The moment Luo's and Hua's attacks had landed on the big trolls, they launched their most powerful attacks as well. Xun enhanced her body with Qi and with increased mobility relied on light and fast kick combos to the head , hitting at vital points near the base of the neck. After those consecutive attacks the troll just fell down, dead, with a broken neck lying at an impossible angle.
Hao Qi's most powerful attack however was not an attack but a support type technique. She took out her flute and notes started pouring out of the flute. It had a strange effect of taking everyone in the hearing range into a kind of trance and the trolls started to headbang in coordination with the sharp drops and the lilting notes of her melody.
Luo and the others however understood that her technique affected the soul after it began and immediately used the 36 walls of Soul technique they had learnt earlier and used it to stop the effects of the technique.
They took advantage of the situation and prepared for another round of finisher attacks for the remaining 3 trolls, one for each of them or so it was supposed to be but Luo asked Hua and Xun'er to stop, "Wait, both of you. I want to try something" .
Luo put his hands in his robes' pockets and took out the Qi absorbing stones. He poured slight amounts of Yin and Yang Qi into two stones each.
Then with the flick of a finger he propelled one stone towards the troll that was in the middle of the other 2 and then with a pivot on his left leg, he threw the Yin Qi stone in the same trajectory as the Yang Qi stone. The Yang Qi stone burned the flesh and was about to penetrate the head of the first troll when the Yin Qi stone collided with it and then BOOOMMMM, there was a very powerful explosion in a 5 yard radius and the same effect as his Yin Yang Clap was caused on a slightly smaller scale.
The upper half of the troll was blown apart into pieces and as if in an amazing coincidence one of the stones, propelled by the explosion pierced the skull of one of the nearby trolls. "HAHAHHAHAHAHA, damn, I did not expect that. Now quickly kill the last one you two" Luo said while laughing and immediately walking towards the dead trolls to search for the Qi stones that he threw.
Hua and Xun had their jaws dropped and because of the explosion Hao Qi was startled and had stopped playing the melody with the flute. "Holy Dragon's balls[1], what was thattttt. Did you know he could do this too, Xun? More importantly how did he do it? I did sense Qi was poured into the stones but why did they explode like that?" Hua asked Xun in exasperation.
"Ewwwww… you curse weirdly. But no, I don't know about most of the attacks that my brother uses, though I do get the sense that it's different from the kind of attacks that I can do with my Qi."
The last of the trolls broke out of the trance and after looking at its dead brethren let out a huge roar in anger and then rushed towards Hua who was still talking with Xun even as she kept pointing towards the troll that was rushing towards his back.
And just before the troll could attack with its burly arms , Hua pivoted and used the momentum to slash the troll diagonally and then back to his earlier position as he resumed talking about the technique that Luo had used.
The troll was split into two and the two halves separated slowly and landed with a dull thud as Xun saw the whole thing just as surprised as she was with Luo's attack earlier 'These two are the real monsters here. I wonder if I can be so strong when I reach higher realms.'
Luo put his fingers into the dead troll's head and fished around for the Qi stone. He had found the other one lying a few feet away from the explosion dug into the soil. He had tracked them by sensing the remnants of the Qi that the stones had in them. After a few squishy struggles he managed to get the stones out and proceeded to clean them with the troll's loincloth.
'That was a neat trick brat. Color this master impressed. It's a safe way to use your so called Yin Yang Clap, but I doubt they can carry Qi much more than the fractions of Yin, Yang of Qi you used.'
'Hehe, I know right, master. I had this idea back at the auction and wanted to try it out. But I doubt I will use it in front of a lot of people as they may start asking a lot of questions, but then again, I may use it in such a case as well. Depends on the situation, right master Yin?'
'That is so.'
Luo just brushed off any questions with a smile and they all proceeded to cut out the monster cores of the trolls. Luo and Hua kept one each of the bigger troll's cores and the rest were split between them all, equally. They moved onwards, deeper into the forest and they encountered various groups of monsters in packs of around the same size as the trolls.
They had perfected their group tactics by then. Luo and Hua would take the first kills with their one move, one kill attacks. Then immediately Hao Qi would put them in a trance with her 'Hymn of the Bangers' technique which apparently was a rip off of a classical technique that their family used.
It would make the targets so engrossed in the music that they would start banging their heads with the allegros[2] of the flute. The original technique was called 'Hymn of Torpidity' which would put those caught under it to sleep.
Luo, Hua and Xun would then proceed to kill the rest who were caught in Hao's techniques one by one. Luo however did not use the Qi stones again and just relied on his Physique for attacking.
By the end of the first day they had a huge heap of monster cores that they were carrying around in sacks that they fashioned from the big loincloths that the trolls had used. They were grossed out when Luo had originally proposed the idea that they collect the loincloths for carrying purposes but they had gotten numb to any feelings of propriety by evening.
***
A few miles away from where Luo's team was hunting , Xiao Wu had a band of followers, who started following him and giving him the cores that they had hunted. These were all from minor noble backgrounds or from noble families who wanted to get close to the Wu Family to get future benefits.
Xiao Wu was fiercely slashed ahead into groups of enemies, never stopping to look behind whether he had killed the monsters or not. They were powerful attacks that critically hurt the monster and then his band of followers would finish the monsters off, collect the monster cores and then carry it in packages for him.
"Keep up the good work lads. I will be sure to compensate you when I win the first prize. I will also make sure that a good word is put into the Wu family representatives and teachers in the Heavenly Dragon sect. We must make sure that the trashes that insulted me do not win the competition."
He distributed lesser Qi pills whenever his followers had depleted their Qi and they continued hacking the monsters without a single break. By the time the moon was high in the sky, all of his followers were carrying sacks of monster cores; sacks that they also had the brilliant idea of fashioning from troll's loincloths that they had hunted.
For being the only pieces of spare clothes that anyone could find for carrying the monster cores in, the value of the Troll's loincloths was surely high that day.