Everwood Isolated Domain.
Inside the sturdy wooden house.
While Lian and his subordinates were engrossed in investigating Aksai, who had seemingly vanished into thin air, Aksai was tending to his wounds.
Earlier, he had used a healing-type talisman Aunt Reta had given him to mend a majority of his injuries.
He then calmed himself down before practicing the 6th layer of the Basic Greenwood Tantra to recover his lost Spirit essence as much as possible.
When he started practicing the Tantra, the effects of the appearance-changing pill came undone and he reverted to his usual appearance.
After a considerable amount of time had passed, Aksai opened his eyes and expelled a turbulent Spirit essence from his mouth before examining the achievements laid out in front of him.
Three corpses of his fallen enemies.
“I finally got a space storage artifact,” he smiled lightly, observing the storage ring the woman had worn on her right index finger. He felt excited, knowing that it would make moving items to and from the Everwood farmhouse much more manageable.
Aksai rose from his meditative position and approached the masked woman’s corpse. He took the ring from her and used his own elemental Spirit Sense to erase her Spirit Imprint. Since the masked woman was dead, he had no trouble claiming the storage ring for himself.
Aksai checked the inside of the storage ring as soon as he claimed it. The storage space offered by the ring was only about 5 cubic meters, spacious enough to store a variety of items from daily necessities to crucial cultivation resources one needed at all times.
Nesha had stored about 100 low-grade spirit stones inside it, along with a bunch of spirit crystals.
She had also stored a low-grade sword artifact along with several talismans she couldn’t make use of in her battle against Aksai.
Nesha had plenty of Advanced Light Steps talismans. She also had around 10 offensive-type talismans and 3 defensive-type talismans.
In short, Nesha had all the firepower she could have possibly needed to “manhandle” Aksai.
After inspecting Nesha’s possessions, Aksai gulped in trepidation. He realized he was extremely lucky in dealing with her. The woman was wary of Aksai’s Mudra-weaving skills and decided to forgo using her resources to maintain constant pressure on him.
If Aksai hadn’t taken her by surprise by utilizing the powers of his treasure, she would have had numerous means to defend herself against his attacks. His direct attacks couldn’t harm her in the first place.
Apart from Nesha’s stored possessions, the storage ring itself cost more than 70 spirit stones. Aksai had to thank the masked woman once again in his mind for providing him with the storage ring and a bunch of spirit stones as well. The loss he had incurred in the black market shop had been recovered with these items alone.
Nesha’s storage ring also contained various elixirs and pills ideally suited for mid-stage Spirit Refiners. It seemed that she had already prepared herself for breaking into the late stage of the 1st realm. Too bad she died before she could ever make use of the accumulated resources.
To Aksai, who was in the 7th stage of Spirit Refiner, Nesha’s cultivation resources were still useful. However, he had the neural link fabric, so he had less dependency on the elixirs to make progress in his cultivation. A least when it came to breaking into the 7th-stage Spirit Refining.
“Never mind. I can always sell this stuff somewhere and turn these assets into spirit stones,” Aksai thought to himself as he keenly scanned the elixirs stored by Nesha with his Spirit Sense.
“I can also give these resources to Aunt Reta as compensation for using her talismans now as well as in the past,” he thought to himself and nodded internally.
Aksai immediately wore the storage ring and stored all his belongings inside that he wanted to carry with him at all times. After all, using the oil painting treasure as a portable warehouse wasn’t always convenient for him.
Aksai then took out a handwritten manual that belonged to Nesha, which looked more like a diary. Initially, he was about to toss the diary away, thinking that the owner of the manual might have written about her mundane experiences in it.
However, he casually read past a few paragraphs before his expression changed. He stopped thinking about everything else and focused entirely on reading through the manual.
When he finished reading the manual, Aksai realized that he had entered a tiger’s den by visiting the black market. It was only because of his prudence, preparations, and a bit of luck that he had managed to come out unscathed.
Otherwise, his life would have changed for the worse, even if he didn’t die. Most importantly, his days as a Spirit farmer would have been over.
“So the black market is run by the Lakir family from the shadows,” Aksai muttered to himself as he put down the manual on the ground.
“The reason they sell the last three layers of the Basic Greenwood Tantra is so that they can identify rebellious Spirit farmers. Earlier, they either used to kill these Spirit farmers or use them in their experiments.
But now they have started recruiting them because of the emergence of the inheritance ground and overall unrest in Wuyum County.
No wonder these three poor bastards approached me intending to spar. It’s good that I killed them, or else I would have been tracked down even if I managed to get away from them,” Aksai’s eyes turned cold as he realized how close he was to falling into the well-laid trap of the Lakir family.
“I can’t visit Lakir City now,” Aksai made up his mind.
“It seems that this dead woman’s name is Nesha. This fellow Lian Lakir was the boss behind these three cultivators targeting me. And it seems that he had some special relationship with this I killed.
What if he is burning in the flames of vengeance because of my actions? To hell with the black market and to hell with the opportunities. Once I leave this city, I’ll not come back for a solid three or four years.”
Aksai snickered before thinking to himself. “How will he take revenge when I stay on my farm and not confront him at all? Let him hate me all he wants. I’ll focus on increasing my strength and looking after my farms,” he decided before heading out of the wooden house.
There, a beautiful lush sight of his Everwood family farm awaited him.
Aksai had learned a lot about the oil painting treasure and how it worked. He had also discovered some of its special features.
After working inside the farm for nearly two weeks in his spare time, the land had been utilized well. To Aksai’s surprise, it even bore the fruits of his efforts.
Aksai had to say that if used correctly, this Everwood farmhouse would turn out to be the biggest treasure supporting his cultivation journey for a very long time.