The legendary warrior

Chapter 26 Heather

It took Ricky quite a long time to calm himself down. He was much too excited.

Now he set his goal on finding out whether his spiritual meridian was suitable for improving his spiritual power and cultivating himself with the manual. He wanted to know if it could enhance his cultivation and skills.

However, it would take a long time to attest whether his spiritual meridian could really improve his spiritual power. Because of this, Ricky now turned his attention to the scarlet runes inside the Blood Zone of his spiritual meridian.

Although Ricky had never heard of a manual that could transform into runes, he speculated that those mysterious runes were exactly the contents of the Chaos Manual.

With this in mind, Ricky gathered his spiritual energy and activated his newly acquired spiritual meridian, after which he began to examine and decipher the runes.

But perhaps, Ricky had overestimated his ability to read the runes, or he simply hadn't reached a sufficient cultivation level, for even though he had spent the whole day studying the runes, he couldn't make sense of any of them.

"It's probable that my spiritual meridian isn't suitable for making weapons," Ricky thought to himself, a little disappointed.

But he didn't dwell too much on that. After all, it wasn't his primary goal for the time being.

"I'd better put this aside first. I have to focus on hunting some more beasts now. I need to fortify the seventh grade of Skin Refinement!"

And with that, Ricky left the pungent place and began to track and hunt the beasts.

This time, after he hunted and killed several beasts, Ricky didn't throw away the valuable materials he got from the beasts anymore, as he found out that the Blood Zone was like the Storage Ring and could store a large number of items.

Of course, Ricky was pleasantly surprised to discover this. However, he regretted throwing away so many valuable beast materials after his previous hunting. It was really a shame. If his spiritual meridian had undergone the changes some time ago, he could have collected plenty of materials worth a fortune.

...

After a few days, Ricky found that the number of the beasts at the periphery of the Lion King Mountains had suddenly diminished, because when the beasts had realized that the mountains were very dangerous now. Many of them escaped and went deeper into the mountains.

The beasts could go deep into the mountains, but the warriors who were in the Iron Blood Trial didn't dare follow. They were afraid that a beast of Blood Purification would easily tear them to shreds.

With so few of the fierce animals around there, Ricky only managed to hunt four beasts at the seventh grade of Skin Refinement in the span of three days.

"Alas. At this rate, I won't even be able to hunt one hundred beasts at the end of the Iron Blood Trial," Ricky muttered, frowning as he stood in the forest.

He had learned that the top three participants at the past two Iron Blood Trials had all hunted at least two hundred beasts.

"Do I have to hunt the beasts of Blood Purification instead?"

The century-old ironwood could also absorb the blood of the fierce animals at the inferior stage of Blood Purification. And after that, there would be five hundred black dots forming on the ironwood.

Five hundred dots! Five hundred times as many dots of a beast at the advanced stage of Skin Refinement.

However, it was not easy to kill a fierce animal of Blood Purification. Usually, even five warriors at the peak of the ninth grade of Skin Refinement could not succeed in killing a beast at the first grade of Blood Purification. There was a high chance that they all could be killed by it instead.

This was because of the substantial gap between Skin Refinement and Blood Purification.

Since Ricky was only at the seventh grade of Skin Refinement, he knew that it was impossible to hunt any beast of Blood Purification on his own. Text property © Nôvel(D)ra/ma.Org.

"This means that I have to steal other participants' ironwoods," Ricky decided after mulling it over for a while.

Ricky was willing to follow the rule that he would not attack others unless he was attacked first, but in the martial arts world where the weak were the prey to the strong, he had to attack others in order to get what he wanted and reach his goal.

Right then, three figures suddenly appeared before him. Two of them were handsome young men, and one was a resplendent, beautiful lady.

'Well, I just decided to start robbing others, and now my prey seems to have come to me, ' Ricky thought with a smile.

But as the three warriors got closer to him, Ricky began to feel stunned, as he could clearly feel that they were the outstanding cultivators at the eighth grade of Skin Refinement.

Ricky was confident he could defeat one of them, and he was sure he could successfully escape while fighting against two. However, if he had to battle with three of them, he might not be able to defeat them.

After all, he had just recently made a breakthrough and reached the seventh grade of Skin Refinement.

"I'd better run away!"

Without any hesitation, Ricky spun around about to leave.

"Hey, buddy. Please wait a second. We want to ask you for help!" the young man in green called out in a friendly voice, as he saw Ricky ready to leave.

"Hey, buddy! Please trust us. We just really want to ask you a favor," the beautiful young woman said pleadingly.

"Oh, really? What is it that can I do for you?" Ricky asked, confused and surprised. But he kept walking.

"We're going to hunt a fierce beast at the first grade of Blood Purification, and we need one more warrior to join us. Would you like to hunt the beast with us?" the other young man explained.

"You must be kidding me!" Ricky responded sneeringly, upon hearing those words.

"If I guess correctly, you three are only at the eighth grade of Skin Refinement. But why would you dare hunt the beast at the first grade of Blood Purification? You seem to be over-confident and reckless."

"Would you stop and listen to us first?" one of them gently replied. None of them seemed to get angry at Ricky's mocking words.

"Well then, you three stop first, please."

The three warriors came to a halt immediately.

After he saw them oblige, Ricky went forward a little before stopping to face them, keeping his distance.

"Alright, I'm listening," Ricky said flatly.

The three warriors exchanged glances, before the young woman took a few steps forward.

Dressed in a long, pale yellow dress, she had an oval face with a small, charming mouth and a pair of elegantly curved eyebrows. She looked very pretty and delicate. Surely, others would be infatuated with her immediately, their eyes lighting up at the first sight of her.

She also exuded an aura of confidence and coolness.

"Hello. My name is Heather. And let me introduce my two friends, Finn Zhang and Waylon Wang," the woman said.

"My name is Ricky!" Ricky responded, balling his other hand into a fist to show respect.

Ricky was willing to stop and listen to the three warriors because he didn't sense a murderous intent from them.

He was certain of that, for his regained spiritual meridian made his perception very sensitive, making him able to sense and notice everything more accurately and quickly.

"Ricky, we happened to find that a beast at the first grade of Blood Purification was injured severely, resting at a place not far away from here. The beast has been weakened greatly and may now only be at the moderate level of the ninth grade of Skin Refinement," Heather explained detailedly.

"Since it is still at the ninth grade of Skin Refinement, we believe that we can't defeat it easily even if three of us fight against it together. So, we decided to find a warrior at the seventh grade of Skin Refinement to come with us."

"If someone at the seventh grade of Skin Refinement joins us, we are confident we can slay that injured beast of Blood Purification."

"I see." Ricky nodded.

"So Ricky, what do you say? Would you like to join us?" Heather asked expectantly, seeing as Ricky seemed to be a little interested in it.

Previously, they had found many warriors at the seventh grade of Skin Refinement and asked them to join their quest, but no one was willing to go with them. That was because those warriors were worried that it would be very dangerous to work with three warriors at the eighth grade of Skin Refinement whom they didn't know.

"I want to ask you two questions," Ricky finally replied, after thinking about it.

"Please do!"

"The first question: why aren't you looking for a warrior at the eighth grade of Skin Refinement? After all, you all are at the eighth grade, so you don't have to fear a warrior at the same grade as you. Besides, such a warrior can be much more effective during the hunting," Ricky said, pointedly.