Black Wind Mountains - 2

With a single wave of his arm, he sliced through any webbing blocking his way and ventured deeper.

Pausing only at a sharp turn in the cave, where he sensed the first of the spider beasts laying in wait, guarding.

He paused there, debating his choices, before ultimate-

Stepping around the turn and confronting the beast head on. Recklessness was not the better part of valour but he came here to test himself.

Eight large red eyes, each twice, or thrice the size of his own eyes locked on him as soon as he stepped into view, a huge brown spider a few feet bigger than himself hanging from a web above staring down at him.

A loud chittering noise escaped its maw, its twin mandibles clacking together audibly and resonating through the cave.

It was alerting its companions to his presence.

As soon as it did, it lunged towards him, shooting down through the air as a large brown blur.

It was fast-

For a mere first realm, easily as fast as a first realm stage seven or eight.

Not as fast as Shen Lei was before he had his breakthrough though, and not even close to how fast he was now.

It may as well have been going in slow motion for all the good its lunge did it.

He jerked to the side and swung his arm up, allowing it to pass right by his side while at the same time, the heavenly blade clad hand of his, cleaved straight through all the legs one one side of its body.

It slapped to the ground meatily, purple blood spewing from its side and a chittering shrieked leaving its maw-

Only to be cut off as he raised his leg up and brought it his heel down on its skull, a loud crunching sound echoing through the cave and it went still.

"…That was easy." he blinked, eyeing the corpse of the demonic beast, even as a series of similar chittering noises echoed from the back of the cave, getting louder and louder, the sound of running legs over the cave walls echoing alongside it.

It was his first time fighting demonic spiders. While he wasn't expecting much of a challenge…he was expecting a bit more than that.

He wasn't able to stare at his kill for much longer, because just a few split seconds later, the dead spiders family came pouring out the dark cave depths towards him, running along the walls on each side, the ceiling and the ground.

With their size, speed and numbers, they practically blotted out all of that direction of the cave.

A split moment later, multiple thick lines of spider silk web shot through the air towards him like a barrage of spears.

Quickly, he wound both arms back, cladding both with the heavenly blade technique and whipped both arms out, slicing through the ones aimed at his torso and jumping over those at his legs.

The first was upon him then, but mid-jump he launched his leg up into a knee strike, catching it straight on the forehead before it could snap at him with its sharp mandibles and fangs dripping with venom.

Its skull crunched from the impact, and then he thrust one arm out, stabbing into its upper body and pulled its entire weight down.

It had to weigh a good few hundred pounds just from the main body, but it wasn't too bad of a strain.

With a shout, he leveraged the huge dead spider in front of him like a shield and barrelled straight through the approaching spiders like a wrecking ball, clearing the way.

He smashed through all of them, tossing them aside-

All but one that jumped onto his spider corpse shield and aimed straight for his head over its body.

Acting quickly, he thrust his shield down, bashing the hairy spider beast into the ground, drawing a squeal from it and thrust his heavenly blade clad hand that was inside the corpse deeper and through it, straight into the beasts head, killing it.

He pulled his hand free, a bubble of excitement erupting within him and laughter echoed into the cave from his throat. He whirled around, ignoring the corpse and taking in the other eleven huge spiders left, gaining their bearings after his charge.

Yes, this was good!

"Haha!" he crouched low for a moment, before springing forward, rushing them before they could fully recover, "I'll fucking have you!" from his mouth, came an ever unique battle cry…in this world.

The influence of his other self bleeding through.

He exploded forward in a blur, stabbing his heavenly blade clad hand into the first spiders face, before pulling it free and lifting his leg forward and punting it like a ball.

It slammed into another, pinning it below its weight briefly and he pounced like an apex predator, stabbing through the corpse, into the one below it and killing it just the same

More laughter bubbled from him, a euphoric high filling him to the brim as he sank into combat with the demonic beasts.

He couldn't get enough of the power flowing in his veins and tearing through his enemies.

And this was but only a taste of true power, the true power that awaited him once he reached the pinnacle of the martial dao and ruled over the heavens themselves!

________________________________

A half an hour later, he was done.

His blue robe top and white pants were covered in the purple blood of the demonic spider beasts, but he was satisfied.

Dusting off his hands, Shen Lei took the moment to admire his spoils so far. That of the fourteen huge spider corpses piled up now outside the cage. They were messy, riddled with stabbings and leaking blood, crushed bones and missing legs.

He was not at all gentle with them.

"Not a bad haul." he mused, crossing his arms as he looked them over. While demonic spiders were indeed the lowest of low demonic beasts, that did not mean there were no uses for them.

In fact, they were full of uses. Their venom could be used for coating weapons, or for alchemy, or even an array. Their blood of course was useful for de-toxicity pills. Their carapaces could make for decent low grade artefacts, as could their fangs.

In fact, in total he had twenty eight large fangs. Each of those could be refined into small artefacts such as daggers. And using the carapaces with them, he could enhance their durability.

And of course there was their spider silk thread.

Though the greatest thing he got from the demonic spider beasts, would of course be their beast cores. That which held the demonic spider beasts souls and all of their power.

They had a variety of uses. Though, one of the best uses was not at all something he could use himself. Those who refined monster qi, could use the monster cores to enhance their cultivation.

Without that himself, he only had three options, or rather four. Using them in alchemy, using them for refining artefacts or using them for refining arrays.

'Technically there is nothing stopping me from refining monster qi.' he mused inwardly.

Except for one tiny little thing.

To do so, one generally had to refine a beast core first that would influence the path of their martial dao. Doing such a thing with a low level demonic monster beast though, would be an utter waste.

The only people that it was of worth to, were those with few options themselves.

Honestly, if Yang Kai couldn't break through from the Tempered Body, third stage, it would have been a decent enough path for him to take.

'Demonic Spiders are wood alignment if I remember right.' he thought, before shrugging.

Well, it wasn't anything worth thinking about now, Yang Kai had broken through already, and in fact his senior brother had seemed in good spirits when he saw him training just before he left the sect for his trip.

His eyes drifted to the spider corpses, "Perhaps I should refine some weapons?" he wondered.

While these were merely first realm beasts, it was known that there were beasts even up to the fifth realm in the Black Wind Mountains, some venomous weapons would go a long way to helping him killing ones beyond his level.

The cave he was outside of would work as a decent shelter to go about it as well.

If he say, managed to bring down a Five Horned Tiger in the Black Wind Mountains, now that would be a monster beast core worth refining, though they were of the Yin alignment, while he cultivated the Yang.

…He did have his other self though.