For the next three months, Lingtian didn't leave the Border Stone city; he stayed to help his father manage his shop.
But today, he planned to start his journey to the Zhang royal city. He prepared his horse and some rations and asked his father for a new sword and two daggers, as his old ones were already greatly damaged.
"I will be going, father. This time, I don't know for how long. It could be just a few months or a few years. Take care of yourself and be sure to focus on your cultivation more. When I establish my foundation, I will make sure to get you a foundation establishment pill, and by then, you better be at the ninth stage already." Standing outside the city, Lingtian said to his father and bade him farewell.
"I will, don't worry. You seem really confident, so I will believe in you this time and will make the ninth stage my sole goal from now on. Hahaha," Zhen responded with a hearty laugh. He was really excited by the idea of getting a foundation establishment pill.
"It seems that I should give the store to Ying'er to manage and free up my time for cultivation. It has been a long time since I spent all my time cultivating like crazy..." Seeing the disappearing silhouette of his son, Zhen murmured under his breath and turned around, walking back to the city.
The journey from the Border Stone city to the Zhang royal city would take about twenty days of non-stop traveling, and Ivar planned to do just that.
But traveling in this dog-eat-dog world, there is always a chance of unforeseen events happening, and that's what just happened with Ivar.
Just moments ago, five days into his travel, he stumbled upon what seemed to be a robbery. Just ahead of him, in a narrow valley, there were two groups fighting.
Lingtian relied on his strong soul and experience in hunting demonic beasts to mask his presence and approached undetected.
This place was called the Deep Mist Valley, a valley that linked the outskirts of the Mystic Forest to the south and the main plains of the Brocken Moon Empire to the north.
The Brocken Moon Empire was composed of an imperial family and its four branch royal families that controlled the four axes of the empire land.
The Zhang royal family controlled the southern axis of the empire, and this valley, the Deep Mist Valley, linked the outskirts of the Mystic Forest where the Border Stone city and many more were located, and the main area under the control of the Zhang royal family.
"Don't let anyone escape; kill everyone."
"Regroup and form a defensive line NOW."
"You bastards, you won't get away with this."
Many shouts and screams could be heard from both sides as they fought and killed each other. Lingtian could see that there were about twenty people still alive at the moment.
The robbers were outnumbered but had a much better lineup of experts. There were two ninth-stage Essence Gathering Realm cultivators and six at the seventh stage and below, but the weakest was at the fifth stage.
As for the other party, they had just one at the ninth stage, one at the eighth, and the rest were weak, at the fifth stage and below. These weak cultivators were clearly not warriors but just merchants and servants.
Approaching closer, Lingtian didn't make a move to help any side. He waited in the bushes like a predator, monitoring his prey.
A few minutes later, the fighting was reaching its end; all the weak cultivators had died. The robbers lost two more experts trying to take down the eighth-stage expert. The most surprising fight was between the three ninth-stage cultivators.
Even though the bandits had two people ganging up on one person, they couldn't take him down, so they tried to tire him down first.
'Now' it was at this moment that Lingtian moved out. Taking out his two daggers, he used his ability to mask his presence and swiftly appeared behind the bandit.
The moment the three fighting experts collided, he used his left arm to throw his dagger at the bandit next to him. This was so sudden that he didn't manage to react before the dagger penetrated his head as he was busy blocking the mad expert who was attacking him crazily.
The other bandit, who took the chance to behead the mad expert, reacted and retreated with all his might.
Lingtian ignored the two corpses in front of him and swiftly followed after the retreating bandit, throwing his second dagger at him and taking out his sword.
The bandit was able to deflect the dagger, but he couldn't keep up with Lingtian's speed and failed to stop the sword attack, getting cut down into two parts horizontally.
"Who the fuck are you!" The seventh-stage bandit just witnessed what happened and was greatly shocked and alarmed; he screamed out of reflex.
Lingtian didn't respond but joined the fight between the eighth-stage expert and the rest of the bandits.
After some time, the fight ended; all the bandits had died, and only the eighth-stage expert survived from the other side.
"Thank you, thank you, benefactor, for helping to kill those bandits." The expert was greatly wounded and exhausted, but he managed to walk up to Ivar and thanked him while bowing.
"No problem, it's unfortunate that I arrived late." Lingtian shook his head and said in a somewhat regretful voice.
"Not at all, not at all; the fact that you helped us is already enough." The eighth-stage expert responded while sitting on the ground; he was too tired to even keep standing.
"Why did you get attacked anyway?" Lingtian asked as he looked over; he wanted to know what was going on.
"We were heading back to the royal city from Laos city. We belong to the Treasure Pavilion in the royal city. This was supposed to be a normal escorting mission, but we encountered these damned bandits." A great deal of hatred was seeping from him as he recalled what happened just now; many of those who had died were his friends for many years.
But his train of thoughts was cut short as his head suddenly fell to the ground with blood seeping from his cleanly cut neck.