655 Taking out Trash

"RWAMBH!" Zhilan's words came out muffled, but Alex could still understand what she was trying to say.

Run.

Even now she wanted him to run. Did she not get together with him in the first place so that she could use him when the situation got dire? Or was he wrong about that?

The girl with the saber wore a yellow robe and had a True Master 8th realm cultivation base.

The man in the pink robe that punched Zhilan had a cultivation base of True Lord 1st realm.

And finally, the other man with the sword and the most blood of them all had True Lord 3rd realm cultivation base.

They were all strong, and yet not a single one of them was a threat to him.

"Why are you doing this?" Alex asked seriously. "You guys are so strong. Is robbing the only way you guys can think of to earn in this realm?"

"This little shit has a tongue on him, doesn't he?" the girl said with a wicked grin.

"Of course, we have other ways of gaining what we want here," the man in the pink robe said.

"Then why are you—"

"What makes you think we're doing this for gaining treasures?" he asked.

"What? If not for treasures and cultivation resources, why would you rob anyone?" Alex asked.

The man grabbed Zhilan's hair and pulled her up to show her bloody face. "What part of this do you think is robbing?" he asked.

"Enough with that, let's just kill him. He's one-handed already and so weak. Torturing him won't be very fun," the man with the sword said.

Alex looked at the three in shock. "Are you doing this because you like to hurt people?" he asked.

"Exactly!" the young man said and let go of Zhilan, whose face hit the ground with a smack.

"I love when I can beat people up," he said as he kicked Zhilan in the face and sent her flying into a wall.

"Good," Alex said. "Then I won't have to feel bad about killing you."

The moment Alex said that he disappeared. The man with the sword and the woman reacted as they had been watching him, but the man in the pink robes had his head turned so he didn't see him.

When he heard the rustle behind him, he quickly turned his head around only to see a palm outstretched onto his head.

Alex enforced his body with the Jade Skin technique and a fire burned out from his palm as he grabbed the man's face.

'Explode!'

~BOOM!~

Both the man and the woman were pushed back by the force of the explosion.

When they got back up, they could only see Alex brush off chunks of red from his grayish-blue robes.

Next to him was the headless and half a torso missing corpse of their previous companion.

"Don't worry," Alex's voice rang in the silence as he brought out his blood essence refined sword. "Unlike you trash, I don't like torturing people."

As he said that, his cultivation base flared to show that he was in the True Master 9th realm.

The man's eyes narrowed in fear and confusion when another aura flared a little further away.

The small cat that they hadn't noticed had gotten big and now showed a cultivation base of True Lord 5th realm.

The man lost hope.

Before he could say anything, the girl from the other side immediately got up and ran away.

"Take care of her," Alex said softly.

"Meow!" Pearl said and ran after all. Not 3 seconds later, the man heard the terrifying scream of the woman as she was killed.

His eyes darted towards the side to see if the beast would return.

"He's not your opponent, I am," Alex said. Then, he slowly strode forward towards the man.

When the man realized that the beast wasn't returning, he gained unfounded courage to fight Alex as his cultivation wasn't strong enough to fight with him.

In his fear of Pearl, the man forgot what the young man in front of him had just done to his own companion.

With a glowing blue sword, the man slashed, sending out chunks of sharp ice toward him.

Alex still had his defensive technique running, so he ran through the ice shards and directly appeared in front of the man.

The man slashed down in a hurry, but Alex's golden sword easily parried it. Immediately in the next moment, he slashed at the man and cleanly separated his head from his neck.

The man didn't even realize what had happened as his head struck the ground. He could only stare at the sideways image of Alex who turned around and walked towards Zhilan.

Then, his vision slowly vanished and he died.

Alex quickly arrived next to near-dead Zhilan and force-fed a healing pill to her.

He waited for a few seconds as the healing pill started doing its work.

Pearl arrived next to her in his small form and nudged her a little. "Meow?" he called.

Zhilan slowly opened her eyes and looked at Alex. "Wha-What happened?" she asked.

"Nothing, I just gave you a healing pill," Alex said.

Zhilan slowly got up and tried to circulate the healing pill to make it work faster. She could feel the broken bones and cut flesh slowly fixing themselves as her pain disappeared.

With a flick of his finger, Alex got rid of all the blood that was on her. He then handed her a pill to restore the lost blood which she ate a moment later.

5 minutes later, Zhilan was perfectly healthy. Aside from the tears in her robe, it was impossible to tell that she was near death just moments ago.

Finally, she looked at the dead bodies around her and hesitatingly asked, "Did… did you do this?"

Alex nodded without hesitation.

"Then… you must be very strong," she said.

"So-so," Alex said.

"I see," she said as she lowered her eyes. Alex couldn't tell what she was thinking of at all.

After thinking for a while, he brought out a pill and handed it to her.

Zhilan thoughtlessly grabbed the pill and was about to eat it when Alex grabbed her hand. Only then did she look up with confusion.

"That's the pill to help you break through. Do you want to eat it here?" he asked.

Zhilan's eyes immediately went wide. "What?" she cried out. "Wait let me pay you." She started searching around her robes for some spirit stones.

"I don't need anything, sister Zhilan," Alex said. At the same time, Pearl returned from gathering the storage bags of the three people. In total, there were 5 of them.

Alex sent his spiritual sense through them and checked. He noticed a few alchemy ingredients, and techniques books but aside from that, he saw nothing of value to him.

He kept what he wanted and handed the rest to Zhilan. "You can take these," he said.

"I cannot accept this!" Zhilan immediately said.

"Is that so?" Alex asked. "Since I don't need them, you can throw them away."

Of course, Zhilan wasn't stupid enough to throw it away, so she helplessly kept the storage bags.

"I will take my leave now sister. You can go to the 2nd mountain and enter one of the forging rooms to cultivate to True Master 5th realm. Although the Qi there is thin compared to the 3rd and the 4th mountains, you should be able to breakthrough with the pill," Alex said.

"Junior brother, thank you," she said.

"Don't mind it, sister Zhilan. I'll leave, for now. Take care," Alex said and stood up to walk.

"Meow!" Pearl said goodbye and walked next to him.

"Wait Junior brother, what's your name?" she asked hurriedly.

Alex stopped. "Oh, have I not introduced myself yet?" he asked. "My name is Yu Ming. Goodbye, sister."

With that, he left.

Zhilan sat in a daze as she watched the pill in her hand before standing up to leave.

She grabbed the sword from the man's corpse and made her way to the 2nd mountain where she would spend her remaining time trying to breakthrough.

With the month-long cultivation in the 3rd mountain, she had nearly broken through. But now with this pill, it was practically guaranteed.

* * * *

Alex arrived at the 3rd mountain a little before noon and walked up to the midsection and waited for his name to be called out.

The number now was 149, so his turn wasn't very far away. As more and more started getting called in, Alex felt someone's gaze on him.

He didn't know how he could tell, but he was sure he was feeling something. So, he looked in the general direction of where the feeling came from and saw a man staring at him.

'This guy again. Is he so ready to die?' Alex thought as he stared back at the beast tamer. It seemed he had already left the cultivation and was now waiting for Alex.

Soon, Alex's number was called and he walked forward. After showing the paper slip, he was let inside. Alex went through the hall and just like the 2nd mountain, tried searching for a room with a glowing rune.

When he found it, he entered. As soon as the door closed behind him, a rune on the floor of the room started glowing all of a sudden, scaring Alex.

He worried that it was something dangerous, but soon felt a lot of Qi gathering in the area.

'Oh!' he thought. It was preparing the room.

So, without hesitation, Alex sat down on the floor and placed Pearl on his lap.

At his command, the both of them then started their closed cultivation that would last exactly an entire month.