Chapter 10: Breakthrough! Innate Realm, Second Layer!! Strength Soars!!

...

At long last, after a spree of slaughter, Xiao Xuan finally reached the edge of that enormous abyss.

He looked down into the pit, which was more than ten meters deep and resembled a meteor crater.

There were indeed countless traits here, densely packed together, but after looking more closely, he discovered that there were no Death-type traits among them.

And all along the way, Xiao Xuan had not seen any Death traits beside the corpses of either ferocious beasts or humans.

There were plenty of other traits, though.

“Could it be that Death traits only drop if I’m the one who kills them?”

At that thought, Xiao Xuan raised a brow.

The other traits did not seem to have that restriction.

Still, it was only natural for Death traits to be limited in that way.

After all, the Death trait was a little too outrageous. Even an ordinary Third-Tier beast could drop a Blue trait with a one-hundred-percent chance.

A guaranteed high-grade trait like that would be absurd if it had no restrictions at all.

Fortunately, ordinary traits were unaffected. As long as a state changed, a trait could still appear.

“With this many traits, I’d be a fool not to take advantage of it.”

Xiao Xuan grinned, then jumped straight into the abyss and began sprinting.

That was right—sprinting.

There were simply too many traits here.

And he had never tested how long traits could remain in existence.

Naturally, that meant he had to move as fast as possible.

【Ding... Congratulations, you recycled the trash 【Severely Wounded! Green】 and obtained Eco Points: 67】

【Ding... Congratulations, you recycled the trash 【Mighty Strength! White】 and obtained Eco Points: 3】

【Ding... Congratulations, you recycled the trash 【Injured! Green】 and obtained Eco Points: 25】

【Ding... Congratulations, you recycled the trash 【Flame Control! White】 and obtained Eco Points: 2】

...

Very soon, prompt after prompt rang out.

And Xiao Xuan’s Eco Points began rising at a frantic pace.

Among all those traits, the most common by far was naturally Flame Control.

After all, seventy percent of those ferocious beasts were fire-attributed.

He directly set things up so that any trait type he already possessed, along with all negative traits, would be recycled straight into Eco Points.

As for the traits Xiao Xuan did not already have, he tossed them all into the bin to sort through once he got home.

And he only needed to keep one of each kind. If he wanted to upgrade anything later, he could decide then.

There were still many ferocious beasts inside the crater.

Those were the ones that had rushed in afterward, as well as the ones that had fled in terror.

While Xiao Xuan was frantically collecting traits, he also killed those beasts one by one.

As the slaughter continued, more and more martial artists gathered nearby.

And those people soon noticed Xiao Xuan.

“Good lad! To be fighting so bravely against ferocious beasts at such a young age—this is how a son of Huaxia ought to be!”

“Hahaha! These old bones of ours had better put in some effort. We can’t let a kid look down on us!”

...

Watching a blood-soaked youth slaughter ferocious beasts so fiercely, the martial artists and soldiers around him were all stirred by the sight.

But before long, those people gradually realized something was wrong.

Xiao Xuan’s strength felt a little too terrifying.

“Holy shit, that kid just one-shot a beast at the second layer of the Vitality Realm. Am I seeing things? What kind of strength is that?!”

“Damn, that was a beast at the fourth layer of the Vitality Realm! The fourth layer, and it still got one-shot!”

“Who exactly is that kid? How is he so strong?”

“A lightning-type trait. That looks like Lightning Control. At that level of power, it has to be a Blue trait. Is he some genius cultivated by one of the major martial halls? How could they let a genius like that loose in a beast tide to fight?”

...

...

For a time, Xiao Xuan’s terrifying combat power left all the martial artists around him stunned.

The Vitality Realm was normally something one could only reach in one’s forties or fifties, and only with at least a Green aptitude-type trait.

Yet Xiao Xuan had reached it while still in his teens.

And he even possessed a Blue lightning trait.

In the entirety of Blackwater City, that absolutely placed him among the very top geniuses.

As for Xiao Xuan, he paid no attention to any of that.

As more and more people arrived, more and more ferocious beasts were killed. Before dying, those beasts all passed through injured states, which caused traits to burst out of them.

Of course, those injury-type traits were not especially high-grade.

Even Second-Tier beasts could only produce White traits, though occasionally he could get a [Minor Injury] worth seven or eight points.

And Third-Tier beasts could only yield somewhat weaker Green traits.

As for Fourth-Tier, Grandmaster-level beasts, Xiao Xuan had not seen any so far.

Mu Xiying had probably killed them all.

Of course, even if he had seen one, Xiao Xuan would not have been able to beat it.

Although he had poured most of the Eco Points he picked up into his Vitality, Xiao Xuan’s Vitality had still only risen to 85.

That was merely the eighth layer of the Vitality Realm.

Even so, Xiao Xuan had managed to pick up a Blue [Severely Wounded] trait.

It had directly given him more than three thousand Eco Points.

That was most likely what the Fifth-Tier beast had left behind when it was nailed to the ground in a grievously wounded state.

One could easily imagine that if he actually killed it, it would definitely drop a Purple trait.

Of course, even if that might yield tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands, of Eco Points, Xiao Xuan still knew his own limits.

At least for now, he was no match for a Fifth-Tier beast of that level.

Fortunately, this time his harvest had still been enormous.

Before long, more than three hours had passed.

Every ferocious beast that had rushed inside the city walls had already been killed.

Only a great number of human corpses and beast carcasses remained scattered across the battlefield.

Standing amid that blood-soaked battleground, with its overwhelming stench of gore, Xiao Xuan could not help furrowing his brows.

“So this is what a beast-tide battlefield looks like? After tonight, how many people are going to lose their families?”

Xiao Xuan took a deep breath.

If Mu Xiying had not killed that Fifth-Tier beast, along with a great many Fourth-Tier beasts, it was hard to imagine what would have become of Blackwater City tonight.

There would probably have been only one outcome.

The city would have been completely destroyed.

“My strength... still isn’t enough!”

Xiao Xuan’s gaze turned grave at once.

Then he began moving among the countless corpses.

【Ding... Congratulations, you obtained the trait 【Blade Technique Fundamentals! Green】】

【Ding... Congratulations, you recycled the trash 【Mighty Strength! White】 and obtained Eco Points: 3】

【Ding... Congratulations, you recycled the trash 【Severely Wounded! Green】 and obtained Eco Points: 75】

【Ding... Congratulations, you recycled the trash 【Weak! White】 and obtained Eco Points: 3】

...

One prompt after another rang through Xiao Xuan’s mind.

And the amount of Eco Points he possessed also began climbing rapidly.

Combined with the fact that the Bloodthirsty Demonic Art was still running and growing stronger, Xiao Xuan could now gain more than 800 Eco Points per hour from that cultivation method alone.

Adding in all the traits he picked up, his total Eco Points finally settled at 18,500!

And that was after he had already spent more than five thousand points raising his Vitality.

If all those traits had been poured into his Vitality instead, he would have already stepped into the Innate Realm.

But that was not Xiao Xuan’s only gain.

While collecting traits, he had found several rather good ones.

...

【Blade Technique Fundamentals! Green】 (Grants decades of blade experience and increases the power of blade techniques by 200%)

【Appraisal Eye! Green】 (Can see descriptions for certain items and discern other people’s cultivation realms)

【Combat Mastery! White】 (Grants powerful combat talent, allowing one to unleash one’s strength in battle more effectively!)

...

Those three were the most promising traits Xiao Xuan had picked out from a huge heap of trash traits.

After all, biting off more than he could chew would do him no good.

Each of those three traits could greatly enhance Xiao Xuan’s combat power.

As for the blade trait, once it was upgraded to Blue, it would increase the power of his blade techniques by a full 500%.

And that increase could stack together with his physical combat boosts.

As for Appraisal Eye, it would allow Xiao Xuan to clearly see how strong an enemy really was.

That way, he would not recklessly charge into battle without knowing the other side’s strength, only to end up dead without even understanding how he had died.

And as for 【Combat Mastery】, that one was a rare trait.

Xiao Xuan had never expected to pick it up at all.

This trait allowed him to unleash much greater combat power in battle.

To put it simply, if Xiao Xuan were split into two, and both versions possessed exactly the same traits, skills, realm, and weapon, then the one with White Combat Mastery would definitely defeat the other within ten moves.

If it were Green Combat Mastery, three moves would be enough.

And if it were Blue, then one version could fight three identical opponents at once and still kill them instantly.

Combat Mastery was, in essence, battle technique and combat experience.

And as long as those were strong enough, killing enemies above one’s level was entirely possible.

“It’s just a pity that among so many humans and ferocious beasts, I still haven’t found a single one with a mental power mutation.”