After Ulf ate the bear's heart, a large amount of poor qi started surging inside him as a catastrophic tsunami. As his body cultivation was higher and the beast's heart had a lesser grade than the moose's own, the absorption progressed more smoothly.
His body gained better resistance against the foreign power.
Nevertheless, the confrontation between the two sides continued for quite a long time and when everything was finished the sun was starting to pop out and push back the darkness.
Ulf could feel more domineering power inside him.
'Hm, it seems, I became a peak warrior?! I almost feel no pain from absorbing external qi by using my tribe's cultivation method.'
His physical strength jumped up to another level. The skin became tougher, the muscles were firmer and could produce more raw power. However, during the advancement, Ulf got the feeling that a new huge border was blocking him from the next rank.
Giving some thoughts, it became a logical outcome for him. Even if Ulf got a physique strength as strong as the peak warrior rank, he hadn't learnt how to use the body enhancement technique that was characteristic of this rank.
Peak warrior's body enhancement wasn't only useful in a fight, but also to strengthen the body even more bit by bit. Ulf remembered that his teammate hunters had told him there wasn't any use for shortcuts in order to easily advance on the leader rank. Only pure hard work, talent and time could help hunters to advance above the warrior rank. That was why only two or three out of ten could advance on the leader rank in Hadda tribe.
He didn't have knowledge about the bone forging method either.
Ulf had the intention to gather more information about this method but always was rejected with the excuse that it wasn't time yet. That was why he would have to return to the village to continue body cultivation.
Nonetheless, Ulf got a second advancement that overshadowed the delay to accomplish a major breakthrough in his physique strength. The spiritual energy was pushed forward once again. Extremely powerful energy was flowing inside his body.
Ulf understood that his spirit purification stage of mind cultivation attained higher grades. As usual, the spiritual energy didn't expand in quantity but got purer. As Ulf was meditating, he noticed that achieving a proper meditation state became easier. The spiritual energy started gathering faster.
A more amazing fact was that purer spiritual energy had a better influence on inner qi. It even cleaned some of the left impurities. The benefits of this cleansing weren't limited only to the growth of produced power. Ulf's regeneration and self-recovering ability were improved. The enhancements on his five senses showed better results too.
Previously, Ulf's strength supplied only by his inner qi was equal to peak beginner grade leader rank hunter and combined with warrior power, he would rival some weak middle leader rank tribesmen.
The only reason why he won against the middle-grade beasts was that they were heavily injured. The short-faced bear had lost at least a third of its combat prowess. As for the cave lion, its health was even worse. When the lion tried to ambush him, perhaps less than half of its original capability in agility and strength remained. Defeating these beasts in their peak condition would be near impossible for him till now.
However, after the current improvement, Ulf sensed that he wouldn't have any problem putting up a fight against the cave lion in its peak condition.
The exciting feeling of spreading a large amount of spiritual energy all over his body, even in some new and deeper parts, overwhelmed Ulf. An increased quantity of inner qi began to move according to his will.
When Ulf analyzed his situation, found the reason why his mind cultivation speed decreased drastically over the past few years.
It was a correct statement that cultivating spiritual energy was very hard. Ulf had been meditating already for more than eleven years and knew that developing his mind demanded more effort than building up the body.
However, on another side, there was a fact, that during these eleven years Ulf grasped the power identical to leader rank hunter, which was an unimaginably great success. The youngest leader rank hunters still needed more than forty years of hard work in the village. It was an enormous gap.
However, Ulf connected his fast advancement to the human's rapidly growing and developing body at an early age. Speed of mind cultivation got slower when he started to approach his tribe's standard height.
Maybe, this reason was part of the cause of stagnation too, but it appeared that the main point was another hidden factor. There was a huge diversity between the powers of mind and body cultivation.
The past several days' experiences also proved that his body, which looked fragile on beginner warrior rank compared to the amount of inner qi contained inside it, couldn't withstand leader rank power for a long time.
From this point of view, If Ulf had continued his advancement in mind cultivation like usual, then the aftermath wouldn't pass without some disastrous consequences. Most likely, that was why his body laid the boundaries for mental cultivation.
However, consuming two beats' hearts brought Ulf from the beginner to peak warrior rank and lessened the imbalance. It opened the nearly closed door for spiritual energy.
Ulf had various kinds of discoveries and wanted to study them in detail, but suddenly his spiritual energy caught something weird. It was very faint but, he sensed that a small amount of qi around him began flowing toward the south.
There weren't any dangers nearby or else spiritual energy would give him a warning. So, something was attracting external qi from very far away.
'It seems, it isn't the perfect time to meditate when a big variable situation is evolving into the forest.' Ulf sighed and stood up.
Ulf looked out of the cave, but nothing noteworthy. Even farther?
'What kind of anomaly creates such commotion?' He was astonished.
After looking around, Ulf initiated to gather whatever was most important for him and left the cave. First, he took the weapons and then useful parts of the beasts.
Of course, the first concern was the lion's heart. There wasn't time to consume it and even if there was, Ulf had doubts that unlike the other two ones it would bring any big benefit. His spiritual energy showed unexpected exceedingly growth in power and the mind and body would need some time to get used to it.
Ulf cut the abdomen of the cave lion and took out its heart. In order to not lose any drop of blood, bound it with the blood vessels, put it inside the bag carefully and then continue to extract other useful cultivation resources from the beasts' bodies.
Everything took less than a quarter of his bag. Such an amount of trophies wouldn't hinder Ulf to move freely in the forest.
When Ulf climbed up, he once again tried to see anything on the horizon, however, the high hills on the opposite side of the canyon were restricting his vision.
In order to gain a better position, he targeted the highest spot on his side of the canyon.
On his way to the nearest high mountain, Ulf noticed that the number of creatures was reduced inside the forest.
'It's more than just an unusual event.' He was becoming warier of the ongoing strange incident.
Half an hour later, Ulf was on the biggest mountain in a radius of a few kilometres.
As there was no longer anything to obstruct him, Ulf started to observe the southern direction. At the start, there was nothing, but then enhancement of the eyes was activated.
Bit by bit, Ulf's eyesight was breaking through far-off barriers and was reaching dozens, if not hundreds of kilometres away from him.
Soon he saw three dots.
"Are they Howling mountains?" Ulf was startled due to his observation ability to see the biggest, most important and dangerous part of the southern forest.
Even though what gained his whole attention wasn't Howling mountains, but something else, located on top of the middle mountain, out of three of them.
"Oh my blissful ancestors, what kind of oddity am I witnessing?"