Chapter 19 - Chapter 19

Two small holes appeared right between grandpa Jin's eyes and where his heart is. Right after that he hit the ground already dead. Mira jumped from the shock but then quickly calmed down. This was the plan they agreed on. Mira just had to lure the old man away from everyone else and Vain would do the rest. Mira then watched as Vain absorbed the blood from the old mans body, slowly getting used to this sight. Mira scoffed and kicked the old mans body saying, "How could you be a demonic cultivator if you're just using the powers you're born with?" Vain sighed. Mira said again, "These old fogeys really are too much." After this, the two of them found a safe spot to sleep in a tree and quickly rested. The next day came and the two of them were awakened by loud shouts and cries of excitement. They wanted to know what was going on so they quickly departed from the tree and rushed into the bazaar. They immediately found out that the Serpents Hollow unique space was starting to open. Both of their hearts were starting to beat faster and faster. The usually indifferent Vain was feeling somewhat excited. It was his first time going into a unique space. What's more, he really wanted to absorb the Serpents blood. He needed to absorb Kingsfield blood or higher now to make significant process. Mira's heart on the other hand, was beating faster for a different reason. She was anxious, scared, worried, and etcetera. She knew Vain was extremely strong now but still, fighting against a Kingsfield realm beast seemed like a bit too much. However, she for some reason had a deep trust in Vain, perhaps because he's never told her a lie and has saved her life twice. Mira thought that must be it. The two of them hurried in the direction of the unique space, not being stopped by anybody. They soon arrived at the place where the giant tents were set up and a saw a huge crowd standing in front of a three meter tall, two meter wide, light blue circular curtain of light. These people were almost all young boys and girls, looking like they were between the ages of thirteen and twenty. About half of them were wearing uniforms, while the other half were not. The young people wearing sect uniforms had airs of arrogance about them while the ones who were not had looks of worry on their faces. After just a short while, the circular light blue curtain of light seemed to darken and release a wave of spiritual energy. This was the sign that the entrance to the unique space was now completely open. Seeing this, the disciples wearing sect uniforms split into three groups,( each group being one of the three different sects ) While the other half of the people were in an unorganized huddle. The group of sect disciples didn't waste any time, gathered all of their slaves/servants and lined up in a straight line. They forced the slaves to enter first just in case any of them had any ideas of running. The slaves were used to carry the resources the disciples couldn't bare to hold onto while in the unique space just like Mira previously mentioned. However, after entering the unique space, one's luck played a huge role. They could either be taken straight to the beginning of the unique space, like walking through a door or relocated randomly based on the unique spaces preferences. Fortunately, the Serpents Hollow was the kind of unique space in which its entrance was like a door. Since Vain and Mira already knew this about the Serpents Hollow unique space, they rushed towards the crowd wanting to enter early so they wouldn't get stuck in the plot of the three sects. The sect members hearing the ruckus, turned their heads and saw the two young people rushing towards the gate. They sneered and went to stop Vain and Mira, but in an instant Vain picked Mira up by the waist, threw her over his shoulder, and leaped a total of fifteen meters directly entering the portal to the unique space. The sect disciples were first shocked, then enraged. Every single one of them wanted all of the resources inside to themselves, seeing random cultivators speed by them made their arrogant expressions turn into those of rage. Immediately afterwards, the order of the disciples collapsed as they rushed in to catch the disrespectful brats that dare smack their faces. The captains of the three teams however, didn't care. They thought that everyone who entered the unique space this time would die anyway, it wouldn't matter the order of entry. They were right about this. Right after Vain and Mira entered the unique space, even before scanning their surroundings, Vain used his power; pore spores and covered the entire entrance with the spores of Pallid Rot. The plan was to infect everyone at once so when they were fed to the serpent, the rot could directly spread to the beast. After Vain's body mutated, he had an extremely strong control of all things related to the Pallid Rotwood blight. It was very likely that he could directly absorb the Serpents blood after being infected. He already explained to Mira that his body was mutated by the Pallid blight, but Mira seeing the clouds of blight firsthand sent chills down her spine. However, after she was saved by Vain and she found out he was the strongest of their generation, she decided to follow Vain no matter what. Mira wanted to be strong enough to control her own fate and she figured following Vain could help her wish come true. After Vain covered the entire entrance in spores, he rapidly disappeared into the distance with Mira on his shoulder. His goal was not only to absorb the Serpents blood, but also to get Mira valuable resources. She was far too weak right now to really help him, but her abilities were already extremely useful. If he could raise her strength, then she would become a magnificent partner as she also had a similar goal as him. As Vain dashed into the distance, more and more disciples came through the entrance into the unique space. When they came in, the first thing they saw was a cloud of fog the slaves were fleeing from. Not caring about the cloud at all, the disciples quickly caught up to the slaves and brought them back to the entrance, waiting for the rest of their members to come into Serpents Hollow. About two hours passed and Vain finally set the blushing Mira down. During these two hours, Mira remained surprisingly quiet which caught Vain off guard. Vain didn't know that this was because with the way he was carrying Mira, his hand was on her upper thigh causing the inexperienced girl to be muddle headed. After just a moment, Mira regained her senses returning to her usual self and immediately started talking, "Wow! this place is just like the outside world. I didn't expect the unique space to be so similar. The sky is blue, the grass is green, the mountains are tall, and the river water is clear." Vain nodded, "Yeah." Mira then asked, "How big do you think this Serpents Hollow is?" Vain shook his head, "I have no idea." Mira pondered for a moment and said "Well, let's start exploring. Maybe we can find out." Vain nodded. The two of them started wandering around with no clear destination in mind. Along the way, there were actually a lot of beasts but none of them really stood out. All of them were bone conditioning realm and organ conditioning realm with the exception of one spirit refinement realm bat like creature. To the normal disciples that entered, the bat beast would've been a scourge. To Vain and Mira, it was nutrients and cultivation material. Vain would absorb the blood of all the beasts he killed while Mira would take out the beast core and place it in the bag she was wearing on her back. A beast core was only the size of a baby's hand, allowing Mira to carry many different beast cores from the beasts that Vain killed. In this world, the regular cultivators could not directly absorb the energy from a beast core, but the cores had many other uses. Beast cores can be used to refine into weapons, clothing, poisons, armor, and pills, so Mira put them aside for the time being. Like this, a week passed. The week was genuinely peaceful. Along with the slaying of beasts, Vain and Mira also collected a few herbs that they found in the woods of the unique space. These herbs could be condensed into medicine. Vain knew all about the herbs because Uncle Ale made him study rigorously, but he couldn't do anything with them besides make poisons and antidotes. He couldn't make medicinal pills for cultivation or anything related because he saw no need in learning how to with his lack of spiritual energy. However, surprisingly, Mira said she knew how to create lower level pills she could use for herself. It turns out that the women in her family were forbidden from learning the families combat techniques because they were all married off as ornaments and didn't want them to give their families' techniques to the factions they were married to. Not being able to learn combat techniques, Mira studied alchemy, tailoring, and cooking from a very young age, allowing her to be quite talented in these aspects. After Mira explained this to Vain, he could see the rage in Mira's face, but it didn't last long. The two of them were currently sitting in the grass by a creek that was only four meters wide but stretched into the distance both ways. The water was a deep shade of blue with a visibility of only half a meter or so. Vain sat with a fishing pole in hand while Mira watched. At this point, Vain just finished teaching Mira how to fish and handed over the pole he was carrying. Mira took the pole with a kind of nervous look. To be honest she didn't want to learn how to fish, nor did she mind not slaying the beasts they came across in the unique space. Thinking this, she handed the pole back to Vain and said, "Thats ok. I'll just watch." Vain asked curiously, "You don't want to be able to catch your own food?" Mira looked at him unfazed and said, "Can't you catch it for me?" Vain chuckled but didn't say anything else. Mira felt mocked by Vain's actions so she started scolding "Isn't a man supposed to put food on the table? You want me to get my delicate hands dirty with some stinky fish?" Vain said, "Weren't you just complaining about only men in your family--" Mira cut him off while rolling her eyes, "Thats completely different." Vain gave Mira a doubtful look which she hated, but before she could go on another tirade, she detected a few auras and immediately warned Vain. Vain took her warning seriously, but not so serious as to stop what he was doing and prepare, he only put his guard up. After a few minutes, a group of four disciples came into view. Vain and Mira didnt know which sect they were from because they didn't bother to do the research. The group of four disciples was made up of three men and one woman. All of them wore long light green robes with no clear insignia showing anywhere on them. The four people slowly approached Vain and Mira with smiles on their faces, their guards completely lowered. They saw how young the two kids in front of them were and didn't think they were of any threat. One of the young men glanced at Mira with a perverted glint in his eyes but it was only for a moment and the two didn't seem to notice. The man that was leading the group greeted the two and introduced themselves as members of the Gale Fist sect. Apparently they got separated from their main group when a spirit refinement realm beast attacked them. Right after the group finished explaining their situation, Mira looked at Vain and shook her head. Vain sighed, stuck his hand out and absorbed the four people's blood directly. Usually, Vain could not absorb blood directly from living things, but if the living thing in question was infected with the Pallid Rotwood blight, then it was no issue. Mira shook her head at this sight and sighed. "How hard is it to be honest? Why can't a single one of these bastards tell the truth?" Vain remained silent and focused on fishing while Mira looted the four corpses. Mira ended up finding two bone Refinement Realm beast cores on one of the men and a cultivation that was found on the one younger woman that was in the group of four. The cultivation tome was for an Low rank fist technique called gale fist, but Mira didn't want to learn it. She thought the technique was too vulgar for a woman to learn which made Vain's head spin. She previously complained to Vain for not being able to learn martial arts, plus Mira was the most vulgar person he knew so far. She swore up and down each day, made dirty jokes, and teased him all the time. It was too shameless of her to say a martial arts technique was too vulgar at this point. But Vain didn't dare argue with Mira. She was all mouth and wouldn't quit admitting she was in the right even if she was completely wrong. Vain let out a deep sigh and focused on fishing. Another hour passed by and Vain finally caught a fish. To his surprise, it was a striped frog fin fish. Seeing this unexpected little fellow, Vain couldn't help but let out a smile. Mira looked at the usually indifferent and aloof Vain with a surprised look on her face, "Wow! You actually know how to smile. It looks really good. Oh yeah! That old man said your favorite food is striped frog fin fish. Why is that? Is it delicious?" Vain explained the story of how Uncle Ale taught him how to fish and the young Mira actually had some tears in her eyes, but the empathy she felt for Vain disappeared after she tasted the cooked fish. She wanted to spit it out, but felt that it may be a bit too much disrespectful so she choked the fish down with a forced grin that made her look like a villain. Vain watched Mira eat the striped frog fin fish and couldn't help but laugh out loud when he saw the faces Mira was making.