Chapter 74 - "Now That You Mention It..."
Cai Jingyi, Fu Xuefeng, and Zhong De stood a few feet away with expressions that openly showed how dumbfounded and shocked they were by the way the events unfolded.
Seeing Bai Zemin standing over the body of the First Order Shadow Tiger, none of the three knew how to react to what had just happened.
To Cai Jingyi and the rest, the battle between Bai Zemin and the First Order Shadow Tiger was simply a battle between gods since from the point of view of the three of them the speed and force displaced by both existences were things they could not comprehend even now that they had become evolved humans.
The Shadow Tiger's ghostly speed was undoubtedly astonishing, but what was more astonishing to the three of them had been Bai Zemin's ability to react. He suppressed the Shadow Tiger's speed completely just by relying on three factors.
Reaction ability, strength, battle instinct.
Little did they actually know that Bai Zemin had not even given his 100% in the previous battle.
Slowly, Bai Zemin climbed down from the corpse of the Shadow Tiger and sighed secretly.
Multitasking while he was concentrating on the battlefield and the enemy's movements was really a challenge. If he could get used to his Blood Manipulation skill and Mana, he could not only use the skill on himself, but he could also create weapons to bombard the enemy and restrain them and attack them from inside to outside. Unfortunately, doing such a thing while he was in the middle of a fight was not at all simple and definitely not something that could be learned in a week's time.
Forget it, I'll get better at it little by little. My strength and control over Blood Manipulation have already improved tremendously compared to the first day of the apocalypse. Bai Zemin stopped lamenting and decided to be a bit more optimistic as he made a small but deep cut on the beast's abdomen and began to collect the blood inside.
He even emptied some bottles that had blood from normal creatures and exchanged it for the blood of the Shadow Tiger since although he wasn't sure, Bai Zemin guessed that the blood of a First Order creature should be better than that of an Unclassified existence in some manners.
While he was on that, he decided to check his two most important evolution processes so far.
First, his evolution process to First Order.
[Kill Unranked enemies using Blood Manipulation with a single attack. 100/100].
[Kill First Order enemy using Blood Manipulation on yourself. 1/2].
[Kill First Order enemy with a single attack using Blood Manipulation on yourself. 0/1].
Indeed, he only needed to fulfill one and a half more requirements to advance successfully.
The next thing he decided to check was the progress in the evolution process of his Blood Manipulation skill.
[Collect one hundred liters of blood from fifty enemies level 5 or higher: 68/100].
[Collect ten liters of blood from five First Order enemies: 6/10].
[Collect one liter of blood from one Second Order enemy: 0/1].
A week ago, such requirements were far from possible and it seemed that it would take a lifetime to fulfill all of them. However, today, a week later, except for the last requirement the other two were only a matter of time before they were completed.
These small details showed Bai Zemin how strong he had become while constantly reminding him that he should not be complacent because somewhere out there, there were existences capable of wiping out his twenty years of life and effort in a second.
After collecting a good amount of blood from the Shadow Tiger, Bai Zemin picked up the two orbs from the ground with a complicated look.
When he killed the Blazing Beetle he acquired a skill scroll and three orbs of which one of them was Magic grade. After defeating and killing the Anti-Magic Zombie the beast dropped three orbs and one of them was Magic grade as well. But now that he had killed the Shadow Tiger he only got two orbs and the highest grade was Rare.
Slowly and gradually as he became progressively stronger and capable of defeating First Order existences, the treasures he obtained became less and less in quantity, and the quality also steadily decreased.
After holding on to the treasure orbs, Bai Zemin began to search for the Mana Stone in the head of the Shadow Tiger.
This would be his fifth Soul Stone in case this monster had one; 1 came from the Blazing Beetle, 1 from the Fast Mantis, 2 from two of all the Mutated Dogs he had killed. Bai Zemin had picked them up today while cleaning up the area.
"Em?" Suddenly the sound of footsteps attracted his attention and he looked back without stopping his movements in search of the Soul Stone.
At a short distance and approaching with regular steps, Shangguan Bing Xue was walking through the zombie corpses with an indifferent gaze. The stark contrast between her white dress, silver hair, and her blood-stained surroundings was an exotic sight that could not be appreciated every day.
Her attention went between him and the completely lifeless body of the Shadow Tiger, her eyes had a strange glint in them but due to her icy expression, it was hard to tell what was going on in her head. After she reached a few steps away, she stopped and watched his actions silently.
Bai Zemin's eyes lit up and his attention was stolen by the hard object he was touching inside the Shadow Tiger's skull. With a soft tug, he pulled out his blood-covered hand; however, this was ignored by him and he focused on the dark colored stone in his palm.
His mouth curved slightly into a satisfied smile and he stored his second First Order Soul Stone in a plastic bag next to the rest. He wasn't worried about separating them as the difference in size and shape made it too obvious to identify the differences between each grade.
"Did something happen?" he asked after he stood up and looked the woman in front of him directly in the eyes with confusion.
She stopped looking at the Shadow Tiger's body and looked at him before slowly explaining, "Lunch was delayed to give the others time to work with the Blazing Beetle. Currently, the process is going smoothly but because it's been several hours the survivors are starting to get hungry so everyone is preparing to eat now."
"I see." He nodded, finally understanding what she meant even if she didn't say it explicitly.
"That's okay, thanks for coming all this way to keep me informed." He smiled before turning around and grabbing the Shadow Tiger corpse by a paw before looking back at her and saying. "Let's go?"
Shangguan Bing Xue looked at his actions and raised an eyebrow. She pointed at the monster's body and asked, "You want to eat that too?"
"Eh?" Bai Zemin blinked in surprise and said in a low voice, "My idea was to use this monster's skin as protection at some point, but now that you mention it... I've never tasted the meat of a tiger in my life."