The man desperate to kill Yun Tian attacked once more and Yun Tian seeing his chance dodged once more. Then...

A flash of light ending with silence and no movement.

A few seconds later time seemed to catch up with reality and the man's head slid off his body.

Yun Tian's killing intent had reached reached its peak and by fusing it into his skill with incredible speed using the strongest form he cut off the man's head while his defense was at its lowest. Yun Tian had achieved complete mastery with deadly flash and now every attack with the skill seemed to contain extreme killing intent while also being extremely fast and barely visible.

Everything put together actually made the battle relatively easy for Yun Tian near the end since the man was too slow for him, but he was still exhausted from the long fight and near death experience.

Yun Tian was standing behind the man's headless corpse that was now sprawled on the ground.

He looked at the corpse and was inwardly conflicted 'I just killed another person. Did I really have to do that.'

Another voice inside his head said 'You had to. You were protecting yourself and Shen Yu.'

He shook all these thoughts out of his head and went to grab whatever loot he could from the man's corpse since he knew he had a demonic beast core and his sword. While approaching the body he thought that the pouch on his waist must be a spatial pouch since he didn't have the sword out at first and he took the demonic core out from there.

He had learned about these spatial pouches before. His mom had one while his dad didn't. His mom had shown him hers and taught him how they worked before. She told him they had a separate pocket dimension inside them made by inscription experts and the space inside them varied depending on the skill of their creator along with the material used to make them. They could store non-living objects only within them.

His mom was a mid dantian building expert while his dad was an early dantian building expert. Along with the man's cultivation of mid-dantian building made him think 'It must be common for mid dantian building experts and above to have them.'

He grabbed the spatial pouch and tried injecting his qi into it. He felt that the bag had a space of a room about 175 cubic feet. He checked the items inside and could tell that there were what looked like a few manuals and the demonic core from earlier along with two others of the same amount of energy inside. There was also some money inside it and a few qi gathering pills. Besides that there were three carcasses of beasts stuffed in there. They were a tiger, a snake, and a boar. Evidently the creatures he had taken the cores from. Besides that there were some clothes and other random items.

He was excited to find these items, but also slightly upset by the events earlier so while he had a slight smile he was not jumping in joy. Also these things didn't just fall out of thin air, he killed someone and took them from him.

He took out the manuals and found they were for the three skills the man used. He thought 'The sword skill and the movement technique aren't especially useful, but the defensive skill he used would have many uses. I should try to learn it later. It could save my life at times even though right now I mostly focus on speed. I can sell them later too, if I find the chance.'

He put manuals back in the bag along with the sword and his demonic beast cores now totaling four. He didn't want anyone to recognize the sword if he had it out and realize he had killed the sword's previous owner. He could easily hide the bag within his robes and if he took out money from his bag and had the corpses of beasts in the bag he carried around, no one would suspect he had a spatial pouch. He thought it was always best to be careful.

After this he thought 'I should go check on Xiao Yu now, it's been a while since I left her in that cave.'

So he sped through the forest much faster than before and quickly made it to outside the cave Shen Yu was in.

As he got closer he realized that Shen Yu was cultivating and was even close to a breakthrough.

He didn't disturb her and just stood watching and protecting her.

She absorbed a large quantity of qi from the world and finally broke into the seventh layer of meridian opening. She had already been in the sixth layer for a while and the recent events along with sheer determination had allowed her to go over the edge and break through.

After she finished breaking through she was ecstatic and checked over herself thoroughly, but then she noticed the stern looking Yun Tian not far away and thought 'Oops' with a shy smile like she was worried that he was upset.

What he said made sure she knew he was upset. "Shen Yu what were you thinking cultivating in the wilderness completely defenseless!"

"But Dage I wasn't defenseless the whole time. Just while breaking through, before that I was still paying attention to my surroundings."

"That was extremely dangerous though, what if something appeared during this time and hurt you. You could have died."

"I knew it wouldn't take very long and I wanted to surprise you and make you happy. You just broke through and I wanted you to be happy that I did too. Also if I get stronger I can help you better."

"No matter what you should have waited until I got back to break through so I could protect you, but yes seeing you break through and being happy yourself makes me happy. I love you very much and I just didn't want anything to happen to you." Said Yun Tian with a stern and then happy doting look as he hugged her.

"I love you too dage. I just wanted to make you a little happy and take your mind off things". Shen Yu replied while hugging while thinking 'never leave me please.' While they were hugging they Shen Yu Started crying in his embrace and Yun Tian comforted her while also having some teardrops on his face.

This was happening while he thought 'Why am I not as sad as Shen Yu. Our parents just died. Why am I not as affected as I should be? I feel like part of me has changed since earlier.'