“Greetings, master.”

　　The person who had arrived was Weapon Peak’s master, the disheveled old man. Su Zimo bowed and greeted.

　　Nodding slightly, the disheveled old man’s gaze turned towards the spirit tiger behind Su Zimo and frowned.

　　Right now, the spirit tiger was in internal turmoil. It was actually looking for an opportunity to run away but an old man popped out of nowhere and by the sound of it, he was the perverted human’s master!

　　Didn’t that mean that he was even more perverted?!

　　“This pit is getting deeper by the moment. I’m screwed…”

　　Furrowing his brows, the disheveled old man asked, “Is this your spirit beast?”

　　In the cultivation world, there were many cultivators who kept spirit beasts and in a duel, these beasts played a part in their total fighting strength.

　　Hesitating slightly, Su Zimo nodded.

　　The disheveled old man looked at the spirit tiger and remarked gruffly, “This spirit tiger has quite an ordinary endowment and there’s nothing special about it. But since you chose it, you’ll have to make a blood oath with it.”

　　Su Zimo remained silent.

　　The disheveled old man continued, “Lad, remember. You must be wary of anyone that isn’t of our race. Furthermore, humans and demons take on different paths and it’s hard to change a beast’s nature. Cultivators have naturally weak bodies. If they were to be betrayed out of the blue by a spirit beast that’s constantly around them, it’s easy for them to die to it.”

　　In the cultivation world, cultivators would always make a blood oath with spirit beasts to prevent any betrayals.

　　With a blood oath, the spirit beasts would die on the spot through a reflux of their own blood if they had any thoughts of betrayal.

　　The rise in strength for a cultivator with a strong, variant bloodline or ancient beast was always obvious.

　　But of course, the difference between both sides must not be overly huge while making the blood oath and neither must the spirit beast resist or it will fail.

　　That was why for some super large sects, they would provide various larvae or eggs of spirit beasts if they were grooming some paragon cultivators.

　　While the spirit beasts were cubs and foolish, the chances of creating a blood oath with them would improve tremendously.

　　Su Zimo had heard Ji Yaoxue mentioning blood oaths before but he was rather resistant towards the idea of it.

　　It wasn’t just because of Die Yue or the fact that he was doing demonic cultivation as well. It was more of the fact that he did not like to be enslaved and neither did he want to do it to others.

　　That was equivalent to taking away the freedom of one’s life.

　　It was even more cruel than killing them.

　　More than that, Su Zimo was willing to get along with spirit beasts in other manners, like the way he did with the spirit monkey.

　　He believed that even without a blood oath, the spirit monkey would not harm him.

　　The disheveled old man thought that Su Zimo’s silence was due to the latter not knowing how to make a blood oath. Chuckling, he pulled out a blank piece of paper from his storage bag and scribbled a couple of incantations on it before handing it to Su Zimo. “Here, learn it. Take it as my gift to you as your master.”

　　Incantations like the blood oath require contribution points to exchange for within the sect. The disheveled old man’s act was equivalent to giving a benefit to Su Zimo in secret.

　　Receiving the paper, Su Zimo nodded in thanks.

　　“Alright, head back then and make a blood oath with this spirit tiger soon. Head to the old man guard and get a spirit beast badge from him too. Don’t drag too long,” The disheveled old man instructed before soaring into the skies and speeding out of the sect.

　　Within Ethereal Sect, even spirit beasts of cultivators had a badge for recognition and free entry and exit of the fog formation.

　　Watching everything unfold before his eyes, the spirit tiger’s blood curdled as it cried internally. “It’s really over now! I can’t run anymore! Once the blood oath is made, I’ll be HIS tiger from now on…!”

　　Su Zimo summoned his flying sword and the spirit tiger joined him. Before long, they arrived at his cave abode on Weapon Peak.

　　Through the journey, Su Zimo was silent and expressionless.

　　Arriving at his cave abode, Su Zimo gave a casual rub and the paper that contained the blood oath turned into dust, scattering through the air.

　　When the spirit tiger saw that, its jaw dropped slightly apart in shock.

　　It had been watching Su Zimo through the entire journey – the latter had not taken a look at the blood oath at all.

　　Now that he destroyed the paper, did that imply that he already knew the blood oath?

　　Su Zimo turned around and looked at the spirit tiger indifferently. “I’m not going to make a blood oath with you. If you choose to follow me, nod your head. If not, you can leave now.”

　　The spirit tiger was stunned.

　　A choice!

　　This human could have made a blood oath without it daring to resist at all. Yet, the human had chosen to give it a choice!

　　That gave the spirit tiger an unprecedented sense of respect and trust.

　　“Ow! Ow!”

　　Suddenly, blood rushed into the spirit tiger’s head as its mind went blank, causing it to nod furiously like a chicken pecking for rice on the ground.

　　Su Zimo chuckled. “Alright, since you chose to follow me, you can’t betray me. Of course, I’ll treat you the same way.”

　　Unknown to the man and beast, a pair of eyes were concealed within the depths of the clouds above them, watching everything that transpired between them as well as listening in on their conversation.

　　Su Zimo entered his cave abode with the spirit tiger tagging along.

　　Clouds rumbled as a gigantic pair of wings flapped, covering the skies as it flew towards Ethereal Peak.

　　When it returned to this cave abode that now felt familiar after multiple days of torture, the spirit tiger calmed down and was troubled. “Bloody hell, what happened to me just now? How did I agree to it so rashly? That guy was clearly just trying to bribe me!”

　　“Sigh, how illogical!”

　　The spirit tiger regretted its decision…

　　However, since it had made a promise, it felt bad to renege on it in the blink of an eye.

　　“As long as he doesn’t do ‘that’ to me, I can accept even those random cries every now and then. Alright… I’ll just stay here on that condition for now then. Since we didn’t make a blood oath, I’m free to come and go.”

　　At that thought, the spirit tiger felt no burden and stayed in Su Zimo’s cave abode for the time being.

　　An additional spirit beast did not affect Su Zimo’s life much.

　　The spirit tiger would head out to look for food every now and then, even bringing some back for Su Zimo.

　　Because Su Zimo had demonic cultivation, he required sustenance through meat as well. The spirit tiger’s actions saved him trouble and helped to conserve the essence of his Scarlet Flame Fruit as well.

　　Su Zimo spent the following period of time cultivating the Marrow Cleansing section while raising his cultivation realm and improving on weapon refinement.

　　After the disheveled old man’s hint, Su Zimo went to look for him at the Weapon Refinement Hall for all doubts and view projections left behind by seniors in the sect at the same time.

　　In this period of time, Su Zimo made tons of improvement for the first four steps of weapon refinement.

　　However, the most crucial step was the fifth one – spirit gathering.

　　For that, he was still stuck and had no success in creating inferior-grade spirit weapons yet. Instead, his storage bag was now filled with a whole bunch of pseudo spirit flying swords.

　　The disheveled old man had once said that Weapon Refinement Masters would develop a unique sense of spirit perception after a long time of refining weapons and that would help with spirit gathering.

　　For Advanced Weapon Refinement Masters, the chances of them gathering a single spirit pattern to create an inferior-grade spirit weapon was close to 100%.

　　Su Zimo had spirit perception as well, but it was different from the one Weapon Refinement Masters had.

　　He had tried to make use of his own spirit perception for spirit gathering but to no avail.

　　During that period of time, there was another month end test on Weapon Peak. Once again, Feng Haoyu came to Weapon Peak and even sent Qi Refinement Warriors to Su Zimo’s cave abode, challenging the latter.

　　However, Su Zimo refused to see them.

　　The reason why he had taken part in the previous test was because he wanted to observe the projections. But, now that he could view them at any time he wanted, there was no need to waste time on the test.

　　He couldn’t care less about Feng Haoyu’s challenge.

　　What Su Zimo did not realize was that his rejection of the challenge would indirectly lead to the greatest crisis in the history of Ethereal Peak!