CHAPTER 139: SLAUGHTER POINTS SOARING!

Li Ling stood in midair above the wasteland of flame and char beneath him, which retained nothing of what it had once been. There were no buildings, no corpses, no fixtures... nothing, just a sea of blackened ash that was slowly dissipating with the wind.

Thinking to himself in a joking manner that it was even likely that the spirits of the mortals here had been burned into spiritual char, Li Ling chuckled audibly before stepping through space, heading for his next target.

It shouldn’t be surprising that he had to make a fast operation. As much as he was confident in his spatial traversal, it was better to do things quickly and get out while the going was good.

Even with a mere 1 kilometer maximum range per spatial jump, Li Ling actually found that his speed was far faster than using sword flight or running at his full speed. That was because, like the clever operation where he could retrieve things from afar using subspace, he could also maintain continuous travel.

I mean, it was quite simple when you thought about it. The only limitation to his movement within subspace was his spirit sense’s maximum range, which indicated his limit of instant movement before he had to tear space to exit.

So, he played it like soccer. He would extend his spirit sense to the limit, enter subspace with his body and traverse the 1 kilometer in a mere instant, then, instead of breaking space to exit into the real world, he would ’kick’ his spirit sense forward another 1 kilometer while still in subspace, then traverse another 1 kilometer.

Rinse and repeat this many times and it was almost like he was doing long-distance teleportation since he never actually left subspace during this period.

But... this ’clever’ operation also had its own problems.

Firstly, and most importantly, this heavily taxed his spirit sense. It hadn’t been spoken about much because Li Ling had an advantage compared to all others in the same realm as himself due to his various cheats with the Infinite Slaughter System, but usage of spirit sense was not free for any cultivator.

The worst part was that the Nine Heights Pagoda didn’t help his endurance outside of the refined spirit sense, which had no bearing on his ’loose’ spirit sense that had the longer range.

Secondly, his body was also tested, because standing in the void and moving through it were two different things. He could withstand being in the void for slightly over two minutes when static, but when in motion, it was just enough to last about thirty seconds.

Luckily for him, this kind of travel consumed very little time. His teleportation would be almost instantaneous if it weren’t for the split second he used to ’kick’ the spirit sense forward again, and cumulatively, it made for a small period of time when you considered he took about a minute or two to reach the number 8 marketplace of the Qing Shan Sect.

As for choosing this place over the many mortal towns and cities around, it was the same as before. He was under a limited amount of time before the Qing Shan Sect responded to such mass and senseless slaughter with their upper echelons, and Li Ling didn’t want another Wen Caiyi and Bai Ruyi situation.

Cultivators were worth more Slaughter Points than mortals, and it took him the exact same amount of time and effort to slaughter a low-level market like this as it took to clear out a mortal city, yet it paid almost five times more.

It was just basic common sense to target the cultivator markets.

Of course, Li Ling was not arrogant. Putting aside any unexpected situations, the lower the number of the market, the longer it had been established and the more cultivators it had in terms of quality and quantity, not to mention the closer it was to the Qing Shan Sect itself.

For example, the number 1 Qing Shan Marketplace was a terrifying place that Li Ling knew had Nascent Soul cultivators passing through regularly and was located near to the very Green Hill City he had come from.

Like now, standing above the bustling number 8 marketplace—which was also located on a mountaintop—a casual scan revealed nearly a quarter more cultivators in total than the number 9 variant, while the levels were slightly higher, with more closer to the mid-stage of Qi Refinement.

However, in the face of the almighty Meteor, it meant very little.

KRAKOOM!

｢System Prompt: You have gained 21,665 Slaughter Points.｣

Not a bad haul, but still the numbers felt a little less than they should be. This made Li Ling wonder if the Infinite Slaughter System was also skimming some off the top, but then he chuckled because he didn’t care.

The Infinite Slaughter System could take 99% for all he cared, as long as it didn’t deprive him of everything and still allowed him to grow. He was incredibly realistic in understanding his place in the world and knowing that he needed the system; the system didn’t need him.

Whatever the case, the young man didn’t linger here to admire his handiwork, rather moving quickly to the next location, supplementing his damaged physical and mental state with the Restoration Spell while his magic power was rapidly consumed in exchange.

With the combination of multiple meteors, a Fire Stream usage, and this restoration, he had long burned through almost all of his stored magic power, but he didn’t worry because he could sacrifice Slaughter Points to refill the tank.

Spending a few Slaughter Points to recharge so he could maintain this ’rapid operation’ was worth it when the payout was tens of thousands of Slaughter Points per strike.

A bit over three minutes of travel and he reached the area around the 7th marketplace, and—would you look at that—the cultivator populations and realm distribution were higher than before. This time, there were more cultivators pushing the late stage of Qi Refinement than in the previous two markets, and there was an active economy surrounding the Foundational Building Pill, which was auctioned once a year to furious competition.

Li Ling could almost see a whole story of how a young cultivator rose up here and managed to win an auction for this pill, broke through, and slaughtered his enemy clan while rescuing his lover who had been forced into marriage by his foes.

With this kind of imagination as a backdrop, there was more flavor in the meteor he dropped on the entire market.

KRAKOOM!

｢System Prompt: You have gained 27,101 Slaughter Points.｣

Li Ling no longer bothered checking the numbers for accuracy because, as they said, sometimes ignorance was bliss. Besides, with his current power and ability, there was nothing he could do about it anyway, so he took his ’winnings’ and moved on to the next target.

The number 6 Qing Shan marketplace was actually spread across two mountains, because it was the first market to have a clear division between the area meant for Qi Refinement cultivators and Foundation Establishment cultivators since the bottom ones.

And as one could expect, the whole tier of the market had risen. The Qi cultivators alone were enough to rival a small sect, and there were established Foundation Establishment clans that lived in the second core market that numbered a hundred, even more than the entire Black Heaven Sect.

Of course, while the clans were plentiful, they at most had one or two Foundation Establishment ancestors, either at the early stage or at the mid-stage at best. The Market Overseer—who was usually at Foundation Establishment mid-stage for the previous markets—was now at the late stage, and there were two of them!

However, in the face of absolute power, all manner of trickery was useless.

KRAKOOM!

｢System Prompt: You have gained 63,994 Slaughter Points.｣

The payout had jumped sharply because the quality of foes had also risen sharply. Li Ling compared this to when he slaughtered the Joyous number 5 marketplace, which had two Core Formation, some Foundation Establishment, and the rest being Qi Refinement fellows, which paid out merely around 3,000 Slaughter Points back then, and felt something was wrong.

Was he really the one who killed everyone in that market? Or was he used as a scapegoat by someone?

After all, it was at that damned place that he met the weird old man who sold him the blasted Blessed Augury, which had been the source of many of his problems since.

Then again, why look so far? Could it also not have been the Infinite Slaughter System that heavily embezzled points and then spat out breadcrumbs that, to him at that time, were a huge payout?

If that was the case, then despite his tolerance toward the system due to his position as its user, Li Ling still had to ask... what the heck did the Infinite Slaughter System even need Slaughter Points for?

After all, it seemed to drain something illusory from all the beings he killed, which was then converted to Slaughter Points for his use. Why would it possibly need his own special currency for?