Chapter 61: Abnormality of the Black Blood

[Volume 2 - Bloom of the Other Shore Flower]

The maid was about thirty years old and maintained some of the beauty of her youth. Her figure was full and well-developed.

When she heard Qianye's simple and direct words, she immediately put on the smile she thought was most charming and began pushing her way into her room. Her ample breasts were almost touching Qianye's arms as she said sweetly, "Handsome, I can give you a fifty percent discount this time. You'll only need to pay fifty copper coins!"

Qianye froze and hastily stopped the maid who was just as stalwart as he was, "No, what I meant is to get me something to eat! I want a portion enough for three men! I haven't eaten for an entire day!"

Finished, Qianye passed over a silver coin and said, "The remaining change is yours."

The maid's smile froze as she looked at the silver coin, and then at Qianye. Her expression turned a little grudgeful, "I will bring your meal immediately, but what about after the meal? With this silver coin, you can do anything!"

"Sorry, I just need the food, that is all!" Qianye had a feeling that he was no match for the sturdy, seductive and grudgeful maid.

The maid grabbed Qianye's hand and stuffed both the silver coin and his hand into her chest. Only then did she sway her butt and walk away.

A moment later, she delivered him a whole tray of food and tried to force her way into the room once more. Qianye had to expend quite a lot of effort before finally being able to shut the aggrieved maid outside the door.

This hotel's dinner was pretty tasty. After sweeping through the food, Qianye began cultivating the Combatant Formula. With the vampire's blood as his support, the bottleneck and damage created by the excessively powerful origin tides of the Combatant Formula no longer existed. Qianye was even looking forward to seeing what kind of scenery awaited him when he broke through to the ninth level.

As the Combatant Formula ran through his body, origin power began to pour out of his three nodes to form a tide. Until the third node was completely nurtured, the origin tide would continuously pour into this completely new node.

When looking into his own body, he could see that this newly formed origin node was extremely dim, with a barely formed contour. Meanwhile, the two nodes at his chest and abdominal areas were shining brightly, and the one at Aura Sea point on his chest in particular looked like a tiny sun. It was brimming with threads of origin power amidst light and darkness.

Suddenly, Qianye found that the impact of the origin tide was a lot weaker than usual. The original power of the ninth wave of a tide had been decreased by about one third.

Did something wrong happen to his cultivation formula?

He concentrated on inspecting the entire process of the formation, eruption and flow of the origin tide, and finally discovered that not all of the new tides that gushed out of the three nodes were able to merge with the main origin tide. A portion of them seemed to have been trapped and entangled by the tricolored blood aura inside his body before merging into one.

This discovery shocked Qianye. Could the black blood devour origin power?

It had been a long time since his black blood had given him any trouble. Even after running through the wasteland at his top speed for three days and three nights straight, and entering a large city filled with blood energy, the blood thirst hadn't plague him, which caused Qianye to feel more and more assured over time. But what's with this all of a sudden?

Qianye fell silent for a moment, and in the end, he decided to finish today's drills.

Twenty rounds of origin tides passed, and Qianye stood up to move his body around a little. He then practiced the military's combat art for a full hour, right where he had been standing. These basic movements could effectively train his strength, balance and flexibility. The whole cultivation process could only be considered complete after he finished practicing the combat arts. If this was the Red Scorpion Corps' base, he would have to drench himself in muscle restoration liquid or go to the doctor for a superficial examination in case there were any injuries incurred during the cultivation.

Just like that, Qianye allowed his train of thoughts to wander as much as possible until the end of the cultivation session. Only then did he he withdraw himself and began pondering the problem he had discovered.

The black blood was still flowing quietly inside his arteries, and although it was dormant on the surface, every time an origin tide ran through, a trace of the energy would be absorbed by the black blood. Moreover, this process was completely out of Qianye's control. After origin power was intercepted by the black blood, the impact Qianye suffered from an origin tide would be greatly reduced to the point where it was just a little stronger than a normal cultivator's.

This process wasn't obvious during the first tide, but when all twenty tides were done, Qianye discovered that the blood energy had grown a little more abundant. As of now, one could say that all it affected was his cultivation speed, and he could not detect any other abnormalities besides this. However, Qianye was worried that he would truly turn into a vampire as the black blood grew stronger.

Qianye wasn't able to come to a conclusion even when the day broke.

This unpleasant episode did not affect Qianye's new life too much. He carried on with his usual pragmatic style and increased the intensity of his cultivation to resist the decrease in his cultivation speed.

For the next few days, Qianye would bury himself in his room and cultivate all day. Every day, he would inform the maid to bring his three meals into the room. This was also the simplest and most effective way of throwing off his pursuers after arriving at a new place.

Seven days passed in the blink of an eye, and during this time, Qianye finally learned how to control his blood energy while filling an origin bullet. Surprisingly, the three empty origin bullets the old man from A1 Firearms had gifted him were the real deal, but the bullet case matched the old man's style alright. A buyer would only notice the case's weight discrepancy when they held it in their hands. It was still a fake.

Qianye took out a blank origin bullet and began pouring origin power into it. A dozen or so minutes later, the bullethead was filled with a dense, vapor-like origin power. A wisp of blood energy could also be seen floating inside. Now, he could skillfully choose whether to inject blood energy into an origin bullet or not.

Qianye opened a box and placed the origin bullet inside it. However, without a sealing effect, the origin bullet would lose most of its effects in around three days. He suddenly recalled the crystalline box that the old man called Uncle Wang had left behind. It seemed that it was gone after Red Spider Lily had been destroyed. However, this thought stayed in Qianye's mind for only a fraction of a second before it sank back into the depths of his mind like many of his other memories.

After tidying up all his stuff, Qianye was finally ready to go out for a walk and inquire about his surroundings. Since he was planning to stay inside this city for a long term, he would have to think of a way to earn money. The prices in Darkblood City made not just a little town, but even a place like Blackflow City seem like a completely different country. If Blackflow City used copper coins as their standard unit of measure, then Darkblood City used silver coins.

Before heading out, Qianye disguised his appearance as usual. After many frustrating failures, he had finally figured out a bit of the knack of disguising oneself, and that was to dye his skin as dim and dark as possible. This way, it wouldn't be too obvious that he was in disguise, but he would still appear different on the surface.

What Qianye didn't know was that Yu Renyan had passed through the inn's doorsteps twice while he was cultivating hard on the inside. Seven days had passed, and Yu Renyan had combed through the entirety of Darkblood City by his own plans. However, he could not find a trace of his target at all.

This failure caused Yu Renyan to return to his lodging to ponder the matter.

A moment later, he called over a Dark Blade subordinate and ordered him to deliver a letter to Wu Zhengnan as soon as possible. The letter stated that Yu Renyan had found some clues regarding the killer, but that the killer was unusually crafty. He would require more time.

As for how much time he needed, Yu Renyan used a single word to convey his meaning: indefinite. At the end of the letter, Yu Renyan questioned if the mission should be continued.

A day later, Wu Zhengnan's reply came, and there was only a single statement written down: "Continue until it's done."

Yu Renyan immediately understood Wu Zhengnan's determination. However, he had his own working style and method, and after leisurely taking a spin on the outside, he returned to his lodging with a huge amount of items.

An hour later, Yu Renyan had turned himself into a tall and thin blond. He even changed his eye color. This great leader of the Dark Blade then bought a small house with a separate courtyard within the city before registering himself as a mercenary at the Mercenary Guild under a fake name. After that, he went to Home of Hunters and registered himself for a Hunter's qualification and actually went out of the city to hunt just like that.

Yu Renyan obviously treated this mission as a convenient holiday.

When Yu Renyan left Darkblood City, Qianye just happened to walk out of the inn.

First, he found a random armor shop and bought himself a set of leather hunting armor. This type of leather armor was extremely suitable for hunting at the countryside and was both light and flexible. Its defensive properties were measurable as well. After Qianye put on the leather armor, he finally showed a little bit of the wildness and strength that belonged to a man.

During the afternoon, Qianye randomly chose a restaurant and went up the second floor. He chose a seat near the window and sat down.

Using the rare moment of daylight, he ate as he observed the people who walked back and forth the street in order to familiarize himself with some of the city's habits. When he was done eating, Qianye took out a few advertisement materials and began reading.

These were all advertising pamphlets of the Mercenary Association, Adventurers Alliance and Home of Hunters. Finally, Qianye's eyes fell onto Home of Hunters.

Being a hunter who preys on dark races was the only job that was suited for him. As for Mercenary Association and Adventurers Alliance, their mercenerial qualities caused Qianye to give them up.

The former was discarded because Qianye did not wish to work under any noble as a hired thug. Trouble would come to him constantly if his standpoint was too well defined. The latter was discarded because an adventurer usually needed to possess some professional skills such as machinery maintenance. Qianye's scores in machinery classes had always been quite good, but he had no interest in polishing gears everyday in front of a work bench. Let someone else do this kind of meticulous work, Qianye was more interested in exploding heads of the dark races.

After leaving the restaurant, Qianye looked at his map and searched accordingly, going through many twists and turns before finally entering a dark alley and arriving at a three story building.

There was a board on the building with the words 'Home of Hunters' written on it. Qianye read it a couple of times before finally confirming that this was the place he was looking for.

The building was just too decrepit, and looked like it could collapse any time. Looking at the huge crack at the front wall, it would appear that the building's supervisor had no intentions of maintaining it. With one glance through the crack, one could even see the metallic frame, which components were obviously of questionable quality.

The door was open. After a moment of hesitation, Qianye ultimately decided to walk inside. His experience at A1 Firearms had seriously left a shadow in his mind. Home of Hunters should be a famous hunting organization with branches littered everywhere on the Evernight Continent, and yet, this particular building looked like some other hunter organization that had stolen their name.

After entering through the door, there was a small living hall with two tables and a couple of chairs decorating its interior. There were three big men sitting lazily around a table with huge glasses of alcohol placed at its center.

At the end of the hall was a counter with a wizened old man who was reading something intently with a pair of presbyopic glasses. His half-bald head was unusually bright beneath the light of the gas lamp.

The second Qianye saw this baldy, his heart immediately jumped. He did not need too good a memory to recall it. This shape, this luster, this definition, there was absolutely no mistake! It was the bald old man from A1 Firearms!