A Light Within Darkness.

I took the messed-up corpse of the spider I had already killed and thankfully by relying on my Cultivation art I was able to peel off the chitin off the spider and safely eat the less twisted flesh of the spider that didnt get sucked dry from my Kasaya Blood Beads.

But more importantly was how the flesh of the massive scorpion heavily increasing my refinement speed as I absorbed the leftover lifeforce within the spider. Even if it was a chaotic mess of lifeforce it still allowed me to ascend my Diamond body fully into the first level granting my skin the durability of copper and allowing me to start the refinement of my inner flesh.

All of my Techniques and Auxiliary Cultivation Arts have five stages of completion. Practitioner, Apostle, Master, Perfection, Ascended. The use of the spider's life force basically helped me reach the peak of the Practitioner realm and more importantly I had reached the second stage of the Elementary Realm as I spent the next two days eating the spider and once all of its edible flesh was done, I threw it into the Cistern on the right side of my tunnel in order to not attract any scavengers into my vault.

Now with no food and worse running low on water I decided to take my chance's going left in my tunnel.

A few minutes into going left in my tunnel the dim lights seemed to be gaining strength as the and I was proven correct as I began hearing what sounded like human activity even if it sounded like was a particular bad neighborhood in Detroit as every half a minute, I could faintly hear the faint cracking noise of a firearm ringing through the tunnel.

Coming out of the tunnel I saw the source of the noise was another massive Cistern and instead of being overran by spiders and other mutated beasts this one had an overcrowded complex built into what looked to be a water purification plant and the massive couple dozen mile wide and tall Cistern honestly looked quite similarly to Blight Town from Dark Souls in how decrepit it looked other than being made out of rusty metal and concrete instead of rotting wood.

"Hey! Fresh meat!" A voice screamed and my head snapped to the side as I reflexively dodged a small hunk of concrete someone threw with a sling.

I looked over to the group of what looked to be gangsters confidently striding at me armed with pipes and other blunt weapons with the leader looking to be wielding a machete of sorts.

"All of you but one may walk away... I have questions to ask. Should you refuse my orders I will kill every single one of you." I said simply as my Kasaya Blood Beads began glowing underneath my leather jacket and unfurled from around my wrist.

"Pah!" The leader spat at me literally spitting a thick wad of phlegm that collided on the ground just in front of me. "Hehe. A nice clean good looking uplander like you? We are going use you up till you are a broken toy then we will have our friends cook you up nice and good into some Corpse Starch!"

Hearing there plans to literally use me as a sex toy and then to literally eat my remains I sighed as I cleared my mind and then my Kasaya Beads flashed with red light as they lashed out and wrapped around the neck of the leader of the gangsters.

The sharp bloody beads deeply cut into the neck of the gangster who collapsed to his knees at the feeling his windpipe being shredded and pinched shut but before he could even scream or gurgle at the agony I spoke quietly. "You freaks will only understand fear... I will send a message then." Then calling upon my cultivator strength I jerked hard and the razor-sharp beads similar to a piano wire pulled itself through his neck sending his head flying into the air with a spray of blood.

"Kill the Pysker!" One of the gangsters cried out desperately attempting to rush me to stop me from doing whatever warp fuckery he believed I was doing but a number of the group instead just heel turned and began sprinting away as though there lives were at stake.

Not that it made a difference.

Pushing my Qi into my Kasaya Beads the whip greatly lengthened and with a loud snapping noise the whip acted like a steel wire breaking apart under high stress as it whipped aside so fast only a red blur was its presence as it tore through the half dozen people in front of me literally bisecting them at the waist and it only stopped as it shattered a set of rusty pipes.

Seeing the soon to be corpses in front of me I didnt bother hiding how my Kasaya Beads seemingly slithered across the ground and stabbed into the bodies and began draining the bodies of their blood as I stoically walked up to the lone survivor I left.

"Will you talk? Or do I need to feed you to my pet demon..." I said menacingly as the Kasaya Beads still wrapped around my wrist glowed a dark red in response to my words.

'God.... Khorne is going to love me.' I thought cringing as the under dweller blubbered and finally told me what I wanted to know as he saw his partners in crime literally be reduced to dried out mummies.

Ok so apparently this was Hive city Bornean, and there was a total of twenty major gangs that were ruling the Under-hive in various parts of the different levels of the Hive. The miniature city in front of me was actually ruled by two competing gangs and surprisingly they also controlled the major entrance to the Lower Hive Levels above us as the security and mechanics are basically using the gangs as security to protect the water treatment plants down here and only giving the upper-level members of the gangs some minor support like decent food and the occasional weapon they could 'lose' during a patrol.

I stared at the gang member for a moment after I got the answerers to the questions I wanted and then with a mental sigh I flicked my wrist and my Kasaya Beads stabbed into his head destroying his brain giving a painless death as my weapon drank his blood.

I couldn't trust him to lead me to somewhere safe in the city nor did I want him running off to some church down here or one of the Guardsmen stationed by the entrance to the floors above and tell them about an unregistered Pysker about to take power as that was something that even the normally apathetic oligarchs above their peasantry would sit up straight and would want them brought to heel either into their service or put into a Black Ship to be taken back to Holy Terra.

Either way would be a fate worse than death...

I looted the bodies and found some coins of indeterminate value and after a moment of hesitation I shrugged and took the leaders machete and then ripped off one of the gangsters' shirts into thin strips to tie tightly around the handle for a stronger grip.

"A sword cultivator would kill me for the insult of carrying this abomination..." I grumbled as the machete's blade was heavily pitted with rust and its edge was also chipped in places from where the wielder obviously smashed it into either metal pipes or chopped a great number of bones with the weapon.

Whenever I got the chance, I was going to definitely going to get a decent sword so I could use sword based martial arts with as Sword Cultivators bar none had the strongest offense of any sort of cultivator with the sheer speed and power they could call up with their swords.

I then walked forwards along the catwalk suspended over the churning vile water beneath me towards the dwellings in the distance with my loot in tow within my leather jackets pockets while also carrying one of the less ratty bags those gangsters were holding as a cover so I could use it as a decoy.

Even as I came closer with the way I was hunched over and the way that I didnt bother with the sneers of the people staring at me as I walked into the town, allowed me to avoid being questioned or otherwise accosted until I found what looked to be some form of bar as shown by the crudely scrapped drawing of a cup on metal sign. Or at least I believe it was a bar as I doubted the under hive would have something like a Starbucks down here in this hellhole.

Each person I passed by was to be blunt... Disgusting, as many were missing a limb, were clearly deranged or were suffering some other form of ailment making them a leper in a more civilized place.

But as I went into the bar I froze for a moment as I realized that this wasn't a bar. This was certainly a gang-controlled brothel or something as several chained up decently cleaned up women were shakily dancing in their own personal cage, obviously drugged out of their minds and more importantly each one was branded with the same cross with a skull over their wombs forming an ugly welted scar just above their exposed groins as they danced.

I noticed some of the bouncers were leaning off the walls they were out of sight as they noticed someone very much not a part of their gang walked into their territory, so I got moving to the end of the of building where there was a surprisingly well-dressed man cleaning a knife with rag.

"What you want brat?" The man asked raising an eyebrow before waving his hands to the bouncers that were approaching from behind me to stop where they were.

I could tell that he knew I didnt belong down here in the Under Hive so he was likely thinking he could sucker me in for something or another but either way I spoke my mind. "I want to get up to the Lower Hive... What will it cost me to get through the inspections and security."

The man scoffed before he broke out into hearty laughter literally shaking in his chair before he leaned forward and stabbed his knife into the table in front of him as he seemingly took me in for the first time. "Heh kid do you even know what you are asking? People live and die in the Under Hive for a reason. They don't want our kind breaking out of our molds and having to share more of their already limited resources in the Lower Hive."

The man shook his head smiling softly as he reached forward and slammed down a shot of a dark liquid, I hopped was whiskey before he looked back to me. "Kid just accept your lot in life and move on... We can't get a better life down here than what they allow to trickle down from their overstuffed gullets."

I briefly sneered before I exhaled and carefully looked around the building and the girls within before I spoke. "Those girls. How broken are they?"

The man chuckled and seemingly found me to something more than merely a mark he could get a piece of flesh out of before he threw me to the wolves. "Which one you want kid? They are all worth different amounts and don't worry... They are all thoroughly mentally scrambled by overdosing on different forms of combat stims as well as being briefly physically tortured into a state where any pain is mind shattering agony and the simplest pleasure will make her the most loyal pet you could ever want."

I nodded and with a few more glances I pointed out at a rather busty blonde-haired woman who didnt seem as damaged as the rest. "That one." I said and the people listening to our conversation froze as the room was filled with a deadly silence.

"We just captured her and were unsure of what to do with her... You see, we have captured and safely broken weak Pyskers, Eldar, and other freaks... But she is special, she is a Peredhel..." The man spat on the ground at the blond-haired woman and then as I paid more attention, I noticed her ears were actually strongly pointed unlike a humans along with her dancing being far more flexible than should be natural.

Peredhel were half Eldar and half human... And in this universe of extreme racism, they weren't accepted in either Human or Eldar planets and were typically living on massive ships similar to the Eldar's Craftworlds if at a much smaller scale.

But the biggest issue was how Peredhel could only be born and live to adult hood like she had under the premise that they harvested the organs of Space Marines as the Gene seeds within an Astartes was the only way the human portion of there blood could support the powerful Eldar blood within them.

In return for that, by being only half Eldar they were safe from the hunger of the Chaos God Slaanesh that has been haunting their dying race for millennium.

To say the Inquisition and the Astartes absolutely abhorred the Peredhel was an understatement as each one that lived to the adulthood was a symbol that an Astarte was harvested and lost in order to strengthen what they considered one of the most heretical Xeno races in existence.

"Why haven't you just killed her or given her to one of the churches?" I asked frowning as this whole situation was looking worse and worse but then I saw something in the darkened shadows of the rooms.

A group of men with elongated skulls almost like footballs were staring at me and I realized that truth of this place. This was a gene stealer cult.

"We were planning on making use of her in an auction but the gentleman who was to be our sponsor sadly died after one of his political rivals found out the coordinates of his toilet and the exact time, he woke up to use it everyday Haha! Even if it screwed us over on a big pay day you never hear stuff like that every day!" The man guffawed before he leaned forward and braced his face in his hands and stared at me.

"Look kid I can see you have... refined tastes so I will sell her to you for five hundred credits and not a chip less as I need her out of here before certain people find out I had her to begin with."

The whole reason I was even considering buying a woman at this point even with my food issues was the simple fact that I can easily use them as a cauldron for dual cultivation especially if they come pre mentally broken. But a half Eldar with their potent psychic latent powers would be worth more than a hundred bog standard humans.

In this universe I didnt have the luxury of being choosy on how I gained strength. For all I knew a massive swarm of Tyrranids or a Ork filled meteor will smash into this planet and render it to but a wasteland.

But seeing the proof of there already being a gene stealer cult right fucking in front of me. I doubt the Tyrranids are too far...

"Very well give me an hour to acquire the funds as I obviously wouldn't carry such wealth." I said blandly as I turned around and left the bar.