Ken didn't bother dodging the blood by now, and his tired figure was painted red all over.
'What should I do?'
Ken thought to himself as he searched for a solution to his plight. Once he realized that he didn't want to die, he understood he needed a way to survive. The elder made it abundantly clear that he wouldn't let him go.
Ken's killing rate dropped tremendously compared to his former 10 kills per hour, and from time to time the sect would send a top 1000 disciple when they thought he was weakened enough. To their dismay, he never allowed those, or anyone else for that matter, to escape the arena once they stepped inside.
He killed nearly 5,000 disciples over the past 35 hours, but he was at his limit. He was fighting in auto mode while focusing on searching for a solution to his Qi loss.
'There's only one answer - absorption. I must absorb the Qi from the targets I've killed.'
Ken remembered the manuals he got from his first subordinate, Nick. Nick's first manual allowed him to absorb Qi from his enemies, using it for his cultivation. However, the Qi he absorbed was always contaminated with his enemy's attributes.
It even absorbed part of their souls, which was even more harmful to the devourer as it would affect their own soul until they can get crazy from having too many attributes and foreign souls mingled with their own.
'I can use my Bloodlust Qi as a medium. This way, by contaminating my enemies' cores with my Bloodlust first, I might be able to negate most of the harmful effects of absorbing others.'
Ken thought to himself as he started developing the technique. He couldn't sit on it and focus only on developing the technique entirely, so it took longer and the version he was coming up with was still crude, but he didn't have time to perfect it.
'Vampiric Touch could be a good name, but I don't know if the concept of vampires exists in the world of cultivation. I will just name it… Blood Transfusion. Even if the concept doesn't exist either, it's self-explanatory.'
Ken held the dying body of his last enemy and absorbed the Qi inside.
"It seemed like the disciples of Four Seasons Sect are only this strong. It might not be long before they lose their spot in the top 5. I will make sure to give you all a good look at your friends' executions from now on."
Ken mocked them while gripping his enemy's throat. He didn't want to reveal that he was sucking his enemy's Qi using a bloodlust technique, so he found this excuse. He knew they will think he has a hidden motive, but he could also guess the one they will come up with.
"Stop stalling for time, if you're too tired to continue, just accept your death."
Trenton said with a gloating voice despite the situation. He felt like it didn't matter if Ken killed a hundred disciples more given how many he already killed, so he stopped getting angry over every death by now.
"Please… Help!"
The disciple begged for help as Ken absorbed the man's Qi slowly. 10 seconds later, having absorbed around 1% of the man's Qi reserves, Ken crushed his neck and threw him to the ground.
He couldn't just absorb it all for an hour without anyone noticing or suspecting. It was the best he could allow himself.
This kept on for a few fights; it wasn't enough to allow him to recover, but it was enough to regain half of the Qi he spent in the battle.
However, it didn't end there. Ken kept experimenting as much as he could with every 10 seconds of absorption, tweaking the technique on the go. By the end of the second day, he managed to absorb 2.5% of his victims' Qi reserves in 10 seconds, allowing him to recover all the Qi he spent in the fight and even some more.
Ken's Qi storage volume was a few times higher than others, so this half percentage didn't do much to fill his core with Qi. However, it was enough to sustain him. Once he mastered the technique to the Advanced mastery realm, he found a way to keep the absorbed Qi channeled; this way less contaminated Qi found its way into his core.
With this new source of Qi, energy washed his body, and he fought with renewed vigor. His killing rate didn't rise much because he spent 10 seconds absorbing the Qi of his enemies.
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3 grand elders of Four Seasons Sect stood in front of 3 grand elders of Divine Sword Sect. Every grand elder was an eighth-stage powerhouse and was extremely valuable to their sect.
"You must surrender this boy to us within an hour. You can say he uses evil techniques or something. We can't let him kill our disciples; he already killed a third of our top 1000 disciples from both the high and the peak substages of the Core Formation Stage."
An elder wearing white robes with the Four Seasons Sect's emblem embroidered on it said his demands. His sect has been humiliated by Ken for over 2 days, and he killed thousands of their disciples.
"Why should we do that? He is a powerful young cultivator that might lead our sect one day."
An elder from the opposite camp said indifferently. He didn't care much about the other sect's face.
"Don't forget that we are ranked 3 while you're only ranked 4 for a reason. We all agreed not to let this matter blow out of proportion or else our two sects will be weakened too much. We can't afford to lose all our top 1000, he even killed 2 disciples from our top 10."
"Are you threatening me?"
"I'm only stating that he is breaking our agreement to keep this war with minimal casualties. We will give you one hour to decide before we kill him ourselves and open a real war, including our top elders. Don't think we don't know he isn't truly from your sect."
The elders left the place, intending on returning when the ultimatum was over. Until then, they planned to let Trenton handle the event.
However, nobody noticed a blurred silhouette listening to their conversation.
The source of this c𝐨ntent is freewe(b)nov𝒆l