Hunting for a breakthrough

Finally the time to go soul beast hunting has come, I am quite excited for this day after all I have been stuck for a long time at the soul grandmaster rank I couldn't wait to proceed onto the next one, but cultivation is an annoying thing I had to grit my teeth and wait patiently as shortcuts would only make me weaker in the grand scale of things.

Why can I not be like those isekai protagonists that I don't drink a glass of water and suddenly are the strongest beings on earth or something. Well thinking back on it I'd rather not be part of the isekai protagonist hive mind, I would have an incredibly generic look then wouldn't I?

Let's move on from my shower thoughts and move onto the more exciting stuff which is of course my growth, this soul ring will be a significant leap as I move onto the next stage in my cultivation, thinking about it I should be getting quite close to manifesting a soul core shouldn't I? Well I won't really do that even if I could, I have plans for that soul core.

By close I mean that most likely I will have my soul power vortex at soul ancestor, but I'd rather get my soul core at soul emperor at least, well that's still too far to talk about soul cores so let's talk about the soul beast hunt itself.

Truly I was quite excited for it so I'm already at our meeting place for it, I even pushed the boats onto the water already, bad idea btw I'm holding it with spiritual power right now and that won't help me when the fight starts, ugh I will have to focus on recovering my spiritual power once the others come back.

On this trip we will take a few more people, meaning Yuhe and Hei Long. The twins aren't exactly suited that much for fighting on the sea, they did a good enough job previously but that was only because of luck and the circumstances that they managed to do anything at all. On top of that we are also going to fight an even stronger soul beast today.

So we decided to go with this set up in the end, oh it seems they are finally coming here. I think as multiple people come closer to me.

Weles:"It seems you couldn't hold on for much longer well I can understand that"

Weles:"However I have to say a few things before going out, remember how last time we kind of just wandered around till we got one"

Cai:"Indeed I do, it was only a few weeks ago how could I forgot"

Weles:"The thing is I found a bait for us"

He takes a small container with a soul beast inside of it, it looked like a regular fish but was amethyst coloured and their scales seemed like they are made out of it.

Cai:"And how is that thing going to help us?"

Weles:"I'm glad you asked you see this thing right here is like an elixir for those soul beasts, this one is about 1 thousand years old so it will make another soul beasts below 100k level raise their cultivation by at least 100-200 years. Of course they will have to eat it first."

Weles:"The plan is to make this thing bleed a little and put it into water, these 10k year old soul beasts will smell it from a nautical mile away, the weaker soul beasts we can scare away with our auras, that should be enough"

Cai:"But won't that bring other soul beasts to us as well"

Weles:"Indeed it will that's why when a suitable soul beast for you comes up we will let it eat this thing before killing it"

Cai:"I guess that will work in a way, well I'm holding these boats for a good while already lets go on them already"

And so everyone climbed up onto the boats and we left for my next soul ring. Weles didn't seem to bother doing anything with the soul beast at this distance as well, it's quite clear we won't meet any strong ones near here.

So we swum in the boats further and further away until finally.

Weles:"Stop everyone ,I will prepare the soul beast now"

He took out some sort of cage and the previous container, he took out the fish together with the water using his spiritual power and put it in the cage, to slightly pierce it with some sort of nail it seems. As soon as he did that the fish started squirming but it could do nothing, so we put it into the water right after.

Weles:"Okay we can continue now, release your spiritual power as pressure to scare away the weaker soul beasts too"

And so we continued to ride the boats around, I saw some weaker soul beasts get closer but as soon as they went in our range they left quickly without looking back. It's actually surprising how quickly it works.

Cai:"Oh I seem to see a big shadow coming into our direction from there, maybe a good soul beasts already?"

Weles:"We will see once it gets close enough to us"

And so it came out from the water, a soul beast about 20 meters big.

Weles:"Well it seems your luck is bad today it's only a soul beast about 20k years of age"

Cai: 'Luck boosting my ass, how can a decent man get a good soul ring if my own enhanced luck is against me.'

Oh? It seems I am yet to fall into despair. I didn't really get a close look but something similar to a purple tentacle came in front of it from the water and, ejected it back with its soul power. And it seems like I didn't have to wait long for the reveal of this thing.

From the water something like a cap seemed to be seen slightly, it was purple in colour and slightly see through as well, and made out of something soft too. It seems I encountered a jellyfish soul beast, good, good, that's good. Not for my water pen but for my spirit eyes that is!

Indeed I will have to kill this thing for its soul ring or I won't be able to sleep tonight! Soul beasts suitable for a mental type soul master are quite rare after all. Plus it doesn't seem that it will let us go. It seems that the fish was long eaten by it as well.

Weles:"That's quite bad this soul beasts seems to be 50k years old and quite troublesome to deal with as well"

Cai:"It won't let us go anyway, well we have to remember at the end of the day it's still a jelly fish with less than mediocre defence, but if it has the powers I assume it does it's also beast not to hold back.

All of us felt a weird fluctuation around us at this time, I started to move my eyes around seeing if I can spot anything and I sure did, in the air there were small strings of electricity being created before disappearing soon, and it flickered like that around us like that.

Like a snake one of the currents attacked the person with the lowest defence here meaning Yuhe, it shot out at her body fast enough that we barely seen it, she couldn't utter a single word and just fell onto the boat. It seems she was paralyzed with these currents.

All of us reacted quickly Yi Hen quickly activated his soul ring one by one, most of these drain abilities are physical so it wasn't that useful against this enemy but the luck one for sure is good enough.

This soul beast would be quite strong for the current me so.

Cai:"I will show you guys what I worked on for this two weeks"

I summoned my armour from my body and donned it ready for battle, the enhancements are real I already feel much stronger, plus this will also make me capable of resisting these currents more, they don't seem to straight up be able to attack more like what happened with Yuhe.

The soul beast raised two of its tentacles above water and electricity crackled around them, they looked like they are covered in an aura of electricity. The soul beast ruthlessly swung both of them at us.

Weles made a big barrier out of water to block one of them, I took it upon myself to stop the other. I used my water pen to quickly make thick dome of water around us before freezing it. The tentacle hit the dome of ice and all the energy gathered in it exploded obliterating the dome of ice.

But at the end of the day mediocre defence is mediocre defence. As both me and Weles were quite dazed from covering for the blow, Hei Long not having to worry anymore about the electricity quickly severed both of them.

However once he got back onto the next boat he grabbed his right arm with a pained expression, it seems he got hit by one of the currents and it would be hard to move his right arm for a bit. At least this isn't some kind of venom, I think in this case that would be even worse.

Hmmm, I think it would be better if I used a sword to fight this beast. I'd rather not show my Caliburn so I will make one out of ice with my understanding of sword intent it should be quite sharp. A sword made out of ice slowly appeared in my hand. I should practice making intricate things more.

I send two sword projections and two icicles to see how will this beast react to projectiles, it seems the closer it is to the beast the stronger electricity attacks it can produce as it shot sharp bolts of electricity at my attacks obliterating them.

Weles also seemed to make some experiments on his own, I saw a vortex being created to tear apart the jellyfish but it's strong enough to stop it having direct contact with it using soul power.

Cai:"Such an annoying beast to deal with, I guess the best bet would be to go on the aggressive"

I step out of the boat onto the water as a platform of ice was created, thankfully the sea is quite calm today and there aren't really any waves or it would have been much harder to do.

Weles:"If you are going there I guess I should help you out as well"

Weles also stepped out of the boat onto the water.

Cai:"We don't have to worry that much about it, I mean look at this thing it's a jellyfish can't have much of a brain there"

My first soul ring lit up as a mist started to get ejected out of my ice brush, soon enough the entire area around me was barely visible, I can use the mist to sense things around me so I'm not entirely blind but this will be quite the setback, mostly did this thing to block out the electric currents.

Cai:"I'd appreciate if you would just focus on dealing with its annoying electric attacks, I have to be the one to kill it to get the soul ring after all"

I'm honestly surprised a soul beast like this survived long enough to gain this level of cultivation, with such a weak body it's a miracle it survived. But if it survived with such a weak body it has to mean its soul and spiritual power is extremely abundant otherwise it would have no chance in this environment. Well enough of this time to finish this thing off.

I grab my ice sword tightly and run in the direction of the soul beast, Weles started to run right after me. I started to gather the ice mist more densely around me, the soul beast started to gather large amounts of electricity after we got close enough. Weles started to attack those clumps of electricity with water before it had the chance to shoot them.

This thing is a total glass cannon once I rip through its soul power protection one big attack in the head should be good enough to kill it, honestly this soul beast is quite weak but its cultivation is no joke. It's still a 50k year old soul beast and will bring me good benefits once I absorb it.

Once I got close enough I used my sword intent to cut through the electricity to get close and started to gather it and my icy mist around my ice sword. I raised it up so that it even reached slightly behind me.

When the whole mist covered only the blade of my sword I slashed out my sword and a big arc of everything I gathered around the blade so far. My second soul ring lit up and the slash grew 3 times its original size, I'm not giving it any chances. Well not only the slash grew 3 times the ice I made to stand on before did the same, so much of my soul and spiritual power got drained suddenly that I got a bit dizzy and fell

The beast however was slain .

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Well finally another chapter after 2 weeks I think honestly was supposed to write it later but it just so happened I fell sick so I have free time now, well next chapter mc will finally advance in his cultivation yyaaayy, I have some ideas for what will happen when he does break through and I hope you will like it, To be honest this battle was an idea I had instantly when I decided Cai will end up going to the sea, I kind of racked my brain to thought up of the soul beast when he will go to the north for his spirit eyes ring and this idea came to me of why not just make him get it early here. I guess I got an urge to spoil a little I think we got a lot of fights after fights to get these soul rings so I decided that the third for the pen will be hunted off screen. Well now I will have to get back into the rhythm of writing so I can regularly upload again. Honestly being consistent is so hard especially when i got ideas for other fics one is an extremely long type moon one another is a decent sized star wars one, there is also that idea for an original novel but I am so bad with naming that will take a while. Well this is all from me today I hope you liked this chapter.