Author's Note: Forgot to mention this last week. The name of the volume is "Fated Encounters". Some action in this chapter and we'll finally see his martial technique. While it seems simple right now, MC will find other ways to use it. Hope you guys enjoy the chapter (:

Departing from the mountain, Qian Yu knew that gathering information was the biggest issue he had currently. Without information, he had no ways of getting money which he needed. As such, he took out a map before he decided to head towards the nearest city that wasn’t Shipton City. 

Although it was unlikely that the person on the Hunted List was still in the city, there was a chance that he could still be in the surrounding villages so Qian Yu decided to go deeper inland to Allwake City which was the largest city in the western half of the Soba Empire. 

Along the way, he made sure to visit the villages marked on the map. These villages were the larger ones with probably thousands, maybe even tens of thousands of people in it and it would give him better information. 

A few hours passed as Qian Yu descended from the mountain and headed eastwards, away from Shipton City. The Elder’s words had weighed heavily in his mind and he wanted to get as far away as possible from the city. 

By evening, Qian Yu had reached a village. It was pretty small with only a couple hundreds of inhabitants. It reminded him of his own village as he took a look at the people. Young children were playing around, some getting into small brawls with each other. Older ones were seen doing heavy work in the fields, along with their parents. Others were walking around, transporting or carrying food and water.

“Hello, ah yes, let me help you carry that,” Qian Yu ran up to an old skinny woman. In her hands, she had a large basket with various fruits.

“Ah? Thank you, young man,” she said as she handed the basket over to the young man.

“Are there any bounties around here?” Qian Yu asked.

“Hmm bounties…” the old woman did her best to search through her memories.

“No, I haven’t heard anything about them lately,” she shook her head after a few seconds. 

“Okay…,” Qian Yu wasn’t too discouraged. It was only the first village after all. 

Time passed by and Qian Yu went around the village asking for information as he helped the farmers and other workers. Yet, nothing came up until two days later.

“Hello sirs, I’m a wandering cultivator and I’m looking to see if there are any bounties around here,” Qian Yu sat down at a small restaurant and asked twp men sitting at a table.

“Ahh, some of our hunters were killed and injured the other day by a madman,” One of them said. 

“I think he was called “wolfblade” and his bounty is like 20 gold coins. I visited another village the other day and I was told he was somewhere in the low qi gathering realm. If you kill him you can redeem it at any of the larger villages. Just be careful young lad,” the other man said.

“Thank you for the information. I’ll be off now,” Qian Yu quickly got up, excited that he had finally landed an opportunity. 

Instantly, Qian Yu was roaming through the woods. Even though he was always good at tracking, he had improved a lot during the winter hunt. Tracking and anti-tracking skills were pretty important as they needed to hunt spiritual beasts and look for the traces of other groups in the hunt. At the same time, they needed to maneuver more safely to avoid leaving obvious traces that the other groups could use to target them.

After half a day, he found some footprints and traces of battles. Cautiously following them, he found a small cave hidden behind some trees and bushes. 

Looking around, he started planning his attack There were currently only two things that could happen. Wolfblade could currently be inside the cave or he could be outside. Either way, Qian would launch an ambush if he went out of the cave or came back to it. The other option was that Wolfblade had given up on this hideout already and went somewhere else.

*Rustle rustle* A couple hours of staking out in the bushes passed as Qian Yu started hearing some footsteps. 

“God damn it, those women were so ugly and they had no money at all,” The voice was angry and loud, not trying to conceal his presence at all. Slowly, he was approaching Qian Yu who was hidden in the bushes.rrrrrrr

‘Now!’ Qian Yu got up as Wolfblade got close enough. 

*Fwoosh!* At that moment, the opportune time came. With a leap, Qian Yu jumped out from the bushes as he aimed the spear at Wolfblade’s heart.  

“You!” Wolfblade wasn’t an amateur though. He had already instantly moved when he heard the rustling of leaves and felt the changes in the qi and air fluctuations. Between fighters of the same level, it wasn’t easy to just casually kill an enemy with an ambush.

Dodging the vital attack, the spear had managed to lightly gaze Wolfblade’s arm. 

“Bastard!” Wolfblade shouted as he took out his sword. He was a scrawny old man, somewhere in his 50s or 60s Qian Yu quickly observed. 

*Clang* Instantly, the two started fighting. From his nickname, Qian Yu could infer that his cultivation technique was probably related to a wolf somehow but he didn’t know what it really entailed. As such, he decided to quickly kill Wolfblade when he wasn’t expecting it so he couldn’t counter it and launch his own attack. 

*Clink...* Battle noises rang out as the two continued to trade blow for blow, suffering some minor wounds.  

“YAHH!” With a yell Qian Yu ran forward as he put all his strength into what seemed to be an all-out attack. With a swing of the spear, Qian Yu used the spear in a slashing manner forcing Wolfblade to use both his hands to block it with his sword. 

Yet when the spear made contact with the sword, Wolfblade was shocked, not feeling much strength and energy behind the attack. 

‘Damn it, I got baited,’ he cursed to himself as he saw Qian Yu’s feet shooting at him. However, he didn’t seem too afraid from the simple kick.  

However, Qian Yu thought differently. ‘Checkmate!’ Qian Yu smiled as his foot landed onto him.

*Boom!* The moment his leg came in contact with Wolfblade’s body, an explosion sounded out as the upper torso of a body could be seen flying out from the smoke. 

‘Wow it was even stronger than I thought. Truly worthy of being a forbidden legendary grade technique!’ Qian Yu thought to himself. Compared to the 1st layer of the other techniques, cultivators often needed a small amount of time to gather the qi in their body to perform a martial technique. As such, this always let your enemies know about what you were trying to do and could have time to react and counter it. 

For example, the spears of ice needed time for the cultivator to gather qi and turn the qi into ice attributed qi before manifesting it into spears of ice. As for Zhao Xieren’s Wandering Blade, it would require her to channel qi into her feet to enhance her speed as she performed the quick successive flurry of attacks. Of course, it wasn’t as simple as this but it was a good general observation.

However, Lightning Spasm was different. Instead of gathering qi and performing the martial skill, the martial skill only needed to use a little bit of his own qi to chaotically disrupt the qi at the area Qian Yu desired. Of course, the desired area was anywhere on his body such as his fist or feet. After the disruption, Qian Yu could “electrify” the qi in the area causing it to be unstable and explode. 

As such, when Qian Yu kicked out his foot, he had activated the skill and the qi in his soles had turned chaotic. The moment his kick landed on Wolfblade’s stomach, Qian Yu had converted the area qi on Wolfblade’s stomach to chaotic qi before instantly energizing the chaotic qi and causing an explosion. Therefore, it was extremely hard to defend against as it didn’t give the opponent an opportunity to react to it! 

While it was hard to defend against currently, it was easy to prevent. As long as this skill was exposed, the enemy just needed to not make physical contact with Qian Yu. This however, was fine with Qian Yu since nobody knew about it. At this level, nobody would expect the spear Qian Yu swung around would be the bait while his fist or feet would be the real dangers. 

Walking towards the 20 gold coins on the ground, Qian Yu couldn’t help but be a little prideful.