9 Beast Core

After crawling for a little while, Edward was right next to the corpses of the cows, and he started to absorb their blood into his body. When the blood got absorbed into his body, Edward quickly started to refine it as well as he could to heal his wounds, but this wasn't an easy task, as he was hurting really badly, and he had a lot of trouble concentrating. After about 10 minutes, he needed to take a short break, as he was starting to get a bit dizzy from the pain, as well as absorbing so much blood. After a short 5 minute break, he quickly resumed, he didn't dare stay here for too long.

Whilst he was absorbing the blood into his body, his aura also started to raise involuntarily, making Edward a bit gloomy, this healing process was probably going to force him to break through into the third rank of the body-tempering realm, which would be euphoric for normal people, but in actuality, this was going to hinder Edward's cultivation speed a little bit, but it wasn't that bad. He was still upset though, as the time remaining until the annual family martial gathering was ticking, there was only a little over 9 months remaining.

After healing for about 15 minutes uninterrupted, Edward's aura suddenly surged, as he stepped over the threshold for the 3rd rank, but at this time, he heard some footsteps. And so he hurriedly got up from the ground and bolted off into the opposite direction, as he didn't want to get caught up in any trouble. This proved to be the right choice as some youths clad in brown martial attires arrived at the scene. If Edward was still here, he would recognize these people as people from the Stone family. But at the same time, he would be doomed, as they would see what he was doing. Absorbing the blood of other creatures and people was something that evil practitioners usually did, so it would be impossible for him to explain it without revealing his martial spirits ability.

After the youths arrived at the scene, they all gasped when they saw the two corpses on the ground, this was definitely an evil practitioner's doing! Their eyes showed a glint of fierceness as they looked around them. They had come here because they had sensed a strange fluctuation in the qi, so they had believed it to be some kind of treasure, not something like this! While this was happening, Edward was already far away from his original spot, he had sprinted in the way of the city as soon as he sensed the presence of other people since he couldn't explain himself.

But he didn't get to fully heal his wounds, which made him a little mad. But he calmed down as he reached inside of his bag and took out a shiny brown core. He had managed to snatch this from inside of one of the bodies of the mad cows. This was a beast core! Edward couldn't really believe his own luck as he had managed to get something so precious, this could sell for more than a hundred gold! A beast core was something that some beasts were able to produce inside of their bodies, and it would improve the beasts cultivation speed tremendously, but it was something that only higher ranked demonic beasts had inside of them, as they were hard to condense.

Because of the raw amount of energy contained inside of a beast core, they sold for very high prices, the higher the rank, the more money one needed to get one! Because of this, Edward could manage to acquire some cultivation resources for himself, which would help him both heal and stabilize his cultivation! Since he had this beast core with him, forcefully breaking into the 3rd rank wasn't such a bad thing. It could almost be considered a good thing, but he didn't think too much of it right now, as he still needed to get back to the city safely first.

After traveling for a little while, avoiding beasts along the way, Edward could finally see Croria. But at this time, there were sounds of fighting up ahead, and they were quickly coming his way! Due to his lack of preparation, Edward only hid in the bushes next to him, hoping he wouldn't be found out. But as the sound of fighting got closer, Edward was able to distinguish the sound of a beast, which meant that he wouldn't be drawn into a conflict between families or anything if he was forced to fight.

After a couple of seconds, Edward could finally see the fight quickly approaching his location. The ones who were fighting were two young boys and a girl, they were clashing with a mid-grade rank 1 beast that looked a bit like a flaming stag. But it wasn't real flames though, that was only the aura that was surrounding the stag, which was weaker than a real burning flame, but it was a pain in the ass to fight against if you were weaker. The youths who were now running away were all at the peak of the 3rd rank of the body-tempering realm, but they couldn't get a good opportunity to attack, and so they could only run away from the stag.

Because of the chaos, Edward had almost missed out on a very important detail, these youths were from the Stone family! They were wearing the Stone family's traditional brown martial attire, and they all had martial spirits related to stone. Seeing as how his own family members were being chased, Edward couldn't just sit and watch the battle doing nothing. So he quickly accumulated the strength he had to do a sneak attack on the stag.

The youth were starting to get tired, as they suddenly heard a whoosh sound coming from behind them, and when they looked back, they were stunned. A youth at the 3rd rank of the body-tempering realm, with a really unstable aura, suddenly jumped out of a bush and slashed at the hind legs of the stag! Since the stag had been totally focused on attacking the humans in front of it, it didn't expect a sneak attack at all. The slash wasn't very strong, but it was extremely sharp and swift, easily cutting into the hind legs of the stag, making it crash heavily into the ground.

After seeing this chance present itself, the three of them combined all of their strongest attacks, finishing the stag off for good. They were really grateful to this stranger in front of them, and after noticing his brown martial attire, they were all going to split the parts of the stag with him, and give him their thanks, but before they could do so, he ran off. They were very confused as to why this guy had suddenly run off, but they were still grateful, and they silently memorized his face as they split the rewards from the fight amongst themselves.

...

Edward was swiftly making his way to Croria as he was still filled with adrenaline. The reason he had run away was that of a couple of reasons, the most prominent one was that he didn't trust those people at all, and when they had expensive material in front of them, who knows what they would be capable of doing. He also didn't think he deserved any rewards as he barely did anything, even if the little he did was crucial to the overall situation, he wouldn't feel good taking advantage of them like that.

After a couple of minutes of traveling, Edward finally arrived at Croria once more, even though he had been gone for less than a day, it felt like a long time to Edward due to the struggles he had. And after arriving at the city Edward decided to start by selling the monster core he had gotten. For this, he went to the Storm Forge, which was an organization of blacksmiths that were situated all over the country. And when they crafted weapons that used energy to attack, they neede materials to craft them with, and because of this, they would but all sorts of materials from people, and for a pretty good price as well.

When Edward entered the Storm Forge he could feel a wave of heat roll over him as he entered the lobby. He quickly walked up to the counter to sell the beast core, and when he told the clerk what he wanted to sell, he quickly inspected the beast core and gave Edward a price, 110 gold. Edward thought that the price was fair, and so he sold it to them. After having sold his beast core, Edward quickly went on his way. Now all he needed to buy was a healing pill, as well as some cultivation resources. But when he was just about to leave the store, Edward noticed a sword in the corner of his eye. This sword was giving off an extremely familiar aura to Edward, the aura of wind, therefore he quickly went over and inspected it.

The sword was called the Wind-Chasing sword, and it was a low-grade human-ranked weapon. Weapons were categorized in the same way as martial arts. The sword was extremely attractive to Edward, but the price tag quickly dampened his mood, this sword actually cost 1800 gold! When the clerk saw him staring at the sword, he quickly explained:

"That sword is the best low-grade sword we currently have in stock, and it isn't that far from a mid-grade one, hence the high price!"

Hearing this, Edward wanted the sword even more, but he had to save up some money first, then he would come back and take this sword as his own! After his declaration to no one but himself, Edward went on his way again. And this time, he was headed towards the medicine pavilion. He really needed to both heal and stabilize his foundation, so he could quickly adventure out and earn himself some money!