Chapter 13: Blood Feast
Volume 3 – The Place Where My Heart Feels At Peace, Chapter 13: Blood Feast
Inside Qianye’s body, a scorching sun gradually rose as the world became filled with light for a period of time! Daybreak origin power gushed out continuously from the four nodes and flowed to every limb and bone inside his body, replenishing the origin power that was consumed.
The blood energy seemed not too used to an environment overly abundant with Daybreak origin power, and they all fell off his innards and reformed into seven blood energies, heading towards his heart. But it was at this moment the gold blood energy suddenly jumped out and caught a normal blood energy, instantly consuming it entirely.
As if it wasn’t satiated yet, it pulled out the normal blood energies that had hidden themselves back into his heart one by one and devoured them until there were only two left. Only then it gradually swam its way back into the ability rune. A change finally came over it, and it was obviously a lot bigger than before. Once it returned into the rune, the gold blood energy immediately curled into a ball and ultimately condensed itself into a gold colored cocoon, motionless.
Qianye ended his cultivation and gradually opened his eyes. A dark colored light of blood seemed to flash across the dim, dark room.
He was finally now a rank four Fighter.
Not only would the physical qualities of a rank four Fighter continue to improve vastly in all aspects, when his realm had stabilized, he might even awaken a new ability. As for what this ability might be, it would depend on said person’s innate gift.
Qianye moved his body slightly, and he could feel very clear that some miniscule changes were happening inside his body yet again. Strength quietly flourished from every corner of his body non-stop, and the unprecedented feeling of power also gave Qianye an unprecedented level of confidence.
If he were to encounter Yu Renyan again, Qianye was confident that he would be able to obtain victory in a direct battle. However, if his opponent was only thinking to escape, then he probably would not be able to keep him from doing so.
Being a rank four Fighter also gave him a most straightforward benefit, and that was he could use Eagleshot twice in a battle now. However, after firing two shots he would basically fall into a state of origin power exhaustion, so he would only be able to continue fighting with origin power after injecting himself with a stimulant.
The rate of his cultivation was faster than Qianye’s own imagination. The consumption of a set of medicines was already enough to activate his fourth origin node. It was no wonder that there were countless young elites within the aristocratic families. Other than the first two nodes, which had to be cultivated fully on their own as a mean to build a firm foundation, the nodes afterward could literally be built by borrowing the power of medicines until all of their innate gifts and potentials had been unearthed completely.
In the eyes of aristocratic families, the question of innate talent was measured by whether a person could break through the pass of a Champion.
However, the higher the rank the medicines corresponded to, the higher their price became too. Basically, every increase in rank meant that its price would be doubled. Never mind the ascension from rank four to rank five, the price of the medicine that were required to ascend from rank five to rank six easily began with a base price of one hundred thousand gold coins. Even for a great aristocratic family, this was not a small number.
Yu Yingnan hadn’t returned yet, and the details of that mysterious mission were unknown either. However, since Qianye had already used up the medicines worth three hundred gold coins beforehand, he had to accept the mission now no matter what its content might be. Otherwise, where would he earn so much money to pay them? Higher income would come only with greater strength. Money begets resources, and only then greater strength would come.
For the next few days, Qianye was going to continue cultivating and stabilzse his current realm properly. At the same time, he planned to nurture his blood energies up to a total of seven once more. Obviously, a decrease of the number of normal blood energy also meant the reduction of defenses around his innards. With only two blood energies around, Qianye would hit his limit right after he pushed himself beyond the thirty third cycle of origin tide, and not the thirty fourth. It might seem like just a cycle’s difference, but his cultivation speed would drop by a whole ten percent.
The Yu Renyan Qianye was concerned about wasn’t in the city right now. After he had recovered from his wounds, he once again left behind the Dark Blade warriors who were searching blindly throughout every city and entered a high grade hunter mission. Right now, he was already at a wasteland several hundred kilometers away from Darkblood City.
This was the edge of the human’s area of control, which was why there were often large sizes of dark races operating around this area. The human race’s main method of control over these lands was to send the expeditionary forces’ main troops over to perform irregular armed patrols. Besides that, the other method was to have the army set up bounties and rely on mercenaries and hunters to clean out the dark forces within the area.
Yu Renyan was fully clad in survival gear, and the short mantle and mask he wore covered a huge portion of his face. He looked just like a veteran hunter. There were also five other people around him, and even the weakest among them was a five star veteran hunter, joining together to form a small, powerful squad.
The squad was currently moving into battle formation and entering a settlement to perform a search. There were about a few hundred people living in this settlement, and it was one of the places they had planned to stop by earlier.
It was now evening, and the sky had darkened a long time ago. Dim light still penetrated some of the buildings of the settlement, but the entire place was dead quiet with not a bit of sound to be heard anywhere. The hunter squad stood at the only entrance leading into the village, but not even the hunting wolfdogs gave any reactions at all.
Yu Renyan suddenly made a stop hand gesture and pulled down his mask. Sniffing the air twice strongly with his large nose, he then stopped bothering to disguise his tracks and ran straight to the center of the village. He paused for a moment on top of the stairs, before extending a hand and slowly pushed open the main door.
The hunters walked into the hall one after another. Then, they stood still in silence.
This was supposed to be the meeting hall of the entire settlement, but now it was a complete mess. The remains of several young boys and girls were placed on top of the long table that could fit thirty people in the form of dishes. Only their heads were intact. Their faces were frozen in the pain and fear they experienced prior to their deaths. Their bodies had already been more or less picked clean.
The walls were nailed full of human bodies like specimens, and there were even more bodies cluttered at sixes and sevens on the floor. The floor, the walls and even the ceiling of the entire hall was painted with a condensed layer of fresh blood, and half eaten limbs and innards were tossed all over the place. A row of stakes were even laid out at the depths of the hall, and every one of them were pierced with a human being!
The people of the entire settlement were all here.
Suddenly, a rustling noise rang inside the hall as one fist-sized spider after another crawled out of the bodies. They turned their heads all at once towards the hunters while bloody red compound eyes glared, their mouthparts opening and closing repeatedly.
“Servspiders of arachnes.” a veteran hunter said in a heavy voice.
“There were at least five or six vampires, or they could not have put up a blood feast this size.”
“They had just left not long ago. It should not be more than a day.”
Yu Renyan pulled out his handgun and blasted the new born servspiders crawling towards him into smithereens before saying hideously, “We’ll chase them and kill them all!”
The rest of the hunters had no objections to that. No one could suppress the fury in the hearts after witnessing this sight.
Gunshots erupted inside the hall. The six hunters formed a circle formation by sticking their backs against one another. The weapons in their hands spat out flame tongues continuously as they blew apart the innumerable servspiders that were charging towards them.
In the hands of these high ranking hunters, even the rapid fire of an automatic rifle was no different from burst fires to them. Not a single bullet missed, and the hundreds of servspiders in the hall were swept clean in the blink of an eye.
A rank six hunter with half white beard took out a square-shaped molotov cocktail and was planning to toss it out. However, his hand was pressed down by Yu Renyan.
“Keep it. It will do good to have the others see this so that they will not forget the past thousand years of history and the wars of countless casualties.” Yu Renyan said.
A blood feast like this was rare especially within the human race’s area of control. The moment they appeared, the imperial expeditionary forces would view immediately it as a major provocation. No matter what the authorities had in mind at the time, they would usually be inclined to take revenge. It could be said that a blood feast within the human’s domain usually equaled the starting sign of a new round of racial war.
Yu Renyan’s words were filled with deep meaning, and the other hunters were looking pensive as well. On the Evernight Continent, there was a portion of the human race who utilized the special geography of the abandoned land to perform transactions with the dark races in secrets. This was almost an open secret already. Even some people at the internal division of the imperial expeditionary forces had once suggested obscurely if they should coexist with a portion of the dark races.
However, how could thousands of years of blood possibly be wiped clean by a light word of “coexist”?
“These black blooded bastards aren’t weak.” a hunter said slowly.
“We’re not weak either! What, you’re scared?” another hunter in the prime of his youth bit back.
The previous hunter grew angry, “Scared? You weren’t even born yet when I started killing those black blooded bastards!”
An old hunter said, “Let’s listen to Little Yu’s opinion. He is more experienced than either of us.”
This was not a praise, but acknowledgement. Yu Renyan had cooperated with them a couple of times, and he had won every squad member’s respect with his strength and results to show.
Yu Renyan’s voice was a little raspy, “A thing like this cannot be endured. We chase them, and take out these bastards!”
The elderly hunter immediately said, “Alright! Let’s kill those bastards! Who cares how strong they are!”
The hunter squad left behind some marks outside the settlement and charged into the boundless wasteland.
The marks left behind by the squad of dark races were few, but the thick stench of blood and the stink that was unique to arachne were distinct signs in the eyes of these veteran hunters, not to mention that they had a tracking master like Yu Renyan in the group too. He chewed a small piece of servspider meat and memorized the scent of the two arachne who had participated in the blood feast just like that.
A day and a night later, a base belonging to the dark races appeared in the hunters’ field of view. The final tracks of the squad of dark races who had created the blood feast yesterday stopped there.
The hunters spread out and quietly approached. Then, a few gunshots boomed as the few dark race warriors roaming and patrolling at the edge of the base collapsed in response.
Every hunter felt their hearts tighten. They were simply doing harassment shots, but they did not think that they would have succeeded this easily. If the patrollers were high ranking warriors of the dark races, then they would be lucky if they even get half of them during the first round of ambush. At best, the ambush would grievously wound their opponents. However, not only did the ambush went off perfectly without any misses, the enemies had all died in a single shot. This meant that the patrollers were not warriors at all. They were all cannon fodders!
Yu Renyan was the first to react as he abruptly stood up from his hiding spot and let out a shrill howl of warning. This was the tradition of a hunter squad, an expression to mean that he was willing to cover his squad’s retreat. The rest of the hunter stayed motionlessly in their hiding spots and did not escape in a panic. On the wasteland, leaving one’s back to the dark races meant death.
Flickering shadows surged out of the opposing base, as a dozen or so high ranking warriors formed by arachne and vampires spread out and pushed outwards in a wing formation. They obviously planned to capture the attacking hunters in one go.
Then, another four vampires walked out of the base’s main entrance. They were all tall and wore arrogant and cruel expressions on their faces. The armor they were draped in were almost excessively gorgeous, and all of the same style. They were obviously of the same clan.
Yu Renyan and the hunters’ hearts abruptly sank! Blood Esquires, and four of them no less!
An anointed Blood Esquire was at least rank seven in power. Occasionally there would be rank six Blood Esquires, and those kinds of esquires must be incredibly young and the publically recognized geniuses of a big clan. Contrary to expectations, they were in fact even harder to deal with than rank sevens. Yu Renyan was confident that he could take out a Blood Esquire one on one in direct combat, but he would definitely perish if he tried to fight one versus two instead.
With their squad’s strength, they would lose just going up against three Blood Esquires. Against four, without the loss of a few lives it would be very difficult to even escape, not to mention that there were still several dozens of high ranking warriors watching them covetously by the sidelines. These were not normal cannon fodders.
It was at this moment another two people walked out of the base. One of them was a tall, thin and handsome looking young man. The center of his forehead was an impressive vertical pupil! This was a demonkin; an incredibly rare demonkin. The fact that he had grown out his third eye signified that he had already broken through his limits and reached the level of Champion!
Beside the demonkin, there also stood a girl whose appearance looked completely like a human.
She was incredibly beautiful, and she had a pair of big eyes and thick and black long hair that flowed down her shoulders like silks. She wore a blank and innocent expression on her exquisite face. She was a little thin and weak, and she stood barefooted on the ground. Her white skirt was dirty, and the edge of her skirt had already frayed into threads a long time ago. She looked to be about twelve or thirty years old, and there were plenty of unhealed wounds on her hands and legs.
The girl was actually dragging a square-headed, thick-backed butcher knife over one meter long in her little hand! If swung around in a full circle, this big weapon about a dozen or so kilograms could split open a lion’s head with the weight of a downward smash alone!