Baotian, instantly regretting, already thought about how to use Bai Zisheng as a meat shield while he escaped.
"I see, I now realize my mistake, being so impolite toward a junior from another nation, so please just take it as a joke from a mischievous senior" he said. "It is not much but, as an apology, you can ask me any question and I will try to answer to the best of my abilities"
Hearing this, the young demonic cultivator blinked, looked at him, looked at his body to make sure it was still whole, and then looked at the other to make sure he wasn't having a pre-mortem dream.
'Ahh… is that how it feels to be blessed by heaven?' he wondered.
The Nascent Soul cultivator from the Divine Storm Sect, who would have undoubtedly tried to harm him, had mysteriously disappeared. He had received a proposition that would allow him to have a Golden Core level subordinate, simply by giving less than half of his blood essence, which was originally his senior's, which he had gifted him. And now, Baotian could realize that in the first place, Hanliang had only made this… proposal… as an excuse to grant him information.
'Why would he do it? Hmm… actually, it doesn't matter'
Baotian knew that due to Zhenyun's existence, his fortune was fundamentally limited, and so he absolutely had to capitalize on opportunities such as this one!
"Thank you senior" he said out loud.
Then switching to his spiritual sense to make sure they wouldn't be heard, he went with it:
"I have two questions for senior" he said. "The first one is, is the referee part of the Divine Storm Sect?"
Hanliang nodded:
"Indeed, he is" he replied, through spiritual sense too. "He is elder Na Fengxia, the grand-nephew of the Nascent soul who disappeared. It was decided that, since I, the one in charge of the organisation, am a Spirit Beast, the one in charge of arbitration would be a human and he ended up being the one chosen"
"I see… then if it doesn't bother senior, let me ask another question: the spiritual contract guaranteeing the safety of all during the match, they were signed by the kings right? Then, let me ask about a theoretical scenario: I know that these contracts have a lesser effect when the close concerned only imply other cultivators than the ones who signed and I know that, the further their cultivation level compared to the ones who signed and the lesser their relation with them, the lesser the effect would be, too" Baotian said.
"So far, it seems right" Hanliang replied. "So what is your question?"
"My question is the next one: assuming the one acting against the contract is in the Core Formation realm, two major realms below the signatories, that he doesn't have much ties to the king as part of a human sect, which are usually more neutral between the Xuanhe Kingdom and the Zhaoqing Country, and that he only act to 'enforce' another clause, being that the cultivators cannot give up in the middle of their duel, for example with a particular technique that only blocks the fighter's actions if he tries to give up.
Again, theoretically, it would be entirely possible for the signatory, let us call him king Xuanhe Wuxin: in this scenario, it would be entirely possible for him to avoid any drawback from the contract, right? Meaning that, hypothetically, if 'someone' trafficked the draws to make a certain junior fight the strongest opponent, and then use this method to prevent him from surrendering, and the junior in question was already an eyesore for the king, he would have no problem looking away, right? Since none of these actions directly equate to harm the junior or to hinder the competition"
Once again, Hanliang nodded:
"That would be possible too" he transmitted. "I have to say, your deductions were very impressive, I'm pretty impressed. Are you sure you do not want to be my concubine?"
"..."
"Don't think it's such a bad think, the conditions and resources are good, you will still have most of your freedoms and I'm always gentle with my pa-"
"Thank you for your help, esteemed senior Hanliang"
The Griffin Spirit Beast chuckled at his expression, and then turned away:
"Well, it is all for today, let's meet again tomorrow for the third round!"
He stopped a moment to add:
"And please, stop calling me a retard or any hurtful word in r tied to the rumors about me, I'm perfectly valid mentally and always make sure that all my dual cultivation partners are consentants. I'll take my leave now"
And just like this he left. Baotian was left on his own to suppress his killing intent, his bloodlust increasing by the second as he resisted the urge to throw himself at the referee. Turning back, he gestured toward Ye Mu:
"I made my decision, your proposition is good enough" he said. "But we have to get it over with today, do you agree?"
The fox, surprised and relatively suspicious due to this sudden change of behavior, still ended up nodding in the end, following him.
'To go along that easily, he likely has less than five years remaining' Baotian thought. 'That's good for me'
The two of them went to an empty place, circled by hills.
"So, before we do it, senior Ye Mu, please tell me the reason why you did not collect the blood essence yourself. We were interrupted earlier, but my curiosity has not waned in the meantime"
"Of course" the fox nodded. "The reason I didn't do such a thing yet is simple: it simply went past my bottom line, this is it"
"..."
Baotian frowned:
"Are you saying you are better than me? While that may be true, that still is a pretty hypocritical thing to say considering you are currently depending on me"
"Oh, please don't take it personally, fellow Zhang" Ye Mu said. "I don't believe I am better than you or anyone, and I'm immoral enough not to feel guilty about using resources provided by demonic cultivators. It's just… I can't 'produce' them myself. In this world, they are many who exploit innocent ones through others, but are horrified by the mere idea of doing so themselves. In your human society, for instance, rich ladies would enjoy the tastiest of bird meats, but tremble at the thought of holding the knife that cut a chicken's head. Mortal lords profit from the merciless exploitation of workers but would still give beggars a coin and look at them with pity.
I am the same: it is not moral or logic, but merely a constraint put on by my subconscious. I did not talk about it to my tribe because I feared they would put blood on their hands to help me, and I did not ask to demonic cultivators because I knew the ones weak enough to be bought likely did not have such a quantity on them and I couldn't push myself to ask, knowing that their next victims would only be killed because I requested it"
Baotian, hearing him, felt strangely enlightened. Wasn't he too still feeling reluctant, sometimes, to commit bad deeds? Wasn't he regularly feeling empathy toward those that were wronged by others, even though the suffering he himself inflicted was much more severe?
"I understand, it is a good enough reason" he said. "And what made you believe that I, at a lower realm than you, had such a ludicrous quantity? Blood essence is relatively hard to get, and Qi Building often have to extract it from mortals one by one"
"I simply thought I would try my chance with fellow Zhang, and then go to senior Zisheng in case it failed"
From his unsure tone to his body language, passing by his avoiding gaze, everything was obviously indicating that he was not telling the truth. Baotian sighed internally: how could a fox be such a terrible liar?
'Well, no matter, I already have an idea of who could have told him…'
Anyway, they had already lost enough time. Baotian, taking out the thousand liters of blood essence and putting them in a separate storage bag. Instead of directly giving it to Ye Mu, he handed him a spirit contract:
"Here, it will guarantee me that you will indeed use this blood essence as base for your core" he said. "I will add the tampering to the blood essence in the meantime, so don't hesitate to read it as much as you wish"
Saying that, he went away and, once he was out of the fox's sight, immediately took out an additional hundred blood essence liters, beginning to set up a formation with these:
'Ten years? That is a good offer indeed. But if I can get a Core Formation powerhouse to serve under me for longer, then I'll make sure I will!'
In the first place, the reason why he could learn basic formation killer moves so fast was because he already had a solid basis in array formations from his time in the Liu clan. He had learned about it in an effort to find a way past his blockage… without much success.
'Now, if I use this blood essence midway between an array and a killer move, I should be able to do what I want… more or less'
Inscribing symbols and character on the ground while adjusting a few blood orbs around, he spent almost two hours trying to put it in place, and eventually succeeded.
'There! With this, the microscopic pieces of wood I hid in the blood essence will nest themselves in the core thanks to the array, and will be able to sprout whenever I wish thanks to the amplification granted by the killer move!'
And thanks to his complex assemblage, even if the blood essence in the base was replaced, the replacement would still be encompassed in the killer move, and the tempering would only be eliminated when the wood pieces would be fully expelled. If Ye Mu went with his planned method, it would take at least thirty years, instead of the original ten!
After doing this, he returned next to the fox, who had finished reading the contract:
"Here, senior Ye Mu, your perfectly fine and not tampered blood essence"
"...
Thank you, I suppose"
The fox delicately grabbed the storage bag between his jaws.
"The reason for which I need this is that, back when I was in the mid stage of Foundation Establishment, the equivalent of the Qi Building realm, I was hurt in combat, and had to consume part of my foundation to survive"
Opening the storage bag, he used a force control spell to make it float in front of him, struggling under the effort.
"I could still advance to the grand perfection stage but, lacking the complete foundation one needs to create a core, I found myself stuck in my cultivation. I tried every way I could think of, even perfecting my mastery of the Flying Leaves Scripture to reach the same level of technicity as human cultivators, but nothing worked. Only by using blood essence could I substitute the missing part of my Foundation. Sometimes, I thought about just going on a slaughter to gather it, but I never did"
Slowly, through a basic fire spell, he evaporated the blood essence and, with a wind spell, redirected it toward his body. As the sinister vapor stuck to his fur, its tired white-grey was slowly replaced by a redder color.
"There wasn't much reason behind it, I just couldn't slaughter mortals. Stupid, isn't it, fellow Zhang? But I know that if someone understand, it's you"
His fur lost its color once again as his body absorbed the essence, and then sent it to his Foundation.
"I did not spend much time with you, fellow Zhang, but you don't strike me as someone who would enter the demonic path just for some more power. From what I can understand, you were also from the same clan as the young man who is going to fight senior Hanliang, right?"
he accumulated energy, ready to break through, and kept talking, not waiting for a reply. His foundation started to compress, getting closer and closer to look like a core.
"You must have not lacked resources there, and you don't seem to have poor talent either, so the only conclusion I can arrive at is that you had a similar problem to me. You made the choice I couldn't, you had the strength to go through with it without having someone to bail you out, unlike me. I… I think that, in the end, if, to reach Golden Core, I have to choose someone to sell myself to, then I much prefer this person being you. Thus…"
His spiritual energy reached the critical point.
"Wish me good luck, fellow Zhang"
On these words, Ye Mu reached the last phase of his advancement, initiating his Golden Core tribulation.