Li Ling acted on his plans immediately, because time waited for no man. He went to clean his robes and switched them to something a martial artist of the mortal world would wear, one of the disguises he had kept when he was traveling Firmament Heaven before settling down here.
Glancing at it, Li Ling felt no more inner turmoil, only disdain. He felt disdain for his former self and his way of thinking, even if it had only been just minutes ago. However, the psychology of a cultivator was far more volatile and intense than a mortal, which was due to its linkage to their cultivation state.
As such, he put away the disguise and realized that it was unnecessary because what he was about to do was not a crime. Killing in the marketplace was illegal but killing in the wild was natural in the cultivation world.
As for killing livestock and a few mortals, no one would hold him accountable unless it was a place guarded by a force of cultivators or unless he slaughtered a whole city wantonly. Since Li Ling was only testing and not harvesting, it wouldn't raise any alarms.
As such, he calmly set out, seeing that the flow of traffic in Ivy Lane was largely back to normal and people were going out and about on their business. Many glanced at him strangely, wondering where this slightly handsome young man had appeared from, but made no moves to find out, listing him as one of the hidden hermits of their district who had been upset by the earlier event.
Li Ling knew they wouldn't make moves because they all possessed the same mentality he previously did, but were not nearly as psychotic or obsessed with it. He had no value to them, being at level 1 and likely not worth the fight or trouble it would take when there were juicier options.
As such, he left number 9 marketplace for the first time in almost 6 years, looking at the mountain path before him with a deep glance. The plants as well as the trees were much the same as he remembered and it felt as if he had only been in the marketplace for a few days, not a few years.
Once out, he traveled rapidly to the foot of the mountain on which number 9 marketplace resided, where there was a transit station which sold and rented horses as well as various mounts. Li Ling was not interested in using any flying Demon Beasts because those were usually utilized by those in mid-level Qi Refining or higher.
He simply rented a powerful charger, one that had been fed spiritual food from birth by the tamers here but never actually evolved into a demon or spirit beast. It was just a 'super' animal, far stronger and more active than normal animals of its kind but far below even the weakest demon beast.
It cost him 10 spirit shards to rent it for a day, which was quite expensive, but Li Ling was not going to bargain with the seller who had Qi Refinement level 2 cultivation, because that would be courting unnecessary trouble.
It was this kind of slight that he had endured throughout his years in the cultivation world, but unlike before where he gritted his teeth and lowered his head, now he just seemed casual and indifferent about it, but he would not ignore nor forget it.
Not anymore.
He whipped the reins and got the horse into full gallop, heading towards one of the more obscure villages he had passed through on his way here which was around 200 kilometers away from the market to the northwest.
At the speed at which the charger could gallop, it would take about five hours to get there, so while he moved, Li Ling began to lay out a general plan for his future.
As this event had occurred during noon, it was the early bits of dusk that Li Ling arrived at his target location. However, he came to a stop in a forest near the village and circled round to the back, where a large farmstead was established and controlled by one of the richer villagers who provided grain to a nearby mortal city.
Li Ling dismounted and tied the horse to a tree stump before moving rapidly towards the animal pens. He did not want to waste time here, so immediately upon infiltrating the property, he took out a short spear that he had been given when exiled from his clan and stabbed into the neck of the muscular guard dog that was beginning to stir at his intrusion.
At the end of the day, it was just a normal guard dog with no spiritual energy so it couldn't react to a cultivator's speed, even at Qi Refinement level 1.
For comparison, the martial artists of the mortal world who were said to be able to shatter boulders and split creeks were only able to match Qi Refinement cultivators at their highest realm. In other words, the Grandmaster of Martial Arts, acclaimed in mortal cities and able to open martial halls to teach disciples, was only now qualified to wrestle with a youngster in Qi Refinement.
Just infusing his body with the thin and sparse refined spiritual qi he had was enough to elevate his physical state beyond the point of some low-level superheroes from his past life on earth.
After making sure the guard dog was dead, Li Ling removed his spear and flicked the blood away while checking the prompt that came up.
｢System Prompt: You have gained 0.001 Slaughter Points.｣
Well, there was good news, even livestock could yield Slaughter Points. The bad news was that they were so poorly valued that it would take killing a thousand of them to gain one Slaughter Point.
That was just as well, since this farm was quite well stocked in that regard. Even if not, the workers here would surely be able to provide higher value to be able to meet his goal.
Li Ling moved towards the nearby chicken pens with a cold look on his face.