Chapter 213: The Flower Palace, the Year Beast!
Compared to being hunted by countless factions after achieving fame for the first time, Kai Xin’s current situation was far more comfortable and relaxed. For three consecutive days, he stayed in the rarely visited advanced training area in Wuhu, the “Pink Mist Forest,” undisturbed, and focused on mastering a lower-level sword technique.
Now, his internal energy had reached 159.4 points. With just one more improvement in his martial skills, he could reach perfection and attain the third level of the Mysterious Realm…
Although there were increasingly more powerful individuals with master-level advanced skills on both the Dragon and Phoenix Lists, as well as more people in the Mysterious Realm, Kai Xin didn’t care much—these lists still relied primarily on realm levels and advanced skills as measures of strength, and they were still in their infancy, not fully developed. Whether one made the list or not didn’t really matter.
At present, many people still didn’t understand the principle of mutual restraint between martial skills. Many insisted on mastering high-attack advanced skills, believing that those with strong killing power were the best. Of course, speed alone didn’t guarantee superiority either—specializing in one area alone wouldn’t lead to success…
Kai Xin simply wanted to quietly follow the cultivation methods from his past life to grow stronger faster. With master-level skills like “Flower Hero’s Song” and “Shadowless Swift Leg,” dealing with ordinary experts was a breeze, and he could even compete with some strong opponents. Among players, he had few rivals—except for those few who even he hadn’t faced in his past life…
One Emperor!
Two Queens!
And a few from the “Three Kings and Seven Marquises” who, for some reason, hadn’t registered for the “Global Swordsmanship Competition on Huashan.”
But Kai Xin believed that with his current experience and strength, even if these people had already inherited peerless martial skills, they wouldn’t be his match. They would gradually emerge later on.
“In this life, I’ll wait for you to show up.”
With determined eyes, Kai Xin wielded his Silver Wolf Breaker Sword in the pink, fresh peach forest, effortlessly lifting aside two graceful, masked, pink-clothed female thieves.
Whoosh! Whoosh!
A red glow flashed as two darts struck outside Kai Xin’s body, instantly repelled by his golden protective aura.
His Golden Bell Shield flashed repeatedly, its color dimming slightly…
It was clear that the power contained in those darts was no less than a full-force strike from an advanced martial skill.
As an outer branch of the Flower Palace stationed in Wuhu, these masked, pink-clothed female thieves had reached the later stages of the Mysterious Realm—very formidable foes. They had become an area that players in Wuhu avoided unless necessary. Even Kai Xin had to go all out and be extremely cautious.
However, it’s a great choice for practicing sword skills and improving the level of the Golden Bell Shield at the same time.
…
“Hurry! Stop it quickly!”
“Okay! Lead it into the woods…”
“It’s too tough; we can’t hurt it. Let’s deal with it slowly in the woods!”
“Great luck! It’s a Nian beast! Haha! Hurry! It’s bad if someone sees us.”
On an official road far from Wuhu County, a dozen players were excitedly surrounding a strange-looking, sturdy yellow wild beast. While attacking it, they shouted, driving the beast into the woods a hundred meters away:
“It’s trying to run!”
“Idiot! Open a path! People in the woods direction, get out of the way! Drive it into the woods so others won’t see it…”
The group rushed into action in a flurry.
It turned out that these people were all disciples of the same sect. They had formed a team to carry out a mission in a place near Wuhu County. Unexpectedly, this strange beast suddenly rushed out from outside the road as if nothing happened, ignoring them completely, grazing on the grass outside the road like ordinary cattle and sheep.
Originally…
the group didn’t take it seriously either.
The mistake was that this yellow beast was too eye-catching, with a prominent “Nian” character carved on its forehead!
“A Nian beast!”
When the group got closer, someone shouted, and the entire team immediately became frenzied.
Nian beasts.
These days, rumors about them have spread gradually from the martial arts world and official forums…
It is said that they appear randomly in various places across the country, extremely rare. Yet, each Nian beast seems to hide many valuable items. Some even claim that one can obtain pure gold coins from them, top-tier currency worth ten thousand silver taels when sold in shops. Moreover, although these Nian beasts aren’t very strong, their defense is abnormally high, requiring a long time to kill. However, each one can drop at least three gold coins, along with random secret manuals, pills, weapons, and other items.
Rumors say that a few lucky ordinary players, who were originally quite weak, managed to get ten gold coins and a complete set of high-grade martial arts manuals for the Creation Realm by relying on Nian beasts, and then received invitations from several local gangs.
It is precisely because Nian beasts are easy to deal with and can make people rich and powerful overnight that a craze for searching for them quickly swept through the martial arts world…
Realizing what the beast was, the group was extremely excited, but quickly calmed down.
Under their deliberate indulgence, the frightened Year Beast panted and galloped frantically on all fours, striving to reach the forest in an attempt to escape the group of vicious “monsters” wielding swords behind it. The crowd followed eagerly, entering this unknown forest, and only once deep inside did they encircle the Year Beast again: “We’re rich! We’re rich!” “Tsk tsk, the Year Beast—who knows what treasures it might yield…” “It’s a shame there’s only one.” The poor, honest-looking Year Beast, surrounded by the crowd, paced anxiously, trembling with fear. “Stop talking and just kill it!” “Go!” Various cultivation levels were activated, with one person even displaying the astonishing prowess of the Mysterious Realm. His fierce ghost-head sword was incredibly powerful, its blade edge capable of slicing through flesh, causing more damage than all the others combined. “Truly a first-class legendary weapon…” The others around also noticed that every time this Mysterious Realm player swung his sword, the Year Beast let out loud screams of pain, seemingly severely injured. A few in the group grew wary. After all, although they were together, in this game world, only the one who dealt the most damage could claim the loot from the corpse; others could only get it after three minutes of protection time had passed. So… If things continued like this, whatever the Year Beast yielded after death would surely belong to the Mysterious Realm player. The beast carried many valuable gold coins and top-tier martial arts secrets! The temptation of tens of thousands of yuan was deadly for ordinary players. As the Year Beast suffered more injuries, the joy on the Mysterious Realm player’s face grew stronger, and he swung his sword even more forcefully, as if already receiving system notifications that he would obtain the beast’s treasures, making his movements even faster. The others surrounding the Year Beast, however, showed hesitation, their actions slowing down slightly…