Living Longer

Although Bell was at a loss for words as to how he had killed the Blade Paw Tiger in one hit, Sixth Void, who had deactivated the shrouding technique he was using after making sure the beast was dead, thought otherwise. With a light whistle, he could not help but say, "As expected from a mosquito that's at the 4th Stage of Qi Sensing. With that much force behind the attack condensed into a small point, it's no surprise that you would kill that beast so easily."

"Anyways, do you want to leave the beast here for others to fight over or do you want to siphon its blood before moving on?" he asked soon after, knowing that even though Bell had broken through his curse, he could still become stronger. In response to those words, Bell decided to reply by his action, landing on top of the tiger's head before identifying the amount of Impure Blood Energy he could obtain through the system.

After finding out that he would only obtain around 600 points of Impure Blood Energy, Bell could not help but feel like it was too little, prompting him to wonder if the amount of Impure Blood Energy a being had was related to their cultivation. With that, he placed the question at the back of his head, deciding to check it for himself by killing other beasts. Just as he was about to poke his proboscis into the tiger's skin and deprive it of the blood that was slowly trickling out of its open wound, he could not help but recall a certain skill he had obtained after undergoing his third bloodline awakening.

'If I remember correctly, didn't I obtain a skill that allowed me to siphon vitality from other beings?' he thought to himself, only to command the system to show him the list of skills he had not too long after.

Ding!

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Bloodline Awakening Skills:

[Stealth Lv. 1], [Mass Siphon Lv. 1], [Strengthened Qi Root Lv. 2], [Vitality Siphoning Lv. 1]

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Seeing the specific skill at the very end of the list, he then commanded the system to show him its description, to which the system complied not long after.

Ding!

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[Vitality Siphoning Lv. 1]

A skill obtained from evolving to Void Erudite Mosquito. This skill allows the owner to siphon the vitality from other living beings, turning it into the owner's own lifespan. The amount of vitality the owner can absorb is theoretically unlimited, but the amount that the owner could make use of is limited by the owner's maximum lifespan.

Conversion rate: 0.25%

Upgrade cost: 1,000 Impure Blood Energy

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Even though he didn't know if a conversion rate of 0.25% was a lot or not, he still tried to activate the skill onto the tiger he had just killed, wondering if he could siphon its vitality through his proboscis. However, not long after, the monotonous voice of the system resounded in his mind, telling him, "You cannot use the skill on beings that are already dead."

"Well, I guess that's a given," Bell muttered, wondering where he could test the skill on as he deprived the dead tiger of the blood it once had. Of course, as the tiger did not have a Constitution skill formed in his system yet, it slightly increased his Constitution, increasing it by 0.03 points once the skill had reached its maximum level. Sure, it may not seem like much, but with Bell having access to Constitution skill mastery, it did not make much of a difference.

With the tiger now turning statue-like after being deprived of its blood, Sixth Void was about to ask Bell if he wanted to head to another spot, only for him to notice that Bell was moving towards the surrounding foliage, making him wonder if he had spotted a beast that would allow him to assess Bell's mastery over his strength. But of course, in reality, Bell just wanted to test [Vitality Siphoning], recalling that it worked on other living beings.

As such, he eventually chose a decently sized bush, poking his proboscis into the slightly thin trunk where all of the leaves extended out of. Since wood was slightly hard, he reinforced his proboscis with a bit of qi before activating [Vitality Siphoning], instantly becoming surprised as he felt another type of viscous fluid entering his proboscis, though the sensation was different.

Unlike when he absorbed blood, which gave him a feeling that he was having the most delicious meal in his life, this viscous fluid instead rejuvenated him, giving him the feeling that he could go on without a meal for days if he was a human. But of course, just like how it was for blood, the sensation brought about by the viscous fluid eventually stopped as he soon noticed that the bush had wilted from his action.

Ding!

[You have increased your lifespan by 1 day thanks to Vitality Siphoning.]

As he retracted his proboscis from the now dead bush, Bell could not help but somewhat excited by the fact that he could extend his lifespan, even though he had already gotten a memo from the third bloodline awakening he had undergone. Of course, he thought that a day was quite little, making him wonder how many bushes he would have to use the skill on to reach the maximum lifespan he could currently reach, which was 100 years.

Experimenting if it had something to do with the conversation rate of the skill or the target of the skill itself, Bell then poked his proboscis onto the trunk of a slightly large tree, activating [Vitality Siphoning] without hesitation as the tree visibly wilted with every passing second.

Watching this from afar, Sixth Void could not help but scratch his head, finding it confusing that Bell was poking his proboscis into the trunk of a tree. In his mind, he knew that mosquitoes would usually suck out the blood of living beings or the juices of a fruit. Never once did he expect to find out that a mosquito could actually siphon whatever was inside a tree as well.

In any case, after a minute or so, the tree Bell was using the skill had eventually turned into a husk of its old self, a stark contrast to how the beasts Bell siphoned blood from would look. Nevertheless, he ignored that, as he inwardly let out a sigh of relief, muttering to himself, 'So, I just need to find the right target to siphon vitality from.'

Ding!

[You have increased your lifespan by 7 days thanks to Vitality Siphoning.]

After getting a general idea of how [Vitality Siphoning] worked, Bell then urged Sixth Void to find a beast that had no cultivation, which the latter naturally had questions but did not decide to ask. Of course, he asked how Bell was able to siphon something from the trees while finding the second beast, to which Bell naturally replied, "I guess it's a part of my bloodline."

Being given a vague answer once again, Sixth Void decided to forget that he asked the question in the first place, finding Bell a lone wolf searching for prey around five minutes later. Making sure that the wolf emanated no qi whatsoever, Sixth Void went ahead and activated his shrouding technique while Bell moved closer to the wolf before plunging his proboscis right in the back of the wolf's neck.

Then, just like what he did to the bush and the tree, he activated [Vitality Siphoning], which surprisingly made the wolf howl in pain. While it was howling, it was visibly aging as time passed, making Bell realize that he couldn't really use the skill out in the open unless he wanted to be captured. Eventually, with such a gruesome death, the monotonous voice of the system resounded throughout his mind, telling him that he had gained a month's worth of lifespan from the poor wolf.

Of course, after siphoning the wolf dry of its vitality, he tried to check if he could also siphon Impure Blood Energy from it, to which it could not be done. With that, he found out that he could only choose between one of the two when siphoning something from living beings: vitality or Impure Blood Energy.

Experimenting a bit more, he asked Sixth Void to find wolves of the same species, but with progressively higher cultivations. After siphoning 2 wolves each from the 1st Stage to the 3rd Stage of Qi Sensing, which made it a total of 6 wolves, he eventually noticed that there was a pattern as to how much lifespan he could gain. When he siphoned a wolf with cultivation at the 1st Stage of Qi Sensing, he gained 2 months of lifespan instead of 1. As for wolves at the 2nd Stage, it was 3 months, and for wolves at the 3rd Stage, it was 4 months.

With that, he had made up his mind to only siphon vitality from beasts that had decently high cultivation, allowing him to increase his lifespan even faster. Then again, from his experimentation alone, he had increased his lifespan from 1 year, which was the lifespan given to him after he underwent his third bloodline awakening, to over 2 and a half years, basically giving him twice the amount of time to explore the world.

Seeing how it was quite easy for him to increase his lifespan, it was natural that he had gone on another killing spree. But unlike before, where he only siphoned beings to gain their Impure Blood Energy, as well as their Constitution skills, he would now alternate between siphoning beings for their Impure Blood Energy and their lifespan, killing two birds with one stone.

And with that, Bell went ahead and killed a great number of beasts from the 1st Stage to the 3rd Stage of Qi Sensing, around 10 beasts per stage, making sure that the ones he killed were ones wherein he had obtained their Constitution skills already. While doing so, he was able to answer his own question from before, wondering if the cultivation of a beast correlated as to how much Impure Blood Energy he would siphon from them. It turns out that the amount of Impure Blood Energy he could absorb would increase by 100 points per stage of Qi Sensing they had reached, while stages at Body Forging would increase it by 200 points. In other words, he could absorb an extra 2,700 points of Impure Blood Energy from a beast at the peak of Qi Sensing and Body Forging, as well as the base amount of Impure Blood Energy it had before it started cultivating.

Of course, since he could only store so much Impure Blood Energy, he allocated most of it towards upgrading [Lesser Blood Dimension — First Expansion], maxing out and evolving it to the next grade, which was aptly named [Lesser Blood Dimension — Second Expansion]. He only stopped allocating Impure Blood Energy to it once it had reached Level 5, more or less quadrupling the amount of Impure Blood Energy he could hold at one time from 2,000 points to over 7,000 points.

With him still having about around 2,000 points left to use, he decided to use 1,000 of it to upgrade [Vitality Siphoning], increasing the conversion rate by another 0.25%. Surprisingly, that one upgrade alone was enough to double the lifespan he obtained from living beings, speeding up the process of him getting closer and closer to his maximum lifespan.

After he decided that he was done with testing out his newfound strength, he had killed a total of 30 beasts for their Impure Blood Energy. On the other hand, he had siphoned a total of 10 beasts at the 4th Stage of Qi Sensing before he upgraded [Vitality Siphoning], and another 5 more after he upgraded [Vitality Siphoning].

With that, he was able to extend his lifespan even more. From the 2 and a half years he had before he went on a killing spree, his lifespan would now end at just a bit above 10 years. Satisfied with his results, he then told Sixth Void that they were going to stop hunting for now as he wanted to continue cultivating. After all, he wanted to turn into a human as fast as possible.

In response, Sixth Void just shrugged his shoulders as he found them a clearing that was near the last corpse they killed. After that, the two of them started to absorb energy from the surroundings once more.