Is that a Wisp? Chapter 8 – Planning for the Spiritual Vein

Krune started cultivating and soon he could feel the difference, his cultivation speed has improved a lot as expected, with another Spiritual Energy Meridian to share the burden of spiritual energy conversion, his cultivation is now improving at least 50% faster, Krune decided to take this chance to breakthrough to the 7th stage of the Qi Condensation.

The 7th stage of the Qi Condensation is known for it’s bottleneck, but it’s not without reason, its only at the 7th stage that a cultivator can finally form their Divine Sense, until now Krune has been using his affinity with spiritual energy to feel his surroundings and prevent dangerous situations, but this kind of scanning ability is very limited since he can’t really see what is happening ahead nor can it reach too far, it can only help him to feel if there is something alive ahead or not.

But Divine Sense is different, you truly ‘see’ everything around you, it’s a very weird feeling once a cultivator open their Divine Sense, they are used to only see what is ahead of them and then suddenly they now can see everything around.

But there are other races that don’t think anything strange about it, wisps are one of them, they don’t have eyes to start with, ever since wisps are born they have a complete vision of 360 degrees, so, for them, the Divine Sense will basically improve this ability a lot but other than the distance and the way that they ‘see’ with the Divine Sense, there isn’t too much of a difference to start with.

Another thing worth remember when achieving the 7th stage, is that the boost of power is much higher than when you breakthrough previous or next stages of the Qi Condensation, Divine Sense is the reason behind it, it’s not only limited to what you can see but also improves the cultivator’s own ability to control spiritual energy like the ability to use skills at a much greater distance than it was before.

—

A week later in a hidden burrow sealed by an earth wall, spirit energy started to convene at great speed, inside one could see Krune absorbing all of it like a bottomless hole, a few minutes later he felt like a boom came out of his core and the spiritual energies around finally started to stabilize.

‘7th stage of Qi Condensation, it’s only been three months since I met Feifei and old man Feng, in three months I went from 3rd stage to where I’m now, this progress is faster than anything I ever thought be able to do.

Let’s try out the Divine Sense.’

Krune concentrated and slowly his divine sense started to spread out.

10 meters…

50 meters…

100 meters…

300 meters…

500 meters!

Krune was dumbfounded!

‘500 meters, I can see everything in 500 meters! Incredible, I can’t believe Divine Sense is so useful like this, with it I won’t need to fear anything as long as my opponent cultivation isn’t much higher than mine so that it can be concealed from it!’

Krune was ecstatic!

One must know that when other cultivators achieve the 7th stage of Qi Condensation, it can already be considered a miracle if they reach as far as 300 meters, and that’s usually the case for races specialized in maters of the soul, other races would usually have a range of 150 to 200 meters, fortunately for Krune, wisps can be considered one of the soul races too, its just that they are far from the top rated ones, of course Krune didn’t know such things, the reason he was so happy was simply because now he will be able to avoid danger and prepare attacks much easier than before.

Krune didn’t know, the reason his Divine Sense could reach so far as 500 meters is also because of his Energy Meridians, other than the soul, Divine Senses are boosted by the owners own spiritual energy and its purity too.

Wisps are already known to have very clean spiritual energy, so much that they are hunted for use in cultivation, on top of that, his Energy Meridians conversion ability far outmatches normal meridians, not only in speed but in purity as well, all of that put together turned into this unbelievable range coverage.

But Krune happiness didn’t last long…

‘F*ck! This thing spends spiritual energy like there is no tomorrow!’

That was to be expected, such a good thing like Divine Sense couldn’t come that easy, there is no free lunch in this world, after calculating the rate of consumption of spiritual energy, Krune found out that he could maintain his Divine Sense spread out at full range for at most 10 minutes before his energy is over, but, if he reduces the coverage range the consumption also is greatly reduced.

There is another thing that one must pay attention too, once someone uses Divine Sense to scan an area, if someone around the same level of cultivation or higher has a Divine Sense, they will be able to feel the scan and will be put on alert, simply put, Divine Sense is not omnipotent.

—

One day later after stabilizing his cultivation, Krune left his seclusion sight and set out to get the spiritual vein, Krune already know where it is, he found it during his travel and hunting, the problem was that this one’s owner is a 8th stage Qi Condensention Lizard Dragon.

Lizard Dragons aren’t real dragons, but they do indeed have a very feint dragon bloodline which make then stronger than ordinary beast at the same cultivation level.

Krune didn’t have confidence of beating this Lizard Dragon before, not because he thought he couldn’t win in a one vs one, but because it isn’t the only beast guarding the location. Every spiritual vein owner would usually have a few more members of the same race, and this Lizard Dragon wasn’t different, together with him there was another ten some Lizard Dragons of lower cultivation level. But now that he made his breakthrough and got his Divine Sense that can see everything 500 meters around him, Krune was confident that he could deal with this group and at the same time gather quite a few Demon Cores.

Few hours later Krune arrived at a mountain range, it wasn’t a big one but still covered a 20 some kilometer radius, he approached the lizards nest carefully to not alert anyone, after getting close enough he started to spread his Divine Sense.

‘If I’m not wrong, that 8th stage Lizard Dragon should be at the bottom of the nest, as long as I don’t spread my Divine Sense too far it shouldn’t notice me, as for the 7th ranked ones, if there is any, they probably won’t be able to feel my divine sense since it is much stronger than any other 7th stage beast’

After spreading his divine sense for 400 meters, Krune could already see almost all the lizards.

‘Two 7th stage and nine 6th ones, I will need a to get rid of them little by little first, the stronger ones are deep inside while the weaker ones are close to the entrance or outside.

I know what to do.’

Lizard Dragons are predators and this mountain range is their territory, other beast would not get close easily.

Krune left to find a bait, with his Divine Sense it wouldn’t be too hard, although spreading it 500 meters of distance spend a lot of spiritual energy, it doesn’t mean that he has to keep it active 100% of the time, Krune circled around the border of the Lizards territory and spread his Divine sense every now and then for a few seconds, it didn’t take long for him to find a 6th stage Demon Bear.

It was quite easy to deal with, Krune’s cultivation is higher and together with his wisp energy body, as soon as the bear saw that it was a wisp, it disregarded any possibility of danger, wisps are hard to catch but are very good cultivation resources for all the other races, this Demon Bear wasn’t afraid at all that Krune could present any danger to it, the bear rushed straight at him and when it got closer, an earth spikes shot from the ground under the bear, it pierced the bear which growled and tried to get rid of the spike when ten wind blades came from above and cut off it’s head.

‘As expected of a defense type beast, the earth spike didn’t have enough power to pierce all the way to it’s heart, with the amount of spiritual energy I used to cast it, any ordinary type 7th would have died if they didn’t dodge in time. Even the wind blades, the bear’s head only dropped after the 8th one hit, but with this big guy, it should be easy to slowly attract those lizards.’

Krune Grabbed the bear corpse, took out the Demon Core and brought it somewhere close to the but far enough so that he wouldn’t catch the attention of the entire lair when killing the first ones to come.

He also prepared some pit traps with some earth spikes, he made sure to use a lot of spiritual energy in those spike so that they could be much sturdier and would likely be able to pierce the scales of the lizards. Although Lizard Dragons aren’t as heavy and the demon bear they are still on the bigger side of the beasts around and this kind of trap would be very effective on them.

It didn’t take long for a few Lizard dragons to get the scent of blood from the bear corpse and come close, there was four of them and they are used to the safety of their territory, so after seeing the bear corpse, those lizards didn’t think much before rushing to get the meat, just when they where about the reach the bear corpse, several earth spikes came from bellow direct impaling three of them, the last one was luck that there was no earth spike ready where he passed, after noticing the danger it immediately tried to flee, but just when it turned back, several wind blades struck it from the side.

The Lizard Dragons have a high defense due to their scales, one or two wind blades wouldn’t be able to straightly kill it, but the amount of blades obviously wasn’t so little, just like with the Demon Bear, Krune used ten wind blades against this last Lizard precisely hitting it’s neck, it could said to be an overkill already, Krune swiftly took out their Demon Cores and cleaned the battlefield.

‘Good, there is another five 6th stage lizards, they should be coming soon.’

Sure enough, noticing that those four Lizards didn’t come back after some time, the rest of the 6th stage Lizards came to take a look, there was even one of the two 7th stage Lizard Dragons leading the group, this one was smarter than the lower levels one, after taking a look it found the situation somewhat fishy, Krune noticed that and decided that to best way to bring them under his trap was to appear himself in front of them, no beast would ever let a wisp go away like that, they are too precious for the other races.

Sure enough, when a wisp suddenly appeared beside the Bear corpse all the lizards eyes lit up, the 7th stage one was no exception, he gave a big roar and all the lizards rushed over, wisps are hard to find nowadays, they couldn’t let this one escape.

Krune snorted at this sight, he didn’t move and patiently waited for them to enter the range of his earth spikes, they have long since be readied with enough spiritual energy and he just need a thought for them to activate.

As soon as they got inside of his trap, Krune controlled his spiritual energy to activate the traps, one lizard after another was immediately impaled, the only survival this time was the 7th stage one, it was alarmed, it never expected that a wisp could be this strong, although its body was able to fend of the attacks of the earth spikes aimed at it, it still suffered severe injuries, it immediately turned tail to run, but how could Krune let him go? As soon as is it started to move, four earth walls appeared around it, Krune had been prepared for something like this a long time ago, once the walls were erected, from above, one could see over ten wind blades coming down, the Lizard Dragon noticed the crisis, it used all it’s strength to blow away the earth wall in front of it, although the earth wall was sturdy, it couldn’t hold a 7th stage Lizard Dragon with a feint dragon bloodline for long, on the second hit it finally crumbled, but it was too late, wind blade after wind blade hit it’s body finishing the job.

‘Phew… that was dangerous, it almost escaped, those guys are really something else, as expected of a dragon bloodline, even with such a feint one.’

After getting the Demon Cores Krune decided to retreat, he used over 80% of all his spiritual energy in those two traps, he definitely wouldn’t be able to deal with the leader and the last 7th stage the way he is at moment.

‘I don’t need to go far, I just need more or less two hours to to recover my spiritual energy and I can start the last phase of my plan.’

Some time after Krune left, the Lizard Dragon Leader and the other 7th stage one found out that almost all their nest was wiped out, the leader was enraged, but it couldn’t do anything, Krune had left already, all it could do was to go rampage around it’s territory until it finally got tired and decided to go back to their nest to prevent more casualties.

—–

Around two hours passed and Krune was back to his peak, he immediately set off, he wanted to finish all today.

‘As long as I get that low level spiritual vein, I should have no more issues with spiritual energy for the creation of the next Spiritual Energy Meridians’

Krune looked at the entrance of their nest, it was a cave entrance on the base of the mountain, this time Krune wouldn’t be able to rely on his earth spikes or wind blades, that 8th stage Qi Condensation Lizard Dragon leader defense is bound to be higher than the other 7th stage remaining lizard, it will be very difficult to cause any serious injury on a 8th stage beast with a feint dragon bloodline, but he wasn’t intending to do that anyway.

Krune spread his Divine Sense a little, just enough to see the things around 50 meters ahead of him and moved carefully inside the Lizard Dragons nest, being a wisp here really is good, as long as he wasn’t in their sight line they would not be able to detect him, first, wisps don’t walk, they float, and second, they don’t have a body, so they don’t have a scent to start with. Well, at least not until they gain their human form.

It didn’t take long for Krune to find what he was looking for.

‘Found it!’

Around 10 minutes later, the Lizard Dragon leader sensed a Divine Sense scanning his nest, the leader was already enraged to start with and now someone dared to barge into his nest, it gave a profound roar and immediately set out, it was going to eat the intruder alive!