By the time the day was over, Di Tian had completed thirty two more kills, bringing his total kill count to fifty.
The dynamics changed after he left the Golden Eagle's zone. The next couple of territories on Mount Wuling were inhabited by Demon Beasts in small groups, each headed by the strongest among them.
Only about six out of these thirty-two new Demon Beasts that Di Tian encountered possessed bloodline skills. Learning from his previous experience, Di Tian was particularly cautious when battling with them and resorted to sneakily targeting their vital spots when the opportunity arose instead of going for a frontal clash.
Even then, Di Tian found himself suffering a loss each time and only managed to win with the tactic of trading injury for injury, relying on Spirit Herbs and his unique Healing Talent afterwards to recover rapidly. Luckily for Di Tian, many Spirit Ginsengs were present in the new territories he conquered, so he didn't have to consume any other Spirit Herbs with possibly dodgy effects.
Di Tian now understood why the Life Encyclopedia had mentioned that Body Tempering human cultivators were generally incapable of battling True Demon Beasts at that stage, and only after condensing Qi to become second-stage cultivators and learning cultivation techniques to boot could they barely qualify.
Di Tian was lucky that the Demon Beasts he fought were newly evolved and still in the process of purifying their bloodlines. Technically, they only qualified as Pseudo Demon Beasts at best. A true Demon Beast of the first rank that had mastered all three bloodline skills available to them at that level would be a challenge for even a peak Body Tempering cultivator to defeat easily.
Regardless, Di Tian got the chance to hone his battle awareness and gradually develop his own unique combat style in the process.
Hours later, Di Tian stopped hunting when the sun was setting and built his tent once more. Dinner was dried food rations, energy bars and plain water, and after eating, he spent most of the night partially awake in the event of possible sneak attacks.
As a result, Di Tian was mostly drowsy when the sun rose the following morning.
"Today's supposed to be the day of the tournament," Di Tian suddenly remembered this fact and his mood turned sour. He had to intentionally control his breathing to calm himself.
"There's no use getting riled up over a situation I can't control," he thought, forcing himself to think about another matter; he only had one day left to clear the rest of Mount Wuling. Fang Ao would be returning the next morning as the two-day deadline would be over by then.
Di Tian proceeded to begin today's exploration, this time with an enhanced sense of urgency.
Subconsciously, he took out his anger on the Demon Beasts he encountered, becoming fiercer in his attacks.
By mid-day, he discovered he had been neglecting his radar territory big time. When he fully utilized the heightened observation power it provided in close combat, he realized it gave him a near-godly prediction ability.
For example, he encountered a mutated Porcupine that possessed a bloodline skill to shoot out spikes from its body, but one at a time. Because Di Tian was able to sense its heart accelerating whenever it was about to activate its skill, he was able to know when to dodge, predict the direction of the shots and sweep in, finishing it off with ease.
"My abilities are very practical and go hand in hand," Di Tian was satisfied. He could visualize his future combat style; by leveraging on his prediction power within his territory, he could dodge attacks or set their landing destination to non-vital body parts. Even in worse case scenarios, his body could rapidly recover from injuries anyways.
With this new realization, the time Di Tian took to defeat the Demon Beasts reduced. By the end of the day, he had already wiped out almost all the Demon Beasts on the mountain.
Of course, these Demon Beasts only accounted for five percent of the total animal life on Mount Wuling. Most of the wild animals were actually in deep hibernation, still evolving their bloodlines.
Di Tian only had one final territory to explore, but he hesitated.
"Most Demon Beasts are nocturnal and stronger at night," he thought. "It's almost night and I'm already exhausted from fighting all day. But the deadline is supposed to be tomorrow morning, what do I do?"
Di Tian considered it and decided to wait till dawn. Besides being fatigued and having his vision impaired at night, he had no idea what creature was in the final territory, whether it was alone or in a pack and possessed bloodline skills or not.
It wouldn't be too late to try to kill it very early in the morning, hopefully before Fang Ao returned.
"If I did not possess these particular set of abilities, I'd have died several times over," Di Tian reflected. "But Fang Ao gave me this mission like it was no big deal at all. Are the standards of cultivators outside the planet that high?"
This line of thought made Di Tian subconsciously rein in the little pride he had gained from his victorious battles so far.
"That's not right," Di Tian remembered the excerpt from the Life Encyclopedia uploaded by the Universal Council that made comparisons about the combat strength of humans against that of Demon Beasts at the first stage. "Maybe it's the standards of the Taboo Order that's high, not the general cultivation world."
Di Tian continued his musings as he proceeded to build his tent. He was a bit pleased that this would be his last night on Mount Wuling. After the past couple of days, he needed a long bath, good food and some quality sleep.(A/N: Wistful shenanigans if you ask me, tsk)
But while he was fantasizing, a strong sense of danger suddenly assaulted his senses.
"What is it?" Di Tian instantly became alert. He was no stranger to this intuitive forewarning; it had manifested before to warn him of Patriarch Auna's malicious presence.
The fact that it was manifesting right now could only mean that he was in mortal danger at the moment.
Sure enough, his body abruptly froze as an awe-inspiring aura pressure rooted him on the spot.