The next morning, Qian Yu left the remote village as he headed towards his next destination. 

Two days later, Qian Yu arrived at one of the entrances to a large mountain range. 

“Hello, is this the entrance to Soba Summits?” Qian Yu asked a middle-aged man at a local village. The Soba Summits was an extremely large mountain range that started from the middle of the continent and stretched around the eastern border of the country. Essentially, it was a mountain range that protected the eastern side of the country where the capital was located.

“Yea, young lad, are you planning to go hunt spiritual beasts there?” the man asked. 

“Mhm, that’s my plan,” Qian Yu replied wondering if there was an issue.

“Aiyah, there has been a lot of chaos in the mountains near us lately. Some cultivators who have come in to find spiritual beasts haven’t come out and some of our village men that went inside to hunt regular animals didn’t come back either. You should be careful,” the good natured man replied as he sighed sorrowly.

“Thank you for the warning. I will be cautious,” Qian Yu nodded, yet he still proceeded into the mountain range. 

‘Hmm, I wonder what’s up. I don’t really have a choice to go though,’ Qian Yu thought about the man’s words as he was walking. If this was some other occasion, Qian Yu would probably have left and go hunt a different spiritual beast. However, he had chosen these mountain ranges because there were two spiritual beasts that he could hunt here!

It had taken 4 days for him to come here and going back to the Soba Capital would take another 4 days. If he changed his plans, he would have to go to two different locations which would take so much time that he wouldn’t be able to meet the appointment with Elder Zhang in time. As such, Qian Yu decided to enter the mountain ranges.

“The strongest spiritual beasts in the range around this area are at the peak of uncommon rank. However, they are deeper into the mountains. I should be fine as long as I don’t enter too deep,” Qian Yu muttered. 

Of course, there were probably stronger beasts than the uncommon ranked if he was to truly venture into the deeper portions of the mountain range. This however would take a week’s worth of traveling to enter that area. Meanwhile, the area Qian Yu was referring to was just a couple days’ worth of venturing.

After a couple hours of travelling through the mountains, Qian Yu saw the first dead body. Looking on the ground, Qian Yu analyzed the cause of death. Turning over the body with his spear, Qian Yu saw a large claw mark. As he looked at the large wound and felt the stiff muscles, he immediately knew the body had been dead for a couple of days.

As Qian Yu continued onwards, he occasionally saw more bodies of both humans and spiritual beasts. Poking around, he eventually managed to pick up a few common ranked beast cores that could be sold for a couple gold coins each. While it wouldn’t help in the grand scheme of things, it was a good pocket change that could pay for stuff like the inn and food expenses.

‘Thankfully, this mountain range has good visibility,’ Qian Yu sighed in relief. If the mountain range was something like the cold and snowy mountains filled with endless trees and forests like the one in the winter hunt, Qian Yu was sure he would have immediately left. With no one to rely on or help him, it would be a joke for him to stay here with his meager power.

Like that, night arrived and Qian Yu found a small cave to stay the night. ‘This isn’t good. No Wolfen Beast or a Fanged Salamander beast core yet,’ Qian Yu sighed as he failed to find the two beasts he was looking for. While he did see other spiritual beasts, they were pretty weak as he recognized they were common ranked spiritual beasts. Yet what was surprising however, was that he had not seen a single beast at the uncommon rank despite traveling the whole day.

“ROOAARRR!” 

“stomp… stomp…” 

A couple hours later, Qian Yu was sleeping when he was awoken by the sounds of battle as he left the cave.

Leaving the cave, Qian Yu went to look over the hill as he saw the culprit of the noises a couple thousands of feet away.

“What the heck!” Qian Yu stared in horror as he saw the monstrous hordes of spiritual beasts. More specifically, the spiritual beasts were fighting and killing each other.

Getting closer to the chaos, Qian Yu laid on the ground as he slowly approached further. As he did, he saw that it was pretty similar to a war between two opposing forces. In the middle of the large hordes of monsters, two large spiritual beasts could be seen.

‘Are those the leaders?’ Qian Yu thought as he saw a large bear and a gray lizard-like creature. 

‘Just how strong are these guys’ Qian Yu thought as he watched them fight. From his perspective, they were no weaker than the peak stages uncommon rank spiritual beast projections that Sun Hong had soloed in Liu Wang’s inheritance realm or the Demonic Wild Boar that he had participated in hunting with the three other rogue cultivators and they could even be at the rare grade. 

‘Is it due to territory?’ Qian Yu thought. If there was anything he learned from dealing with spiritual beasts, it was that they were extremely territorial. These two beasts fighting right now, were no doubt, leaders of their respective domains and areas. 

Yet, currently, they were fighting so either it meant that one beast invaded the other’s area or was there something else? A few seconds passed as light shined in his eyes, ‘Is it a treasure or some higher stage cultivation beast?’ 

One of the other common uses of beast cores were to feed to spiritual beasts to allow them to grow and mature faster. As such, the two beasts could be fighting for a beast core of a rare grade spiritual beast that they could use to advance further and become stronger.

Cautiously, Qian Yu started approaching the battle as he came within the radius of a couple hundred feet. Soon, he saw the battlefield better as dozens of common and uncommon ranked spiritual beasts dead on the ground. 

‘… that’s a lot of cores,’ Qian Yu gulped as he proceeded to look at where the beasts were fighting. However, he didn’t see anything that resembled what the spiritual beasts were fighting for. There was nothing in the area that seemed exceptionally special. 

Gritting his teeth, Qian Yu inched forward as he started to loot the corpses of the beasts. There were numerous beasts here and it was likely he could find the beast cores he was looking for without fighting. 

Elsewhere throughout the mountain ranges and forests, battles were happening everywhere. Yet it wasn’t just uncommon ranked spiritual beasts in the area fighting. In the deepest depths of the area, rare ranked spiritual beasts were fighting each other.

Uncommon ranked spiritual beasts were like lords over the common ranked beasts living near them. Likewise, rare grade spiritual beasts were the leaders of uncommon ranked spiritual beasts in their domains and the pattern repeated as such. 

In the deepest ends of the forests, a man with a long slithery tongue and slit eyes spoke as he looked towards the spiritual beasts surrounding him, “How can you guys not find a fucking injured beast. God fucking damn it, it’s been almost 2 whole damn weeks already. If that lion finds it before you guys, don’t blame me for being merciless. We also don’t have much time until the human experts notice this anomaly and come...”