At the waterfall.
Early the next morning, Lanling got up full of energy. After washing and eating breakfast, he entered a new day of cultivation.
Yesterday he had already completed the most critical spirit out of body technique. Today’s goal was to use spiritual power to lock onto moving water droplets. If he could lock onto water droplets, then locking onto and aiming at other targets would be no problem at all.
He sat cross legged forty metres from the waterfall and stared directly at the water droplets on it. At first he could not see the water droplets clearly at all. However, after injecting dragon power into his spiritual power and looking straight out through his eyes, the waterfall forty metres away seemed to be pulled right in front of him instantly. Every single water droplet became clearly visible.
Then Lanling performed the spirit out of body technique and let the demon star’s dragon power pull his spiritual power out of his body to follow a particular water droplet and move along with it.
Immediately, a miracle happened.
Lanling’s spiritual power continuously locked onto that fast moving water droplet, something he had been completely unable to do before.
However, because of gravitational acceleration, the water droplet fell faster and faster. After only a few metres, Lanling’s spiritual power could no longer keep up and he immediately lost the lock on the target.
He tried again, and the result was the same.
He immediately withdrew his spiritual power and said to Ye Jingyu, “My spiritual power can now lock onto water droplets forty metres away, but only for a few metres. Later the water droplet falls too fast and I cannot keep up.”
Ye Jingyu said, “This is very normal. However, with your spiritual talent, you will soon be able to lock onto the entire falling trajectory of the water droplet. After all, it is only forty metres. The most difficult barrier has already been passed.”
The so called most difficult barrier was of course the spirit out of body technique, allowing the spirit to leave the body and chase and lock onto moving targets.
Lanling was greatly encouraged by Ye Jingyu’s words and immediately entered a new round of practice.
Sure enough, the locking time became longer with each attempt, and the distance he could lock the moving water droplet also grew longer, from five metres to eight metres, to thirteen metres, to fifteen metres.
Finally, when he managed to lock onto the water droplet for the entire fifteen metres of its fall, his spiritual power was completely exhausted. His target was fifty five metres, the full height of the waterfall.
He had no choice but to stop cultivating and restore his normal vision.
Then the scene before his eyes left him completely stunned, because there was a mermaid swimming in the water.
This mermaid was of course Ye Jingyu, completely naked and doing backstroke.
At this moment the sun was high in the sky and the weather was at its hottest. While Lanling was practising locking onto moving targets, he was completely focused with no distractions. At that time, even if someone was swimming or even if someone came to kill him, he would not have seen it.
So Ye Jingyu could no longer resist the temptation of the cool river water and jumped in to swim.
But her luck was not very good. Lanling’s spiritual power ran out at exactly that moment.
Lanling stared blankly at Ye Jingyu in the water and sighed in his heart that her figure was truly excellent, especially those two long legs, which were far too shocking.
In the next second, Lanling discovered that Ye Jingyu’s cold and lightning like gaze shot directly towards him.
In the following second she dove straight into the water bottom, while Lanling immediately closed his eyes and waited for Ye Jingyu to come out of the water and explode at him.
With his eyes closed, Lanling listened as Ye Jingyu climbed ashore and put on her clothes.
“This time it was unintentional, so I forgive you. But staring with wide eyes after discovering it is your fault.” Ye Jingyu said coldly. “If there is a next time, I will beat you.”
…
Just as Ye Jingyu had said, the hardest part of locking onto moving targets with spiritual power was the spirit out of body technique. Once that point was completed, the rest became simple.
On the second day, Lanling tracked and locked onto the water droplet for a full twenty five metres. On the third day it was thirty metres, and on the fourth day thirty nine metres.
On the fifth day he broke through fifty five metres in one go.
That meant from the moment the water droplet appeared until it disappeared, his spiritual power had locked onto it throughout the entire process.
Lanling jumped up with a cry of surprise and said, “I have completed it. I have succeeded.”
Ye Jingyu said in astonishment, “I already told you that once you broke through the spirit out of body technique, completing the lock on moving targets at forty metres would be relatively simple. But you only used five days. It has truly shocked my eyes. Rest well tonight. Tomorrow we will carry out new shooting trials against even stronger exotic beasts.”
Stronger exotic beasts also meant thicker and stronger dragon bloodlines in their veins, which meant he could devour more energy. The demon star inside Lanling immediately began to stir restlessly.
…
Early the next morning, Ye Jingyu and Lanling left the waterfall and headed to the place where the blood cloud leopard had appeared before.
This area was much more dangerous than Wild Bull Valley. There were far more ferocious exotic beasts, such as blood lions, blood cloud leopards, demonic lizards and so on, too many to count.
“Look ahead. There is another blood cloud leopard.” Ye Jingyu said.
Lanling focused his gaze and saw that there was indeed one in the grass, but this one was black with even more vivid red spots on its body.
“Black blood cloud leopards are more alert and faster.” Ye Jingyu said.
“What about the dragon bloodline in its body?” Lanling asked.
Ye Jingyu was stunned for a moment, then said, “Of course it is also thicker, which is why it is stronger.”
“That is good.” Lanling felt happy in his heart. He took a deep breath, nocked an arrow, and pulled the bow open fiercely.
Then he used the spiritual locking technique to lock fiercely onto the black blood cloud leopard more than forty metres away.
One second, two seconds, three seconds.
Spiritual lock complete. Because he did not need to specifically aim at the eyes this time, the initial aiming was actually easier.
Whoosh…
The string sounded and the arrow flew out like a meteor.
However, the arrow had only flown less than halfway when the blood cloud leopard heard the sound of the bowstring and immediately rushed out like lightning.
Lanling was truly startled. The speed of this black blood cloud leopard was too fast. By his visual estimate, its speed exceeded twenty metres per second.
In just a moment it had already run dozens of metres away. It was too terrifying.
Without doubt, Lanling’s first arrow missed, landing a full twenty metres away from the target.
But he did not give up. Although the blood cloud leopard’s speed of twenty metres per second was very fast, it was still not as fast as the acceleration of the water droplet in its later seconds.
Lanling used his spiritual power to lock onto it firmly.
Immediately, in his field of vision nothing else could be seen. Everything around him ceased to exist. There was only the fast moving light and shadow of the leopard.
The madly running leopard remained firmly locked by him. But unfortunately, the leopard soon ran forty or fifty metres away and left the range of Lanling’s spiritual lock.
Ye Jingyu did not say a word. She directly carried Lanling on her back and charged towards the blood cloud leopard. As expected of a high level warrior, although she was not agility specialised, Ye Jingyu’s instantaneous speed was actually no less than that of the blood cloud leopard.
On Ye Jingyu’s back, Lanling once again locked onto the blood cloud leopard. His spiritual power followed it like a shadow, closely tracking it.
He took a deep breath and fiercely nocked another arrow.
His brain quickly calculated the leopard’s next movement trajectory and worked out the lead.
Whoosh… He shot the second arrow fiercely.
The second arrow also missed, landing five metres away from the target.
Immediately afterwards, Lanling drew the third arrow at the fastest speed and shot it fiercely.
It was only two metres away from the target.
The fourth arrow shot out fiercely.
Whoosh…
The black gold plated arrowhead fiercely pierced into the blood cloud leopard’s belly and even shot straight through its body.
It was obvious that this blood cloud leopard’s talent was completely in agility, so its skin and flesh defence was not strong.
He had finally hit it. Lanling felt wild joy in his heart. He had actually managed to shoot the blood cloud leopard while it was running madly at twenty metres per second.
If this were on Earth, it would have been almost impossible. This spiritual locking technique was truly too heaven defying.
Lanling immediately got down from Ye Jingyu’s back. After roaring once, the blood cloud leopard continued running forward for two or three hundred metres with its injury before it fell heavily into the grass and breathed its last.
In fact, a single arrow might not have killed it outright. What was fatal was that after being injured it still ran wildly, which violently tore the wound in its belly, causing it to die directly.
He rushed to the blood cloud leopard at the first moment and pulled out the black gold plated arrow from its belly.
At the same time, the demon star inside his body began to spin rapidly and devour madly.
Previously with the flaming wild bull it had only devoured for less than half a minute, but with this blood cloud leopard it devoured for nearly a full minute.
Lanling felt the dragon bloodline of the blood cloud leopard turn into thousands upon thousands of strands of energy drilling into his body.
“How is the dragon bloodline power of this blood cloud leopard?” Lanling asked.
“It is twice that of the flaming wild bull. At most three of them will be enough to increase your strength by ten jin.” The demon star said.
Lanling immediately felt extremely excited.
Then they continued searching for new prey in this wilderness.
This wilderness was too vast, spanning hundreds of li, and the wild grass was extremely dense. Exotic beasts were not very easy to discover.
Lanling and Ye Jingyu searched for two or three hours without any gains.
Ye Jingyu began to feel uncomfortable all over again. She was the kind of person who would feel like dying if she did not bathe for a day. She immediately began searching for a nearby river by instinct.
After hearing the sound of flowing water, the two of them rushed over quickly.
While running, she began to undo her tight leather clothes and said, “Suo Lun, I do not need to warn you about anything, right?”
“I know. If I peek, may my eyes go blind.” Lanling said.
After reaching the riverbank, Lanling directly turned his back and sat down.
Ye Jingyu quickly stripped off her clothes and dove fiercely into the river, letting out an incomparably refreshed and comfortable sound from her mouth.
“I am hot too. I also want to bathe.” Lanling complained inwardly and forcibly endured the urge to turn around and peek.
At this moment, a sudden loud crash sounded from behind, as if something had burst out of the water surface.
“Lanling, run quickly…” Immediately afterwards came Ye Jingyu’s cry of alarm. Her voice had never sounded like this before.
Lanling turned around and almost jumped up immediately.
At this moment, a giant snake dozens of metres long had tightly wrapped around the completely naked Ye Jingyu. It opened its bloody maw and was about to swallow her.
This giant snake was forty or fifty metres long and one metre thick. It had horns on its head and was so red it seemed as if blood was about to drip out.
What kind of monster was this? So huge and so terrifying? It was at least countless times stronger than the exotic beasts they had hunted before.