Two weeks later Bjorne and Fen Chang could be seen eating a feast inside a giant decorated cave. On the floor there are many beast skins carpets, the walls covered in drawing and a glowing crystal embedded in the ceiling.
This is the cave they took over from one of Bjornes opponents and have been using as their base for the past week and half.
Both of them have progressed a decent amount, but Bjorne more than Fen Chang. Bjorne can now face up against late rank 2 beasts and draw, but is still unable to win yet. He is still a low rank 2 but is half way to mid rank 2, so being able to face against a late rank 2 shows its ability to learn and the power of its new bloodline.
Fen Chang on the other hand hasn't had as much of an upgrade. The most noticeable thing is that his cultivation rose from mid-level 5 to mid-level 6 stage 1. Due to all the fighting, eating pills and treasures, and cultivating at night he managed to break through the barrier. He is still unable to match against a early rank 2 but is now able to run away with a high chance now.
He has also managed to get his technique understanding to intermediate which is the second layer of understanding. There are 8 layers of understanding. Beginner, Intermediate, Professional, Expert, Perfection, True Essence, True Perfection, Once with Technique.
Each layer allows for the technique to release more power. When one reaches perfection, they are able to unleash the full 100% of a technique. After perfection the user is able to release more than 200% of a techniques power. And rapidly rises while also becoming more unique to the user. At perfection the technique is still the normal technique, but at true perfection the technique adjusts to the user, so it could change elements or even get extra elements or effects depending on the user.
These techniques though where only of the high sky rank. His immortal ones would normally require years just to get to intermediate for the average talented geniuses.
His senses are the main place he has seen improvement on, even if not that noticeable by most people. So far, he has only trained his hearing and touch as he plans to spend a week working on each. Even though he only trains his senses at night, as the day is for techniques, he is still now able to fight against mid rank beasts using only his hearing or touch.
He trained his sense of touch by being completely naked and feeling the vibrations on the dirt as a creature ran, the wind's direction, the difference in temperature down to extreme precision to pinpoint if a warm-blooded beast is nearby. This was a dangerous one to train as at first a lot of beasts had bitten and clawed at his neck, as he wouldn't even know when to defend as he couldn't hear, see or do anything to tell the direction.
He had to use many high rank 3 and a few low rank 4 pills to heal the fatal wounds on his neck, chest and many other places that got attacked at the beginning. By the end of the week, he had trained his bodys touch sense to be able to feel the miniscule vibrations from beasts running, though it is still susceptible to flying creatures and the other goals he set to be able to do with his bodies touch.
Compared to Bjorne who learned how to control his Qi and tactics to fight high rank 2 beasts Fen Chang fell short on advancement but he didn't mind as what he was doing was building the most broken and OP foundation in the cultivation world.
He is vert excited to see how his soul sense will be when he's strong enough, as a soul sense is created based off the persons natural senses so the stronger the senses before, the stronger the soul sense.
…
The feast they were having was in celebration of Fen Chang reaching level 6. The beast meat was from the only high rank 2 that Bjorne was able to beat, which was due to it being weak against earth Qi and Bjornes attack style.
After the feast they decide to head to sleep ready to train the next day.
After waking up the two go their own separate ways in order to search for opponents. Due to the location of the cave they made base in, it didn't take him long to find a high rank 1 beast. The beast was still resting in its shelter, due to it still being very early in the morning and the sun just barely breaking the horizon.
He stealthily goes up to it and instead of bringing out his sword or scythe, he instead brings out a dagger. Once 10 meters away he uses his movement technique silent steps to cross the remaining distance in less than a second. He quickly stabs the dagger through the sleeping beast's skull before infusing a little ice Qi to go through the dagger directly into the beast's brain.
It died before it could even wake up. Seeing the effectiveness of stealth, he was happy that he has decided to start practicing some assassin moves.
Thinking that high rank 1 creatures will be too easy to assassinate he decides to go find low rank 2 beasts as even if he can't beat them in a head on fight, the advantage of assassination is being able to kill things stronger than oneself.
The first low rank 2 creature he found was a mountain goat grazing in a small grass field on the size of the mountain. It was currently eating away at the grass it had just moved the snow off of.
Seeing the target being in the open and the goat being in the open, makes him think about how he wants to get to the target. He takes a second to think, while staying hidden in a snow pile.
He then decided to do it a similar way to how he stole the dove egg. The snow being over a meter deep makes it easy for him to crawl his way through without alerting anything above.
He uses his ice Qi to freeze the snow keeping the tunnel he is using from collapsing, which would create a dent should it collapse. Continuing along his path he supresses his presence as little as possible, but due to his lack of experience still can't fully supress his Qi.
To counter this, he uses a miniscule amount of ice Qi to not only keep the snow from collapsing but also mask what little Qi is still leaking out.
It didn't take him long to reach the snow near where the goat had cleared out. Unfortunately, the goat had cleared a few meters in each direction making him unable to get closer without being seen.
Unable to get closer to the goat he thinks about bringing the goat closer to him. He lets out a small amount of earth Qi shrouded in ice Qi and sends it a meter away from him. He then implants the earth Qi into the ground and manipulates what its outputting to seem like a spiritual herb.
He removes the ice Qi masking it allowing the earth Qi to seep out in small quantities. There was no immediate effect for the goat as he is only giving it small amounts of Qi at a time.
10 minutes later the goat rases its head and looks in the direction of where his earth Qi is. It seems sceptical about if it really is an herb but when it doesn't sense any Qi other than the earth and ice it relaxes its guard and heads towards the location.
Ready with dagger in hand and body compressed ready to spring he uses the hearing and touch senses he trained to accurately determine the goat's movements.
When in the perfect place he lets loose his spring tight body as it flies forward with the dagger directly piercing through the under chin of the goat and going straight up into the brain by manipulating the Qi to make the blade bigger and have more penetrating power.
A pale blue light shone through the top of the goat's head and disappears as he pulls out his dagger. Watching the goat fall down, he is even more impressed with assassination since normally he wouldn't have been able to take down the goat, with his current restrictions from the weights, Qi supressing seals and not using his main weapon.
Collecting the goat's corpse and cleaning off all the blood that sprayed from the goats neck he continues off in search of more things to hunt.
…
By the time it was night he had managed to successfully assassinate 7 low rank 2 beasts. Some of them were finished quickly due to having their guard down eating, while others took longer due to them hunting themselves so their guard was always up and were moving fast.
Although he wanted to use the cover of night to try assassinate mid rank 2 beasts he didn't as he wants to continue using night to train his senses.
Heading out of the mountains back to the forest he once again covers or blocks all the senses but his nose. Trying to use his nose to find training partners was easier than the other senses so far but getting there was still just as hard.
He ran into many trees and tripped over many things. Due to having no sense of touch he couldn't even feel his way through by touching trees since he doesn't feel it. He only knows he hit something when his whole body hit something.
An hour later he could still be seen slowly making his way through the forest heading towards the direction he smells blood. Managing to not fall as much due to being able to tell if a tree was in front of his by the smell of the bark, he got to the blood-stained area without too many falls or bumps.
The area he was smelling the blood from was a thin tree soaked in blood. He pulls out his scythe and tries smelling around for any other creature or to even try to see if there were two different blood types.
Not smelling anything other than blood he walks forward towards the tree which had the strongest stench of blood. Once less than a meter away he can roughly tell he is close to the bloodiest area and slashes vertically at the tree.
The scythe cuts through the tree as it falls to the ground creating a loud crash. He now understands it's a tree he hit due to the faint sap smell coming from the cut tree.
He waits for a few minutes with his nose on full alert trying to smell other scents. He smells nothing, and he also isn't attacked at any point. This makes him confused as to why there would be a dense blood smell but no creature nearby that has hunted.
He temporarily takes off his blind fold to look around and only sees the cut tree and a large amount of blood staining the area. No corpse, no anything but blood.
At first, he suspects a man-eating tree but all the trees in the area are normal. Being confused but not wanting to waste time he moves away from the area just in case it is some mysterious powerful beast he has to risk his life against like what happens in novels.
In a whole new area, he once again just uses his nose and for the rest of the night he fights against a bunch of mid rank 1 creatures honing his sense of smell.