A sweep of his divine sense revealed thumb-sized holes in the lower abdomens of the two individuals. Strangely, these wounds weren't bleeding; instead, they were continuously expanding, turning into wisps of black smoke.
"How… how can this be?"
The pale-faced man gurgled a few times in his throat, his voice broken and intermittent, before his head lolled to the side, lifeless.
With two dull thuds, their corpses fell to the ground, completely dead.
Zhang Ling flashed beside the corpses and with a wave of his hand, retrieved five storage bags from them.
However, one of the black storage bags developed a crack as it flew towards him, and a pile of items fell to the ground.
He quickly discarded the damaged storage bag.
Looking back at the two corpses, a bizarre sizzling sound could be heard emanating from them, with wisps of green smoke rising from the wounds. The two corpses were rapidly dissolving.
In the brief span of two breaths, the corpses vanished, leaving behind only wisps of black smoke rising from the ground.
The Water Astral Divine Lightning emitted by the Black Stone Treasure Mirror possessed extreme corrosive properties. Had he not swiftly removed the storage bags, he feared he would have lost all the spoils of war.
Zhang Ling finally smiled as he looked at the four remaining storage bags, all of which were high-grade.
High-grade storage bags had some defensive capabilities, but the power of techniques used by high-level cultivators in battle was immense, so many high-grade storage bags were destroyed in the process.
Damaged high-grade storage bags wouldn't explode directly like ordinary storage bags, but their contents would spill out upon being damaged.
Like the black storage bag just now.
In this process, most of the contents were often destroyed. Items like pills, spiritual herbs, and books were the easiest to ruin.
Only weapons like swords and blades, made of sturdy materials, would remain unaffected.
Some of the items that fell to the ground were relatively intact. Zhang Ling waved his hand and collected them into another storage bag. After a quick cleanup of the battlefield, he left the area.
…
Half an hour later, inside an unnamed cave within an unnamed mountain peak, Zhang Ling sat cross-legged, recovering his spiritual power.
This battle was his first time facing high-level cultivators alone since entering the Golden Core stage, and there were three of them, with the pale-faced man being a mid-stage Golden Core cultivator.
In this battle, Zhang Ling used all his means and nearly allowed the three to escape. If he hadn't been fortunate enough to obtain these treasures, especially the black stone mirror in his hand that could easily break through their defenses, he would have been the one fleeing.
He used two ancient treasures and two or three magical artifacts simultaneously in this battle, which greatly consumed his divine sense and even more of his spiritual power.
He meditated for two full days before fully recovering his energy and spirit. Then, he began to take stock of his gains.
First, he took out the spirit beast bag containing the two Ice Spirit Silkworms and released the silkworms, their spiritual power sealed.
With a flash of light, the two Ice Spirit Silkworms appeared on the ground, but they were a mottled blue-black, devoid of any vitality, and had already died.
Earlier, when fighting the three cultivators, he had taken out the purple net-rope artifact that bound the Ice Spirit Silkworms to increase his chances of victory.
At that time, the Ice Spirit Silkworms were fine and hadn't died, but now, only two days later, they were dead.
Such spirit insects had tenacious lifeforces and wouldn't die easily. Moreover, one of the Ice Spirit Silkworms was comparable to a fifth-order demon beast.
Upon closer inspection, he discovered that the two Ice Spirit Silkworms had committed suicide. For a moment, Zhang Ling didn't know what to feel.
After calming his mind, Zhang Ling felt bitter. He had originally intended to tame these two Ice Spirit Silkworms, but now it seemed he had underestimated the temperament of these spirit insects. He hadn't expected them to be so unyielding, even resorting to suicide.
Zhang Ling sighed and began to examine other items, but then a look of joy appeared on his face.
Although the two Ice Spirit Silkworms had died, he found two Ice Spirit Silkworm larvae in the silk cocoon in their nest, which delighted him.
Immediately, Zhang Ling inscribed a simple formation on the ground and easily subdued the two Ice Spirit Silkworm larvae, and even took out some Earth Spirit Bee honey for them to consume.
Seeing that the two larvae could eat and sleep, he was relieved. As long as he nurtured them carefully, the Ice Spirit Silkworms could be of great use.
It wasn't a complete waste after all.
Then, Zhang Ling began to sort through the storage bags he had seized from the three enemies. There were many items inside, but few were of value to him.
There were three or four magical artifacts, but besides a blue defensive shield with decent defense, the rest were pills for cultivation.
There weren't many spirit stones either, only three or four hundred middle-grade spirit stones and a thousand or so low-grade spirit stones.
The most valuable items were the seven or eight bottles of pills, which contained spiritual pills suitable for Golden Core cultivators.
Besides that, there were some jade slip books and other items. However, most of them contained cultivation techniques, and only two cultivation methods piqued Zhang Ling's interest enough to browse through them for a while.
One cultivation method was called the Dragon Phoenix Dual Essence Art, which turned out to be a dual cultivation technique, detailing the art of male and female co-cultivation, and even described several sinister secret techniques for extracting essence.
After cultivating this technique to a certain level, both the man and woman would benefit, allowing both parties to rapidly increase their strength.
Moreover, in times of crisis, a portion of one's cultivation could be temporarily transferred to the co-cultivator, greatly increasing their cultivation in a short period of time.
Seeing this, Zhang Ling also realized the reason for the white-faced man's sudden increase in cultivation, which seemed to be due to this cultivation method. Then one of their two female companions must have also practiced it.
The other cultivation method was also very interesting, although it wasn't the man's primary cultivation method. It was a demon tamer's technique called Spirit Snake Demon Art. Although the name was ordinary, it contained various habits of snake-like demon beasts, as well as methods for nurturing them. Among them, a technique called Supple Bone Art aroused Zhang Ling's interest.
After cultivating the Supple Bone Art, a human cultivator's body could become extremely flexible, allowing them to perform bizarre movements and slightly evade some dangers. This seemed to be a close-quarters movement technique.
Most demon tamer cultivation methods would include body tempering methods that body cultivators would practice.
For example, the Corpse Bear's current cultivation of the Fiend Demon Art's core was to use fiendish energy to cultivate and break through. The fiendish energy between heaven and earth was not ordinary spiritual energy. Whether it was yin fiend or yang fiend, many kinds of fiendish energy were very violent. Once fiendish energy was introduced into the body, the body would be in danger of collapsing if it couldn't withstand it.
The Fiend Demon Art required the introduction of fiendish energy into the body for cultivation, which naturally placed certain demands on the strength of one's physical body. Therefore, cultivators who mainly cultivated this technique were stronger than ordinary cultivators due to the constant tempering of their bodies by fiendish energy.
Cultivators who practiced demon tamer techniques were basically stronger than ordinary cultivators and could be considered semi-body cultivators.
Zhang Ling himself had studied the Fiend Demon Art in order to better use the vines on his body, although he didn't mainly cultivate this technique. However, through the characteristics of the vines, his body strength was actually stronger than that of ordinary cultivators.
Demon tamer techniques were actually also very suitable for him to cultivate.
