Ning looked at the deer-like beast in front of him and got very nervous. He wasn't nervous because it might attack him, but because it might run away at the slightest disturbance.
The deer was very much heavier than him so he couldn't use Telekinesis on it to try and stop it.
The deer was around the 8th realm of Qi Condensation, and while he could easily kill it, he didn't want to run through the jungle following it.
So, he trod slowly, making sure to not step on anything dry or could make sounds. As soon as he got close enough, he turned his palm into a fist and punched the air.
Suddenly, blue energy appeared from his arm that took the shape of a fist and rushed towards the deer. Before the deer could even do anything, Ning managed to incapacitate it.
Seeing the deer down, he immediately ran towards it and killed it with a normal punch. He then put the corpse inside the storage bag and sighed in relief.
The first few beasts he came across in the jungle that was weaker than him but heavier, usually just ran away because of his aura. He killed every single one of them after running after them for a bit, but that was starting to get annoying.
"I need to learn how to contain my aura," he thought. His cultivation base was too strong now and he needed to be able to contain it in.
It wasn't only for the sake of these beasts or the competition, he needed to be able to do this so that he could mix in with the mortals or lower level cultivators if he ever wanted to have a slow life, or if he ever wanted to act like a pig to eat the tiger.
"Can I do it?" Ning wondered. From what he knew, the aura on one's body appeared when the Qi continuously circulated throughout the body and some of it escaped from it.
"So, if I want to hide my aura I either need to have the Qi not escape my meridian or… not have the Qi in the meridian at all," he thought.
Previously, he wouldn't think this was possible. If the Qi the always stayed in the meridians were to be thrown away, he would have to cultivate overnight to gain the Qi back.
However, now that he was a Foundation Establishment realm cultivator, he could store the Qi in the Sea of Qi. That was where all of the Qi in his meridians originated from, to begin with.
So what he needed to do now was cut off the supply.
He sent his divine sense into his Sea Of Qi and started controlling the Qi flowing out of it. The Qi was his, so he could control it.
But the Sea of Qi had its own plan it seemed. As Ning tried to control the Qi, the Sea of Qi kept trying to force some more Qi through.
Ning tried for a while but couldn't entirely stop the flow of Qi. In the end, he gave up and got satisfied with what he had.
While the aura was still there, thanks to the lack of Qi, it felt more like he was around the 5th realm of Qi Condensation at best.
"I can work with this," he thought. He used part of his attention to keeping the Qi at bay and walked forward.
Now that his aura wasn't as terrifying as before, beasts were more attracted towards him thinking he was their prey.
Ning cracked a smile every time one of them tried to sneak attack him.
"You can't sneak when I have my divine sense, you fools," he thought to himself and immediately turned around to kill whatever was behind him. Taken by surprise, they were usually stunned like a deer in the headlights.
" This is getting too easy," Ning thought as he looked at the corpse of the hyena-like creature in front of him. He quickly put it into his storage bag and walked on.
He found a few more ingredients along the way and killed some beasts as well.
He was walking forward when he suddenly noticed an opening that didn't have any trees. "Am I out of the forest?" he thought and walked forward.
When he reached the open area, he realized that it was actually just a small place in the middle of the forest that didn't have any trees.
That was probably because of what was in the middle of the open area. "Holy Sh*t," Ning couldn't help but curse when he saw the gigantic tree in front of him.
The tree was around 4 meters in diameter and nearly 50 meters high. The trunk separated into dozens of think branches that separated into more. All in all, the tree had about 30 meters in radius at the maximum span of its horizontal length.
That wasn't the only thing great about the tree in front of him. There were multiple snakes wrapped around the branches of the trees, each at least 5th realm of Qi Condensation in cultivation.
"Hmm… can I fight them all without getting overwhelmed? They probably— no, most likely have venom too," Ning thought.
He started looking through the snakes and quickly started recognizing them.
"Geez, 90% of them are venomous, and those are just the ones I can see from here," he thought.
He looked near every single snake and could see a green fruit hanging near it. He paid closer attention and suddenly his eyes went wide. " Emerald Mango!" he shouted.
That was the name of one of the most hard-to-find ingredients of all. It had many usages in healing pastes and other forms of medicine but was very rare, so no one used it.
Now, here it was and he could get a lot of it as well. However, he would have to fight through the hoards to snakes to get to it.
"Whatever," he thought and was about to move forward when suddenly, he heard footsteps nearby.