Li Ban froze for a moment when he heard the prompt.
He had possessed the Silver Kingfisher for a while now, usually letting it out in secret to train.
To keep others from noticing, he generally trained the Silver Kingfisher inside his own bedroom.
But the Silver Kingfisher had never sublimated. Li Ban had even started to think he lacked the guaranteed ability to sublimate elements, and that his first two sublimations were merely coincidences.
To his surprise, simply letting the Silver Kingfisher fly freely through the mountain woods today had directly awakened its second ability.
If the Cat Girl found out about this, she would probably cough up blood in sheer frustration.
Now, only two abilities remained unsublimated: Blazing Flame Art and Flute Sound.
Li Ban no longer doubted his ability to sublimate elements.
The reason those last two elements hadn't sublimated yet was highly likely because they were both good-grade elements.
He was simply curious to know what second abilities these two elements would gain once they sublimated.
He hoped Flute Sound would evolve from a passive skill into an active one. Otherwise, he had no idea under what circumstances he could even use it.
Because of the element's name, Li Ban had even bought a flute to attempt an artificial sublimation, but it had yielded no results. The group had been moving through the mountain woods for a while now, and someone finally discovered the first injured slave.
Except the man was already a corpse.
His back had been torn open by sharp claws, leaving his snapped spine and ribs exposed to the air.
Leopard tracks were also scattered nearby.
The head catcher investigated the scene and returned to report. "A ring-tailed leopard must have launched a sneak attack. After killing one slave, it went after another."
A nearby patrol inspector slammed his fist into his palm and grumbled in dissatisfaction. "Dammit, why didn't he lure the leopard back? What's the use of dying out here?"
At that moment, a miserable shriek echoed from ahead. It seemed another slave had run into a wild beast.
Zhou Jinhai simply raised his hand and waved it. "Move up!"
He led a team of men forward, while Liu Mu and Li Ban hung back for the moment.
The fierce beasts were a menace to commoners, but they posed absolutely no threat to 2nd Tier and 3rd Tier Spirit Cultivators like them. There was no need for a massive siege.
Having conferred with Zhou Jinhai earlier, Liu Mu hurried back to Li Ban's side, leaned in, and muttered quickly, "Kill the adults and the old ones. Let the young and the cubs go. For every one we release, two liang."
Li Ban looked at Liu Mu in surprise. Seeing the other man's beaming smile, he gave a faint nod.
What Liu Mu and Zhou Jinhai had discussed wasn't the bounty for killing a black leopard, but the payoff for letting one go.
Releasing tigers back to the mountain would inevitably lead to future disasters.
This meant Zhou Jinhai had absolutely no intention of eradicating the beasts.
Others harbored bandits to extort military funding.
Was Zhou Jinhai doing it for the funds raised by those merchants?
But in the long run, this would inevitably cause commerce across Qingcheng County to wither, leaving the economy in ruins.
From the look of things, Zhou Jinhai couldn't care less about any of that.
Li Ban just didn't know if the rest of the County Office shared the same attitude.
Seeing that Li Ban understood, Liu Mu finally split off and headed toward a different team.
Both he and Li Ban held Tier 2 Status. Naturally, they couldn't be wasted in the same squad.
Li Ban glanced back. Zhou Jinhai wasn't in the same group as them, either.
He turned around and continued on his way, no longer paying attention to Zhou Jinhai's position.
After the hundred or so people entered the woods, they quickly fanned out.
From time to time, shouts and the clash of weapons rang out in the distance.
Just then, Li Ban noticed a blur of black in the trees not far away.
He instantly drew his saber and charged forward with great strides.
The fierce beast hiding among the leaves seemed startled, for it immediately turned and bolted.
Li Ban and his team members rushed in pursuit, but seeing their numbers, the beast focused entirely on escaping without the slightest intention of turning back to fight.
Li Ban turned his head toward the runners and shophands struggling to keep up with him. "Go find the others, I'll take this one!"
Hearing this, the rest of the men immediately skidded to a halt, panting heavily.
When they spotted the black panther ahead, it hadn't fallen into their ambush ring and had run off prematurely.
With their physical fitness, there was no way they could catch up.
Only a 2nd Tier cultivator like Li Ban had any chance of keeping pace.
So the group obediently stopped, preparing to check on the other areas set with traps.
Now, only Li Ban remained in pursuit.
The wind blew through the mountain woods, rustling the leaves.
The deeper they ran into the mountains, the denser the forest became.
Li Ban kept his eyes locked tightly on the black silhouette ahead. He didn't slow his pace for a moment, and they were right on the verge of entering the deep mountains.
He knew that leopards had incredible sprinting speed, but their stamina was lacking. As long as he didn't lose its trail, he would definitely catch it.
Finally, the ring-tailed black panther stopped to avoid exhausting its stamina completely. It whirled around, bared its massive fangs, and let out a low rumble as it faced off against Li Ban.
But Li Ban was entirely unfazed. Although he had also burned some energy, the nourishment of the spiritual rhinoceros left him with more than enough strength to fight.
He sprinted forward with his saber raised and slashed at the panther without a second thought.
The panther attempted to circle around and ambush his flank.
Man and beast brushed past each other.
The panther dodged Li Ban's gleaming saber, but it failed to evade the fist striking out from under his arm.
With a fist wrapped in an Iron Fish Scale and physical strength enhanced by Zhai Liu, he sent the black panther flying three or four meters away with a single punch.
It collapsed onto the ground in a heap.
Meanwhile, Li Ban effortlessly sidestepped the claws the panther had swiped at him.
The ring-tailed black panther that had once filled the slave Li Ban with endless terror had been killed in a single blow.
Li Ban drew back his fist and let out a long breath.
Quickly calming his surging joy, he stepped forward to inspect the carcass, only to find no elementalized body parts.
Without an elementalized body, the value of this ring-tailed panther wasn't very high.
He looked around. Seeing no one nearby, he hacked at the panther a few more times with his saber before finally leaving.
After leaving, Li Ban didn't regroup with his team. Instead, he headed in the direction Zhou Jinhai's squad had taken.
He moved very cautiously, sometimes even climbing trees to avoid the others.
Fortunately, Li Ban's eyesight was exceptional, allowing him to hide away before anyone could get close.
Before long, a flash of silver flew right in front of him.
Li Ban raised his hand to catch it. It was none other than the Silver Kingfisher.
The Silver Kingfisher, which should have immediately started leading the way, actually opened its beak and spat out human words.
"How is it?"
"Li Yun fled with heavy injuries."
"Trash."
"Shall this subordinate pursue?"
"No need, I'll go myself. Continue the encirclement, and let the seeds go."
"Rest assured, Sir."
Sentence after sentence of human speech poured from the kingfisher's tiny beak.
Sometimes the voice was sharp and thin, and sometimes it was gruff, but all of it was muffled, sounding quite unlike a real human's voice.
However, the Silver Kingfisher was Li Ban's element, so he still understood its meaning perfectly.
It was playing back a conversation between two people for him.
Li Ban stroked the Silver Kingfisher, feeling thoroughly satisfied.
As it turned out, this extermination campaign was also an ambush Zhou Jinhai had set up for his enemies.
But Zhou Jinhai likely never expected that—just as the mantis stalks the cicada, unaware of the oriole behind—someone else was gunning for his wretched life as well.
"Zhou Jinhai going off alone to hunt someone down is a perfect opportunity. Silver Kingfisher, lead the way."
He raised his hand, and the Silver Kingfisher immediately took off.
Li Ban hurriedly followed.
They had already been near the deep mountains to begin with, and now they were heading straight into the valley between two great peaks.
Soon, Li Ban could no longer hear the roars of the beasts or the sounds of people fighting.
The mountain woods were dead silent. Li Ban could only try his best to muffle the sound of his footsteps as he ran.
He glanced left and right constantly, ensuring no one could sneak up on him unnoticed.
Finally, his right eye caught sight of two faint figures locked in a standoff on a distant, low slope.
Li Ban immediately stopped in his tracks and held his breath.
Although he was still quite far from the two men, Li Ban concealed himself early just in case one of them possessed an element capable of detecting intruders.
One of the men in the standoff was Zhou Jinhai, and the other was the head catcher he had seen at the very beginning.
Zhou Jinhai wore a ruthless expression, while the head catcher opposite him glared with wide, furious eyes.
Li Ban didn't care about the grudge between them. He slowly untied the slipknot on his arm wrappings, revealing the hidden Sleeve Arrow beneath.