Washing his body with cold water, Mangrel removed all the impure substances stuck to his skin.
Looking at his body, he appeared slightly pale and sickly, due to the death energy spread through the body. It was a common backlash of storing death energy within a living person.
The first step of the eight rings of death cultivation art — was to replace the death energy in the artificial veins with the origin essence; this process was completed immediately because of the benefits received from the array.
The death energy present in the vein before now spread through his body. Normally, an ordinary human would die infected by death energy, as it would try to harm the life essence within you.
Mangrel didn't have such a problem as he was a cultivator, his life essence had a natural resistance against it. Not to say that he had good control over it too.
Mangrel clenched his fist, staring closely at it, 'I can kill a normal person with a simple punch now. I have already attained one ring of death too, so I have some storage of origin essence. After all eight rings are created, I can try to ascend to rank one.'
After washing himself, Mangrel put on fairly loose pants and tied a thread around its waist area so it wouldn't fall off.
'I have to get out of here quickly, The chances of an assassin coming here are not low. I don't want to clash unnecessarily....' Mangrel moved to the cellar with Mars, quickly bringing all the boxes with material to the entrance of the house. Belvan's body had degenerated to ashes at the end too.
Mangrel did not break a sweat picking up the boxes, his body enhanced to a large degree.
Thinking for a second, Mangrel remembered something said by Meren yesterday.
["Want to play behind the cart..."]
'Cart, I will be needing that to get past the checkpoint naturally I guess. Carrying boxes in hand is just too unnatural after all.' Mangrel dugout memories quickly thinking this far.
However, as Mangrel walked out of the house, he felt a killing intent brush past his body, involuntarily making him jump to the side.
Swish~
A sword embedded itself in the ground where he stood before.
'....I was late, huh? Sigh...'
Mangrel was aware of this risk from the beginning, but he still had to waste some time to become a cultivator for many reasons. The most important reason was so that he could at least fight against unexpected threats.
Looking at the figure, who appeared beside the sword aiming for his life, Mangrel exposed a calm expression.
The cultivator, who appeared before Mangrel, wore a brownish tunic made of fine fabric and shoes made up of leather. With a robust body, he pulled out the sword stuck in the ground.
"Who are you?" The cultivator questioned with doubt, feeling Mangrel to be a cultivator.
"You have a nasty attitude there brother. You ask such a thing after trying to take my life, shouldn't you first apologize?" Mangrel disdainfully looked at the cultivator before him.
"You are the one intruding on our territory here. Not to say that you killed one of our members. You must compensate us according to the rules." The cultivator didn't spew overbearing demand, though he sounded threatening.
The cultivator gave up on killing Mangrel and taking all his resources, instead resorting to extorting some benefits. Killing some mortal could be written off if the other party was a strong cultivator and if he compensated accordingly.
"Ohh, material worth five origin stones should do then?" Mangrel smiled amiably.
Thinking for a second, the cultivator nodded his head, all he cared for was the benefits.
"But let me be clear. You will have to give me the life force physique, you found here. Only then can I let you go from here." The cultivator stated sharply.
"Life Force physique?" Mangrel looked on with confusion.
It was normal for not all cultivators to know about the life force physique.
The cultivator frowned upon hearing this, "...I mean the dead body present in the house."
Mangrel spoke with enlightenment: "Ah, then I can't give them to you."
"What do you mean?" The cultivator's voice turned cold.
"I burnt all the corpses within the house."
"What....?"
"I burnt them all."
"...."
'Things turned a lot more complicated.' Thought the cultivator.
In the pin-drop silence, Mars felt his heart beat louder and louder. An invisible pressure was exerted by the two people before him, making him feel heavy and clumsy.
"Then, give me the compensation first. You are not allowed to leave this city until this matter is investigated properly too. Tell me the place you are going to lodge too." The cultivator spoke in a calm voice as if it couldn't be helped.
"Alright." Mangrel walked to one of the boxes.
Mangrel brought the whole box to the cultivator, who showed a greedy face. Reaching three steps away from him, he pushed the box forward.
"The item within this is worth five origin stones," Mangrel informed him with a calm voice.
"Ohh, that's good. Then....die!"
A sword flashed with blue light, appearing before Mangrel's eyes.
Bang! Crumble!
"You..." Before the cultivator could wallow in surprise, the wooden box, which was cut in two, had one of its pieces thrown on his face.
Shockingly, Mangrel dodged the sword slash with ease. The moment flashed near his neck, he brought the box before it and dodged it by crouching down. Then, on the cover of the box's pieces, he threw one of them at the cultivator.
These actions were done with perfect timing and with no hesitation.
Slash!
Cutting the box with two barks again, The cultivator moved a step forward with a furious face. The next moment his eyes shrank to pin size, a dagger aimed at his eyes.
Jumping back, he was able to escape with just a small cut above the brow.
"Who are you trying to fool with such clumsy acting?" Mangrel didn't immediately launch another attack.
The cultivator had not touched the subject of why Mangrel killed Jwarlen. And the man before Mangrel was without a doubt a demonic cultivator.
Who would try to ambush a person they just met, for some benefits?
Trusting the words of such a person was no different than digging a grave for yourself. Hence, even if the demonic cultivator wanted to end this peacefully, Mangrel planned on ambushing him.
"You dodged that?"
"It's easy when you know the place the opponent is aiming." Mangrel pointed at his neck.
"Hahaha, for a righteous path cultivator, you are not bad." The cultivator nervously laughed, the prior attack almost took his eyes.
There was no apparent reason as to why someone would want to kill Jwarlen, if not for the life force physique. But the cultivator found out Mangrel wasn't even aware of such a thing. So it was rational to think that he did it because Jwarlen was doing an immoral business.
'...Where does he think the wooden boxes came from? He isn't as smart as I thought. Let's end this quickly, the poison should be taking effect by now.' Mangrel's eyes turned serious as he showed a demeaned smirk to the cultivator.