Cultivation Begins From The Desert

Chapter 32: Examining the Spoils of the Battle

Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation

“How formidable! As expected of the Thunderbolt Spell. Its power is almost comparable to the Grade 3 spells of the five elements!”

Zhou Yang stood on the sand slope, looking down at the charred corpses of the sand bandits with a face full of amazement.

He had long heard of the astonishing power of the Thunderbolt Spell. There were very few other spells of the same grade that could rival the Thunderbolt Spell in terms of power. Now that he had witnessed it with his own pair of eyes, he knew that the rumors did not appear out of thin air.

However, the Thunderbolt Spell was also one of the hardest to cultivate.

Generally speaking, only cultivators with Wind-Lightning-based spiritual roots could learn the spell more easily.

Cultivators like Zhou Yang with Fire-based spiritual roots would have ten times more difficulty learning the Thunderbolt Spell. Moreover, even if someone like him learned it, the power of the spell would be much lower than that of a cultivator with Wind-Lightning-based spiritual root.

As such, though many wanted to use the spell, they were not willing to spend that much time and effort on learning it. The ability to utilize it to its full potential was extremely rare.

Inserting the spell into a spiritual talisman not only required a highly-skilled talisman maker but also Wind-Lightning-based spiritual materials.

The high requirements of making a Thunderbolt Talisman were precisely the reason its value was always the highest among spiritual talismans of the same level. Sometimes, its value would be on par with the higher-level spiritual talismans.

As such, the talisman was usually a rare find. Possession of one was an indicator of the possessor’s luck, either in being able to make or obtain it.

Zhou Yang’s Advanced Grade 2 Thunderbolt Talisman was given to him by the clan leader. It had been intended as a trump card for Zhou Yang to use for self-protection.

The clan leader had specially warned him not to use this talisman unless it was absolutely necessary.

Neither of them would have expected Zhou Yang to use the talisman, which had been kept well by Zhou Minghan for decades, in less than a month.

“What a waste! If I had known that the Thunderbolt Talisman was so powerful, I would have let this fellow off!”

Zhou Yang recalled how solemn the clan leader had looked when the latter was handing the Thunderbolt Talisman to the former. Zhou Yang was starting to regret his decisions.

Although the sand bandits deserved to die, he probably didn’t have to use the Thunderbolt Talisman to kill them!

However, what was done was done. There was no point in regretting. He could only look at the sand bandits’ corpses on the ground and muttered to himself, “I hope their storage bags will have some surprises for me. Otherwise, I might have suffered a huge loss today!”

On a more serious note, this was the first time Zhou Yang had killed people, and three immortal cultivators in one go too.

However, he did not feel too repulsed or guilty, most likely because of the training and teachings he had gone through since he was a young cultivator. The sight of the dead bodies of the sand bandits on the ground did not make him feel uncomfortable at all.

Why would those corpses make him squirm when he had seen worse back at Qingping Mountain Oasis – many of the corpses of the miners who had been bitten to death by the Metal Eating Rat were not even complete. He did feel slightly uncomfortable back then but it wasn’t anything terrible.

After all, immortal cultivators had mana to protect their bodies. They would not suffer from any simple illnesses, and even if they had been afflicted psychologically, they would be able to circulate their mana to suppress the effects.

Zhou Yang shook the unnecessary thoughts out of his head as he searched the sand bandits’ corpses on the ground. Once he was satisfied with his search, he used the Earth Escape Technique to bury the corpses before returning to the tent on the sand slope to check out his steals.

Rogue cultivators weren’t like the cultivators of sects and clans. The former did not have a settlement to store their assets like the latter did. Cultivators who belonged to sects and clans didn’t have to worry about break-ins.

Rogue cultivators had to bring their belongings with them at all times. As such, they would carry multiple storage bags of various sizes, and each would almost always be full.

Zhou Yang did not bring back three storage bags from the corpses. He brought back ten.

Three of the bags had a volume of ten cubic feet, six had a volume of five cubic feet, and one had a volume of three cubic feet.

He emptied all the storage bags before him and found all sorts of items ranging from gold cups and jade bowls for meals to cowhide tents and rosewood beds. The sand bandits had everything.

But, of course, the most common items he obtained from the storage bags were Golden Pearl Rice and frozen demon beast meat. The three bandits were probably afraid that they would starve to death in the desert. Each of them carried enough Golden Pearl Rice and demon beast meat to last them three to five years!

“No wonder the clan elders always spoke of rogue cultivators strangely, calling them disdainful, beggars, and vagrants in the immortal cultivation world!

“Who wouldn’t be called those names if they were found walking around with these items in their storage bags?”

Unfortunately, most of the items were more useful for mortals than immortal cultivators. He felt both amused and extremely disappointed.

He was hoping to find some valuable goods from these storage bags to make up for the many Advanced Grade 2 spiritual talismans, including the Thunderbolt Talisman that he had wasted on the sand bandits earlier. It seemed that his spoils hadn’t been worth it.

Those rogue cultivators were sand bandits for a reason. They couldn’t have had a rich family background. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have become sand bandits. And it wasn’t easy to become a sand bandit either.

However, patience was a virtue. After spending a little more time searching the ten storage bags more thoroughly, Zhou Yang finally found some decent spiritual items for cultivation including two to three hundred pieces of lower-tier spiritual stones and several bottles of Grade 1 and Grade 2 spiritual pills with various uses. These pills would be worth over a hundred spiritual stones.

Zhou Yang also found a few Grade 2 spiritual talismans as well as materials for artifact refinement and alchemy that the three sand bandits had stolen from who-knows-where and had yet to use or sell.

By themselves, the materials weren’t very valuable, probably only worth a dozen or twenty spiritual stones. But since Zhou Yang was an artifact refiner and his father was an alchemist, they would be able to refine those materials into magical artifacts or spiritual pills that were valued several times more.

As he continued to rummage through the storage bags, Zhou Yang found another eight low-level cultivation methods, a few cultivation notes, and two immortal cultivator travel notes that recorded some strange things in the immortal cultivation world. Zhou Yang examined the cultivation methods and found that six of them already existed in the Zhou clan’s Scripture Cave. He decided to donate the remaining two to the clan. He could probably also exchange them for twenty lower-tier spiritual stones.

If he added up the value of all his spoils, including the magical artifacts that the sand bandits had equipped, he had made a return of investment from his battle with the sand bandits earlier. 

“Those who kill and start fires wear a golden belt, but those who repair bridges and patch the roads don’t even have their corpses left as remnants!” Zhou Yang let out a long sigh and decided to take back his previous words.

Although rogue cultivators were poor, they could still be useful!

After all, the three sand bandits were Advanced-Stage Qi Refinement cultivators. They had been in their trade for many years, so it was not a wonder that they had accumulated some wealth.

If he excluded the life-saving talismans and pills that the clan elders had graciously given him, his wealth might not be much higher than the sand bandits’.

Even in the Zhou clan, only the elders – besides the Foundation Establishment cultivators Zhou Minghan and Zhou Xuanyu – at Qi Refinement Level 9 could surpass these three sand bandits in terms of personal wealth.

After Zhou Yang was done admiring his finds, he burned the useless things and stuffed those he wanted to keep in two large storage bags at his waist, while the remaining empty storage bags hung along the back of the Camel Beast to later be given to the clan shop upon arrival at White Sand River Oasis.

This was one of the advantages of being a clan cultivator. As long as the treasures obtained from the outside world had a clean background and did not belong to cultivators from other clans and sects, they could be sold at the marketplace freely. The only catch was that the clan cultivator seller would have to give back 50% of the sales to the clan as handling fees.

Rogue cultivators would be able to sell things at the marketplace too, but only at 30% of the normal price.

If they were unlucky or inexperienced, they would foolishly sell the goods stolen from clan or sect cultivators to well-established shops and risk confiscation or arrest and interrogation by law enforcement cultivators of the market. If the unlucky or inexperienced ones were found guilty of obtaining their steals through murder, their lives would be in danger.

Thus, rogue cultivators would rather sell their spoils to smaller stalls than risk their lives at the bigger shops, unless they were desperate for spiritual stones.

After all, rogue cultivators had to pay a fee to the marketplace managers just to sell their items.

It wasn’t fun being a rogue cultivator in the immortal cultivation world.

Zhou Yang was very glad that he was a cultivator of a clan. Although the Zhou clan was not big, it was better than being a rogue cultivator in the immortal cultivation world.

Fortunately, the battle with the three sand bandits earlier did not take up too much of Zhou Yang’s time. On the contrary, it took him only half a night to examine his spoils.

By the time he was done, the sky was already gradually getting brighter. He put away his tent and continued his journey on the Camel Beast..