The hard work paid off, after a week of cultivation Krune is already able to use five pseudo energy meridians, which also helped him achieving the 3rd stage of the Qi Condensation, in part, it was due to the fact that he had been in the 2nd stage for a long time already so he was already more or less close to this small breakthrough, but then again, without the Myriad Energies technique he would still take another month to get there.
But instead of feeling happy Krune is now facing a huge problem, there is not enough spirit energy! As a wisp, he obviously need more energy than the other races not to mention that part of the energy absorbed is used for his living, wisps can be said to eat energy for food which will inevitably take a tool on his own cultivation, that's one more advantage of the blood and flesh races, all the energy absorbed can be used for cultivation alone while wisp have to spare some of it to keep living.
It's not like Krune doesn't know where get it, but that implies in going further into the Katiu forest, wisp hunters are not the only ones Krune need to pay attention to, demon beasts also know that wisps can help them get stronger, if there is an advantage then that would be the fact that due to the beasts low cultivation realm they still have a rather low intelligence.
But the further you get into the forest the higher their cultivation and so the higher their intelligence, but their higher cultivation is also due to the higher spiritual energy concentration, quite a few more wisp are born there instead of the outer sides for the same reason, of course, a lot of them are eaten before they can leave that dangerous place.
Another problem is that wisps are quite a catchy, so hiding is an issue for them too.
Krune started to ponder about this issue, if he stayed here it still shouldn't be too hard to get to the 4th stage of Qi Condensation, with five pseudo energy meridians his cultivation speed has increased multiple times and he have another four meridians to create, in at most a month he should get to the next stage, but then again as a wisp his time is limited, the earlier he gets to a higher font of spiritual energy the more time he can save.
After think a little more Krune made up his mind, if he wants to get strong then he can't keep avoiding this kind of issues, otherwise his life span which is already small to start with will end and he won't be able to even regret his decision, but before that he has to think of a way to get rid of enemies and the best way is to learn spiritual arts.
Krune of course doesn't have any art techniques, if he wants to use his energy for attack purposes he will have to use the simplest methods at moment, but if there is something good about his three years of fleeing from wisp hunters, that is the fact that he has seen them using all types of arts, and one of them just happen to be wind blades, before he didn't have enough spirit energy to spare when he was at the 2nd stage but now that he had a breakthrough his energy is more abundant, it should be enough to cast a few of them.
For the next five days, other than creating new meridians, every time he was back to his peak of energy he would practice throwing winds blades, at first it was very clumsy, it could barely reach ten meters and didn't leave behind any marks on the targets, he had never tried it before so to manipulate the energy of his body to gather the wind, compress it several times and release it in a form of a blade took quite a tool on him, but if there is one thing that will never betray you that thing is definitely hard work, Krune wind blades now could already reach a distance of fifty meters and if shoot at ten meters of distance or less he was even able to cut a small tree with two or three blades.
During the time he was recovering his energy for wind blade practice he didn't simply wait, he took that time to create another two pseudo energy meridians and now he is just two short from the nine pseudo energy meridians possible to achieve with the Myriad Energies technique, Krune didn't feel anything strange about it, he thinks that since he himself is an energy being it goes without saying that he should be able to do this much, but if anyone were to know that he was able to create a total of seven energy meridians in just thirteen days their eyes would pop out from their heads.
One must know that for any other race they would take an entire month to create two or at most three meridians, the impressive thing here is the fact that even if it was another wisp they would at most create five or six in the same month period, Krune has no idea how shocking of a feat he has done, be it luck, talent or his huge experience in life and death situations, the fact is that no one has ever achieved this much proficiency in the Myriad Energies technique before.
Feeling that it was about the time for him to go Krune left the waterfall behind and started his journey into the inner parts of the Katiu forest taking care to not alarm any wisp hunter that might be around, once he gets into the inner parts he won't need to be afraid of them anymore, the inner parts have Foundation Establishment beasts and the big majority of hunters are usually around the 5th to the 9th stage of the Qi Condensation, rarely there is a Foundation Establishment hunter around and even if there is they would not risk a battle with the beast of the inner parts.
Even though Krune made a bee line to the inner parts of the forest, in the last three days he still got pursued by two hunter groups, fortunately there is very few hunter groups with a member capable of putting tracking markers, those two groups obviously didn't have anyone of this type and with his rich experience it was quite easy for him to leave them behind, Krune now could already feel the concentration of spiritual energy growing the further he went and from here onward it will be very hard to find any hunting group, in exchange he could few the auras of beast more often.
One of the good things about being a wisp is that as an energy being he could feel other energies that are not part of the environment around him even without developing his spiritual sense yet, which helped him to pass far away from those beast, another thing is that wisps that are not in their human forms don't have a smell to start with so the beast can track him.
But that is only for now, the higher the enemies cultivation the harder it is to feel their energy, this is basically the disparity of cultivation levels working its wonders, so Krune had to be even more cautious the further he went.
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Another five days later the Krune finally arrived at the division between the outer and inner parts of the forest, his ability to feel the beast energies is almost gone already, from here he will definitely not find any beast under the 5th stage of Qi Condensation and those are just the weak ones.
First he needs to find a place to hide, the spiritual energy around him at moment is already enough to speed up his cultivation by at least four times, he is planning to first create the two last meridians and reach the 5th stage himself before set off to look for a spirit vein, those veins are usually occupied by 7th stage QI condensation beasts or higher but even though their intelligence is better than those of lower grades they are still a far cry from an adult wisp mind, Krune is not underestimating them but now he is quite confident that as long as he plan well he will be able to get a spirit vein for himself.
There is one thing that Krune must do doesn't matter what before leaving the Katiu forest, and that is to reach the Foundation Establishment so that he can turn into his human form, if a wisp like him dares to step out in his wisp form it will be a wonder if he can get near to the closest city without being caught. But things are different when you achieve your human form, unless the other side has a cultivation much higher than oneself they will not be able to tell that Krune is a wisp, the most they will be able to see is that Krune isn't really a human but probably a demon beast in it's human form, and a demon beast with a human form is bound to be at a high level of cultivation so no one will try to find trouble with it.
In fact demon beasts in human form walking in the streets ins't anything uncommon, as long as they don't cause any ruckus in the city the guards won't do anything to them, not to mention those beast usually come with a lot of spirit stones from their lairs and those spirit stone are basically the universes currency, different from gold, silver or cooper, spirit stones are accepted everywhere.
If the city guards start to capture or kill those demon beasts no more demon beasts will come out of their lairs and the spirit stone available on the markets will definitely fall, no lord of any city wish to see that happen.
Krune advanced very carefully, trying to keep aware of the surroundings, at first everything was going okay, he was trying to find a river, if anything went wrong he could still try to dive into it again to escape, there wasn't much trees around him at moment so he had to take extra care to not be seen, sure thing by feeling the beasts energy he avoided quite a few battles, but he never thought that danger would be coming from above.
"Crowww!"
Krune froze for a moment, when he looked above he could see a dark feathered bird diving straight at him, he immediately recognized it, the four winged demon crow, a demon beast with a cultivation that varies between 5th and 6th stage of Qi Condensation.