Chapter 175 - Wraithfiend

Half an hour later, the battle had nearly reached its end. The once level, dense mountain forest had collapsed in jagged patches, one stretch after another. On many places across the ground, ice crystals left behind by the fighting still clung in glittering sheets.

BOOM! With one final thunderous crash, the battle fell silent.

Everything around them was quiet enough to frighten a man.

The burly man lay flat on his back at the center of a huge crater. He stared up at the dead-still sky, where the full moon hung high and cold, and let out a long breath.

“Hah... finally over.”

After lying there in silence for several breaths, he struggled to his feet. There was still a trace of lingering fear in his eyes.

Those two had been frighteningly strong.

Fortunately, they had been careless.

With that thought, the burly man gave a faint shake of his head. He bent down and casually picked up a severed hand slick with blood, then slowly made his way toward the edge of the crater.

Beside the crater was a river that had once flowed down from the mountains. But now the little valley carved out by the stream had run dry. Fallen trees and pits blasted open by the aftershocks of the battle had cut the entire river clean in two.

His gaze swept over the area, and the burly man soon found the person he was looking for. A short-haired old man with one severed arm, standing beside the dried-up river valley.

When the burly man came up beside him, the one-armed old man glanced back. His voice was neither warm nor cold. “You all right?”

The burly man forced a smile and said in a low voice, “My wounds are fine. It’s just a pity about Zhou Jing—”

“B, shut up!” the old man snapped, cutting off his attempt to say a real name.

They could not leave behind any trace.

The burly man froze for a moment, then nodded and corrected himself. “It’s just a pity C died.”

After saying that, he looked toward the woods a thousand feet away.

There was a corpse there. It belonged to the slightly plump woman. Her whole body had first been frozen into an ice sculpture, and then someone had punched straight through her chest.

The short-haired old man looked quite indifferent at the sight of his companion’s death. He said softly, “No matter. Whether C lives or dies is not important.”

The burly man was somewhat displeased by the old man’s cold-bloodedness, but in the end, he said nothing. He glanced in the direction where the woman’s source qi had vanished.

“What about Ran Qingmo?”

The short-haired old man said in a low voice, “No matter. She’s already badly wounded. I planted a mark on her. She won’t get far. I’ll go after her shortly.”

“What if you can’t catch up?” the burly man asked hesitantly. “That woman probably still has some tricks left.”

The short-haired old man hesitated slightly. “It does not matter. Even with third rank cultivation, it would take around three days to make a round trip to the nearest county city from Shengshan. That is enough time for us to destroy every trace. The plan may have to be delayed a little, though. After all, there is a good chance the Prime Minister’s Estate has been dragged into this.”

After a pause, the burly man asked the old man in a low voice, “What about that man from earlier?”

The short-haired old man said nothing. He only raised his hand and pointed toward a large crater in the middle of the nearby river valley.

The burly man glanced over.

The man in the blood red robe who had suddenly launched that sneak attack was gone. All his flesh had vanished without a trace. Only a skeleton and a blood colored robe lay quietly in the center of the crater.

The burly man withdrew his gaze, amusement flickering in his eyes.

“If that fellow had ambushed me or B, the three of us might really have died here. Too bad for him, he chose to sneak up on you, old man.”

The short-haired old man glanced at the burly man and said softly, “That man’s methods were strange. Very strange. His own cultivation was only around seventh rank, yet he could burst out with source qi close to third rank. It seems he was relying on some external object.”

The burly man chuckled. “You, old man, actually have the nerve to call someone else’s methods strange? Your own cultivation method is what I’d call truly strange. To be honest, sometimes I feel like you do not even count as human anymore.”

With that said, the burly man tossed the severed hand he was carrying to the short-haired old man across from him.

“Hmph.” The short-haired old man gave a cold snort and caught it casually. Then he pressed the severed hand straight against the stump of his own arm.

For one silent instant, an eerie aura stirred.

In the blink of an eye, flesh began to writhe. Countless tiny threads of meat sprouted from the stump, growing, connecting, knitting together. In the end, the entire arm was joined back in place, flesh and bone both, whole as if it had never been cut off.

The burly man watched the scene in silence for a while, then clicked his tongue in wonder.

“Old man, is that a secret art or a cultivation method? Even cutting off your head will not kill you. Rebirth from a single drop of blood is a method of the Origin Awakener Realm.”

The short-haired old man gave him a cold sidelong look. “Enough nonsense. I will clean up the traces of the battle here. You hurry back and control the array. Kill everyone inside Sageridge. Ran Qingmo escaped, so whether I catch her or not, we need to handle the aftermath quickly.”

The burly man’s expression turned solemn when he heard this. He said in a low voice, “Then I will return to the array control node first. Come over once you have finished here.”

“Mhm.”

With those words, the burly man adjusted his breathing for a moment, then turned into a blur and sped off into the distance.

The direction he headed was not Sageridge.

It was deeper into the Myriad Ascents Mountain Range.

The short-haired old man watched him disappear into the distance. Then he gave a faint shake of his head and slowly walked toward the place where the man in the blood red robe had died.

The short-haired old man stopped beside the skeleton and stared at it for several breaths. Then he gave a faint shake of his head. “The robe is completely undamaged. The material is truly first rate. A pity we cannot use it. We will have to find a chance to have an auction house sell it.”

The short-haired old man bent down, preparing to pick it up. But just then, several glowing, dazzling cherry blossom petals drifted down behind him.

The short-haired old man’s fingertips froze. He remembered there being no cherry trees nearby. More than that, this was not the season for cherry blossoms to bloom.

He whipped around. Behind him, the short haired old man saw two familiar figures. One was illusory, the other solid. The two of them were talking and laughing as if nothing had happened.

The man in the blood red robe chuckled softly. “Old Luo, see? I told you I could handle it myself, but you still had to worry.”

The middle-aged scholar’s phantom replied with a merry smile, “You little brat. A mere seventh rank, yet you have comprehended Dao essence to such a thorough degree. This old man underestimated you. And this Divine Sakura Dao Essence really is rather mysterious.”

The short-haired old man stared at the scene before him, his contracted pupils trembling.

Then, he discovered that everything around him had begun to change.

The blood colored robe lying quietly on the ground was gone. In its place was the skeleton of a woman. As for his own lower body, it had already been frozen into an ice sculpture.

A bone-deep chill was still spreading upward without pause.

Divine Sakura Dao Essence. Connecting it to the words he had just heard, the short-haired old man instantly understood. He had fallen into the other party’s illusion, and killed his own companion.

“You... what is this? What is going on? Impossible!”

“Nothing impossible about it. That companion of yours called B has already taken Ran Qingmo to the array control node.” After saying that, Xu Yuan paid no more attention to the old man’s low shout. Instead, he turned to the Sage's remnant soul and asked, “Old Luo, this man’s cultivation method is this strange. Have you ever seen anything like it before? I ambushed him, but he nearly turned it back on me. Almost capsized in a ditch there.”

The Sage's remnant soul shook his head. “No.”

Xu Yuan clicked his tongue, his eyes filling with disdain. “Tsk. How come you never know anything?”

“What are you so anxious for, brat?” The Sage's remnant soul spoke in that slow, leisurely voice of his, carrying a trace of laughter. “Although this old man has never seen a similar cultivation method, I have seen a similar creature. And this old man happens to know that creature very well.”

Xu Yuan frowned. “Creature... what do you mean?”

The Sage's remnant soul stared at the old man, who was gradually being frozen into an ice sculpture. Then he grinned and spat out, “Wraithfiend.”