“What is happening? Why are the beasts getting aggravated?”

Lute lifted his head up from the lake; he was currently floating on his back, enjoying the feeling of relaxation after long days training. But it was very quickly disturbed; all of the Vicious Beasts at the lake had grown very agitated, looking towards the forests.

Isla didn’t bother to manifest before Lute, she had been sleeping for a while, but her voice could still be heard replying lazily to Lute through their connection. In his mind he heard Isla speaking, “Well go check it out, seeing as how you’ve made all of these insects your friends.”

Lute quickly swam to shore, he dressed himself in the fur loincloth he had and began running into the direction of where the beasts were looking towards. With each step he bounded like a deer through the forests. Each step was strong enough that it cracked the dirt ground underneath Lute.

It wasn’t long before the stench of blood permeated the air. What he found was corpse after corpse of Vicious Beasts, all at the peak of the Foundational Qi Realm. There were clearly signs of a struggle, a broken sword, a dagger stuck in a tree and a broadsword left behind that was larger than any sword Lute had ever seen.

Everything was ransacked; there was blood and entrails everywhere. Surveying the seen, Lute somewhat could guess there was cultivators here, and they were injured. The only reason that they would be in this far was to come after him, that much was for certain. And it all stemmed from Glen.

‘I should’ve killed that prick when I had the chance. Now look at the problems he’s caused. People are simply throwing their lives away, do they not know any common sense. Might as well go put whoever is left out of their misery.’

Lute began running through the direction towards the lake again, hoping to catch whoever was injured and kill them. It could be seen that someone had escaped towards the inner mountains, clearly not knowing that it would be suicide for them to head in deeper instead of leaving.

The further he ran, the more Foundational Qi Beasts Lute noticed, but they didn’t look at him with any hostility, they were the ones that lived with him at the lake. They might not interact and ignore each other, but it was enough that they shared a home, and investigating when people encroach on your territory was a given.

Some of the weaker beasts decided to eat the piles of corpses; there was no need to let the bodies go to waste. They had no problems with eating each other; food was food in the wild, no matter where it came from.

After about another five minutes of a high speed dash, Lute came across who he was searching for. Quickly suppressing his aura and hiding within the foliage, Lue practically disappeared and became invisible. The other beasts were doing the same thing, clearly letting the beast that was already their claim its prize.

Looking forward, Lute saw the cultivator and thunder seemed to go off in his mind. She had a strikingly similar face to his sister. Her hair color and eyes were the same color. The body figure was almost the exact same. But at the same time, he knew this wasn’t his sister.

First, his sister was slightly shorter than this person. Next she wasn’t a cultivator; she was only a mortal as far as he knew. But the most important factor was his sister had a unique aura around her, it was like a raging volcano, and she was a high energy person living off her emotions without putting a single thought to logical decisions. She was the complete opposite of Lute who tried to hide his and prevent them from influencing his decisions.

The cultivator before him, while having a striking resemblance, was not who he thought she was, the aura about her was ice cold yet gentle, but it seemed to be capable of ruthlessly lashing out at a moment’s notice. That is… if she were in her prime state. Blood was seeping from many cuts along her body and she was devoid of any strength, so much to the point that Lute could barely make out her cultivation.

But he was just barely able to tell she was in the Nascent Qi Realm.

‘Nascent Qi Realm, but with those wounds, and her strength clearly depleted, she won’t survive a single attack from the panther. But, those cuts are too clean to be a Vicious Beast…. Perhaps her sect members tried to kill her….’

In that moment, the panther decided to pounce upon the cultivator, she had slumped down to the ground, without the energy to support he body anymore. She should’ve died. But in that moment Lute made a choice, one he hoped he wouldn’t regret, as part of it was based off emotions and the other part based off logic. He’d never made a decision utilizing both of these traits before.

Exploding forward using only his physical strength, Lute catapulted out from where he was hiding and body slammed the panther with his right shoulder, immediately destroying all of the organs and bones within its chest. The panther didn’t even have time to feel the pain before its world became black and it died without being able to put up any resistance.

It slammed into a tree, and fell limply down onto the ground. The surrounding beasts weren’t surprised, Lute was easily the strongest here, but they had a slight misunderstanding. The human on the ground was clearly female, Vicious Beasts weren’t idiots, they were comparable to humans in many ways, and they became even smarter and capable of human speech as they became higher ranked.

They thought that since Lute was male, and she was female, he wanted to procreate with her and leave his offspring; such was the natural instinct of any Vicious Beast that was a young adult. So they all quickly scampered off, assuming the situation was resolved.

In actuality, Lute had no such thoughts, he could easily control such urges, and frankly he wouldn’t want to do the deed anyways since he shared a body with a woman who was also his Master.

There were two reasons as to why he saved this girls life, the first, this person reminded him of his sister based on appearance. Although he had originally come to kill her and be rid of the nuisance preventing any problems, he just couldn’t do it, not when the resemblance was so close.

The other reason, there was information to be had from her, clearly she wasn’t alone as Lute doubted she could lift a massive broadsword on her own with ease, she’d need to use a lot of Qi. Any information was better than none, if he could learn some useful things about these worlds’ cultivators and their customs; the easier it would be for him in the future.

The cuts on her arms and body gave it all away in Lute’s eyes; he could easily tell she was betrayed, so perhaps she would be more willing to converse with him since she needed someone to protect her. But he wouldn’t do it for long, only until she could protect herself, then Lute would leave her.

Lute casually walked over and with his right hand, he picked her up from the waist and threw her over his shoulder like a sack. Not caring about anything or thinking of any ulterior motives. If anyone else did this, they might’ve lost themselves in obscene thoughts as portions of her clothes were ripped and her chest, which wasn’t large, but not small either, was pressed against Lute’s back.

He didn’t have any feelings for this girl, and as such felt he did nothing wrong with these actions. Of course if she was conscious, she’d probably attempt to kill him for even touching her, not even mentioning the fact he was carrying her like a sack.

The time was close to twilight as the sunset was dipping below the horizon. Lute had returned to a small cove at the lake. There was a hill which he had dug into; creating a relatively large space that he could even stand in, with his physical strength, this was easily done in a few hours. Inside of his small homemade hermit cave there were numerous pelts, claws and fangs of beasts stupid enough to challenge Lute. There were even some cores, but Lute didn’t use them as they couldn’t progress his cultivation. Only cores of beasts at multiple levels of cultivations above him would be of any use.

As for food and furnishing, off to the side, Lute had carved out a wooden box; it was extremely crude but served its purpose. Underneath it was a small channel Lute had built to the lake, which had water that was quite cold. In this way, Lute smoked meat to preserve it the best he could, and the box which was floating in this cold water, while it didn’t get cold enough where it would freeze the smoked meat, it would allow it to last for a few days longer.

There was a pit inside the shelter that a fire could be started in and the smoke would leave through a hole in the roof. There was nothing else notable aside from many pelts stacked on the ground which Lute used as a makeshift bed. This was truly the most effort he’d put into making a home in the wilderness in years. It was crude and simple, but comfortable.

Lute returned here with the girl, he had no qualms about the beasts attacking her as he could be considered the overlord of this small lake, only the beasts that didn’t live here at all times were the ones to challenge Lute and lose their pitiful lives. As long as he was in this girl’s immediate vicinity, she could be considered safe from harm.

Entering his home, Lute brazenly threw the unconscious girl down onto the pile of pelts he used as a bed. He didn’t know restraint or care much for her comfort, as long as she was alive, he didn’t care how she felt.

Turning his back around Lute quickly grabbed some wood from his stash and began to light a fire in the pit. At which time he half covered it with a rock slab and began to cook preserved Vicious Beast meat. But he didn’t take his attention off of the girl lest she wake up and immediately try and kill him.

After eating a simple meal of meat, Lute occupied his time with carving, a habit he picked up when he had nothing to do and didn’t feel like cultivating since he absorbed Qi autonomously. At this moment in time, he was busy using a sharp rock fragment as a knife and was attempting to carve a cask with which he could store water as Lute didn’t want to trudge all the way down to the lake in order to drink. Then he wanted to carve small cups to drink from.

All of this was because his stay in the mountains just extended. There was no way this girl would heal as quickly as he could. Although her wounds were moderate and non-lethal, it would still take at least a week, maybe more for her to make a full recovery.

While Lute was trying to usehis feet to steady the wood, and his right hand to carve since he couldn’t use his left wrist, he ended up in awkward positions that looked quite weird. From behind it seemed as if he had his arm stuck in the walls of the shelter.

It was precisely this seen that Seren woke up to. Groggily sitting up, she was silent and graceful, even if she was devoid of any strength; all she had was a shred of Qi left for use. But looking over to her right, what she saw was Lute busily working off in a corner of the room.

Murderous Intent flashed through her eyes. Covering her hand in what little Qi she had left, Seren felt that this would be more than enough to kill Lute as she realized that although he was the savage she’d come to kill, his cultivation was below what she was told. With that, it wasn’t hard to realize that Glen had lied, but she would deal with that later, right now, it was better to kill Lute as he dared to drag her off to who knows where and touched her in the process, that was a taboo.

Moving as quietly as possible, Seren moved behind Lute, seeing that he wasn’t moving his left arm and using his legs, she guessed he’d injured it. With a silent movement, she slashed down at the base of Lutes neck, intending to sever the connection between his brain and body.

Contrary to her expectations, Lute immediately turned around and stood up, towering over her by more than a foot in height, he grabbed her Qi covered hand and shoved her against the walls of the room. Slaughter Aura slowly leaking out, his eyes seemed to pierce into Seren’s soul. She didn’t move, but defiance was clearly showing in her eyes.

Lute moved his face closer to Seren, until they were mere inches apart. A disdaining looks apparent from his face. With anyone but Isla, he held no regard for them or their lives under normal circumstances. Lute would be respectful to the strong as that was the key to living in the world of cultivation, but that didn’t mean he was a coward or kind.

His voice, razor sharp as he spat out each word with utter disdain for Seren’s existence, “Is that how you treat the one who just saved your pitiful existence form being extinguished. Learn to respect your superiors whelp.”