Once I made sure no one was nearby, I summoned my flying sword again and jumped on it, then I followed the map that led to the Poison Valley.
It took me less than two hours to meet people, a group of demons from Vitra'Ghoul's kingdom. When they saw me flying through them, they did the unthinkable, trying to use divine sense to scry and investigate me.
But the moment their divine sense touched my body, the Sky Pearl tingled and its inscriptions were triggered, a bright light shone from behind my eyepatch and then loud screams of pain, and agonized lurching sounds echoed around me.
I continued unperturbed, leaving a group of cultivators frightened beyond fear, shuddering in their place.
It's quite nasty, if anyone was prepared and knew what to expect, they'll never use their divine sense like they just did. There were two methods of using one's divine sense on another person. The first is to forcefully apply it to another person, a pervasive measure to see into the person's body, meridians, and their cultivation. But this is actually not the best method, not even the Poison God did this because it didn't just invade a person's body, but also it would allow the person to retaliate, sending your divine sense into another person's body was the same as asking for your hand to be chopped.
The second method was less overbearing, a gentle scry, to have one's divine sense just be on top of a person's skin, it would do the same as you could have your divine sense scan the person's residual spiritual Qi and immediately gouge their strength, and if the other person tried to assault this divine sense since you haven't pervaded their body, you could easily retract yours. Though the second method was the safest, it was also the most complicated and required a lot of experience to understand Qi waves that were emanating from another person, because some, cultivators have such deep cultivation that they could easily hide their Qi release and look like mortals. But there were always deeper seas and higher mountains, and experience can make one know the level of another person even if they make themselves look and feel like mortals.
All of this was mentioned in a passage of the poison god's book, thankfully, the book still taught me many things, and since I unlocked the Core Formation stage, the book's instructions were heavily related to cultivation advice instead of skills and abilities. It seems that the book was preparing me to tackle yet another venture, but it has yet to explain it, I could feel the book trying to teach me on various subjects to cement my cultivation had foundations.
I continued flying through the forest, with my divine sense spread around me, touching just barely on the rims of objects and not trying to bore through them, I wanted to understand my surrounding before I made the same mistake as those demons just did, it would be unwise to have one's divine sense spread, inspecting everything lest it would touch upon the body of a ferocious beast that one can't afford to agitate.
After a while of traveling, I managed to find a few spiritual plants, nothing too fancy, but still useful seventh-grade herbs. I plucked them and continued moving. I also managed to sense the presence of several Blood Wolves that were running in a pack towards something in the distance. They seemed to be agitated and were in a hurry.
I decided to follow them but still keep my distance, wolves always choose to run against the wind so that their scent won't alarm their prey, and if I moved using flight behind them they'll not be alert to me. And as a bonus, they too were going in the same direction of the Poison Valley.
As I've gotten closer, I heard a piercing blow of a flute, it wasn't a sonorous melody, but more like the screech of one's fingernails on a blackboard. And the wolves whimpered and they increased their speed. It seems that they're chasing something.
After moving behind the wolves for a few more minutes we arrived at a clearing, where the wolves spread out and surrounded a group of cultivators. And among them was a bloodied and wounded kid, the same kid that I gave him a spiritual pill yesterday.
Among the wolves stood three cultivators two of them were in the middle stage of Core Creation. As for the one who seemed to be their leader seemed to be at least the seventh stage of Core Cultivation., he had an ethereal demeanor, standing tall with a hand behind his back and a smile that made him look like the most pious and noblest of nobles, yet his eyes dripped of venomous greed.
"Hand it over, Chu, you're unworthy of that pill, it will do you no good, you don't have the talent." The leader of the assailants said.
"Be wise kid, Second Prince Wu doesn't give opportunities too frequently." One of the men next to the boss Wu as his name appears to be, said.
"Second Prince," another one spoke after licking his face, "There are a couple of beauties with that kid, if I can get you the pill, can I…"
"Do as you wish, I don't want to dirty my hand with hitting mud," Second Prince said.
The bloodied kid struggled to stand up, especially with all the wounds on his body and a few of his comrades lying next to him, heavily injured.
The kid held a sword with shaky hands and said, "I told you, I already used the pill," he said gritting his teeth.
"You're too stupid for your own good, you were already on the cusp of reaching the second realm of Core cultivation, and if you had consumed that pill you'd already broken through, I bet you still have it and wanted to use it after you breakthrough, so that way you'll jump from second to third directly." The second prince analyzed, and I was impressed, he figured out the kid immediately especially from the look of the kid's now anxious face.
"I'll give you the pill, but you'll have to let everyone go," the kid said.
The prince thought for a moment and said, "Okay then," hand it over."
The kid hesitated for a second and threw the pill at the second Prince. But the moment the pill was in the prince's hand, his lips curled in a vicious smile, "Fool, you just gave up your only leverage. Kill them," the prince said dismissively and turned away."
"You liar!" the kid said as the two cultivators approached him, a couple of girls next to the mug kid whimpered as the vicious and lustful looks of the prince's henchmen looked at them with clothe tearing gazes.
"I never was honest in any of my deals, and even if, I never was called a liar, do you know why?"?" the prince said and his grin turned even more evil as he looked down at the kid. "Because no one lived to denounce my honesty."
The kid laughed as he raised the pill as if to consume it. But the moment he released it to have it drop down his mouth, nothing fell. I had already come down and swooped the pill from him.
The second prince frowned then looked at me, I was standing right next to him.
"Old man, what are you doing?" he asked.
"I can ask you the same question, what are you doing?"
The kid frowned, his face turned ugly from rage, "Kill him first!" he ordered as he pointed at me.
"Damn old man, I was going to have some fun but you just came and ruined it," one of the two brawny kids said as he drew his sword and came at me.
I looked at the man dismissively, with a dead expression as he approached me, sword extending in a slash aimed at my head.
I had one hand behind my back and raised the other one to block the blow. In truth, blocking a sword blow from a cultivator at the middle stages of Core Formation while I just broke through the first layer of Core Formation would undoubtedly end up with me being dead, but I used my sleeves to do the job for me.
The sword struck against my sleeve and broke in two, the residual force from the exchange caused the cultivator who had wide eyes from shock in front of me to stagger and couldn't evade the tip of Creeping Demise that bore through his neck, in and out and his life was gone.
The man fell to the ground, dead beyond dead, and not even gods can save him as the poison coating my blade did quick work of his vital organs destroying them before he could even breath his last.
"W-what?" the second henchmen said.
"Y-You how dare you kill my underling!" said the pretty boy, but he didn't seem rash enough to try and avenge him.
"Do you know who I am?!" he shouted.
Ah, here it comes! The 'do you know who my daddy is' CRINGE!
"I don't know, and I don't care, but what I do know is, how dare you take things I have given to others." I looked the man in the eyes.
"Wait what was the sentence again, ah yes, I remembered… you must be tired of living!" If you want to be edge-lord cringy, then I can also be edge-lord cringy times a hundred.