Thirty minutes. Lan Quan and the rest observed for more than thirty minutes. Xiang Ning was like a cockroach that couldn’t be killed. He stood up no matter how many times the beasts struck him. If it weren’t for the stench of blood, Lan Quan and the rest might have thought he was a robot. But even the most sophisticated robot wasn’t as durable as Xiang Ning!

“Hey, hey, hey! Lan Quan, look! I think he’s finally collapsing from fatigue.”

Lan Quan was contemplating leaving Xiang Ning behind and departing for their destination before one of his team members shouted in delight. At first, they felt excited watching Xiang Ning keep dodging and standing up but it got boring after a few minutes. They were even betting money on him as it went on!

One of the team members played as the house and told everyone to play a game with him. Everyone bet on how long it would take before Xiang Ning would finally collapse, but all of them lost after thirty minutes. No one had thought he would hold on for thirty minutes. Everyone just resentfully stared at him as they had lost all of their money and thought he was just gloating. 

“Next time, try not to gamble too much. It’ll only ruin your future.” The team member tried to smooth things over, but was secretly very happy about winning so much.

“Tch.”

“Hoho.”

“Hey. Why’re you guys looking at me like that?”

Lan Quan ignored them and stood up to observe Xiang Ning. This time he saw Xiang Ning standing a distance away from the five tired beasts.

The beasts had tried eating Xiang Ning numerous times throughout the thirty minutes, but every time they tried to bite his head off, he would always dodge by the skin of his teeth. He avoided all of the lethal blows and continued being battered by the non-lethal ones.

One of the reasons was due to the Devourer. While the Devourer had consumed quite a few tier six beasts, most of them were alpha-class beasts. Out of the five beasts that were attacking Xiang Ning right now, only one of them was an alpha-class beast. The rest of them were regular tier six beasts, so they were one step down the hierarchy.

In just half an hour, Xiang Ning had consumed numerous healing potions and used up more than four hundred thousand Fury Points. It was the first time he had used so much in a short amount of time. But in return, the reward he got was well worth the cost.

Tier five, three-star martial artist (122915/600000)

He finally advanced into tier five, three-star after sustaining a continuous beating from the beasts for half an hour. While the efficiency was a bit low, he was now infinitely close to tier seven if he activated seven of the eight gates. He only needed to rest for five hours—or one hour, if he had a healing potion—and he would be good as new.

Xiang Ning downed a healing potion and saw it was almost time to head to the mission site. If he departed now, he would meet Gu Kun and the rest on the way there at best, or meet them at the mission site at worst.

With Gu Kun's experience and the team’s combined strength, they should have no problem arriving at the mission site. Xiang Ning needed to make haste now. It was time to slay the five beasts. I wonder how many beast cores there’ll be?

“Hmm? What's wrong?” One of Lan Quan’s team members who had been facing the other way saw everyone’s expressions freezing in fear.

This feels… different.

Three minutes later, the vice-leader beside Lan Quan was mumbling in disbelief. “Lan Quan, am I seeing things?”

“The world is indeed a huge place,” the others sighed and lamented their strength.

One of the team members who had lost almost half a year’s worth of salary finally snapped out of his daze and saw everyone was in the same daze he’d just been in. “Wow, when were they killed? How long did it take? Did you help him? Huh? Why’re you guys so silent? Did you guys not help him? Did he exhaust the beasts’ strength before killing them? It should be possible since it’s been thirty minutes….

“Uhh… is something wrong? Why’re you all not answering me?” He was panicking a bit. Everyone was being very unnatural.

The vice-leader didn’t answer him, but said, “Lan Quan, I think we need to reassess his threat level and strength. This is ridiculous.”

Lan Quan nodded. He had been observing for the past half hour and saw how Xiang Ning had managed to last for that long. But based on the information he had on Xiang Ning, that wasn’t entirely impossible. There were a few people as ridiculous as him on Azura, but none of them were as young.

But now, in just three minutes, Xiang Ning had killed all five of those tier six beasts. He was even hurt from the beating he had taken! He was bloody from top to bottom; no one knew how much blood he had lost.

“Lan Quan, I’ve always been a fan of Earth’s myths and legends. Do you think he was training his body? It should be similar to how a martial artist trains their physical body. Don’t they do the same? I always read that they’d fight and temper their body before breaking through new heights during battles.”

No one said anything. Now that he mentioned that, everyone thought that it was plausible. They always thought that Xiang Ning was still young. Even if he had killed three tier six beasts, he should still be like a chick in front of a tier seven Beast King. They thought that three tier six beasts were the limit for Xiang Ning. Never would they have thought that he could exceed that limit.

Maybe he really was training his body in that thirty minutes. Xiang Ning’s perception is monstrous, so he could just dodge the lethal attacks while taking the non-lethal ones to temper his body.

“Damn, that’s too scary. To think that he could slay five tier six beasts in just three minutes. What’s the limit to his strength? Wait, I just detected something. It seems that his strength and speed have increased by a lot…. No way! Was he really tempering his body all that time?!” The vice-leader was bewildered. He had seen Xiang Ning in action before and realized that his strength and speed had indeed increased.

The stronger a cultivator grew, the harder it was for them to increase their cultivation. To explain it in simple terms, if a cultivator’s capacity was the size of a bowl and the cultivation they gained was a cup of water, the change in the amount of water in the bowl was significant. But if the cultivator was strong, their capacity would be the size of a bucket, or even a tank. Adding a cup of water to that would be less significant, and the change would be harder to observe.

“Damn. His combat prowess is monstrous, he’s extremely smart, and he has unlimited potential as one of the disciples of the Twelve Prodigies. He’s also suspected of being the one behind the invention of dimensional rings and a plausible candidate for the Smith Saint project. How could there be such a perfect individual? No, this is beyond human! He’s inhuman!”

Five of them in three minutes is a new record folks!