Chapter 119 – Experience

“Thud—”

Lu Yuan landed steadily from a height of over ten meters. Despite his considerable size, even fourteen agility points couldn’t completely control the descent.

His thick legs crushed through the thin layer of dry, hard soil on the top of the grassland, sinking deeply into the slightly moist black soil beneath.

When Lu Yuan pulled his feet out of the holes, his black sneakers were already covered in wet mud.

“Crack crack—”

A series of crisp bone-cracking sounds echoed through his body as his size, which had swelled after the special exertion, quickly returned to normal.

Thanks to his flexible T-shirt and athletic shorts, he avoided the awkward situation of tearing clothes and having to run around naked. His clothes were just slightly stretched out.

“Well, at least I don’t have to cover up my footprints.”

Lu Yuan thought as he looked at the two deep holes in the ground, which looked like they had been driven in and then pulled out.

But he quickly dismissed the thought.

“So what if they find out it was me?”

He had killed a Crow Deity’s servant, not an innocent person. Yellow Bear wouldn’t punish him for that; if anything, he might even get a commendation.

As for his exposure of power, he had indeed used a skill from the Death Messenger (extraordinary).

But his death energy entanglement skill was at such a low level that the summoned black aura was just a thin layer. Who could see it clearly in the dark?

Even if the surveillance caught it, he could blame it on the Crow Deity’s servant—claiming that the servant had released the death energy which then entangled his arm.

No worries at all.

This was one of the reasons Lu Yuan dared to confidently rush here to ambush the Crow Deity’s servant.

A gentle night breeze blew, cooling his face, arms, and body.

Lu Yuan wiped his face with his hand and looked down to see a faint pink color on his palm.

It was a mixture of sweat, which his body had expelled in a sudden burst, and the blood mist from the Crow Deity’s servant that had landed on him.

He even felt something soft, possibly meat flakes or some other substance, between his fingers.

Disgusted, he shook his hand off.

Lu Yuan shook his body vigorously before turning his attention to the Crow Deity’s Divine Servant, who had been shattered into pieces by his punch.

With all his states activated and his killer move [Spirit Crane Technique: Crane Shadow Float] in play, it was no surprise that three tons of boxing power exploded inside the Divine Servant like a time bomb.

Dead beyond doubt.

But searching the corpse was a bit inconvenient.

Lu Yuan extended his Mental Power around the area.

After raising his intelligence points to 15, his Mental Power could extend to about ten meters, with much greater strength.

This strength was something Lu Yuan assessed himself.

At 13 intelligence points, his Mental Power had just awakened, and besides detection, he couldn’t even turn a page in a book.

At 14 intelligence points, he could turn pages remotely.

Now, with 15 intelligence points…

He could use his Mental Power to slightly move small, lightweight stones or similar objects.

“With this skill alone, even without martial arts practice or studying, I wouldn’t starve if I became a street magician…”

Lu Yuan observed the scattered fragments of the Divine Servant’s flesh, along with grass, small stones, and soil particles, all moving slightly under the influence of his Mental Power.

He realized that searching this way was troublesome and likely to miss something.

So he activated [Crow Language], summoning all the crows in the vicinity.

With the Divine Servant dead, the crows he had commanded naturally obeyed Lu Yuan.

“Whoosh.”

Hundreds of crows descended from the night sky, following Lu Yuan’s instructions to search for valuable items among the corpse fragments.

In just a few seconds, Lu Yuan had results.

Two crows almost simultaneously approached him, one bringing a string of silver keys, and the other holding a photo in its beak.

Frowning slightly, Lu Yuan took both items and examined them.

The keys were ordinary, with many different types of keys, most of them rusty. Only a nail clipper shone brightly.

The photo showed a young man and woman, both smiling brightly.

However, their facial features didn’t match those of people from the Xia State.

Lu Yuan casually flipped the photo to its back and saw a scribbled note: “Happy Vanilla Festival!”

The handwriting was in Javier language, and Vanilla Festival was a traditional holiday in Javier…

“Probably what he looked like before joining the Crow Deity sect…”

Lu Yuan glanced at the scattered fragments of flesh on the ground, thinking calmly.

He tossed the two items aside, letting the crows handle them, and continued to use his Mental Power for the search.

Suddenly, Lu Yuan’s expression changed. He directed a crow to bring over something from the ground.

It was a black, hard object about the size of a ping-pong ball, with some flesh, sinew, and bone fragments attached. It looked like it had originally grown inside the Divine Servant’s body and was shattered by Lu Yuan’s explosive boxing power.

Lu Yuan held the small hard object and could clearly sense the dense death energy contained within.

He applied a bit of force and easily crushed it.

Immediately, a visible black aura emerged from the fragments, almost like a living thing, actively drilling into Lu Yuan’s palm.

“Damn!”

Startled, Lu Yuan quickly tried to throw away the mysterious hard object.

But his effort was in vain.

Once he crushed it, it instantly turned into black aura, transitioning from solid to gas faster than ice melting in heat by several hundred times.

In just the blink of an eye, all the black aura had been absorbed into Lu Yuan’s palm.

Both shocked and confused, Lu Yuan carefully examined his right hand, but he couldn’t feel any changes or abnormalities.

Instinctively, he pulled up his professional panel to check.

When he scanned the [Death Messenger (extraordinary)] section, he was surprised to find that the experience points for [death energy entanglement] had increased significantly.

The experience points for the [death energy entanglement] skill mainly depended on usage time.

After all this time, Lu Yuan had only managed to increase the experience points to (45/100).

But now, the experience points had suddenly jumped from (45/100) to (67/100).

A gain of over twenty points at once.

“Could it be because of that black hard object…”

Lu Yuan suddenly remembered something. When he had entered the body of the Divine Servant in the Consciousness Space, he discovered that the body’s mutation was primarily due to storing death energy inside.

“That black hard object might be a nearly solidified death energy nodule, a death energy seed… I didn’t expect that [death energy entanglement] could gain experience by absorbing this part of the death energy.”

Lu Yuan felt astonished but more so delighted.

He immediately conveyed the order to search for death energy nodules to his crow assistants.

Previously, when he had told them to “search for valuable items,” what counted as valuable? To be honest, even Lu Yuan wasn’t very clear.

He had only emphasized finding “something like the crows’ eye-colored red beads” and let them figure it out.

Now, with a specific target, the efficiency of the crow assistants improved several times over.

Soon, one death energy nodule after another was collected and brought before Lu Yuan.

Lu Yuan crushed them one by one, absorbing the death energy.

He watched as the experience points for [death energy entanglement] on his panel rapidly increased, quickly breaking through to level 2.

It was now heading towards level 3.

After absorbing all the death energy nodules collected by the crow assistants, the level of [death energy entanglement] finally stopped at level 2 (178/200).

A total of eight death energy nodules were found, providing Lu Yuan with a total of 233 experience points.

If Lu Yuan’s punch hadn’t shattered some of the death energy nodules in the Divine Servant, he might have reached level 3.

“…The Powerful Divine Servant’s death energy nodules were probably more numerous and of higher quality. Unfortunately, at that time, my [Death Messenger (extraordinary)] panel wasn’t activated, so I didn’t notice these things at all…”

Lu Yuan was lamenting when suddenly, a crow assistant flew over his head.

A flash of crimson caught Lu Yuan’s eye and then quickly disappeared.

A sharp light flickered in Lu Yuan’s eyes as he stealthily concealed that crimson flash.

He gave the crow flock the order to thoroughly dispose of the Divine Servant’s corpse, then quietly retreated.

Thousands of crows feasting on a corpse.

By tomorrow morning, there would be no trace of the Divine Servant left in this area.

Lu Yuan took off his shoes and ran along the field ridge.

When he reached the farmland near the highway, he stopped.

He found a nearby fish pond and carefully washed off the bloodstains from his body and the mud from his legs and shoes.

Then he retraced his steps in the direction he had come.

He had run more than ten kilometers, fought a fierce battle, and then had to cover several dozen kilometers on the way back.

By the time Lu Yuan got home, it was almost eleven o’clock.

The night breeze along the way had blown away the faint smell of blood and fish from Lu Yuan, making it impossible to tell that he had just “killed someone.”

Lu Yuan even helped Zheng Qiuling tidy up the shop and close it before going upstairs.

After taking a shower, he closed the windows and drew the curtains.

The air conditioner, set to 24 degrees, hummed as it blew out cold air.

With his hair still damp, Lu Yuan, wearing a tank top and shorts, sat at his desk.

It was then that he took out the last item that the crow assistant had found for him earlier.

A bead.

A red bead.

In the middle was a black line, with a faint spread of white around it.

It looked just like a crow’s eye.

It was almost identical to the bead Lu Yuan had obtained from the Powerful Divine Servant of the Crow Deity sect.

The only difference was that it was much smaller.

The last bead was about the size of a marble, while the one in his hand now was only the size of a mung bean.

“There really are experience pills…”

Lu Yuan took a deep breath, feeling a mix of emotions.

He gently crushed the mung bean-sized red bead.

Just like last time, the red bead turned into a sticky red liquid upon breaking, flowing down Lu Yuan’s index finger.

Before it reached the third knuckle, all the liquid was fully absorbed into Lu Yuan.

Then…

“Buzz.”

The long-awaited crow dream came as expected.