Chapter 11: Spoils

       “Boom!!!”

“What, what… the hell just happened?!” Elder Shi panicked due to the explosion.

“Look alive.” Longtian Xucheng said.

Before he was even done speaking, he had already extended his senses to cover the entire Mountain Pot outpost. Elder Shi promptly did the same, expanding his spirit to get a glimpse of what was going on in the outpost.

Their spirit easily pierced through the smoke and dust, allowing them to see what was transpiring in the outpost. Some parts of the building were on fire while some disciples laid on the floor. Some of these disciples were afflicted with severe burns while the rest managed to get off with light injuries.

Within the center of the room, a man dressed in all black was fighting a disciple of the Hollow Dragon Sect. The disciple was already in the Beast-lord stage and he was hardly his opponent's match. In just three moves, the disciple was easily defeated. Elder Shi and Longtian Xucheng easily deduced that the black-robed man was obviously in the Beast-Emperor realm, two minor realms above the disciple.

As if sensing something, the figure in black suddenly dashed out of the outpost and started running towards a nearby river.

“!”

“!”

“He’s fast!” The person’s sudden burst of speed shocked both of them.

“Elder Shi” But Longtian Xucheng did not panic, he instead called Elder Shi.

‘Goddamn brat ordering me.’ Elder Shi grumbled internally at Longtian Xucheng's rude attitude towards him. But he could not disobey him, after all the mission hall put Longtian Xucheng in charge of the operation.

“I’m on it!” Elder Shi floated forward.

He swung his sleeve forward and said. “Go forth and slice my enemies, Wind Blades!”

Several gusts of wind in the form of seven sharp blades emerged from the air and flew toward the man in black robes.

“Hehe, you can’t escape me, my spirit senses can extend as far as a radius of 500 meters around me, meaning any attack I use here is directed at you with increased accuracy.” Elder Shi gloated as his Wind Blades flew toward the man with great speed.

But what happened next caught Elder Shi and Longtian Xucheng by surprise. The man they assumed to be in the Beast-Emperor realm easily dodged five of the wind blades, blocked one with a barrier talisman and lost his left arm to the last one.

“What!” Elder Shi exclaimed.

“You vermin, take another one, Wind Bla…”

“Stop.” Longtian Xucheng put forth his hand and prevented Elder Shi from activating his technique.

“I’ll deal with him.” He calmly said as he began he put his hands on one of his swords.

‘Longtian Xucheng wants to act? The only time he unsheathed his Twin Dragon Devouring Blades was during his fight against the Ethereal River Sect master.’ Elder Shi retracted his Qi and waited for Longtian Xucheng to act.

“He is almost out of the range of my spiritual senses. I only have now to act.” He reminded Longtian Xucheng.

“He might be out of yours, but he is not out of mine.” Longtian Xucheng said but by the time the sound was reaching Elder Shi, Longtian Xucheng was nowhere to be seen.

“What?! When did he?! Faster than sound with no sonic boom. He has reached the realm of Sound King in his movement techniques?” Elder Shi was baffled by the speed Longtian Xucheng just displayed.

“Huhuhu… That was close, no one told me two Demon-Gate cultivators would be here. Shit, that bitch used me as bait. Luckily, I must have escaped out of the range of their spiritual senses, I’m lucky I got off with just losing an arm.” The cultivator in the black robe rejoiced as he believed he had finally escaped.

 

Swish

“Who are you?”

“What?!” The black-robed man was surprised to see someone standing in front of him all of a sudden.

“Who are you?” Longtian Xucheng asked again.

‘I don’t know why he is here, but die.’ The man did not answer but instead dashed toward Longtian Xucheng with a rapier in his remaining arm.

   He pointed the rapier at Longtian Xucheng's neck hoping to kill him with one blow.

Shiing

“Huh?!”

Thud

‘Heh, what is my body doing over there? Why am I still alive?’ The man thought to himself.

“I won’t ask again. Who are you?” Longtian Xucheng asked coldly while holding the decapitated head of the man.

Meanwhile, back at Little Garden, Vasha sat in a meditative position while injecting Qi into Jiao Xuan’s blood-red ring.

Kachak

‘Finally’ Vasha breathed a sigh of relief. He was scared that the ring was already damaged. After all, he had been pouring Qi into the ring for the past ten minutes without any reaction.

“I guess it requires that bond to give me full access huh? That vermin probably never unlocked it this entire time.” Vasha swallowed a Qi replenishing pill to help him recover his spent Qi.

After regaining some of his Qi, he once again injected the Qi in the pattern of the runes on the ring. The ring began to give off a blood-red glow and Vasha’s senses were pulled into space by the ring.

“Wow” Vasha marveled as he sensed the size of the room. The space connected to the ring was larger than the room he was currently in. It measured 16m by 16m from one end to another and was about 10m high.

Within this space was a pile of materials and scrolls. Vasha directed his senses to the piles and what he saw there shocked him.

“Dark Element Crystal!”

“Yang soil essence.”

“Ethereal Sun Fairy dust?”

“And many more materials I cannot even name.”

Vasha directed his senses to the scrolls and books and what he saw surprised him.

“What is this?! I can’t read any of this!” The writings on the scrolls and scripts were of a different writing system. It looked elegant and esoteric, something about it robbed him the wrong way.

“Some of these are cultivation techniques and cultivation notes. I can only get so far with diagrams alone.” Learning cultivation techniques required a combination of instinct, visualization, and immense theoretical knowledge. But just relying on only one of these could lead to Qi deviation or cause hidden injuries in the body. This was the main reason why Vasha did not dare cultivate the techniques depicted without knowing how to decipher the text.

“I should probably look for hints on this language when I get back to the sect. Or maybe look for the place where Vermin found this ring.”

“Hmm?” Vasha was about to give up on the books when he saw a book underneath the pile that was written in the common language of the long-lost Astral Dragon Continent.

“This is Dragon Script!” He exclaimed.

“A pure one at that too.”

“It’s been years since I have seen one. Even towards the end of the great Astral Empire, the Dragon script was mostly a diluted, pig style.” Vasha lamented.

“Let me see if I can still read it. Thect@ v&t M@geddo#.” He slowly said.

“The Book of Doom?”

“Interesting.” Vasha decided to remove the book from the space to have a closer look at it.

The cover of the book was as dark as the abyss itself. It displayed a grim picture in the blood of some people terrified of an object in the sky.

“The Astral Empire? Does this book of Doom have anything to do with the collapse of that great civilization? Meaning this must be at least 5000 years old.” Vasha was giddy with excitement as he deduced the meaning of the image.

The book gave off a scent of death and despair but Vasha ignored it and instead without a second thought opened the book.

“YOU ARE KNOCKING ON THE DOOR!!”

Boom

Those were the words he heard before his head exploded with tremendous amounts of information.