Mo Fan had killed lots of demon beasts, thus he was not as pleased as Zhang Xiaohou after eliminating a Warrior-level creature. He was more concerned about money.
Unfortunately, the Sand Howl Tiger did not have what Mo Fan was looking for. Even its soul was only an ordinary Soul Remnant.
He stored the Soul Remnant inside the Little Loach Pendant, treating it as a raw material to refine Soul Essences, as he was aiming to improve his Shadow Element Basic Spell to the fourth tier.
"Say, Mo Fan, why didn't you try improving your Basic Spells to the fifth tier?" asked Zhao Manyan, raising his eyebrows.
"I already did" said Mo Fan
Chen Yi, who was standing beside them, opened her eyes wide. The fifth tier?
- This guy has already improved his Basic Spells to the fifth tier?-
"YOU DID!!???" yelled Zhao Manyan
The Zhao Family was considered a famous business-renowned family in the Magic Community. One could find marketplaces that belonged to their family in most cities across the provinces, thus many people referred to their family as a Tuhao.
Despite that, she had never seen any renowned family that was willing to invest in improving someone's Basic Spells to the fourth tier, let alone the fifth tier, which was basically a fantasy!
"Screw you, leveling up a Basic Spell from the fourth tier to the fifth tier requires a total of seven Warrior-level Soul Essences!" cursed Mo Fan.
Zhao Manyan had made it sound easy, but if the higher tiers only needed Servant-class Soul Essences, he would actually consider living deep in the woods for a while, improving his Basic Spells further. However, the resources needed for the fifth tier were too dumbfounding. Seven Warrior-level Soul Essences would sum up to more than a hundred million, which was enough to get himself the Wing Magical Equipment for Xinxia!
On top of that, the odds of finding a Warrior-level Soul Essence were a lot lower. Even if Mo Fan managed to collect over a hundred Warrior-level Soul Remnants, it was not enough to refine a complete Soul Essence. Improving his Basic Spells to the fifth tier was a strenuous commitment!
"Let's move on, stop wasting time here! You'll have plenty of work to do at the Drifting Sand River!" emphasized Lingling.
The most dangerous part of their adventure was the Drifting Sand River. Even though they had brought Xinxia the Psychic along, it did not guarantee that they could cross the place unharmed!
The party had only briefly proceeded on with their journey when they saw a group of people rushing toward them through a cloud of sand ahead.
As the group came closer, Mo Fan's crew realized that they were also a party of Hunters, who seemed relatively young. They had to be quite talented among Magicians.
When they arrived and saw the Sand Howl Tiger's corpse, their expressions immediately sank. A female Magician who was slightly tanned among them approached Mo Fan's group furiously and snapped while pointing her finger at them, "How shameless are you guys! We've been hunting the Sand Howl Tiger for half a day and injured it, yet you guys have stolen our prey after we lost track of it for a while. Don't you know that as Hunters, you're not supposed to take other people's prey!?"
The tanned female Magician spoke imposingly, her voice sharp and screeching, making everyone feel uncomfortable.
"Aunty, the Sand Howl Tiger was already charging at us when we saw it. Are you telling me that we're supposed to let the beast eat us alive if we're not allowed to kill it?" Zhao Manyan was the first to blurt out unpleasantly.
"Who are you calling an aunty? I'm not even thirty!" The tanned female Magician was infuriated.
"Oh, but your temperament is the same as those aunties dancing at the public squares when their spot has been taken." Mo Fan was fond of making sarcastic remarks too. He immediately joined in and sang a duet with Zhao Manyan.
The tanned female Magician pulled a long face, and seemed to have an urge to teach the two disrespectful guys a lesson.
However, the rather manly leader with a black beard stepped forward and stopped her.
He preferred not to start a fight here, since they were currently in the demon beasts' territory. It was better for the Hunters to help one another, even though they felt it unfair that their prey was stolen just like that. They had injured the Sand Howl Tiger in the first place, thus the creature's strength was no longer at its peak...
"No wonder the Sand Howl Tiger was so easy to deal with," Zhang Xiaohou realized.
When fighting the Sand Howl Tiger, Zhang Xiaohou had already noticed that the beast was covered in wounds and bruises, so he thought the beast had fought against some other creature before. It turned out that it had fought a group of Hunters, and fled when it realized that it was no match for them. Somehow, it had stumbled into Mo Fan's party, who ended up taking advantage of the situation.
"My brothers, we fought the Sand Howl Tiger for quite a while. Otherwise, you wouldn't be able to kill it so easily. How about this, let us take a look if the Sand Howl Tiger's corpse has any rare bones, rare blood, rare skin or something else, and we'll split the loot in half," said the leader with a black beard in a friendly manner.
However, Mo Fan was not happy.
These idiots had lost track of their prey, then came running back acting like they owned it, and now even had the audacity to demand half the loot after doing absolutely nothing in the end. If this was the Mo Fan from before, maybe he would have argued a bit more, but now? After stepping into the Advanced realm, after experiencing real battles and life and death situations, this kind of behavior simply annoyed him.
"In your dreams," Mo Fan said calmly, but there was a sharp edge hidden beneath his voice.
The Sand Howl Tiger was not just any ordinary prey. Even without rare drops, its corpse alone was worth well over a hundred thousand RMB. Mo Fan had no intention of sharing something he had personally erased in a single strike. To him, this wasn't even a negotiation, it was a joke.
"How shameless, and you call yourselves Hunters," Lingling added coldly, clearly just as displeased.
"Mm, little girl, who do you think you're talking to? That prey was ours to begin with!" the tanned female Magician snapped, pointing at Lingling with an aggressive glare. "Come down here and I'll teach you how to behave!"
"We're following Hunter rules. You lost the target. It's ours," the bearded leader added, though his tone carried less confidence than before.
Lingling scoffed. "Hasn't anyone taught you to respect your seniors?"
"Seniors?" the tanned woman laughed mockingly. "You look like a bunch of high school kids who ran away to play Hunter. If we hadn't injured that Sand Howl Tiger, you'd all be dead right now!"
Mo Fan didn't respond immediately.
Instead—
he took a step forward.
The air changed.
It wasn't sudden.
It wasn't explosive.
But it was heavy.
A suffocating pressure began to spread outward from him, subtle at first, then rapidly intensifying. The surrounding sand shifted slightly as if reacting to something unseen, and the temperature itself seemed to drop, not from cold, but from pure oppressive force.
It was the aura of someone who had stepped into the Advanced realm.
A presence forged through real combat.
Through killing.
Through overwhelming power.
The tanned female Magician's voice suddenly stopped mid-sentence.
Her body stiffened.
Her instincts screamed.
Danger.
The bearded leader's expression changed instantly. His pupils shrank as he felt it clearly now, that invisible pressure pressing down on him like a mountain. This was no ordinary Intermediate Mage… this was someone far beyond their level.
Mo Fan looked at them, his eyes calm, almost bored, but carrying a coldness that made their scalps go numb.
"I'll say it once," he said quietly. "You lost it. It's mine. If you want to take it—try."
No shouting.
No threats.
Just fact.
That made it worse.
For a moment, no one spoke. Even the wind seemed to die down around them.
Then Lingling casually took out her Hunter badge and showed it.
The tanned female Magician's eyes widened instantly, her earlier arrogance completely gone as she stared at the badge in disbelief. A Hunter Master… and paired with someone like him?
The bearded leader's face stiffened. Sweat formed on his forehead.
They had misjudged.
Completely.
The Sand Howl Tiger dying instantly suddenly made perfect sense.
They weren't dealing with rookies.
They had walked straight into a group they couldn't afford to offend.
Without another word, the leader forced a stiff smile, gave a quick nod, and signaled his team.
They left.
Fast.
Almost like they were escaping.
—
It was only a brief interruption. Mo Fan's group continued forward across the pulsating sandhill, the desert stretching endlessly ahead. After more than a day of travel, the terrain slowly shifted, the golden sands giving way to barren rock and uneven ground.
This region was far more dangerous.
The odds of encountering Sand Howl Tigers increased significantly here. Although they tried to avoid unnecessary fights, encounters were inevitable.
Fortunately, Zhang Xiaohou's experience in the army proved invaluable. His control over movement spells allowed him to lure threats away efficiently, often drawing entire groups off course so the team could advance without slowing down.
Facing multiple Sand Howl Tigers at once was still troublesome, even for them. However, with Mo Fan present, those encounters rarely lasted long.
What once would have been a dangerous battle—
had now become routine.
With steady progress, the group eventually arrived at the Drifting Sand River, a massive dry valley carved by time itself. From above, it resembled a colossal earth-colored serpent winding through the land, stretching across vast distances. Even at its narrowest, it spanned more than ten kilometers, an overwhelming natural boundary that marked the next stage of their journey.