Chapter 336: A change in mentality
Emperor tomb mountain range, black prison village.
As usual, when the sky brightened, many odd-job workers were gathered outside the black prison sect’s Mountain Gate and began to count the amount of soul coins they had collected for the night.
Although there were 3000 odd-job workers, it was not troublesome to count them.
There were a total of 126 disciples in the black prison sect, and each disciple would be responsible for 20 to 30 odd jobs. These odd jobs would send the soul coins they earned in the night to the disciple in charge of guarding them by mail at about six in the morning. Then, the disciple in charge would calculate the number of unfinished tasks and send the soul coins to the sect leader, Xuan Tianji, by mail.
In terms of paying soul coins, the odd-job workers could pay more soul coins to cover the amount for the next day, but they couldn’t pay less.
This time there were still several tens of people who didn’t complete the required amount of soul coins for a day due to various reasons and were called out.
However, what surprised the black prison sect disciples was that there was no response even after three of the handymen had called out their names several times.
After being enslaved for a long time, the servants were completely numb and no one dared to resist. This was the first time such a situation had occurred, and it made the black prison sect disciples want to kill the chicken to warn the monkeys.
In order to find the servant who didn’t make a sound, the black prison sect disciples began to count the number of servants. At the same time, they divided the people according to the living area of the village and began to count carefully.
However, this count made the black prison sect disciples stunned. There were actually close to ten odd-job workers missing.
“You dared to form a group and escape. Haven’t you learned your lesson?” The black prison sect’s head disciple, Xiao lang, stared at the servants below and shouted angrily.
“Do you know where they went?”
Other than fear, the servants below were still numb. No one answered.
This kind of thing happened every year among the odd-job workers. Xiao lang saw that the odd-job workers ‘expressions were wooden, so he didn’t want to ask any more questions. He said to the disciples beside him,”
“Junior brothers, go and find them with the black prison true seal. As long as they leave the range, you will be able to sense them. They can’t escape!”
“Yes, senior brother!” “Yes!” The black prison sect disciples beside him replied in unison. Then, they each chose a direction and left.
After the disciples left, Xiao lang dismissed the servants and left as well.
In fact, he was not worried that the servants would be able to escape. After all, the Emperor’s Tomb mountain range was huge. How far could a servant go without enough food? Moreover, with the black prison seal as insurance, it was impossible for a mortal to escape from the black prison sect’s control.
At this moment, Black Tiger was mixed in with the crowd of handymen and also had a wooden expression.
Unlike the others, Black Tiger clearly knew where the handymen had gone because he was the one who had caused all this.
His spirit root was of poor quality. If he relied on slow cultivation, he would never have the chance to escape from the black prison sect’s evil clutches.
Therefore, he set his eyes on those handymen who were completely defenseless against him and killed them with cruel means. Then, he used the great art of Foundation seizing to condense their flesh and blood into a blood pill that could improve the foundation and ate it.
There were no traces left behind, so he did not have to worry about being found out.
After snatching the foundation (spiritual roots) of nearly ten handymen, the black Tiger was pleasantly surprised to find that its inferior spiritual roots in the game had actually evolved into basic spiritual roots.
One of the handymen had refined a blood pill that had helped him jump from a poor quality spiritual root of 72% to a basic spiritual root of 18%.
After the quality of his spirit root had evolved, his cultivation speed had indeed increased.
Living in such a black prison, Black Tiger had fantasized countless times that there would be righteous cultivators who would fly over and destroy the black prison sect with a wave of their hands, saving him from the fire and water.
However, this was ultimately just a fantasy. The cruel black prison sect was still fine and continued to torture them cruelly day after day.
After obtaining the “Foundation stealing technique”, Black Tiger felt that this was his only chance. Although the methods of growing up were very cruel, he felt that he could only have a chance to turn things around if he was more ruthless than the black prison sect.
Black Tiger no longer cared if it was right or wrong. He had had enough of such days. If he could live, so what if he became a demonic sect like the black prison sect?
No! As long as I can live, I will be more ruthless than them.
In the past three years, Black Tiger’s attitude had changed. He was no longer that kind and hot-blooded youth. In Black Tiger’s eyes, the environment was different. Being hot-blooded and kind were stupid. Only unscrupulous ruthlessness was the only way to survive.
After another busy day, the black Tiger didn’t enter the game at night. Instead, it went to the wooden house next to spiritual field number three and pushed the door open.
When the handyman living here saw the wooden door being pushed open, he was so scared that he took a few steps back, thinking that it was a disciple of the sect.
However, when he saw that the person who came was also an errand boy, his expression returned to his wooden state. He didn’t even ask Black Tiger why he had come. He took out the virtual helmet from under the bed and was ready to enter the game.
The black Tiger watched him put on the helmet, then took a step forward and punched him in the throat. Then, he quickly covered his mouth to prevent him from making a sound.
The laborer struggled madly. However, his strength was undoubtedly too weak in the face of the black Tiger, who was already a cultivator. He gradually lost his strength in his struggle and finally stopped moving.
After killing the handyman, Black Tiger pulled open his clothes and placed his palm on the left side of his chest where his heart was.
He began to fantasize about the familiar trajectory of the spirit Qi in his mind. Faint light spots slowly appeared around him and seeped into the servant’s body.
The spider web-like blood-red threads spread out from the laborer’s heart and gradually covered his body.
During the refining process, the servant’s body slowly shrank …
Two hours later, the black Tiger walked out of the wooden house after swallowing the blood pill. It went to another place and started killing again.
After killing the two servants, Black Tiger returned to his room and logged into the game.
The first thing he did when he got online was to open his attribute panel.
Black Tiger (player)
[Level: 43]
[Spiritual root (special): basic (58/100)]
(Has comprehended the foundation stealing technique, able to steal other people’s spirit roots to feed on one’s own spirit root)
[Cultivation method progress: Foundation stealing stage level 1,2.8%]
……
Seeing that the quality of its spirit root had increased once again, the black Tiger’s face revealed a sinister smile.
The quality of the spiritual roots of the two handymen he had killed this time was not bad. It had actually increased the quality of his base level by 40%. It could be said that he had gained a lot.
The black Tiger only understood how important the quality of the spirit root was after it started cultivating.
His previous poor quality spiritual roots were very wasteful during cultivation. He could only preserve 2% of the spiritual energy he absorbed into his body. It could be said that he was useless on the path of cultivation.
However, it was different when the quality was upgraded to the basic level. Not only was the speed of absorbing Reiki increased by 20%, but the Reiki that was absorbed into the body was also increased to 10%. The cultivation speed was more than five times faster.
This made the black Tiger understand that the most important thing for it was to improve the quality of its spiritual roots. After all, as long as the quality was up, perhaps a day’s cultivation would be equivalent to a year’s cultivation when it had a low-quality spiritual root, or even more.
However, he could only kill two handymen a day. He had to spend the rest of his time earning soul coins. Otherwise, he would definitely be beaten up the next day.
Before he obtained the strength to go against the black prison sect, Black Tiger chose to bear with it.
With the cultivation method’s attributes, the black Tiger’s current speed of killing monsters was much faster. By the time morning arrived, it had completed a day’s worth of soul coins. Then, it sent the soul coins to the black Tiger sect disciple in the form of mail, who was responsible for managing it.
However, on this morning’s morning routine check, the black prison sect disciples were surprised to find that two more handymen were missing.