Chapter 75 – Deep Sea Encounter with the Dragon Whale

Chapter 75 – Deep Sea Encounter with the Dragon Whale

The moment he heard the target was only at mid Qi Refining stage cultivation, Jiao Xiuyuan immediately relaxed.

He made grand promises right away: “Rest assured, it’s just a minor Qi Refining cultivator. I guarantee I’ll dig up every last detail about him. It’s just that the price…”

Li Fan smiled. “It’s merely a minor Qi Refining cultivator—surely it shouldn’t cost too much.”

Jiao Xiuyuan wished he could slap himself. He said sheepishly, “In this line of work, there’s always some degree of risk involved. How about… this amount?”

He held up eight fingers.

“Forty contribution points. Not a single point more,” Li Fan shook his head.

“Oh come on, you’re cutting the price way too deep! Sixty points is reasonable, isn’t it? Otherwise this is another deal where I’m losing money!” Jiao Xiuyuan cried out in distress.

Li Fan turned and walked away.

“Wait, wait!” Jiao Xiuyuan hurriedly blocked Li Fan’s path.

“Fifty points then—truly can’t go any lower,” he said with an expression of genuine pain.

Only then did Li Fan stop.

“Please give ten contribution points as a deposit first,” Jiao Xiuyuan said, handing Li Fan a communication talisman. “Once I have results, I’ll notify you through this talisman.”

Li Fan accepted the talisman and produced a mid-grade spirit stone to hand to Jiao Xiuyuan.

Rather than leaving in a hurry, he instead began examining the other goods for sale around the room.

Seeing that a big customer had walked in today, Jiao Xiuyuan became even more enthusiastic.

“What else would you like?”

“Do you sell cultivation techniques? Preferably an escape technique, or something with effects similar to a Form-Concealing Talisman would work too,” Li Fan asked.

The expression on Jiao Xiuyuan’s face immediately froze.

“Ha, are you having me on? How about you take a look at some other things instead? What about this Bewildering Maze Formation diagram? Absolutely the cream of the crop. Once deployed, it can trap a late Foundation Establishment cultivator for an entire day.”

“This set of Frost Talisman Swords isn’t bad either—perfect for ambushes…”

“Hey, don’t leave!”

…

After leaving Thousand Miles Hall, Li Fan returned to the Celestial Mystery Mirror.

He planned to first cultivate the Nether Spirit Illusion Art to late Qi Refining stage before doing anything else.

Once the Blue Flame phantom spirit was fully stabilized, he could release it to kill enemies.

With the assisted cultivation mode activated, Li Fan once again entered seclusion.

…

One month later, in the waters near Flame Crystal Island in the eastern Layered Cloud Sea.

Deep beneath the sea, Li Fan concealed his aura and trailed behind a school of Crimson Flame Sharks.

The school consisted of over a dozen sharks, and they were hunting a lone Red Seat Whale.

The Red Seat Whale possessed an enormous body and fed year-round on flame crystals at the sea floor, giving its skin a texture like a layer of solid rock.

The Crimson Flame Sharks, on the other hand, had razor-sharp teeth, moved with great speed, and coordinated flawlessly.

Though they couldn’t inflict significant damage to the Red Seat Whale in the short term, they could slowly drain its vitality like a dull blade cutting flesh.

The Red Seat Whale attempted several times to break through the Crimson Flame Sharks’ encirclement, but each attempt failed.

Gradually, its resistance grew weaker and weaker.

Watching this scene unfold, Li Fan knew the time had come.

The Blue Flame phantom spirit manifested.

It then transformed into a thin streak of blue light, in an instant darting through the dozen-plus Crimson Flame Sharks and the Red Seat Whale one by one at blistering speed.

Moments later, it returned to Li Fan’s sea of consciousness.

The Crimson Flame Sharks and Red Seat Whale abruptly froze in place.

Then, a wave of icy energy surged from within their bodies. From the inside out, they were frozen solid.

In just an instant, the sea floor was dotted with bizarre ice sculptures.

Their expressions and postures were exactly as they had been in life, but all traces of vitality had long since vanished.

“The Blue Flame phantom spirit’s power truly is impressive.”

“These sea beasts mostly possess cultivation equivalent to the Qi Refining stage, and their hides are thick and tough—ordinary methods would have difficulty killing them. Yet after the Blue Flame phantom spirit launched its spiritual sense attack, they were like lambs awaiting slaughter, without an ounce of resistance.” Li Fan nodded. Having tested the phantom spirit’s killing power for the first time, he was quite satisfied.

Not long ago, after spending over twenty days, he had finally succeeded in breaking through the Nether Spirit Illusion Art to the late Qi Refining stage.

To test the phantom spirit’s power and earn some contribution points along the way, he had accepted a task to “hunt Crimson Flame Sharks and harvest the beast cores from their bodies.”

Each beast core was worth 5 contribution points, which would net him roughly sixty-some points total. Adding in the materials from the Red Seat Whale, this outing would yield around eighty-plus contribution points.

How to put it—better than nothing, he supposed.

In the past, his contribution point earnings had always been measured in the thousands. This paltry amount could hardly stir any excitement in Li Fan’s heart.

As Li Fan thought this, he was about to move forward and harvest the Crimson Flame Sharks’ beast cores.

But he suddenly sensed an enormously massive form approaching from the depths of the sea below.

Li Fan’s expression changed. Without bothering about the beast cores mere inches away, he swiftly retreated.

A deep brown deep-sea behemoth with a fearsome visage emerged suddenly from the shadows of the sea floor. On its forehead was a faint, misshapen protrusion—it looked neither like a dragon nor a fish.

Its enormous maw gaped open, swallowing the dozen-plus Crimson Flame Sharks along with the Red Seat Whale in a single gulp!

Its massive body swayed as the behemoth circled once, then identified a direction and swam away.

Li Fan, who had barely managed to dodge the creature, hadn’t even had time to react before watching helplessly as his prey was stolen.

Was this something he could tolerate?

Rage surged within Li Fan.

But the Xuanhuang Heart-refining Mantra quickly activated, allowing him to calm down somewhat.

Wait—this behemoth, didn’t it look like the same one that had destroyed the Spirit Mist Grass island before?

As if recalling something, Li Fan was struck with sudden realization.

When he had accepted the Crimson Flame Shark hunting task earlier, Li Fan had also caught a glimpse of another bounty mission.

Since that mission was somewhat related to him, he had examined it carefully at the time.

As it turned out, those people who had speculated on Spirit Mist Grass back then had nearly all suffered devastating losses, losing everything they had.

With resentment festering in their hearts and grievances churning, they couldn’t even calm their minds to cultivate.

Yet they didn’t dare seek trouble with Sovereign Qingmu Huasheng or the Myriad Immortals Alliance, so they could only vent their anger on the strange beast that had destroyed the Spirit Mist Grass island in the first place.

According to eyewitnesses, the attacker had been a dragon whale with cultivation roughly at the Foundation Establishment stage.

The island’s guardian was also a Foundation Establishment cultivator.

However, the dragon whale’s body was so massive that the guardian’s attacks landed on it like someone scratching an itch—completely ineffective.

The dragon whale simply ignored the guardian, smashed through the island protection formation, rampaged across the island, and devoured the majority of the Spirit Mist Grass.

Only after all this did a Golden Core cultivator from the Myriad Immortals Alliance finally arrive, belatedly.

And this dragon whale, after taking a hit from the Core Formation stage cultivator, had actually survived. It was only severely wounded as it escaped back into the depths of the sea.

The Layered Cloud Sea was vast, and this group of people who wanted to kill the dragon whale to vent their frustrations searched for over a dozen days without finding it.

Left with no other option, they each contributed a small portion of their remaining contribution points to jointly post a bounty mission.

Kill the dragon whale, and receive two thousand contribution points.

Since even Foundation Establishment cultivators couldn’t do anything about this dragon whale, Li Fan—a mere Qi Refining cultivator—naturally hadn’t bothered accepting the mission before.

However…

The situation was different now!