Chapter 38

Nighttime was approaching and the duo decided to return to their inn. When they returned and went inside their rooms, Jiang Mang took out his newly purchased daggers. He tried to become used to their weight and form so that he can accurately hit his targets when he uses the willow leaf throwing dagger technique, which was the first technique he learned in his life. He had continued using this technique in combination with just throwing coated qi daggers instead of using qi manipulation as his targets had seldom experienced ordinary techniques without qi, which wouldn't induce changes in the surrounding qi.

He became proficient in their usage after two hours before he started meditating and comprehending intent. The next day, the duo had planned to visit the pill shop and serpent shop. Their first destination was the pill shop, where they found an entire collection of pills that were classified the same way as artifacts. They had come to buy survival pills and a pill to help Chu Lingxin breakthrough. Unfortunately, pills were much more expensive than they realized. One bottle of ten low-quality saint-tier healing pills cost 5000 spirit coins while one Qi breaking pill, which makes braking through easier, cost a whopping 50000 spirit coins.

This dejected Chu Lingxin, who planned to leave after purchasing two bottles of healing pills. One for each to heal their wounds during the recruitment. They left the shop after spending 10000 spirit coins and headed towards their last destination before they were free to sightsee the city in their leisure time.

They arrived before the serpent shop after a couple of minutes of walking and they were immediately greeted by a shop attendant who asked what they were looking for. They responded by telling that they were looking for hidden weapon techniques and pills similar to the Qi breaking pill.

The attendant guided the duo towards a room filled with pills. He showed them three pills like the Qi breaking pill but none of them was cheaper than it, which left the duo dejected. After telling the attendant that they couldn't buy these pills and were looking for cheaper variants, the attendant's attitude rapidly changed to indifference while responding that cheaper variants didn't exist. He then guided them towards the technique section, where he informed them that they had only five hidden weapon techniques for sale. Three of which were only Xuan tier techniques, and the remaining two were at the Di tier. Jiang Mang looked through both techniques one was a similar technique to Yin daggers as it allows the user to condense flying daggers capable of poisoning their target, while the other was a needle throwing technique which allows the user to coat needles with qi to increase their penetration ability while also becoming able of controlling the trajectory of the needles when thrown.

Jiang Mang was only interested in the flying dagger technique, which was called poison daggers. This technique can convert any type of qi into a poison that is coated on top of a dagger or condensed into a flying dagger through the mastery of the poison intent. The reason that this technique isn't already sold despite being extremely powerful and deadly is that the poison intent is one of the rarest intents a person can learn. It is said that only one out of 1 million saint realm cultivators can comprehend this intent.

This fact resulted in this Di tier technique to be priced at 20 000 spirit coins. This price is only half the price of the inferior needle throwing technique. Jiang Mang eventually decided to buy the technique as he was in dire need of one, and it was the only one to fall in his price range.

The duo left the shop with only a bit more than 10000 spirit coins remaining. Luckily they had managed to acquire all they wanted for the recruitment besides Chu Lingxin's breakthrough pill. She is incredibly talented and should be able to breakthrough naturally after half a year, but this would be after the recruitment and not help increase her chances of being recruited.

Jiang Mang was happy with his purchases and wanted to directly start training his new technique, but he knew that her mood was down and thus accompanied her to a restaurant to help lift her mood. They decided to eat in a popular restaurant called Sea delicacies which served the meat of sea fierce beast and sea saint beasts. They chose a table in a quiet corner to avoid attention before ordering two dishes of fierce beast meat and two cups of sea breeze wine. This cost them another 1000 spirit coins, but that didn't bother them as they would only visit two other cities before the recruitment.

The duo spent their time chatting about the recruitment and what they should expect from it. They know that each recruitment was organized with different rules each decade and that the 9 powers would only accept 1000 disciples out of more than 10000 participants at the saint realm and below or at the age of 20. They had also gotten their hands on a ranking of the top 100 talents in the outer domain encompassed by the 81 smaller continents with the inner domain being the 9 large continents. This ranking was called the genius ranking.

The first place genius was called Huang Mo who had broken through to the saint stage at the age of 17 and was in the possession of twin elemental spirits. His profound spirits were known as the wind lightning spirits and allowed him to control and combine wind and lightning qi. He was currently a mid saint stage cultivator and 19 years old.

The second and third place geniuses were called Zhao Mo and Zhao Yin who were brothers and sisters from the same father but different mothers. They hailed from the Zhao family, which was known as the strongest faction in the entire outer domain and dominated the number one small continent known as the Dawn continent. The siblings were both in the possession of darkness qi and were only different in profound spirits. Zhao Mo was a darkness saber cultivator, while Zhao Yin had a darkness whip profound spirit. They were both at the same age and cultivation realm as Huang Mo. The lower-ranked geniuses should also have equivalent cultivation or should be capable of defeating mid saint stage cultivators.

Jiang Mang and Chu Lingxin were both surprised after reading the rankings as they were only capable of reaching a stalemate against mid saint stage cultivators. This meant that they were weaker than all the ranked geniuses. This piece of information deflated their previous confidence and pulled their feet back to reality. It also motivated them to train harder and become as strong as these ranked geniuses.

This would however not be easy as a requirement for reaching mid saint stage is comprehending a type of intent to initial mastery while the breakthrough would increase the saint realm cultivator's qi to become twice as strong as before. It was often required to have comprehended multiple intents to a higher stage if you wish to jump stages and defeat stronger opponents.