22 three battles

"Old man, if you don't believe me, watch this!"

After which...the drumstick.... disappeared!

____

"You brat, do you think I don't know what a storage ring is? What kind of idiot do you even think I am!"

After saying this the man instantly charged at Fang Qiu, yet right as the man made his first step...

A drumstick hit him squarely in the face!

Or rather, he ran into a drumstick. "What the..."

"Hehehe time to die, old man!" After which the drumstick suddenly turned into Fang Qiu's left hand using a [star grasping hand] at full power from point blank range....

The result was to be expected, the old man had no time to dodge, nor did he try to, before he could process what was going on he suddenly felt a blast of heat hit him in the chest like a miniature sun, which was the last thing he ever felt.

"Phew, I nearly thought the teleportation failed. Wasn't this skill supposed to teleport objects instantly? Why was there a delay? Oh well, guess I still didn't fully grasp the skill even after practicing many times secretly. Let's see what this creepy dude has on him! Foundation realm cultivators should be pretty rich, right?"

Fang Qiu had spent a little bit of time each day to increase his space element warp path and light element illusion path by having Little Black eat part of a nature stone daily.

By now his comprehension for both paths had reached about twenty percent towards elemental seed realm, it wasn't much but at least it was enough to start learning some of the other skills he bought over a week ago now.

"Why is this old man so poor? He barely has enough gold to buy me dinner tonight, and why does he own so many pills?

The only useful thing he owns is a single nature stone of some kind of weird element which I don't recognise.

It seems the old man must have been a rare element cultivator that was hiding in the woods to ambush lone cultivators like me once their qi runs dry.

But didn't he see me eat a drumstick? Obviously, I never ran out of qi, it would be stupid to leave myself defenseless in a dangerous place.

Also, I never got to see his core spirit before he died, seems it was not a battle spirit since I didn't get to see it."

Fang Qiu thought to himself whilst inspecting the old man's storage ring.

Core spirits vanish when the cultivator dies since it is basically part of the cultivator's core. The only thing a dead core spirit leaves behind is some nature stone shards since nature stones are cultivator and beast cores.

And after a tiny bit of searching in the bushes behind the old man Fang Qiu found some nature stone shards of that same weird element, which he put inside his void storage together with his other gains.

He also didn't forget to break Gao Jiang's dantian and take out his core from within, after which he had Little Black absorb the corpse inside his void storage

"A little over a week ago I bought ten yellow rank skills: warp path [teleportation], [replacement] and [warp steps], illusion path [in plain sight], [familiar face], [dupe] and [decoy]. And lastly the star path's [star grasping hand], [shooting star], [starlight shower] and [starry skies].

The only ones I learned for now are [teleportation], [replacement], [star grasping hand] and [in plain sight].

The only reason my [star grasping hand] hasn't reached intermediate mastery yet is because I spent some time learning the other skills.

The other three are currently only at beginner mastery which is enough for now. Good thing I spent some time on these skills or killing Gao Jiang would have been way more difficult."

Thinking about the first battle...

Three days after arriving in the forest he only had [star grasping hand] and was still learning the archery fundamentals manual when he got ambushed by a long ranged dark element cultivator who used darts and seemed to be an assassin style fighter.

Fang Qiu only managed to get off pretty much unharmed since the attacker only saw Fang Qiu use the star element, so he didn't know Fang Qiu was immune to the poison darts the man shot at him (1).

This gave Fang Qiu the opportunity to trick his opponent into thinking he was heavily poisoned before he suddenly hit him with a [star grasping hand] when the man got close.

This battle made him realise he got pretty lucky as the other cultivator relied on his poison too much.

Not that it was a stupid move by his opponent since the odds of Fang Qiu being immune to the poison was nearly zero.

Fang Qiu didn't hide his star path arm, so attackers automatically assumed he was a star path cultivator.

The likelihood of him possessing dual elements and the other element being light element on top of that was nearly zero.

Since that day Fang Qiu started to learn several vital survival skills on the side.

[teleportation] was the core skill of the warp path so every warp path cultivator knew this skill. It could allow the cultivator to teleport any item or person if they didn't resist.

The only limitation currently was his foundation realm qi.

Teleporting himself a couple of meters away would take up over half his qi which is why this skill was only used for dodging lethal attacks in foundation realm.

In higher realms it could be used a lot more versatile since the cultivator's qi would be way more abundant. So, using it for movement would be its main use then.

[replacement] and [warp steps] were used to compliment [teleportation] for now until teleportation became more powerful. Warp steps could increase his running speed, but he hadn't managed to grasp this skill yet.

[replacement] on the other hand could make two items or people swap places if they were of similar size.

The bigger the objects or people and the further the distance in between them the more qi it used up. But it still used up way less qi than actual teleportation which is why he used this skill for now until teleportation was more cost efficient.

And his last skill [in plain sight] could be used to make items close to invisible unless one paid close attention. The skill made use of light element to bend the light around the object to make it camouflaged.

Its biggest limitation is the skill not working on objects or living things that contain qi, since cultivators were very sensitive to qi signatures around them.

In his second battle two days ago, he managed to sense two people spying on him. So instead of passively awaiting their attack he took the initiative by making use of his archery fundamentals. He managed to shoot an arrow containing neutral qi around the tree they were hiding behind instantly catching one of the two cultivators off guard.

Both his opponents were peak Foundation realm cultivators with years of experience, so Fang Qiu didn't expect to kill his target with a single arrow without using a skill. But using skills would make them alert so he used a sneaky shot to gain the advantage. And it's not like he had learned his other star path archery skills already so there were none to be used yet.

Sadly, the cultivator he hit was an earth realm cultivator that had a core spirit rock shield. The two were more careful than Fang Qiu thought and all he managed to hit was the earth cultivator's defensive skill.

The second cultivator was a fire element close range cultivator who cultivated flame path. His core spirit was a fire hound which was a relatively fast battle spirit. This core spirit was the most annoying opponent out of the three since battle spirits were difficult to damage having the same amount of defense as their owner.

He ended up winning this battle only because he had Little Black use [dig in] multiple times to replenish his qi and heal his burns. He also eventually killed the core spirit using a star grasping hand, but this only bought him more time.

Both their void storages were nearly full of meat, so Fang Qiu just had the panda take out food and use [dig in] every time his qi ran low or his wounds got worse. The enemy cultivators only had limited qi and Fang Qiu managed to keep his distance after killing the fire hound, the thing causing him most of his wounds was the fire element cultivator's battle spirit.

He also got hit by a couple of skills and nearly got trapped once by the earth cultivator using [earth walls] to try and trap him in.

Yet, in the end Fang Qiu had a near inexhaustible amount of Qi and as an archer he managed to keep his distance and kite the two close range fighters.

once the two of them got low on qi and noticed how his wounds kept on disappearing, they backed off and didn't come back.

Luckily it seemed both their spirit abilities were only useful in close range or Fang Qiu could have lost a lot more back there if they got to use it.

There was no life and death enmity between them so none of them were stupid enough to fight to the death if there was no clear winner in sight.

Fang Qiu also couldn't kill them since the earth cultivator was too hard to damage and the fire cultivator had his flame path to annoy Fang Qiu. He didn't want to get close either since [star grasping hand] might not have been enough to kill them and letting them get close might cost him his life if he wasn't careful so he let them off.

No cultivator that managed to reach peak foundation realm was stupid and they would always consider the risk and rewards. Both parties realised there wasn't much to gain from the confrontation so backing off and looking for other targets was a better option.

And then there was the battle just now....

Fang Qiu first acted weirdly in order to confuse his opponent and make him focus on the drumstick whilst lowering his guard just a little.

Then he teleported the drumstick in front of the cultivator and used [in plain sight] at the same time to make it invisible.

Locking the drumstick in space was just a basic application of the space laws and Fang Qiu didn't need a skill for this since just his basic comprehension was enough to figure out how to do it.

The combination of his earlier sentence and teleporting the drumstick gave his opponent the illusion Fang Qiu was just messing with him or stalling for time which prompted him to attack just like Fang Qiu intended.

Then he quickly used [star grasping hand] just as the man started charging at him.

Gao Jiang then got distracted by walking into the stationary and invisible drumstick which gave Fang Qiu the time to quickly make a starlight ball in his star path hand with around half his qi.

If he didn't place the drumstick there as distraction the old man might have realised he still had qi remaining so all of these steps were to ensure his opponent would be distracted and unable to react fast enough. Fang Qiu would be able to kill him due to his higher realm even if he ran away but this battle was also a test to see how strong he had gotten and to test out a new combination attack.

Then the final step of the attack was this self-made combination attack...

He used [replacement] on the drumstick to make it swap places with [star grasping hand]'s projectile whilst at the same time having the hand launch the "star" point blank at his enemy, killing him.

This combination attack was something he thought of when thinking about the big limitations of [star grasping hand].

If he used [replacement] to have the projectile arrive close to his enemies before launching the starlight ball it would be harder to dodge. He could also teleport it but that would consume a couple times more qi. So, using the drumstick which is of similar size as a distraction first was an ideal combination to catch enemies off guard since everyone would underestimate a slab of food being thrown at them.

A thing of note was the drumstick he used being from a regular animal he hunted in the past couple of days. This was done intentionally because [in plain sight] would not work with his usual drumsticks since they contained a lot of qi.

"Throwing a drumstick and using [replacement] in combination with [star grasping hand] seems like a great killing move. Though it would only work once.

Let's call this combination move [eat my meat rod] since this would add to the distraction effect, I can't call it exploding drumstick because yelling that out loud during battles would warn them about the move's effect."

Fang Qiu mumbled to himself whilst gorging down the drumstick he got back through [replacement].

_____

One month later....

_______

1. The dark/death element has innately poisonous qi because the qi harms vitality. The light/life element had innate healing because it is based on vitality so this element counters the innate dark element poison. If it was a real poison or the actual poison path Fang Qiu would still be affected, but the innate poison from dark element qi is something he is immune against. Hope this clears up any confusion that should arise.