Night raid (part 1).

A minute later Collin slumped into a chair, the table and testing board were knocked over and laying on the floor several feet away. As a cultivator, everything he does is influenced by his Qi to some degree. If he wasn't so upset at the results of the test, he would have been excited to see the table and testing board be blown away by the pressure of the shockwave caused by his own voice.

As an alchemic cultivator, Collin should have a wood spiritual root and maybe be a slight reaction indicating a pseudo-fire spiritual root from the fire pills he was taking. But he not only had a true fire spiritual root, Collin also had wind, water, and earth spiritual roots.

Collin knew what this meant, he had the ability to cultivate normally from the beginning. The grand elder of the clan, lied. He falsified the results of Collins talent test and had him cast out, and nothing he said or did would change anything.

Speaking out against the grand elder wasn't something he could do even when he was the clan's beloved young master, and now as an outcast, if he dared to speak out it would be a death sentence.

The only silver lining was the fact that along with the fact that his wood spiritual root was extremely more powerful than the other four spiritual roots, he even had the rare life spiritual root. The life spiritual root is usually called the; upgraded, advanced, or evolved wood spiritual root, and only occurs in people with very strong wood spiritual roots.

It didn't take long to figure out the only two ways he could have a life spiritual root. The first being, he was very lucky, and it formed naturally. The second reason was that when he created his Alchemic Pill Dantian his wood spiritual root had mutated, and he gained a life spiritual root as a result.

If it occurred naturally, then Collin was lucky and that would be the end of it, but if it wasn't, and it was due to the increase of wood energy introduced to his body when he created his Alchemic Pill Dantian, then it wasn't luck and could be done again with his fire spiritual root.

The next stage of the fire spiritual root was a lightning spiritual root. If, after Collin re-refined his Alchemic Pill Dantian and his fire spiritual root increased enough to mutate give him a lightning spiritual root, he would know the truth.

Lightning spiritual roots are the most common of the so-called advanced spiritual roots, while life and light are the rarest. Collin was hoping that he would get a lighting spiritual root, but he wasn't planning to cultivate it because it's only known usage was purely for combat. He was training to fight in order to protect himself but had no wish to be a frontline fighter.

The only bad thing for Collin about having a life spiritual root was that it was very rare, and he had no cultivation manuals for it. Other than the Alchemist Guild, who might have a method, he had no idea where to find anything that would help him to cultivate it.

Collin thought about his spiritual roots for a while longer till he was interrupted by the sound of birds chirping. As he was eating dinner, he began thinking about why he was proclaimed talentless, and his theory of stealing the title of territorial lord from his family. If that did happen, then the clan would lose the protection of the imperial family and it would open season on the Monten clan. And while Collin hoped that those going after his former clan would understand that he no longer part of the clan, he wasn't placing much hope on it.

If the Demars clan was trying to promote another noble family to a cultivator clan, then the only option left was the Styron family. The more Collin thought about it the more he wanted to know the truth, so he decided on the most logical and mature idea he could come up with, a night raid.

He would wait till late at night and sneak into the Styron family's compound and eliminate the two or three rogue cultivator guards before interrogating the family head. Collin knew he shouldn't be rash, but he felt a strong desire to know the truth.

Around 2 a.m. Collin exited the front gate of his villa and headed to the Styron family compound. Not a single sound could be heard as he walked the city streets. It didn't take long before he was standing in front of a ten-foot-tall wall near the back of the Styron family compound. With a quick jump he was standing on top of the wall before stepping off and landing inside the compound and beginning his night raid.

The first thing Collin did inside the compound was to find some shadows to hid in and begin to observe his new surroundings. It only took a few minutes before he spotted a cultivator, he was walking around the compound flaring his cultivation base to keep himself warm. To any other cultivators around, someone flaring his cultivation base like that was no different than him jumping around while waving his arms screaming at the top of lungs while shooting off fireworks.

Moving from shadow-to-shadow Collin began to follow the cultivator while taking note of the buildings that were still lit up. After twenty minutes of patrolling the compound, they had arrived at what to Collin looked like the home of the clan head. Next to the clan heads home was a smaller building with Qi fluctuations, there were two cultivators inside the building, and the feeling they gave meant they were cultivating.

Collin continued to follow the cultivator along his patrol route, till they had moved well outside the scan range of the two other cultivators. Pulling a small wooden tube out of his space ring, Collin aimed it at the unaware cultivator and activated the tube. A thin green needle flew through the air, striking the cultivator in the back of the neck. Almost immediately the cultivator fell to the ground unmoving. Walking up to the downed cultivator, Collin used his foot to roll the cultivator on his back.

The needle that he had been hit with was coated with several poisons, they were designed to paralyze its victims. While the cultivator's body was completely paralyzed, his mind was still functioning. He had just watched a faceless servant had taken his storage bag and was rummaging through it for his valuables. But soon that stopped being of any concern as the poison had reached his lungs and he began to suffocate.

After a few minutes of watching the cultivator suffocating, Collin tried to place the man in his space ring but failed since he was still alive. On the third try, the body disappeared into the space ring and would become a food for his new raptor.

Next, he would have to try his luck on the other two cultivators and hope that he can eliminate them without alerting anyone in the compound. The only thing concerning Collin was that the two cultivators were inside a building. If he opened the door to attack, it might alert them, and they might alert everyone in the compound.

As he walked back towards the other two cultivators his mind was coming up and disregarding plans to kill them. He already knew he was going to use poison, he was an alchemist, making pills that can heal and making poison that can kill was what made a true alchemist. The problem was that as a part of his alchemy practice, he had made dozens of poisons.

He made poisons that are meant to be mixed into food or water, poisons that are meant to be applied to weapons, poisons that are meant for crowds, and poisons for assassinations. Colin had two poisons for assassinations, one was a dull grey liquid, a drop of it could be controlled with Qi, a small drop of poison rolling on the ground would most likely go unnoticed till it was too late, but Collin would need to use his divine sense to both scan for the targets and control the drop of poison, most likely alerting them to his presence.

The second poison was white and waxy, when Qi was applied to it turned into a smokey vapor that could be guided. It had no odor, and it had no taste, but it wasn't lethal, it just dulled the senses. In a way it would help the two cultivators enter into a deeper meditation, before Collin killed them.