The Fog Woods sect was considered a minor sect in southern countries. In fact, it's sovereign was a man who was only at the second stage of core formation.
When Yuyue heard this information, she truly felt like a frog in a well.
There were apparently far more powerful and well-known sects outside the little forest she resided in. In fact, the Fog Woods sect was so destitute that they had to recruit from nearby mortal villages.
This would be unheard of in a more powerful sect. The bodies of mortals were weak and their potential limited, recruiting them was pointless.
In fact, a boy with talent like Fan Chu was nearly unheard of. Although his talent was middling, it stood far above other mortals.
Yuyue in contrast had a poor talent for cultivation, she was average among mortal disciples and was not particularly skilled in cultivation herself.
This was not a gap that could not be easily made up with determination alone.
The contrast was day and night, Fan Chu had recently reached the first step of Qi development, with the aid of only a single spirit stone, while Yuyue had to spend an enormous amount to even get past the first step.
Since talent was innate Yuyue had no way of increasing it and could only consume vast quantities of pills or spirit stones to power through.
Still, she did have a single fortune, and that was the fact her foundation was more solid than other disciples, even though she was still at the first step of Qi development she was about as strong as an early second step cultivator.
Recently she had given up on hunting stone-skin voles in favor of searching out more valuable prey.
Currently, she was passing through the far edge of the sect, near the borders of the woods. The beast she was hunting was the jade tortoises. They were an elusive animal in the sect, but apparently, they were worth over 10000 spirit stones! Their shells could be used to forge armors and their skin, bones, and muscle were all tempered with Jade Qi and were used in tonics and foods. Even an inner sect disciple would have difficulties getting their hands on one.
The were rarely hunted in the sect simply due to the fact that their shells were impossibly hard, not only that, but their skin was also thick and tough as jade as well.
Damaging through and killing the tortoise through blunt force would reduce the quality of the shell, for a chosen like Luo Ma they would be able to easily kill a Jade Tortoise but to preserve the shell would be a difficult task.
It would be akin to killing a rat inside a glass box, only an incomparably sharp sword or piercing force would be able to preserve the shell without breaking it into pieces.
Still, Yuyue did have a secret method of dealing with it, the sword she had gotten from the treasure pavilion.
The blade of the sword was sharper than anything she could buy from the contribution point store.
She had full confidence that if she struck the precise spot on the tortoise's heart, she would be able to kill it without too much damage to the shell.
While she wasn't strong enough to avoid all damage to the shell, she was confident she could preserve 80-90% of it, this would only result in a minor deduction of the points she could gain.
The outer disciples could only dream of hunting Jade Tortoises as Yuyue could!
Still, Yuyue had to be careful, a Jade tortoise was as strong as an inner disciple and while they were slow and passive animals they would easily fight back if they were caught.
This was also their mating season, and the younger tortoises were highly territorial which made it even more dangerous.
Yuyue had her talisman which would protect her from a few strikes but she couldn't rely on it. It used her own vitality to defend herself, and she was only at the first step of Qi cultivation, her body was not that strong.
Yuyue slowly walked through the forest clutching the sword in her hand.
Her senses had become more sensitive after reaching the first step of Qi development and she was able to sense the tremors in the earth to locate the exact location of the beast near her in a 100-meter radius.
She suddenly senses the movement of two tremors.
One was a heavy tremor and another was much lighter.
She didn't pay the lighter tremor much mind the Jade tortoises often ate stone-skin voles so she assumed the tremor was simply chasing prey.
It was a good chance for her, when the jade tortoise was slowed from consuming its meal she would strike and kill it.
After calculating the direction, she would need to run to intercept the tremor she began to run off.
It was only until she was around 10 meters away did she realize how mistaken she was.
While her view was still shrouded by the trees, she saw the lone figure of a girl being chased by a blood-skin bear.
Seeing the bear Yuyue's heart caught in her throat.
The bear was even more fierce than the Jade tortoises. In fact, blood skin bear's hunted them. If Stone-skin voles were considered rank 2 monsters, and Jade tortoises were rank 3, then blood-skin bears were rank 4!