Xu Xiong took a deep breath and claimed the rewards.
Xu Xiong has gotten D- Rewards before, and learned that anything higher than E rating will have the system describe its reasonings for the ranking. It probably does this so in the future he has a clear understanding of the ranks.
Though, what he's really excited about was increasing his senses by 30%!
The Black Water Sect doesn't have a cultivation technique to improve one's senses, so Xu Xiong has been sharpening them via daily interactions, which allowed him to avoid yesterday's calamity.
Senses were important not just for travelling and combat, but sensing the pure Qi in the air when not in a cave with pure Qi.
Considering Xu Xiong is out of the sect for most of the month, and using the system to improve his cultivation progress, sensing more pure Qi out of the hot evil Qi would increase his cultivation speed!
If he had 30% better senses yesterday, he wouldn't have just gained 1.5 cycles of purity.
As for cultivation insights?
His swordsmanship is already strong.
Since he goes out and battles Dead Birds every week, it really isn't difficult to increase his swordsmanship with the help of the system.
The only benefit really is the little increase in understanding how to efficiently purify his body, though it really isn't much.
It's like adding a couple of grains of sand to a beach. It's there, but you won't notice it.
This just shows how strong Xu Xiong foundation is. Even the inner sect disciples don't have such a strong theoretical foundation as Xu Xiong.
It's also one of the main reasons why he hasn't broken through to the scarce realm.
He has learnt over the past couple of months that the purer the body, the stronger your Qi is!
With such little Qi in this world, quality is better than quantity now, unlike the ancient days where people were full of Qi and could even fly in the peak of the first realm!
Now people have to be level 21 to fly, which is the third major realm.
Such difference is hard not to be heartbroken, but in the earlier realms, it's said that the current cultivation path is stronger than the ancients, but it's much slower and doesn't increase life span by thousands of years like before.
For example, currently Xu Xiong can roughly live past one hundred years, but if it was the ancient path, they'd roughly be 200 years old.
A direct double in life span!
And this gap only gets bigger and bigger as the realms get higher.
Though, Xu Xiong's goal was to never cultivate immortality, but to get stronger and kill every Fallen Bird on the planet!
Immortality is merely a side goal.
After a couple of minutes of claiming his rewards and digesting them, he looked into the Sunless forest.
"Roughly 90 degrees Celsius." Xu Xiong muttered.
He could gauge the temperature of the forest a lot better now thanks to his increased senses. Even the thick and dense fog was a lot easier to see through. It was almost like entering the forest yesterday before the rain.
If it didn't rain, he'd probably have no trouble seeing through ten meters in the fog.
"Hmm, this temperature is fine. I could make it to the village in roughly three hours now." Xu Xiong said to himself.
Due to the rain, Sunless forest will be a lot more dangerous to travel through.
There might be some puddles of literal molten lava scattered around the forest, as that's how hot it gets in the ground due to the rain.
Without much further hesitation, Xu Xiong got everything ready and hopped on the bike and made his way to Ashen Village.
Xu Xiong really has to thank the man who invented this bike that can stand such rough temperatures and not have the wheels catch on fire.
"I'm already north to the village, I just need to keep heading west." Xu Xiong said, taking a look around his surroundings to judge his location.
Knowing where he was, he pedaled a little faster than before.
After half an hour, Xu Xiong suddenly stopped when he looked down on the dark charred ground.
'Footprints? Could a beast been resurrected so quickly?' Xu Xiong's eyes narrowed.
'No, under normal circumstances, it would take a beast at least a day to be reborn. That's assuming that it's their first Scar of Rebirth. Though, under their first rebirth, their footprints would erratic due to the hot evil Qi driving them into madness. These only go in one clear direction, so it must be a Fallen Bird or something extremely close.' Xu Xiong pondered.
Dying once doesn't immediately make you a Fallen Bird, but you will be full of hot evil Qi, and once your body is full of hot evil Qi, you will turn into a Fallen Bird.
When dying, there is a process called Scar of Rebirth. On humans, the scar can be seen as a reddish purple phoenix feather on their forehead.
This reddish purple phoenix feather will automatically absorb the hot evil Qi in the air into your body, so having more feathers equals more hot evil Qi being absorbed.
Typically a genius can still cultivate normally under one Scar of Rebirth, but they go from a genius to an average cultivator, and probably can't increase their realm anymore, basically blocking their future cultivation path.
The only way for them to improve is to become a Fallen Bird, but in the early stages, you lose all form of consciousness, and when you reawaken, you'll be an entirely different person.
Though, there is one advantage Fallen Birds get, and that's infinite resurrections, and these resurrections only take a couple of hours for the weakest Fallen Birds.
The only way to fully kill them is to burn their souls, which luckily enough, gold can burn away Fallen Birds souls!
The purer the gold, the stronger the effect.
Xu Xiong always carries an iron sword and a gold sword on him just for this reason.
Gold swords are easy to break, so he fights them with an iron sword first and weakens them before switching to the gold sword.
'The tracks seemed to be heading to Ashen Village, seems like I need to speed up.' Xu Xiong thought, and hopped back on his bike and started to pedal as fast as he could.