Saint Spirit Grass

As he meditated, he didn't do what most people would upon their first kill.

They would normally try to ward off the feeling, sealing it deep within them. That was indeed a way to get used to killing, but the wrong way.

If one were to simply seal their own feelings deep within, there was bound to be a time when these feelings would resurface with full force, something that could lead even to that person's death.

Issei had understood all of this during his period of enlightenment. As such, he did something that most people wouldn't dare.

While sitting cross-legged, he continuously repeated the feeling he had felt at that time. The feeling of pain, the feeling of hollowness, how it felt to take a soul. To destroy the future and present.

He repeated it again and again, trying to experience it as most as possible. What Issei was doing was something that most people couldn't. He was forcefully getting used to killing.

Humans could only manage to reach such a high-position in the world, comparable to elves and vampires, because of their ability to adapt to diverse occasions.

Place a man in the desert? His skin will grow dark to withstand the sun, his body will start using water more efficiently, he will develop a resistance to sand..

What Issei was doing was exactly making use of the human's innate gift to adapt in order to grow used to killing.

As such, the more times he replayed the feeling, the last he felt it. He was gaining a resistance to the act of taking a life, becoming more and more resilient.

After seven hours, Issei finally opened his eyes.

They were no longer the same as before. In them, there was an extra glint of ruthlessness and coldness.

Shinso's words from before had greatly impacted him. He now made the decision to kill whoever deserved to die. He would no longer be lenient with his enemies!

Obviously, just that seven hours weren't nearly enough for Issei to develop complete resistance, although now he was much closer to it.

He understood that in order to be able to kill without batting an eye, to kill without remorse, to be ruthless, he would have to kill more and more. Only then would he be able to overcome the penalty of taking a life.

That was Issei's ultimate objective for the moment – becoming completely resistant to killing.

He now knew that in order to grow stronger, in order to reach the peak, one must be used to killing. His goal was reaching the peak in order to make Shinso proud, so, naturally, he would have to get used to killing.

Looking back at the body, Issei sighed. He then stood up and walked to the corpse of the person. Reaching down, he grabbed his cosmos sack.

Issei, obviously, wasn't the type of good guy who would let the person die with all their belongings. The guy was already dead, it wasn't as if it was going to be of use to him, right?

Even then, Issei didn't forget to profit from the situation.

Looking inside the cosmos sack, he found ten high-grade spirit grass, fifty middle-grade spirit grass and seventy two low-grade spirit grass.

Aside from that, he also found some medicines for treating wounds, a Nascent Profound Realm grade sword and some aphrodisiacs.

Keeping everything and throwing the aphrodisiacs away, Issei placed the new cosmos sack right on the side of his original cosmos sack.

Giving one last glance at the corpse of Wu Hai, Issei sighed.

He was already in Lightning Incarnation mode, since he entered it on the last battle and didn't bother to exit it.

(Read the author notes. This time they have important info that is crucial to the story.)

Lifting up his right hand, Issei condensed a ball of lightning. It was pure azure ball, with power of complete annihilation.

Casually throwing the ball towards the body, he walked away. Just as he took his third step, he heard the sound of the lightning colliding with something. Not even looking back, he calmly continued on his way.

On the place Wu Hai's corpse had been before, there were only black ashes. Soon after, a wind came and scattered it throughout the forest.

At that moment, there wasn't even the slightest proof that a murder just took place. Because of Issei's complete control over his lightning, that ball from before only affected the corpse. The grass the corpse was in wasn't affected in the least.

What better way was there to get rid of evidences if not completely destroying them? That was exactly what Issei did.

Although it didn't look like it, Issei knew that with his luck that some times seemed heavenly and some times back-stabbed him, there was definitely a chance that he would be implicated for that murder, although he didn't really know how.

As such, he wasn't about to take any chances and decided to simply make Wu Hai forever 'disappear'.

After walking for a bit, Issei once more continued his search for middle-grade spirit grass, only that this time he was much farther away from the areas that people stayed at.

At that moment, he was on the threshold of the territory of the middle-grade spirit grass. If he were to cross it, he would enter the area that the high-grade spirit grass lived in.

Looking around and not finding any spirit grass, Issei sat down and sent some lightning to the ground, calmly waiting for it to search the entire perimeter.

Just as the lightning was walking casually going around underneath the earth, it sensed something along with Issei.

Widening his eyes, Issei discovered that not too far from him, there were over a hundred and fifty energy signatures fighting!

Deciding to take a look, Issei headed to that location. It was on the high-grade spirit grass territory.

While taking cover behind a tree, Issei peeked at the scene before him.

A three meter tall huge plant-like thing, filled with purple thorns had its mouth open which was full of teeth. It was emitting an oppressing aura from its body, aura of the seventh level of the Nascent Profound Realm.

"That is Saint Spirit Grass!" Issei exclaimed in surprise in a low voice.

Saint Spirit Grass was an existence about high-grade spirit grass. Each of them had the potency of fifty high-grade spirit grass when refining it!

Furthermore, there were over twenty of them.

That meant that right in front of him was... the equivalent of one thousand high grade spirit grass, which was also equal to two thousand middle-grade spirit grass!

That was more than what Issei had collected in these past eight days. Such an amount, if he were to refine all of them, he would probably be able to breakthrough into the sixth level of the Nascent Profound Realm!

Furthermore, there were over two hundred high-grade spirit grass on the ground, which means four hundred middle-grade spirit grasses!

Looking at the situation, Issei was excited beyond precedence. He knew that he really struck it luck this time. Furthermore, his powers were specialized in taking on a large amount of enemies at the same time. It was as if this situation was tailor-made for him!

He then searched around the crowd of Saint Spirit grass and high-grade spirit grass, wondering who provoked their ire.

Much surprisingly, it was single person. Furthermore, it was a girl that seemed to be in the late teens with dark black in a short bob hair-cut and violet eyes.

Around her, the aura of the ninth level of the Nascent Profound Realm surrounded her.

Surrounded by hundreds of enemies, with a rapier in hand, she continued thrusting forward at the enemies, each strike killing at least one, but it was obvious that she was in a disadvantage and would soon fall.

Furthermore, there seemed to be water flowing around her, aiding her attacks, increasing their rage and potency.

Eyes widening, Issei recognized that water as the rank 5 martial skill, Water Fury!

As he looked at the young woman, he felt that he had seen her before. Not even a couple of seconds passed before his eyes widened. She was the young woman who was talking with Senior Brother Sa Ji back then!

Since she was talking with Sa Ji, Issei figured that she wasn't an enemy. Since that was the case, he didn't hesitate and jumped down, falling at the side of the young woman.

Looking at Issei, before she could even widen her eyes, she watched as he sliced at a spirit grass that was about to strike her back.

With surprise, she discovered that if Issei had not arrived, that blow could have severely injured her!

Looking back at the young woman, Issei said, "Need help?"

Strangely enough, her answer was another question, "It's you?"

"Hmm... you know me?" Issei asked as he struck at another incoming high-grade spirit grass, saving her again.

Looking at the young boy who had saved her life twice, Sona cursed. She didn't want to drag Issei into this. In her eyes, he would only end up as a burden for her.

"It doesn't matter. Just get away from here as soon as possible!" She exclaimed as she got back to thrusting at high-grade spirit grasses.

Sighing, Issei shook his head, "No can do."

"What?"

"You see, I'm rather interested on those Saint Spirit Grasses, so how about this? I'll help you deal with them and at the end, I'll grab all the Saint grade ones and you keep the high-grade ones. How's that?"

Sona widened her eyes as she listened to Issei's explanation. Did he truly think that he could deal with them?

"Hmm... so, do we have a deal?" Issei asked, his eyes narrowing as he once more killed another spirit grass.

Looking at Issei, Sona thought things over. She had wanted to know how strong Issei was and this was a golden opportunity! How could she miss it?

"Okay, we have deal," She said, the surprise no longer on her eyes, replaced by her usual cold glare.

Seeing that she accepted, Issei didn't hold back anymore. Dashing forward at the crowd of high-grade spirit grass, he started spinning as he killed spirit grass after spirit grass.

His movements were fluid and beautiful, as if he was calmly dancing. At the same time, his swords flowed around, sending cuts, slashes and stabs.

Dancing around the battlefield, bringing destruction wherever he went, Issei quickly decimated an entire crowd of fifty high-grade spirit grass in an astonishing speed.

The most surprising of all was that Sona didn't feel any fluctuations of usage of spiritual power, which meant that he was killing them with technique and strength alone.

Well, what she didn't know was that he had previously done a partial Lightning Incarnation transformation, removing the restrictions he placed on his fingers. As such, he was able to internally channel lightning into both swords who were at the tenth-level of the Nascent Profound Realm without Sona noticing.

Because of that, each strike that Issei sent would electrify the target internally, adding an extra layer of damage. Also, since the electricity only acted internally, Sona wasn't able to notice it. It was only because of that that Issei managed to kill one with each strike.

If he were to resort to techniques, it wouldn't be so useful, since Issei created his swords techniques with the sole purpose of fighting humans. They focused at striking at fatal and vital points, meridians and acupuncture points.

Such technique was useless against spirit grass, since their anatomy was completely different. Furthermore, if he were to resort to strength alone, he definitely wouldn't be able to kill them. After all, he only had the physique of an eleven years old who looked like he was ten.

There was no way he could compare his strength to practitioners of the same level who were in their late teens.

As such, only by relying on his lightning, Issei managed to bring forth destruction to the battlefield.