would do them a favor, in the end they would become his food as well.
Yun Jhin slowly flew down in the forest as he concealed himself using his stealth technique, the higher the cultivation base, the better the stealth technique became, now at the 5th stage of the ki cultivating realm, he could erase both his presence and become transparent as well to the point no one could see through him.
He reined in his aura as he made his way through the forest, he made sure to be in his humanoid form, the giants were scared of the dragons but they would unleash their hatred on the humans if they found out some of their tribesmen were killed by them.
Yun Jhin wanted to do the same thing as before with the Heavenly Turtle sect and the Long Empire, he wanted to be the fisherman who benefited by taking care of both sides!
He masqueraded as a human as he invaded the giant's living place, he ran quickly in the forest as he tried to find a giant village.
The giant's villages weren't hard to find in the first hours of searching Yun Jhin found atleast 3, but most of them had chieftains with cultivations at the King Realm and above so he wouldn't be able to attack them without preparations.
The dragon caterpillar ran and used his soul willpower as well to scan around the Giant's forest to find a run-down village that he could attack. He went back and forth into the forest as he finally found one at the northern borders.
What he found there made his mouth curve up, there were quite a few giants in the village, around 100,000. But most of them were starved so much that only skin and bones remained of them, unlike humans giants still needed to eat until the King Realm, those at the ki cultivating realm needed to eat less but they still had to eat.
Surprisingly most of the giants were at the ki cultivating realm but there was no one at the King realm, there were a few 9th stage ones here and there but there was no sight of King realm experts.
Yun Jhin laughed to himself as he looked at the village, this was a perfect prime target!
Even the smallest giant was over 10 meters tall, his gut would be overflowing with ki flesh and blood after he ate 100,000 giants!
In the village, children of various ages were surrounding an old giant that was 20 meters tall, the children were around 6-8 meters tall, most of them looked malnourished, and those that didn't look like that were feeling like they could fall down at any moment due to starving.
A giant girl looked at the elder as she said:
"Grandpa, why do the other tribes hate us?"
The man sighed as he looked at his granddaughter then at the other children, he opened his mouth to tell a story...