Divine Emperor of Death

Chapter 5060 Death Triad Ambushes

The night in the Magical Beast Wildlands was thick with vitality, still protected by the trees and rivers running through the land. The heaven and earth energy drifted like an invisible tide through the forest, slowly being eaten under the onslaught of the desolate air, but in locations where the land was blessed with thick vitality, the heaven and earth energy could still survive for some time.

In a clearing, a bonfire crackled and splintered, casting amber light across the jubilant bandits under the moonlit sky. They passed around jugs of stolen wine and tore into the pill palace's provisions. Laughter thundered through the forest.

"Hahaha! Today, we had a big haul!"

"Not only did we snatch so many spirit herbs and immortal crystals, but we've also got plenty of women. This is insane."

"Letting these alchemists think that they found a holy ground for growing spirit herbs and implanting a spy to shift their entire power here, only for them to be robbed by us- holy shit! Iron Brain, you're so fucking smart! I wouldn't want to make you my enemy, so I'll marry your sister."

"Fuck, I don't have a sister." Iron Brains snarled before he smirked and turned to look at the cage where there were plenty of women, some injured but all of them bound in golden chains.

"But I suppose I could adopt a sister…"

He said leeringly, causing the others to burst out laughing.

"Only pick a few. The rest are supposed to be merchandise. Otherwise, the boss wouldn't-"

"Fuck you, Drain Dog. Stop pissing on our excitement. Without Iron Brains, we wouldn't have this kind of haul."

"That's why I said he could pick a few. Did I say that you could pick a few?"

"…!"

The bandit wanted to roar, but he was pulled back and chugged a wine.

Drain Dog sneered and left.

The argument was drowned beneath another wave of laughter from the bandit comrades, seemingly saving their brother from being beheaded overnight.

However, it didn't seem like too big a deal.

Someone hurled a wine jug across the fire, and it shattered against a crate, spraying red liquor across the dirt. Nobody cared. Tonight was a night for excess. The plan had gone flawlessly. After all, a spy planted inside a pill palace a month ago, slowly feeding poison into the ears of their leadership, convincing them that the Magical Beast Wildlands held a stretch of land so saturated with heaven and earth energy that it would become the perfect cradle for nurturing spirit herbs of the highest grade.

The entire caravan had mobilized. Alchemists, guards, servants, supplies, and enough cultivation resources to make a sect weep with envy, all of it funneled down a single road through the forest, and right into the arms of Earth Gorge's men.

The women in the cage said nothing. A few stared at the ground, their expressions fearful or listless. They had seen the men get slaughtered, but their fates would be even worse, sold and toyed with until their deaths.

The whole reason they had decided to move to the forest was that the city they were in had already descended into chaos, with heaven and earth energy thinning out. Hence, they had no choice but to leave.

They pressed themselves against one another for warmth, their robes torn and their wrists raw beneath the golden chains. One among them, a young alchemist with dried blood at her temple, kept her gaze fixed somewhere past the treeline, though there was nothing to see beyond the dark.

None of the bandits thought to post a proper watch.

At the edge of the clearing, where the firelight began to fade into the embrace of the forest, something shifted.

A bandit, half-drunk and unsteady, staggered away from the others. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, grumbling to himself as he sought a quieter place to relieve himself.

"Fuck, to eat is to shit. Why is the heaven and earth thinning like this? Is something wrong with the world?"

He muttered and cursed under his breath before he found a spot.

Just as he was about to whip out his thing, he changed his mind and was about to remove his pants, but his movements froze as he stared ahead.

Two faint lights glimmered in the darkness.

He frowned, leaning slightly as his vision struggled to focus. Abruptly, another pair of sharp lights opened beside those lights, appearing extremely cold. But just before he could react, the light in his eyes died out, and before he could fall, he landed softly on the ground.

No one noticed this except the alchemist woman trapped in the cage. Her heart clench but she didn't make a sound, her eyes filled with hatred as she looked at the bandits, barely suppressing a crazed grin.

Time passed very slowly in her perception.

Suddenly, there was a commotion closer to the cage, where the guards had been placed, rather than outside, as though they were more afraid the chained women would escape than of being attacked.

"Oye, Tree Troll, did you see that?"

A bandit called out a pock-faced bandit, the wine jug hovering halfway to his lips. He pointed beyond the flames of the bonfire, barely able to witness a pair of dreadful eyes that almost made him think it was his imagination if it weren't for his powers.

"You have good eyes and ears because of your dragonfly bloodline." Said the other bandit before wanting to sound the alarm.

However, when he turned to look, he saw a pair of eyes coldly staring at him from beyond the cage.

"Uhh!?"

The sound of horror barely escaped from his mouth when the lean and beautiful figure leaped like a feline creature jumping out of the bush to ambush. When this figure flew past him and landed between him and his fellow bandit, both their heads fell to the ground.

The women in the cage were dumbstruck as they saw long purple hair woman with three purple-black tails appear before them. When she shot a look at them with her cold, purple-golden eyes, she smiled and placed a hand over her lips.

"Hiii!!!"

However, a little girl couldn't take the fright and screamed out, even though she tried to suppress it.

"Idiot!" The chained woman from behind jumped and closed her mouth, but it was too late!'

Or so she thought when she noticed she was no longer in the same space.

Instantly, she knew they were pulled into a life ring.

Outside, Styx's figure disappeared as a shroud of pitch-black death energy encased her. She became one with the darkness as she disappeared.

In the boisterous atmosphere of the bonfire, pitch-black strands of energy flew about, felling one bandit after another.

At first, the bandits thought that their fellow degenerates were dead drunk, unconscious to the point of passing out. However, as more bandits fell, their sense of danger was finally tripped.

"Enemy attack!"

Iron Brains roared, his voice cracking through the festivity like a blade of order. The remaining bandits scrambled upright, wine jugs shattering against the ground as hands flew to weapons, their survival instincts finally overriding their intoxication.

Thirty-nine men, their faces shifting from confused to alarmed to furious as they finally registered the bodies littered around the bonfire like discarded rags.

The pitch-black strands of death energy had already dissolved back into the night.

*Bzzz!~*

Powerful undulations erupted from the bandits in unison.

Their power wasn't lacking, as one of them seemed to be at the Level Six Empyrean Stage, the one who warned Iron Brains to only take out a few women of his liking.

On the other hand, Iron Brains and his bandit friend, who joked about marrying his sister, both surged with Level Four Empyrean Stage undulations, their confidence from the night of victory gradually turning into vigilance.

The rest formed a loose perimeter as though mimicking some kind of battle formation, but there was no formation core, much less flags or other nodes to secure their positions. Their cultivation bases ranged from Level One Empyrean Stage to Level Three Empyrean Stage, their senses straining against the darkness that had begun to suffocate the clearing.

By the time they started to look around, they didn't even see the pitch-black strands of death energy. It had already dissolved back into the night.

"What the hell is going on!?" one shouted, his voice cracking.

"Show yourself!"

"…"

Silence ensued after their roars as they held their weapons.

At this moment, Iron Brains barely managed to notice the bonfire's flames swaying in the wind when there was no fucking wind. His scalp turned numb as though they had met some kind of ghost, but he finally saw someone arrive from the dark reaches of the forest.

From the frame, it appeared to be a black-robed man with a slightly muscular build that was firm and desirable.

He came from directly ahead, his three purple-black tails fanning behind him like smoke given weight and form. The bonfire's amber light perfectly portrayed the purplish-black of his hair, the blonde threading through the sides, and the pair of silver-black axes that appeared in his hands. His pale face held no particular expression, as though he was already looking at a bunch of dead people.

"You motherfuc-"

One bandit was about to step forward to deal with them when the bandit behind him held him and pointed towards the side.

A crescent-patterned black-robed woman emerged from the right, her long purple hair painting a beautiful yet deadly sight because of the long fang blade she held in her grasp.

However, it wasn't over.

On the other flank, a crimson-black-robed man stepped out. His lean frame instantly made people think that he was an assassin, but his dark blond hair that looked like raging flames under the light of the bonfire made one wary of his true nature.

By this time, the bandits did a head count and managed to learn that only thirty-nine out of the eighty survived this onslaught from these three strangers. Their sentries atop the trees who were on lookout also seemed to have been killed silently long ago.

Otherwise, they wouldn't have been ambushed like this.

But what was incredulous was these strange people who looked like they were from the same beast clan, perhaps even sibling feys, all had the aura of a Level Seven Immortal Emperor.

Drain Dog narrowed his eyes, his nose picking up the scent of a great deal of danger from these brats.