Legacy of Hatred-Chapter 131: Loot

The trees were the first to reappear. The shallow red waters came next, their level gradually increasing until they reached Liam’s knees.

At last, a tense silence unfolded, finally putting an end to Liam’s heated escape. He was reluctant to interrupt the training that accompanied his run, but his safety had to come first.

Liam checked his surroundings. Leafless trees surrounded him in every direction, water hid the muddy ground, Qi permeated the area, and the eerie stench of blood had only grown more intense.

However, Liam soon disregarded all that to check the sky. It was still morning, just not as early anymore. He had run for a while, enough to leave the areas previously occupied by the magical beasts, but the tense silence marked the end of that safe path.

Advancing deeper into the swamp would put Liam among magical beasts again, which wasn’t ideal when he had to make people lose his tracks. Eventual fights would only risk revealing his position, so stopping was the wisest choice.

Of course, Liam didn’t merely stop. He replayed Maxwell’s moves, approaching a nearby tree before drawing the stone tablet from his robe, placing it on the muddy ground.

Liam half-worried about the necessity of precise commands, but the magical item worked on its own as soon as he poured Qi into it. The ground moved, shifting and opening, until a familiar passage appeared and drew some red waters in.

Jumping into the passage revealed an underground chamber identical to the one from the previous night. Yet, the passage to the surface remained open, continuing to leak water.

’Close?’ Liam half-ordered and half-wondered, sending more Qi into the rank 1 stone tablet.

That word did the job. The magical item seemed connected to its creation, and Liam’s intentions made it close the passage to isolate the underground chamber.

The chamber plunged into darkness, but Liam kept replaying Maxwell’s actions, retrieving strips of inscribed paper and attaching them to various surfaces.

The paper didn’t need Liam’s Qi to function. A pale-yellow halo soon filled the chamber, its humidity vanished, and the air grew fresher, creating quite a cozy hiding spot.

Liam had already acknowledged those allegedly common items’ value, and using them reinforced that belief. They were incredibly easy to deploy, mostly carrying pre-programmed functions that demanded no input from his side.

Basically, any cultivator could create a quasi-cave in under a minute with those inscribed items. They almost required no Qi, either, and could be reused at will.

’They probably won’t work on every environment,’ Liam guessed, browsing the chamber again, ’But I need to get a set of these. Concocting in the open brings too many variables.’

Liam disregarded the chamber at that point to focus on something far more appealing. He sat down, placing the muddy pouch in his hands on the smooth, solid floor, excitement shining in his eyes.

That dirty pouch belonged to none other than the rooting expert Maxwell had beheaded. It was from someone a whole cultivation stage higher than Liam, and he couldn’t wait to find what it contained.

Naturally, the issue with Maxwell saying that he would have delivered those belongings to the Rising Waterfall Sect never crossed Liam’s mind. After all, he had made no such promise.

Besides, in Liam’s mind, people after his life had no say in what he decided to do with their stuff.

The dirty pouch didn’t have much. It was far lighter than Liam’s, and that didn’t only come from the retrieval of the magical beasts’ cores.

Aside from basic supplies, Liam only found two flasks, a pill wrapped in dark paper, an inscribed green jade, and a glass shard that carried no marks or symbols.

That scarcity almost made Liam wonder whether he had overprepared for the mission, but no such misconceptions settled in his mind. Maxwell had probably brought more than he did, so the matter was about what cultivators could afford.

After all, no amount of preparation was too much when death could occur.

Besides, the blue cultivator’s stuff featured a silver lining. Except for the jade, everything else was a rank 2 item, and the individual value of each one probably matched or surpassed all of Liam’s belongings.

’These are Master’s rank 2 Qi-recovery elixirs,’ Liam concluded, checking the two flasks containing an azure liquid. ’Everyone truly buys from him.’

The pill came next, which Liam carefully unwrapped and inspected from every side, even smelling it to give some sense to its red texture.

’Rank 2 Boiling Blood Pill?’ Liam guessed. ’Luckily, Senior Brother didn’t let him use it.’

Despite Liam’s request to focus on practice, the Alchemy Elder hadn’t forgotten to teach him the theory, which demanded knowledge of all sorts of alchemical ingredients and products.

Liam had lost track of the amount of information his Master had forced him to memorize, and he wasn’t even close to being done. Yet, he could now begin to recognize alchemical products through their mere descriptions.

In the Boiling Blood Pill’s case, its purpose was to produce a powerful, often damaging all-around boost for a short time. It was similar to Liam’s Demonic Art, no different than a trump card to use in desperate times.

’I’d probably just die if I ate this,’ Liam accepted, wrapping the pill and putting it aside. ’At best, I’d irreparably damage my foundation.’

Things would have been different if the pill were in the first rank, but not by much. After all, Liam already possessed something similar, and he wasn’t sure which was stronger or safer.

’Now, this,’ Liam thought, seizing the glass shard. ’Does it need me to bind it? Can I even do that as a foundation expert?’

Liam sent Qi into the shard, only for it to remain unresponsive. The magical item clearly needed to be bound, but its rank 2 state might make his energy unsuitable.

There were also the possible conditions to account for, but Liam was as safe as he could be and full of elixirs. It was worth risking repercussions if it gave him an edge in that dangerous environment.

So, Liam placed the shard on the floor and took a deep breath, pushing a sliver of Qi into his brain, pouring his awareness into it.

Then, Liam brought that Qi toward his hand, condensing it into his fingertip, pushing it past his skin. That energy came out in the form of a clear, almost bright drop of blood, which fell on the shard and melted into it.

The awareness Liam had filled the drop with connected him to the shard, allowing him to experience the opposition it posed against that invasion.

The wooden knife had posed the same challenge. Still, Liam’s Qi depleted at a far higher rate now, vanishing completely before he could even begin to attempt to take over the shard.

’Thought so,’ Liam sighed. ’It needs a rooting expert’s Qi to bind.’

There was actually something Liam could do to lower that opposition and get a chance to bind the rank 2 item anyway. His Master had vaguely described the method, but it required his poisonous pills, and he preferred to rely on them over something with unclear functions.

Lastly, Liam went for the jade, pouring his Qi into it as he had done with Maxwell’s. Information immediately appeared outside his mind, ready for him to access, immediately showing something interesting.

Unlike Maxwell’s jade, the item in Liam’s hands featured an incomplete map of the Mutated Battlefield, alongside pieces of information from previous missions.

It seemed the Rising Waterfall Sect had kept track of the magical beasts’ packs, even marking the lairs its disciples had encountered. However, some symbols had no descriptions, only showing big crosses. 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝐰𝚎𝕓𝐧𝚘𝘃𝗲𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝕞

Despite the incomplete state, Liam could orient himself on the map, seeing how the bigger, brighter mark was near the exact center of the swamp area, and his curiosity inevitably flared.

’Snake,’ Liam called in his mind. ’It’s time you and I have a proper talk.’