As it turned out, although the man had been effectively stopped from leaving the tent, he had somehow developed rather extraordinary senses for anything relating to the Chen family, or otherwise managed to recognise a glint of light as being caused by an overly polished plate of gold.

That led him to think that his enemies had finally come for him, and that it would be a good idea to dig out of the tent whether or not the Hunters would protect him, since he could then make some distance between himself and the pursuers again regardless of their actions. However, as someone that had run here from the south, he had less familiarity with sand than he needed, and so managed to do little more than cover the cloth surface of the tent with sand while making little progress. To be fair, that was also due to the arrays beneath each tent, but he didn’t realise that, and nobody was in a hurry to help him with that knowledge.

After all, he might conclude that the array is a trap planted a long time ago by the Chen family that would then activate once he spent enough time near it, capturing him and delivering him to them, and he would then be even more keen to escape. If he then ran into the Golden Lords themselves, his suspicions would be intensified, and it would be even more difficult to keep him safe, not that it was particularly easy in the first place.

In order to help him out, Wei Yi employed the same method that she had used on Long Wuchu to knock him out quickly and put him to him until the next day, at which point the Golden Lords would not be returning to camp under most circumstances, meaning that he would have no reason to be panicked and afraid. He would probably also benefit from a few things to keep him occupied, so she passed along another anonymous request to Fu Zan to ask him to create a few of the games from his world so that the man could have something to do on his own, without needing someone to stand by him constantly.

For the moment, there was no particular issue in terms of manpower, given that there was also no enemy to fight and that the desert tended to be pretty barren during normal times, not to mention a sandstorm, but if someone was to remain near him for long, he might suspect them as well.

That would take some time, as the tailor was only any good at his job due to his otherworldly gift while lacking experience in most other fields – according to Miyu, any items he made purely by himself would always feature the term ‘crude’ or ‘low-quality’ somewhere in the description provided by her otherworldly gift – so the guard was maintained for now.

Once Wei Yi stood around for a little bit to confirm that he wasn’t going to try to run off again, she returned to Great Dark’s tent and quickly relayed the situation to him. Since it wasn’t that surprising nor confusing, he had no questions and so they were able to return to their earlier discussion, with her bringing over another stool to be able to sit down rather than standing around the whole time as she did before.

“So, we need to figure out a way to cause the fight everyone is looking for to happen quickly enough to capture everyone’s attention, make it tough enough that they are convinced that they have defeated the foe that they had been looking for, and make sure that it doesn’t look like there were any more forces to be defeated, since that would just mean that they would stick around longer. The last is perhaps easiest to accomplish with a few planted items and maybe some kind of sacrifice site stained in dried blood to make it seem like everyone other than who they fight has already been killed, but that still requires the other two requirements to be fulfilled,” she said, solidifying three squares on the table and marking one, “Any ideas?”

“It is still rather difficult to guess… what exactly they are expecting from the Primordial Deity worshipers. If it is something vague and simple, like simply worshiping Primordial Cosmos… then it might be possible to push the blame onto some other group that is already hostile to us and them.”

“Assuming that we can find something of the sort in the desert, then yes, that is plausible, but if they go in shouting about the Primordial Deity as their justification for attack, the other force might believe that if they can convince them otherwise, they would get away with only minor losses,” Wei Yi placed her finger beside the first hollow square she created, “At that point, it would be the word of, at most, two seemingly competent members of the Hunters of the Cosmos, against that group and anything that the others are aware of regarding the worship of Primordial Deities.”

“Do you have a method to create a copy of yourself… or some phenomenon that couldn’t possibly exist, to make them think that their sacrifice had led to it?”

“The first one is unlikely, given that it fucks my head up far worse than the jade slips combined with the memories of the Thunder Lord ever could, but the latter is easier. Our problem is that if they discover such a thing, they may not be particularly keen to leave, and may instead think that it would be a good time to take care of a group or two that they don’t particularly like, which may include us, which may force us to expose our techniques, which would then cast doubt on all of us.”

She joined Great Dark in tapping on the former stools that have now become a table as they thought about this in greater detail. In truth, she did have one idea that would make even an inanimate object a fearsome foe that they would remember well, as she had personally experienced something much like it, but she neither wished to inflict it on other unless necessary and didn’t know how to cause it.

Had she had a spare spatial realm to work with, creating it – a wild spatial spirit simply tearing things apart through the warped space that it could manifest – wouldn’t be a challenge, as she had previously shattered a spatial realm while just at the Half-Step Emergent Anchor realm, but she neither had a realm of that sort nor did she intend to shatter one even if she did. Each spatial realm was precious in the modern world, and breaking any before they could become as prominent as they had been many years ago would just result in the chances of spatial realms becoming commonplace decreasing while also limiting the Ascendant’s Arbiter’s potential for growth through the usage of such realms.

Furthermore, she was still not entirely clear whether the exact violent reaction of the merging between Yi Fenwu and the Kong Holy Ground’s spatial spirit had been due to whatever methods she had been using, or if it could be manufactured anywhere. That, and after getting to know Yi Shi Ming, even if she hadn’t originally been a spatial spirit, she was ever so much more reluctant to randomly inflict suffering on an intelligent entity for a potentially functional distraction.

“Let’s say that we do use some kind of phenomenon to trick them. It has to appear incredibly dangerous to resolve and risky to leave in place, so there has to be a reasonable chance of injury and death among the present groups. We can likely stay back under the pretence of encountering something that looks more like it is related to Primordial Cosmos, but if we do send anyone, we have to do so while being relatively sure that they won’t die there. All of this does limit our options ever so slightly,” Wei Yi said after a while, marking another square, “Let’s assume that we’ve got something that works for that, and we’ve got traces of death. What can we include that will allow them to reasonably conclude that there is nothing more to fight?”

 

Huang Yu Di was not currently calm.

Although his tent was shut and there was someone standing outside to protect him, as well as to prevent him from snooping around, of course, he could swear that he heard the approach of the Chen family time and time again.

He had already seen the glint of gold, so he knew that it was only a matter of time until they came for him, but he didn’t want to simply let himself be taken. He had to get out of here, to notify the Hunters… no, they were permitting the Chen family to remain in their camp! They had to have accepted their payment and were now just letting him stew in that tent before he was taken by them! It wasn’t something that he could just stand, but the tent simply wouldn’t budge.

When his hands didn’t work, he drew the blade that had been by his side, weak and damaged as it was, and stabbed at the cloth, but right before his eyes it turned to gold and deflected him with ease.

‘No! They’re here! They’re already here!’ he exclaimed, “The Chen family have come for me!”

“Oh? You’ve got some problem with the Chen family?” a voice suddenly entered his ears, forcing him to turn despite all the effort that he wanted to put into breaking down the tent’s wall regardless of the threat behind him.

Against his will, he turned and glimpsed a figure covered in gold from head to toe, holding onto a golden weapon and wearing a peculiar featureless mask made of gold that somehow made his entire appearance hazy, as if the only clear thing around him was that mask. Judging by his voice, this was a man, but with the peculiar property of the mask, he could hardly be sure of anything other than his vague proportions and his weapon, a long sword that glistened with light the moment a single ray of the sun’s golden radiance so much as touched it.

“You’ve come for me! You will not get that money, you bandits!”

He still couldn’t see through the mask, but he could swear that he saw a grin appear on the man’s face, “Money? Where is it?”

Huang Yu Di kept a sound of alarm from escaping his mouth and turned to the side of the tent once more, desperately clawing at the golden surface that only seemed to grow stronger as the man from the Chen family neared him, the weapon in his hands audibly cutting through the air as he walked.

When he turned around again, he found that the man had already gotten to the middle of the tent, and that planar energy brimmed in his blade, flooding through his arm and chest to empower the imminent strike that he prepared slowly. It was as if he wanted to witness the despair and terror on Huang Yu Di’s face for as long as possible before putting him down, just as he knew the Chen family would.

“Your choice. That money you mentioned, or your life-”

Just as the man’s voice had previously appeared out of nowhere, another interrupted both of them, “Golden Lord! What are you doing in this tent?”

Huang Yu Di and the man in gold alike turned to see a blond woman with short hair and yellow eyes standing at the entrance to the tent, a long quarterstaff in her hands as she was also driving her planar energy throughout her body. After a moment, both of them recognised her as someone from the Hunters of the Cosmos, and for a brief moment doubt appeared within the mind of Huang Yu Di. Could the Hunters not have betrayed him, and did this Golden Lord just pass through their defences without attracting their attention? Could he still have a chance to live?

“You shouldn’t have found me, Chao girl. I’m two stages higher than you.”

“That makes no difference! Either get out right now, or I will beat you and ensure that W- the boss sees you too!”

“I’m not the one with a choice here… although, neither are you, girl.”

Despite his earlier slow movements, this time he moved with incredible speed, turning around fully and appearing in front of Chao Ru with his blade descending onto the space between her shoulder and her neck, where she wore no armour and where a great deal of damage could be wrought with ease.

Her eyes widened at the sheer speed with which he moved, but as she responded with nothing more but her instinct, she knew that she had seen better.

Blade and staff collided, pushing Chao Ru back into the tent’s entrance by a single step. A small nick had been made on her weapon, one that burned with heat as if a searing hot piece of metal had touched it there, while the Golden Lord’s weapon was entirely unharmed. In the inexperienced eyes of Huang Yu Di, it seemed like a good result for the gap in stages that the man had described a moment prior, but the Golden Lord presented a different assessment of the situation.

“A weak attack and you couldn’t even take it without moving. Your body is fine, but your control over planar energy is lacking, Chao girl,” he stated, lunging at her with less speed, but with a far greater quantity of force, made obvious by the formation of a planar construct around his weapon.

It looked like a wave of pure molten gold following behind his strike, ready to overwhelm anything it touched and consume all that was unlucky enough to be covered by it.

With the decrease in speed, Chao Ru did have the chance to respond with something more than a simple block, but it only took her a moment to realise that if she did attempt to do anything other than defend, she would be overwhelmed without a single chance to damage the foe in front of her. She drew upon her planar energy, flaming red rushing through her meridians, and brought it to her hands and weapon in attempt to form some kind of defensive barrier in time. The energy got there in time, but before any cohesive barrier, his strike appeared to have accelerated with each moment that it had been stabbing through the air, and thus it reached her far more quickly than she had anticipated.

Perhaps the only thing that he wasn’t able to overwhelm her with was his lack of ability to shift the direction of his strikes, as neither the downward slash nor the forward stab had changed their trajectory to benefit him, resulting in this attack also hitting her quarterstaff.

It dug some way into the staff but was easily dislodged by the sheer force of the strike throwing her back by another few steps, causing her feet to slide into the sand outside the tent, while the wave of molten gold crashed into her, meeting the scattered flaming energy that she had become surrounded by.

As each drop of gold touched the fire, it was able to pass through, but each one diminished noticeably before it touched her skin, resulting in the overall damage easily being halved by the loose planar energy that dispersed soon after. That caused the Golden Lord to raise an eyebrow, although neither of those observing him could be sure what had given them that impression through the solid and featureless sheet of gold upon his face.

“Fire may oppose metal, but that is more than I’m used to… Very well, I still have time.”

He may have said that, but Chao Ru was not intending to let him attack either her or Huang Yu Di without doing anything about it. She called out, “Hunters! The Golden Lords-”

“I said I have time, girl. They’re not aware of you or I, are they?”

As he was yet to move again, whether to flee or to strike, she quickly turned to the side, where she had clearly seen a number of the Ascendant’s Arbiters standing around before she entered, as they waited for the day to end or for some instruction to come from their leader.

They were there, still, but everything other than her, Huang Yu Di, the Golden Lord, and the tent they were fighting in seemed dim and dull, moving just a little slower than usual with floaty movements. It was like they were all caught within a thick grey fluid slowing down their actions, while the three of them were able to observe them from a pocket of air.

“Now, you should die. Each moment wasted will come out of my paycheck.”

He blurred again, appearing near her but a few steps further away from before as he swung his blade once. Before it could finish, the shadow of a second, third and fourth strike appeared to intermingle with reality, each one generating a golden wave with the same intensity as the one that had pushed her out of the tent in the first place, while each strike was as fast and fluent as the one that had begun their fight.

Chao Ru was hardly able to contemplate how she would defend herself in the situation before the waves were already approaching, having grown far denser and stronger than the first, perhaps due to the greater distance between them in which to flow, and no simple block would help her this time.

Her body also couldn’t react on sheer reflex, as the training and practise that she had with Wei Yi and in Paragon with the rest lacked the intensive element of planar energy just yet. For a moment, the thought of defeat entered her mind, but the memory of the previous day, as well as of all the effort that she had put into going this far quickly overwhelmed it.

She had done so much already, even if it wouldn’t compare in the slightest to the achievements of someone like Wei Yi, and she might even have the chance to carry the Ascendant’s child, so she couldn’t simply let this man with his faceless mask and calm attitude defeat her! She was part of the Ascendant’s Arbiters, the group that strove to better the world, and in her eyes, the kind of thing that the Golden Lord was participating in was part of the countless issues that plagues the Planar Continents.

For a brief moment, she heard a strange beat. It sounded like her heart, but, at the same time, it was nothing alike, being far stronger, more impactful. If her heart sounded as strong as two wooden spoons colliding, then this sound was more akin to a great war drum that heralded combat.

Alongside it, she felt her vision brighten and intensify, the overwhelming golden waves almost shrinking as she looked upon them, allowing her to see past and through them at the man in the golden mask. Her every muscle pumped with power, and it was one that she could not restrain no matter what. Fortunately, she did not wish to.

The Golden Lord witnessed the woman’s eyes suddenly turn silver as a vast quantity of the same flaming energy as before gathered around her, flooding her weapon and muscles. Before, it wouldn’t have concerned him in the slightest, but her strength had leapt up from what one might expect from that of the third realm to that of the fourth in just a single, seemingly ordinary breath, and the greater quantity of power caused her entire figure to appear ablaze as she vanished from the spot with even greater speed than he had been able to muster under the current perfect circumstances.

She met the golden wave with a wide swing of the staff, cutting through and dispersing it as if it had been naught but a wave of hot air, and in the next moment Chao Ru was in front of him, the end of her quarterstaff flying at his chest.

The moment before it struck, he had been able to invoke the power of the mask and accelerate himself, meeting the attack with his blade but clearly feeling the vast difference between everything about her in this moment. Just as he had done a second prior, she did not leave him with one attack, but, as her now silver eyes stared upon him with fury, she thrust and struck at him with the staff over and over again.

His arm had become numb from just one of those strikes, so he would hardly sit around and take more as she had previously been forced to accept his attacks. While he used the mask once more, he made use of his great speed to dodge and weave away from as many strikes as he could, blocking all those that he had been unable to avoid or that otherwise managed to adjust to meet him nonetheless.

However, he only had to go on for so long before he got the result that he wanted, at which point he ducked below one of her attack and thrust up, trying to impale her neck.

Chao Ru, as quick as she was now, was able to see this sudden change in tactic and thus spun to the side, just barely managing to get away with a small and shallow cut on the side of her neck while she used her staff to prevent him from remaining that close to her.

She had several ideas of how to take him down, if given enough time both in general and with the strange power that she had suddenly obtained, but before she could either strike or block she felt another attack coming from behind her, once that she had no choice but to wildly dodge away from if she wanted to keep her spine. Dodging to the side, she was able to see another figure in gold with a golden mask covering his features, but before she had even the slightest chance to rest she could feel yet another blow flying at her from behind.

By whatever miracle had granted her the current speed and strength that she possessed, she was able to narrowly evade each opening attack, but as their numbers grew they all sought to strike her at once, with as many approaching at the same time as the space around her allowed, doing more than minimizing the damage upon her body was the most that she could achieve.

Soon, once the tide of new Golden Lords finally seemed to end, the cut on her neck and the two marks on her quarterstaff were joined by far more similar marks, although each had been far more shallow than either of them had expected any one wound to be. Clearly, her physical endurance had risen with the rest of her strength and energy, with the latter allowing her to endure all of the golden waves that followed their blows with little more than a thick layer of sweat on her body that mixed with drops of blood.

For a moment, both forces paused, with Chao Ru desperately trying to protect her every side while the Golden Lords looked upon her and were clearly pondering the fastest approach to ending her life.

“Has a killing strike been used yet?” one of the Golden Lords asked.

Another immediately replied, “No.”

“We are using the first killing strike then. At once, Golden Lords!” the first one called out, with all of them raising their weapons and readying techniques all at the same time. A dense sea of liquid gold seemed to grow around them, surrounding Chao Ru entirely, brimming with even more energy than any of their strikes had managed to muster before this.

They shifted their feet to be able to thrust forward and end this.

However, a hand suddenly appeared from the muddled grey around them and grabbed onto the mask on one of their faces, grasping it tightly and pulling.

“You can’t take these off- AH!”

His proclamation had been following immediately by a vague golden sheen appearing around the hand, which, as they were able to see now, was connected to the powerful body of the woman that had greeted them on their way here, her silver eyes glaring at them with far more killing intent contained within them than the woman that they had been attacking. As soon as the golden shade came in contact with the mask, it was pulled off his face, clearly causing some pain, and the masks on the faces of the others all vanished when she brought the mask behind herself, her hand quickly returning as an empty fist heading straight for the face of the Golden Lord that she had exposed.

They were unable to see a drop of planar energy being used, nor had they even been sure of her cultivation, but they did know that she was striking at Chen Chen, a man in the seventh stage of Active Core, who was still able to muster some of his energy to defend even through the pain of the mask’s violent removal.

Despite that, as the grey veil that had been covering the world dissipated as its cause had vanished behind her back, they were able to see her fist easily penetrate the defensive layer of planar energy that Chen Chen had manifested, hitting the side of his face and audibly crushing a part of his jaw and skull as his entire figure was thrown onto the ground in the blink of an eye, the sheer impact burying him a metre into the sand while throwing up a large cloud of it.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing, Golden Lords? Are you tired of your life?” Wei Yi called out, her loud and clear voice immediately drawing the attention of the many Arbiters around them.

Without any discussion at all, the remaining Golden Lords tried to flee, but they suddenly felt a great force push them down onto the ground, then into it as the sand beneath their feet turned to quicksand that they could do nothing about. At the same time, they saw Great Dark arrive on the scene, his eyes clearly blazing with energy of the fourth realm at the very least, leading to a false conclusion.

“What has happened here?” he asked.

“It’s the Chen family, what do you think they were doing? They thought they’d cause some chaos and some losses there and there, and they would then be able to profit from this in some way. I’m right, aren’t I, assholes?”

“We are from the Chen family, and they will not let you-”

“The Chen family means shit here! You enter our camp, try to kill our men, attack someone who we have decided to protect, and then have the fucking nerve to say that we will not be permitted to do something?” Wei Yi asked, approaching one of the Golden Lords and stomping on his shoulder with her foot, easily shattering a few more bones and dislocating the rest, “Go on, you gilded fuckers, what were you going to say? Go on, speak!”

“They… they…” the Golden Lord, a figure that had been near Chen Chen most of the time while they had been waiting around in the camp earlier in the day, couldn’t provide a reply.

“If you had been spewing random bullshit, then maybe you should have refrained from speaking in the first place. Now, I’ll break a few more bones and limbs ahead of time. Tell me, arm or leg? Which one do you lot prefer more? No doubt it’s the hand for most of you, though,” she glanced at the two women in this group, “Don’t you try looking smug at their expense. Who told you I wouldn’t injure you just as much as the rest? I’m not someone that can’t hit another just because they look pretty, or just because they’re female, so you better give this some thought as well.”

The Golden Lords now collectively glared at the man that had provoked her with their usual warning to those that tried to mess with their plans, entirely failing to take the meaning of her words to heart as they did so.

Meanwhile, Chao Ru, whose hands let go of the staff in her hands a few moments after Wei Yi had appeared, finally took a deep breath of relief as she stumbled forward.

“Wei Yi…”

“Yes?” the Ascendant quickly turned to her, bringing her into an embrace with one arm while she continued to observe the Golden Lords with one eye, even if she didn’t think that they would easily escape from the God Burial Sea, “All of your wounds are light, so if you stay close for a few moments, you’ll recover fully… Your eyes, when did they change?”

As she spoke, she provided her with the lifeforce from the Energy Pylon and the Vitality Siphon physiques at the same time, causing much needed energy to rush into the woman’s body and to accelerate the recovery of the wounds.

“My eyes?” Chao Ru repeated, momentarily trying and obviously failing to gaze upon her own eyes, “What happened to them?”

“They’re silver right now, same as… You got a sudden boost of power a short time ago, right?”

She nodded, “Mhm.”

“That explains it. It isn’t permanent, just in case you were concerned, but it was caused by the sudden activation of a pool of bloodline power within you. Given that your eyes currently look like mine, I don’t think I need to explain exactly what the origin of that power had been.”

Judging by the slight blush that appeared on her face, as well as the awkward smile that followed it, there was truly no need to clarify it to her. Besides blood, one substance that brimmed with bloodline power had filled her all day long just the day before, and so Chao Ru remembered the sensation of it, the heat that had spread out all over her body, really well.

That bloodline power could be shared and then activated in such a manner did come as a surprise to Wei Yi, who had thought it to be something that was only of use to the cultivator generating it. The way in which it temporarily changed one’s appearance to match that of the bloodline’s origin was also quite intriguing, giving her some ideas on the topic of bloodlines as a whole. However, she was sure that she could explore more uses of bloodline power the moment that she brought it up by a realm or two and could more easily manifest it as she willed it outside of her body.

“If you don’t mind, I’ll quickly deal with those bastards, then I should be able to get back to you. Rest in my tent for a while.”

Chao Ru nodded again and departed from the embrace, her wounds having already begun to close and heal. Once she made her way past the gathered crowd of Ascendant’s Arbiters observers, who had naturally cleared the path for her, and safely entered the tent, Wei Yi turned back to the Golden Lords that had sunk up to their necks into the sand.

 

In the tent, the blond woman got to the bed, her legs trembling as she lay down upon it and released a tired breath, a significant quantity of unseen impurities escaping alongside it.

Her body, which had brimmed with energy a moment prior, suddenly became weak, and she could feel a faint itch at her eyes come and go within seconds, likely wiping away the silver in her eyes that she had still been unable to see. Every muscle and bone that had obtained miraculous power no longer possessed all of it, but she was faintly able to tell that she had retained a small degree of it all through the enhancement that it had done to her body, as well as the impurities that the process had removed.

Still, with the wounds that covered her body, even if they were sealing themselves quickly, and the pain that they caused, it was rather difficult for her to smile at this kind of personal improvement, especially not when the slight movement of the mouth led to the minimal shifting on skin near the neck, stretching the wound there a little bit.

As such, she shut her eyes, did not move her body, and allowed herself to rest.

 

“You know what, I’ve changed my mind. I don’t think I’ll be killing you slowly.”

“Who are you to make the rules around here?” the woman that she had called out before managed to find some drop of courage in her body, “Isn’t that guy the boss?”

“I suppose that you lot really are fucking idiots, aren’t you? How long have I been the one talking to you rather than him? As I said, I will not kill you slowly, because you hurt the people of the camp, with your crime being made even worse due to you attacking someone that I know and care about. So, enjoy your last moments here in the sand. I’m sure the verdict of death shall soon be passed upon you.”

Indeed, not long after she said that, they could see and hear the approach of the other factions, all of whom the Golden Lords had been attacking prior to being called in to defeat one woman in the camp of the Hunters of the Cosmos.

Some of them had thought that something was odd then, and some did want to flee, but none of them were able to deny that they could no longer change the situation. Even if they tried to speak, their bloodied weapons had already been pried from their hands by the sand and brought to the surface, and even a simple check would easily confirm that it had come from Chao Ru and the other people that they had attacked, so few words would be of any use.

At that moment, even those that viewed money as the ultimate power understood that they would need to pay far, far more than they could promise in order to get out of this.

“Hunters of the Cosmos! Have you also been attacked?” the Keepers of Groves managed to arrive first, somehow making use of wood-type techniques to travel faster than those more used to the environment, “Our camp has been hit by someone, and the only survivor out of four says that… Are those the Golden Lords?”

“I highly doubt that is the testimony they had provided,” one of the male leaders of the Flood Kings of Shi said, “However, we have also been attacked by- the Golden Lords? You’ve captured them?”

The 7^th Legion and the Perpetuals both arrived a brief time after them, and did not grace them with any remarks of their own, although both were clearly looking at the Golden Lords with a great deal of hostility that they were unable to concentrate towards a single person due to the masks that had covered their faces during the earlier attacks.

All of the 7^th Legion had a number of cuts on their arms and a large cut along the chest, the damage having been spread out across them by their group techniques and the flow that connected them. Even then, the degree of injury that each one of them suffered showed that the Golden Lords may have taken them as the most significant threat and had invested the most energy into taking care of them as quickly as they could.

On the other hand, the Perpetuals managed to get away with no obvious wounds on their bodies, but the appearances of those that were not covered by hoods seemed like they had aged a significant amount since the last time that anyone had seen them.

Presumably, this was also part of their own odd methods.

“We’ve had a method prepared to trap the worshiper if they attempted to enter our camp, but we had managed to lure them in instead,” Great Dark explained, “They had attacked us as well, but they had failed to anticipate this and my own strength. Their leader… appears to have died in the sand, so these are all that we have left. Should we kill them?”

“Those bastards must die!” one of the Hammers declared, having arrived at some point in time.

“I don’t know exactly why they had attacked some of us, but they must pay for their actions. We’ll help, if necessary,” Shi Bao Ya said.

One of the Keepers of Groves affirmed, “They do not deserve to live.”

All at once, the 7^th Legion stated, “End them!”

“This one believes that the Great Worm has sentenced them to die through his open maw. We need only strike them down.”

Since everyone had provided a unanimous judgement of these people, Great Dark nodded to Wei Yi, who stepped up to the group of heads in the sand. For a brief moment, she stood there and did nothing, and the grip of the sand around them began to weaken, momentarily igniting the Golden Lords’ hope.

Before they could get too much of it, she combined her own fist, a combat technique, and the Titanic Demolisher to instantly crush their worthless skulls.