Chapter 55: Interlude: Murder On The Streets
Rewinding back to when Li Ling first cast the Meteor Spell...
Right after it was cast and everyone reacted, Li Ling felt the pain of his dantian being empty, like being hungry for three days and seeing food before you. His body immediately began to wantonly absorb spiritual energy to replace his losses, and the young man pulled out spirit stones to hold in both hands, draining them rapidly.
However, doing this would not recover Magic Power fast enough. His physique was not good, and even though his cultivation was high, the blockage in his spirit root was there, so his recovery rate was abysmal compared to other cultivators, and this was not something easily fixable.
However, he was not trying to recover to full, just to recover a slight bit of his spiritual energy. As it were, Li Ling first raised his leg and stomped down on the building he was on, unleashing the full scope of his Blood Qi from his Perfected Mortal Flesh body cultivation, which caused the sturdy building to come down.
With a scream, all of those within were crushed to death, turning into meat paste regardless of whether they were a yang furnace for plundering or yin demonesses here to pay for a round of ’suction’. At nighttime was the brothel’s best time in terms of activity, more than a few Qi Refinement demonesses were present within, including the Foundation Establishment mistress who managed the building.
"Impudent!" She roared as she blasted out of the rubble in a rather sorry state, having been taken by surprise as her focus was locked on the forming Meteor in the sky.
When she came out and saw Li Ling, who had lowered his Essence Locking Technique and revealed a portion of his yang nature—while still disguising his face of course—the woman, revealed to be a late-thirties beauty with heavy makeup, suddenly smiled coquettishly.
"Oh? Young master, there is no need for such violence, right? Come, tell big sis what your problem is and I promise to make it go away~"
It wasn’t even an intentional act, but was like a completely natural reaction towards sensing yang energy, causing her feminine and alluring side to be on display in order to seduce him into her bed to be plundered.
However, the current Li Ling had already reached a point of peak madness and sobriety, his eyes completely bloodshot like a crazed demon while his words were gentle.
Just as she was mired deeply in her path as a demoness, Li Ling too was firmly mired in his path as a killer, with both of them aiming to use the other for their own purposes. As such, Li Ling did not exchange words as his secondary goal had been achieved since the meteor had distracted everyone in the market.
Otherwise, why would he use such a ’loud’ attack to strike? Even if his daoist art was powerful, with his lacking cultivation, it would be a pipe dream to smash the market to paste, or did Li Ling take the cultivation world as a joke?
Even in the number 9 market, Li Ling only caused a commotion near the exit, and only blew up those early Qi Refinement fellows in the outer area. He hadn’t actually provoked those in the middle sector much, and hadn’t even gotten to see those in the core section at all.
So to wipe a demonic sect’s market where there were no level restrictions, without having a cultivation at Core Formation and higher, he was dreaming. The current him did not qualify for such a grand achievement, but Li Ling actually did not mind this.
Because his true goal was to rapidly gather Slaughter Points by manually killing while the others used all their power to defend against his meteor!
That was why he stayed within the range of his own attack, or why not fly to the sky and cast it from there? After all, life was not a game where the user would be conveniently excluded from the area of effect of their own attack, meaning that Li Ling was perfectly capable of killing himself with this attempt if the others did not block it properly!
But such a risk was small compared to the potential reward!
So he did not exchange any words with the Foundation Establishment demoness, only using his system’s new feature to scan her.
｢Name: Qian Xue’er
Status: Slightly Injured, Terrified.
Age: 96/245
Slaughter Points Value: 60
Cultivation Base: Foundation Establishment level 6 (10%)
Remarks: A former Joy Sect disciple, Qian Xue’er eventually chose to become an external elder after reaching Foundation Establishment due to lacking talent and resources, charged to manage the Lingge Building, occasionally ’skimming’ off the top of the yang furnaces within to slowly grow her cultivation. She is currently trying to seduce you in order to drain your yang, as you are the first Foundation Establishment male cultivator someone of her status has had access to.｣
Li Ling raised an eyebrow.
Terrified yet able to act so sultrily?
Truly, these Joy Sect women were something fierce, not like your average demonic cultivator. Still, this woman was dreaming if she thought that she would be able to take him down, Li Ling thought with cold amusement.
With his Perfected Spirit Sense Control, he immediately unleashed both the Blood Drinking Spear and the Mountain Splitting Sword, both top-tier spirit artifacts charging from different angles towards their target at bullet-like speeds.
Immediately, Qian Xue’er’s face changed greatly, filled with utter terror. After all, it was a well-known fact that Joy Sect demonesses were not good at frontal combat, their skills lying in their insidious arts and clever use of fragrances to control their enemies.
However, the fragrance that Qian Xue’er had spread out long ago, which was formless and colorless, had been blocked by Li Ling’s Blood Qi aura which sizzled continuously as if someone had poured water on a hot pan. To defend against the Foundation Establishment art, the Blood Qi was being rapidly consumed, its radius going from ten meters to nine, then to eight...
However, this was fine as the Blood Qi could be regenerated in time, but Qian Xue’er was immediately thrust into her greatest life-and-death crisis in the face of the two weapons coming at her.
"Young master, wait! We can discuss... AIIEEE!" She screamed in pain as she initially tried to beg, retreating quickly and unveiling a defensive magical artifact from her void ring, but was first pinned by the Blood Drinking Spear which tore a slight opening for the Mountain Splitting Sword to bisect her from the waist.
｢System Prompt: You have gained 60 Slaughter Points.｣
Li Ling sneered at the dead woman whose lifeforce had been obliterated by him. Even though she had a defensive magical artifact—magical artifacts are Foundation Establishment-level equipment while spirit artifacts are Qi Refinement-level—her Spirit Sense Control technique was too crude to fully utilize it.
It was like a free kick in soccer. Li Ling, the striker, had immense ball control but slightly weaker kicking power, not enough to lift it over the defensive wall. Qian Xue’er and her defensive magical artifact were a defensive wall with extremely tall players, but their reaction speed and spacing were poor.
So rather than lift the ball over the defensive wall to strike the net, Li Ling curled it from the side, which the defensive wall should have been able to easily block were they not so clumsy.
It was exactly for reasons like this that Li Ling dared to cause slaughters, because he knew the tyrannical value that came with high skill mastery in daoist arts when fighting cross-realm or within one’s realm. Coupled with good equipment, it was not far-fetched to be able to treat your seniors like juniors in terms of battle skill.
Done with Qian Xue’er, Li Ling used the little magic power he had recovered to continue to control the two weapons to go on a crazy killing spree, targeting those who were escaping at first notice so that the ones defending didn’t notice his actions right away.
Notifications of kills came rapidly in his ears, but Li Ling remained calm and focused, only reluctantly pausing his rampant killing due to the fact that the meteor was about to hit. Immediately, he activated the Golden Bell Shield and opened the Infinite Slaughter System.
In this time, he had accumulated another wave of Slaughter Points, numbering 301, the majority from the first building he crushed and its many Qi Refinement cultivators. However, most hadn’t died outright and were still struggling for life under the rubble thanks to Qian Xue’er’s last-minute operation to preserve the core of the structure; its personnel.
The women extracting yang could die, but definitely not their precious yang cauldrons!
Anyway, Li Ling could care less as he invested 90 Slaughter Points to raise his Mind Power Realm to Perfection, then placed 45 points into his qi cultivation, going from Foundation Establishment 2 to 3. In a matter of seconds, his dantian was not only refilled to the brim, but its quantity had increased further, along with his buffed spirit sense that now reached 320 meters.
KRAKOOM!
At this time, the meteor landed and the shockwave erupted, causing more to perish or become wounded, but the general sentiment was that of cheerfulness as the majority of people had somehow survived the cataclysmic scene from before.
However, just before they could call for investigations towards the source of this calamity, Li Ling activated the daoist art once more, burning all his magic power to form a new meteor in the sky as he spoke in a cruel yet teasing manner.
"Good job dealing with that one, fellow cultivators! Now, what will you do about the second one?"
In the face of his words, everyone looked up to see a meteor that was around a third bigger than the previous one falling on them. This one was only 30% weaker than it should be, and each percentage of efficiency in this daoist art meant worlds of difference in terms of actual power.
Li Ling chuckled at the expressions of sheer despair on the faces of everyone, especially the two Core Formation cultivators who fell into a daze. They knew no one would save them this time because this was merely the fifth marketplace of the Boundless Joy Sect and due to their ongoing war with the Qing Shan Sect, they did not dare station their core disciples or elders out here.
Some people directly fell on the floor, sitting on their asses with dazed expressions as they had given up, while others burst into tears, sobbing in their last moments as they knew escaping was futile.
The dual cultivator of body and qi who lost both his arms, who had been smiling at their previous success, was now completely in the depths of despair, roaring endlessly as he vented his unwillingness.
But no matter who it was, their fate was sealed and they knew it. Because they knew it, they couldn’t even muster the energy to launch another barrage, not because of fear, but because of sheer futility.
Hah, cultivators are against the heavens?
In the face of an apocalyptic-level attack like this, all were equal. No matter how rich, how beautiful or how intelligent you were, it was all for naught when a piece of rock the size of a town comes crashing down atop your head.
In that moment, whether cultivator, mortal, man, woman or beast, you would show your truest self, because that would be your final display of sincerity to the world.
KRAKOOM!
Joyous Number 5 Market was completely leveled in this strike, turning the entire prosperous area which even had a small spirit vein underneath into a complete wasteland with a central crater.
From the edge of the crater, a hand poked out of the ground that dragged a beaten and bruised body out of it, revealing a half-dead Li Ling who, despite the pain he felt all over, was laughing crazily due to joy.
Slaughter Points! Oh, so many Slaughter Points!