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Chapter 23: Full Haul

As they were silently retreating, they encountered the horde of hunters that was heading toward the scene from the Blacksteel settlement. The hunters were rushing to the Moonlit Pond overnight, hoping to get the best rewards before anyone else got there, but the six clans had monopolized everything!

Naturally, there would be some hostility between the six clans and the horde of hunters—but that was trivial to deal with; what they couldn\'t risk was angering the wyrm slumbering at the bottom of the pond. As a result, the six clans had no choice but to resort to a peaceful settlement of affairs, as far away from the pond as possible.

Of course, none of this had anything to do with Zhang Lie anymore. He had already returned safely to the settlement, so why would he care about what the other hunters were up to?

He rented a room in the Blackgold Inn of the Blacksteel settlement.

Whereas the Blacksteel Inn was governed by the artificial intelligence itself and was the safest inn in the settlement, the Blackgold Inn was privately owned. Because of Wang Xiaohua\'s occupancy in the Blacksteel Inn, there were far too many hunters lurking about its vicinity, and Zhang Lie naturally wouldn\'t choose to live there.

The Blackgold Inn was constructed jointly by the three corporations, and its interior was lavishly decorated. It was widely regarded as the best inn in the settlement. Of course, such a lavish hotel would charge an exorbitant fee, but this was nothing to Zhang Lie now.

His thirty-thousand point bet on himself had earned him a shocking 3.6 million points, and he was now among the richest hunters of the settlement. He certainly had the wherewithal to let loose.

After having a long, relaxing bath, he began to look over his spoils. What he had earned over the last five days was worth hundreds of times what he had obtained over the past three months. Even excluding the profits from the bet, he had made a killing.

Qin Xiaotian and his team had provided Zhang Lie with over thirty soulshards. Zhang Lie wasn\'t interested in most of them, and had listed them up for trade. Then, he had harvested quite a few rare herbs from the venombane glade, and he had even stolen the kill on the superior-grade venombane scorpion present there.

There were over a hundred sprigs of herbs. The most important one was a main ingredient for Potion #2, and a few others could be used to brew potions that were direct counters to certain genetic lifeforms. He had no choice but to bring forward his plans for brewing Potion #2, because that particular ingredient was extremely difficult to store.

After sorting through the gathered herbs, Zhang Lie finally retrieved the superior-grade scorpion carcass. It really wasn\'t very large, and could fit entirely on Zhang Lie\'s palm. However, its crystalline exoskeleton was quite unique.

Of course, the reason he brought it out was in order to prepare it for consumption, so he could finally get more superior gene fragments. Luckily, his luxurious suite came with a well-furnished kitchen.

Scorpion-type lifeforms weren\'t too uncommon in the dimensional world, and most people would consume it deep-fried. Following this trend, Zhang Lie began to prepare a meal of sumptuous deep-fried scorpion.

However, the venombane scorpion was so poisonous that he would have to start by removing its poison sac, then counteract the remnants of the poison with certain herbal ingredients. Otherwise, Zhang Lie might well become the first hunter to die of poisoning himself while trying to extract gene fragments from a superior-grade lifeform.

Of course, having been a fourth-realm hunter in the past, all of this was easily handled with Zhang Lie\'s experience. With surprising deftness, he extracted the poison sac from the scorpion, marinated it with a specialized herbal concoction, and began deep-frying it.

As the oil sizzled, Zhang Lie probed the superior-grade soulshard in his soulspace to discover its effects. The soulshard was a deep, mysterious purple, and he could see the outline of a sword deep within it. As expected, it was a weapon-type soulshard!

His Galewind wasn\'t too bad against mutated-grade lifeforms, but it would be ineffective against superior-grade lifeforms. This sword would greatly enhance his ability to damage superior-grade lifeforms, and would remove one of his shortcomings.

Very quickly, the fragrant deep-fried scorpion was ready to be consumed. Deep-fried scorpion tasted far better than he had expected: much like lobster or crab meat, with a unique texture of its own.

As he digested the meat, the will of the world announced:

[For consuming the flesh of a superior-grade venombane scorpion, you received one superior gene fragment. Current total: 11]

[For consuming the flesh of a superior-grade venombane scorpion, you received one superior gene fragment. Current total: 12]

[...one superior gene fragment. Current total: 18]

As Zhang Lie consumed the last scorpion leg, he found himself with eight additional superior gene fragments.

The only thing left on the table was a dismembered scorpion exoskeleton. Even so, Zhang Lie wasn\'t finished. After preparing a few more herbs, he made a soup with the scorpion\'s carapace as its main ingredient.

After drinking it all, Zhang Lie obtained one additional gene fragment, for nineteen in all.

An individual lifeform would provide at most ten gene fragments when consumed. However, it was rare that a superior-grade lifeform could be consumed in its entirety. In most circumstances, it was thus impossible for a hunter to get ten superior gene fragments from a superior-grade lifeform.

For example, after draining the blood and removing the poison sac of this venombane scorpion, it could hardly be expected to provide more than nine superior gene fragments.

Zhang Lie rinsed and dried the scorpion\'s carapace, then returned it to his potbellied-toad pouch. It was still a treasure, after all: even after being deep-fried and boiled, it still maintained impressive structural integrity, and it was tough and resilient. Even though he only had a palm\'s worth of material, it would still be invaluable for forging purposes.

After packing up the scorpion carapace and cleaning everything up, Zhang Lie couldn\'t wait to activate the superior-grade venombane-scorpion shard in his soulspace.

A shortsword with a faintly purple sheen appeared in Zhang Lie\'s right palm. Whereas a regular longsword would have a meter-long blade, this scorpion shortsword only had a blade about seventy centimeters long. It wasn\'t particularly long, but it wasn\'t all that short, either.

The hilt was a deep purple, and the crossguard\'s design was that of a venombane scorpion with its stinger raised high, poised to strike. Zhang Lie immediately felt a strange power emanating from the shortsword in his hand.

When he activated it, Zhang Lie\'s body disappeared from sight.

This ability had already been demonstrated by the venombane scorpion when it was fleeing for its life: it felt as though he had become one with his environment. Even a gust of wind seemed to pass through him without impediment.

As long as he didn\'t make any sudden movement, even a hunter skilled in perception like Chu Feng would be unable to detect his presence.

Not only did this shortsword possess a stealth ability superior to that from a mutated-grade venombane-scorpion soulshard, the blade was naturally covered in the potent venombane poison.

Of course, as its owner, Zhang Lie would be forever immune to this sort of poison, and it would even grant him partial immunity to the effects of most other poisons. After all, venombane scorpions could consume all sorts of poisons, and he could even use the blade to suck up any poison present in other hunters\' bodies.

Zhang Lie naturally christened this shortsword Venombane.

After dealing with his spoils, Zhang Lie slumped into bed and fell asleep immediately. He had done quite a lot that night, and he was tired after all his exertion. Fortunately, all his struggles had been worth it, and he was very pleased with what he had accomplished.

On the other hand, others were having a nightmare—Qin Xiao, Wang Xiaohua, and the Zhou clan.

Qin Xiao, who had fortuitously escaped a confrontation with Chu Feng and then with the gathered hunters from the Blacksteel settlement by \'fainting\', was now so enraged that he almost actually fainted.

While the six clans were surrounded by Blacksteel hunters, he had overheard some hunters murmuring about how Zhang Lie had exposed Wang Xiaohua\'s misdeeds. The fiasco unfolding on the forum suggested that it was far more likely that Qin Xiaotian had died at Wang Xiaohua\'s hands, not Zhang Lie\'s.

Furthermore, his act of pushing Zhou Qian out of the cave to save his own life had landed him and the entire Qin clan in dire straits.

"What? What did you say? You didn\'t manage to find Xiaotian\'s corpse?!" Qin Xiao glared at Qin Feng, his eyes red with rage.

.

"Yes, Master," Qin Feng replied. "We combed that mound in and out, but we didn\'t even find a scrap of clothing, let alone a corpse! Wang Xiaohua had to have lied to you!"

"Wang Xiaohua!" Her seemingly gentle face flashed by Qin Xiao\'s mind, his anger burgeoning.

Qin Xiao felt as though he understood it all now. This was all a trap, one set up by the Wang clan.

First, Wang Xiaohua would entice Qin Xiaotian with her looks, then deliberately induce a confrontation between Xiaotian and a third party. Using this confrontation, she would lure Xiaotian into a trap, steal his soulshards, and then place the blame on that third party: the unfortunate Zhang Lie.

Not only that, she would even embroil the other five clans in the conflict. She had planned for them to all head to the venombane glade, hired a hunter to snatch away the fruits of their labor, and even lure out the moonlight wyrm to kill him!

What a malicious plan! She had been targeting the Qin clan—and even the entire Blacksteel settlement—all along!