Red Talon Piercing The Darkness

Hong Zhao shut the door to his room with a sigh. He looked at the bed and noticed a cultivating Ren Cai. Instead of interrupting her meditation, he sat on the floor and began to cultivate himself. Though he had just broken through two ranks in one go, he still had yet to stabilize his foundation. If he did not put forth the effort, it might result in his qi going down in quality at the least. At most, he could hurt his foundation, sending him towards a future of problems within his cultivation.

As he looked within, his qi spiral remained almost at the beginning of the fifth star disciple rank. Feeling the familiar feel of qi flowing into his body, he allowed himself to dive into his meditation. Two funnels of pure energy flowed into two motionless forms until the sun reached the end of its daily journey, and the stars came out once more. Hong Zhao opened his eyes and looked around the small room. He wasn't surprised in the least to see Ren Cai sitting on her bed, looking down at him with a smile.

"I was wondering how long it would take you to make it back."

"It took slightly longer than I thought it would." Hong Zhao scratched his nose embarrassedly.

"Though it didn't take longer for the reasons you would have thought it would." She said with a knowing smile. "At most, the assault took an hour." She cocked an eyebrow as she looked at the small boy. "You took a whole week for other reasons, mister fifth star disciple ranked cultivator."

Hong Zhao's eyes went slightly wide as he looked at himself internally. "I did have to take off the qi suppresser to cultivate at least." He thought out loud, though he had already changed into his qi blocking uniform before sitting down to cultivate.

"I was there for most of the week looking after you." Ren Cai said as she rolled her eyes. "Honestly, who just sits down randomly in a forest and cultivates for a full week? That's just asking to be fierce beast food."

"I think it's about time for us to continue our way to Yuan City." Hong Zhao said after clearing his throat. "We have already been here for a few weeks. I don't want us to fall too far behind." He thought back to the conversation he had with Lan about the new alchemist. "We don't know how long exactly we will have to locate this Yeng Feng. If Lan knows about him, odds are the city lord does too."

"Before we leave though, don't you think we should look at the spoils you received from your raid?" Her eyes lit up when thinking about it. "I did look at each corpse you dropped and noticed that each of the fifty men you dispatched was missing a ring, or any possessions. You were pretty thorough." She raised an eyebrow in praise.

Though he would much rather leave than check the spoils, he could see a childish glint in Ren Cai's eyes. Even though she was ten years old, he had to sigh when he remembered the world class assassin who had once worn the same look on her face at the age of thirty. His mouth twitched up in a slight smile as he waved his hand on the ground. As he did, a pile of storage rings appeared on the floor.

Hong Zhao split them up in terms of appearance. Some were just simple copper rings. These rings might go for ten gold in the market. He counted at least twenty five of them. He then moved on to the bronze rings, which he counted fifteen. Ten silver rings found their way to their own pile, then four gold rings. The last ring was a masterpiece. It was a clear jade ring with gold wiring wrapped around it. His eyes shone as he looked at a ring only royalty should be allowed to wear.

Taking a gold ring, he tossed it to Ren Cai. "I don't know if you have your own storage ring yet or not, so there's one on the house." He smiled as he saw her brows knit. "Don't worry, what is mine on this journey is also yours. I will share everything there is within these rings." After he promised, he began to look through the rings.

The simple copper rings held nothing of high importance. At most, there were ten gold coins and a small pile of qi grasping pills. There were some gold trinkets which were pilfered from homes along the way to the village, yet he didn't know the importance of such objects, so he put them to the side.

The bronze rings had a small amount more gold than the copper rings, and some health recovery pills to go along with the qi grasping pills. His eyes lit up at the sight of these. Sometimes it was a matter of life and death when one would need these pills. If he were to use up his entire store of pills, he would have no other way to replenish them, now that they had no alchemist. He swallowed dryly as he put the pile in his own ring.

Moving to the silver rings, Hong Zhao found a small fortune of gold, qi grasping pills, health recovery pills and another type of pill he had never seen before. He made a mental note to ask Lan later about them.

The gold rings held not only a small fortune of gold, but also fruits that Hong Zhao recognized as spirit fruit. His eyes went wide as he looked at such a store of cultivation resources. "Zheng Guo really does treat his men well. It seemed as though he was going to allow these men to break through to the disciple rank upon completing this mission." The fruit he saw was called blood reaching spiritual fruit. It was dark red as flowing blood, and the fruit itself was full of energy, almost enough to break one through to the disciple rank. If he were to take all four of the fruits that he found, it would be possible to reach sixth star disciple rank easily. That being said, he put the fruits into his own ring for safe keeping.