10 Chapter 10 – Saving the Damsel in Distress

One month passed by.

Deep in the Snowcape Demon Mountain, on top of a tree branch, a young man was sitting, hiding his presence using the branches and leaves and looking at a direction. The young man had a sharp gaze, like he is ready for battle at anytime. His body was filled with scars, even though he looked lean, his muscled were torn and hard.

It is Zhu Xuan, who was sitting on the branch, looking at a golden horned bull that is walking towards his direction.

For the past month, he has been hunting and improving non-stop in the mountain. He had to go through life and death situation quite a few times. Once, he was almost killed by an eighth level demon beast. Thankfully that demon beast was not very intelligent and he threw it off with a feint using his fireball and escaped. All the experience he accumulated for past one month gave him lots of battle instinct and experience.

In this month, he also made another breakthrough, and he is currently at the peak of sixth stage of body purification.

He saw the bull was turning sideways from his direction and stopped his thoughts. He threw a fireball behind the bull to make it run towards his direction. When the bull ran close enough to the tree, he jumped down and formed a sword from his fire Qi and swung it down its neck. The head of the beast flew in the air and its body ran a little distance before it fell.

He made great progress in modifying the blazing flame fist and using it in different ways in training. He could already make changes other than simple fireball he used to a month ago.

He walked towards the head of the beast and cut its horns. They could be sold at good price in the city in exchange for gold. He also collected the blood from the bull and he walked back to the cave he was residing for the past month. He stored all his loots like precious materials from demon beasts, herbs he found in this cave for past one month.

He is planning to take them when he get back to Qinglu city and sell it. That will help him get resources necessary for his cultivation.

He sat down to absorb the demon beast blood; He meditated for a while, opened his eyes and let out a sigh "The demon beast blood is not effective anymore. I need either peak ninth rank or eighth rank demon blood, if I need to progress to the next stage."

He has been absorbing the blood directly unlike other cultivators who use pills to absorb the essence of the blood. As a result, his strength improved a lot. Even though he is at sixth stage, he can easily defeat a seventh stage cultivator and fight on equal with eighth stage cultivator of body purification stage.

But this also made the blood of demon beasts that are in his same level ineffective. "Looks like I need to go further deep into the mountain" He thought.

He walked out of the cave and moved deep into the mountains in search of peak ninth rank demon beasts. He avoided all other demon beasts. He didn't want to wantonly kill; he did only for his necessity.

After a few hours of travel, he found a lake. He was planning to get some water when he suddenly heard the sound of battle in distance. He carefully moved towards the direction of the battle. When he was close, he got up on a tree and observed the situation.

He saw two groups of cultivators, ten people in each group. One group is fighting a peak ninth level demon beast, a Giant Warthog, while the other group is trying to move past the direction of the fight towards a small hill.

A young man wearing embroidered cloth and armour from the group trying to go past the fight jeered at the girl in the other group and said "Bai Ling, if you beg me, maybe I will help you."

Zhu Xuan looked at the other group and found a blue clothed young girl, standing next to a middle aged man, and three more people trying to fight off the warthog. The others are already dead.

The young girl looked like she was around 16 years old. Her appearance could be considered beautiful, but when you looked at her face, she gave an aura of innocence and kindness. It gave a nice charm to her. He searched his memory and realised that she is Bai Ling, third princess of the Bai clan, one of the five prominent clans of Qinglu city.

But currently the young girl was fuming in anger. She angrily shouted at the young man "Cai Guo, you bastard. You said we will work together to get the treasure and you tricked us into walk into this demon beast. Don't even think I will ever let you get away with this."

Cai Guo laughed loudly and sarcastically replied, "Since the young princess didn't need our help we will be on our way."

The group belonging to the young man, Cai Guo walked towards the small hill that was behind the warthog.

Zhu Xuan looked at the young woman's group who is struggling against the warthog. He couldn't let the group die. He just couldn't help it, whenever he heard of betrayal there is a twinge in his heart and reminded of his sister's betrayal. Moreover, they are from the same city so he decided to help them.

He looked at the situation. The young woman Bai Ling and the middle aged man protecting her are slightly wounded where as the three people fighting the warthog directly is heavily injured. All three of them are in eighth stage of body purification, while the middle aged man protecting Bai Ling is at the ninth stage of body purification.

Then he observed the young woman closely. She is at the seventh stage of body purification, but what surprised him was she was using a bow and arrow and the arrow is made of ice; she has an ice elemental root and she is using it to form an arrow and attack the warthog.

He decided he shouldn't wait and he changed his face and body by modifying his bones using the technique and moved towards the direction of the fight.

Bai Ling was depressed. She just realised how naive she was, trusting another group from another city, even though her uncle advised her against it. Now she got herself into such a terrible situation which resulted in losing half of their group and the rest of them are not in any good condition.

She knocked another ice arrow to attack the warthog. It hit in its face but didn't too much damage. Its hide was too thick, but the attack angered it. It charged towards Bai Ling, the other three tried to block it. But it flung its horn and threw all three away, and charged close to Bai Ling.

Her uncle pushed her away and attacked it head on. But it was too fast and strong and flung the middle aged man. He flew far away and fell down, not moving his life or death unknown. The Warthog turned around and again charged towards Bai Ling. She didn't even have time to steady herself and get up.

Just when she thought she was going to die for sure, a fireball came from nowhere and hit the warthog on its side. This changed its direction a bit and it ran past Bai Ling from her side. Before she could even realise what is going on, a shadow ran past her towards the Warthog.

The shadow is Zhu Xuan; he ran towards the warthog and hit its face with another fireball. It charged towards him, but he sidestepped and formed a sword from his fire Qi and slashed at its side. It injured the warthog and it bled. It got angry and charged towards him again with more ferociousness. This time he threw two fireballs at its face, sidestepped and formed fire Qi chains and threw it towards the front legs of Warthog.

It buckled and fell down on the side and slides heavily on the ground. The force of it threw Zhu Xuan twenty metres in air who was on the other end of the chain. He dissipated the fire Qi chain, made a fire Qi spear in the air and plunged down directly towards it face.

He shouted loudly, used his own full force and the gravity to plunge the spear directly in its eyes and straight into its brain. It twitched for a few moments and died.

Bai Ling looked at this scene, shocked and dazed at how he saved her and killed the warthog effortlessly. Zhu Xuan dissipated the fire Qi spear, got off the head of the dead Warthog and walked towards Bai Ling.

He extended his hands towards Bai Ling to let her get up, and asked with a smile, "Are you alright?"