Xin slid two fingers deep into his mouth, and pressed on his throat to induce vomiting. He then emptied himself, furious.
"You made me drink their blood! I think I swallowed a piece of the last guy's throat, too! It's fucking disgusting!" He shouted at the totem internally.
"Me? The whole teeth infusion thing was your idea. Take some responsibility, this is pathetic."
Xin wanted to swear out loud, but it would break the vow of silence, setting him back at least a day and damaging his soul, so he restrained the urge, albeit with great effort.
Loot them! Why are you standing? Get your shit together!
Xin didn't know if the totem was more clear sounding now, or if he was imagining things to cope with the loneliness. I should ignore the totem and focus on healing, he thought. I'm still injured.
Between killing the water path master and his disciple and chasing down the former Fist sect's member who ran away, Xin searched the master's satchel and consumed some blood stoppage and blood restoration pills out of it. And now, with the fourth invader, the hunter also dead, he had no need for spare qi and could focus on healing his wounds properly.
He pulled out the plant rejuvenation dao shard, which was almost done recharging, and sped up the process using his own qi. He then used it to partially restore the healing seed dao shard, which he also had to infuse afterwards. Quite a tedious process, but the reward was well worth it — a single healing seed.
Xin's wounds were mended in seconds, yet he was still hungry and tired. Still, nothing invigorated a cultivator more than a prospect of looting. First, he approached the water path master.
From the fourth try, Xin managed to open up the aperture of his water element core, which was already drying up, and retrieved several dao shards out of it.
Water form dao shard looked like a spiral made of aquamarine, but was very soft to a touch. It was quite expensive and hard to use, a testament to the master's deep water path foundation. Xin was still stressed out by how close this fight went, the master's water form was certainly a strong trap card, especially combined with his deflection based water qi infused blocks. Luckily, the injury he inflicted with the Iron Sting gave him enough momentum to dictate the tempo of the whole fight.
Water jet dao shard, which looked like a glass ball filled with water, with a tiny hose protruding from it, was also of above average rarity. It was stronger than bubble dao shard, for obvious reasons, but spent much more qi to use. Still, in this fight, Xin managed to use it against the opponent, as even without a line of sight, it emitted enough sound to be perceived early and dodged.
Xin didn't recognize the third dao shard, despite his xiandao expertise. It looked like a little azure shell, emanating a subtle sound of flowing water. The small hieroglyph marking it said "Undercurrent", but Xin didn't know what it did. Non-combat ability, Xin guessed, might have something to do with perceiving intentions and emotions, or even some form of precognition. Is this how he detected me when I sneaked up on him? Interesting.
The water path master also had a bag of holding, filled with enough water and metal path materials to feed all the dao shards for quite some time, and as a cherry on top, he carried twenty spirit stones and five stones worth of coins. Quite a treasure.
When it came to the dead disciple, he also had a bag of holding (which Xin felt he owned too many now, a problem he was more than happy to have), and carried two dao shards on his body.
One was the arrow sword dao shard, which he used against Xin, it looked like a tiny arrow with metal feathers and a sword's blade instead of an arrow tip. Second one was also known to Xin, it was called blade sharpness dao shard, but for some reason, this warrior didn't use it. Probably didn't master it enough to activate it quickly, or just panicked.
Other than that, he only had two steel arming swords and one meteoric iron sword, and five spirit stones in his bag of holding. Decent, Xin thought.
Xin kept looting, but his tummy's rumbling became unbearable, so he took a break to eat. He gorged on the group's rice, vegetables and dried meat supplies, stored everything of value into the bags of holding and kept looting.
Xin wasn't allowed to use the looted instruments, only something he crafted himself, but the totem didn't mind tearing the clothing of the dead enemies into rags to use later, or using the fire they lit to keep himself warm.
What should I do with the bodies, though?
Digging graves for them would be hard and exhausting, and rather pointless. Burning their bodies is also tedious and wasteful in terms of firewood. But if I just leave them here, it will attract more predators into the area, which isn't just bad in itself, but would also scare the potential prey.
The answer is simple, Xin thought. It sounds unpleasant, but it's the right thing to do.
Two hours later, Xin had dumped the headless bodies from a ravine to the south, quite a distance away from his lair. This way, even if it attracted the predators into the area, it would be quite far from where he fought. The four heads that he cut were nailed on the sharpened sticks though, left outside of two main forest's entrances for everyone to see. Hopefully, whoever decided to come next would heed the warning.
Xin had no time to ruminate on whether or not this fight was tragic or if these people deserved to die as he hurried back to his lair.
There, absolutely beaten, he could hear a bunch of scavenger birds pecking on the dead boar. He sighed and activated Resonance Palms, then dashed inside and dispatched most of them before they could leave. The boar looked mostly intact, there was enough meat on it to feed a family, the birds wouldn't make that much difference.
Still, Xin had quite a lot of work to do. First, he hid his bags of holding in an old tree hollow, five minutes away from his lair, then came back and spent several more hours drying meat on the sun, using the salt he looted from the invaders to augment the process, and working the hides.
Using the torn clothing and leather scraps, Xin made quite a bed for himself. After cutting off and cleaning some important bones from the boar, he wrapped some meat and fat leftovers into the clothing, hoping that it would last one or two days more this way, put them into a dark corner of his lair and went for a nap again.
Despite the horrific battle he endured just hours ago, decapitating several people and being exhausted from all the labor he had to do, Xin slept like a child, his totem purring happily at the progress he made.
***
It's been four days since Xin started his physical cultivation. Now that he took care of every basic need, he had a lot of free time, and with his abilities, food was also not a problem. Every day, he munched on the leftover food of the invading quartet, collected mushrooms, berries and wild fruit to serve with his dried boar meat or fried rabbits, and enjoyed training to exhaustion in peace, safety and relative comfort.
His body took several days to adjust to the new diet, especially once he started taking physical cultivation supplements. On the positive side, dragon beard root extract was an amazing tool for recovery, removing any muscle soreness and making him much more durable.
The effect of the taurus extract was slightly reduced though, as Xin didn't have any beef to eat, and was forced into using dry boar meat, rabbit meat and poultry. Still, it wasn't as bad as some manuals claimed, and Xin saw his muscles start seriously growing just after the first day of use.
With the dragon turtle extract added on top, even Xin's bones became firmer. So much growth, just in four days! Six more to go!
Xin had finished his second training for the day. Other than endurance training, he also trained with his own weight, mainly using an improvised pull-up bar, made out of a thick stick stuck between two tree branches, but also stretched, making sure his growing body was as flexible and agile as possible.
He also trained his Resonance Palms and Woodcutter's Downswing to perfection again, as with his Foundation stage breakthrough, he could channel much more qi into these moves, and had to get used to them again (and learn to apply this power more effectively). Thus, the area he was in was littered with dozens of dead or sick trees that he cut off. Xin felt like his training was making the forest healthier, reinvigorating it by creating a space for the young and healthy trees to grow. Using metal element to create the wood element. Using death to create life. Curious.
Xin meditated on this after the training was over. He then munched some more of his taurus extract meat mix, finishing his portion for today, rested for ten more minutes and prepared to leave.
Time for a patrol.
***
Now that the forest was claimed, Xin felt emboldened to scout towards the steppe. There could be some rare materials he could gather, and the tiger enjoyed this environment much more, taming it much faster as a result. Now that he was several days into his closed cultivation, his initial arrogant self-confidence was gone, and even the addictive feeling of physical growth couldn't quell the loneliness and frustration building up in his body.
Xin scoffed and kept going.
He knew that his smell wasn't obscured, quite the opposite, as he used certain smelly herbs to keep the blood-sucking insects away from himself, but he felt like it was worth it. He was now wearing a shoddily made jacket, compiled from hides from several different sources, mostly the boar. Still, most of his body was naked, even his genitals itched badly from constantly being poked by the steppe grass.
Sniff, sniff. Xin caught a familiar scent, he was much better at reading what his totemic sense of smell told him. Spirit leaves! These are great for totemic cultivation, and even if I have some at home, these smell fresh and potent!
Xin rapidly moved towards the smell, entering a glade on the north-eastern end of the steppe, where it just started turning into the forest. He never ventured into this area before, as it was quite distant from his lair. He sneaked carefully, obscuring his visage with threes, mindful of a potential enemy encounter. Qi active plants could also naturally attract qi active creatures, after all.
Sniff, sniff.
Potent spirit leaves.
A mammal smell. A horse?
And another one… A woman?