by Gore, A. P.
Wasn’t this bullying the poor?
Looking at his own storage ring, he wanted to cry. He only had a few Qi Gathering Pills that he’d found on that Destiny Mirror Sect’s cultivator he’d killed using the Two-Colored Poison Repelling Flower. It wasn’t worth the trade.
Pulling one pill out, Wei gulped it down. It tasted bad, like a sour lemon, but after entering his stomach it sent a refreshing stream of qi into his dantian. After his Violent Energy Absorbing Array had sucked away a quarter of his qi, this one pill’s energy felt like a small trickle in a dry river bed. That was the surprise he had prepared for the opponents above the Bone Baptization Realm. After reaching the Bone Baptization Realm, one could conjure a manifestation, and that could change the tide of a battle—something he wasn’t looking forward to, so he had prepared by carving this array on his secondary sword.
The Violent Energy Absorbing Array was a forbidden array, lost to time because of its devilous nature. Once activated, it would devour every bit of energy around it, and it didn’t discriminate between friends or foes. Wei had sealed his own qi with his divine sense in an effort to protect it, and yet he had still lost the better part of it.
Tiang Fu was in worse condition. The array had sucked in his manifestation of energy and contaminated it with the surrounding essence energy. If he were to survive, he would spend the next few months cursing Wei.
But why would Wei let Tiang Fu survive?
Revolving his qi into his sword, Wei dashed forward. He couldn’t let this bastard pull out any more trump cards.
“One Sword Strike.”
“I’ll kill you, bastard.” Roaring, Tiang Fu slapped a Wood Shield Talisman on his chest and attacked with his Wood King’s Strike. Under the effect of the Blood Healing Golden Pill, his injuries were healing like they were nothing but scratches.
Damn. Another talisman? Wei roared inwardly, but he was poor as fuck. Other than a few exploding spears lying in his storage ring, he didn’t have anything.
Wait, he had exploding spears.
As their swords clashed, Wei chuckled like a villain, and an exploding spear appeared in his free hand. “Take this.” He stabbed with the spear. If Tiang Fu was a character in a novel, he was the villain. And the villain always had some unscrupulous tricks.
Chapter 93
Reincarnation
Li Wei’s pitch-black spear stabbed at Tiang Fu’s waist, and a fiery smell permeated his nostrils. It was the smell of an explosion.
Tiang Fu’s face turned white, then green, then black when the spear tip exploded on his waist.
A cloud of dust rose, and both men were thrown off the martial stage. Although Wei had retreated as soon as possible, he still suffered from the huge shockwave and heat that burned his skin, making it smell like charred meat.
Wei crashed to the ground a few dozen feet away from the explosion, and a broken rock from the martial stage pierced in his back, sending bouts of pain through his body.
“Fuck.” Grabbing his knee, Wei sat up and spat dust out. His breathing was ragged, and weariness filled his body.
He was feeling the aftereffects of the most intense battle of his life to date, and his qi was depleting at a rapid pace. If he didn’t kill Tiang Fu quickly, he might end up captured. That wouldn’t do. He had been given a second life to enjoy life and become a lazy immortal, but he was doing anything but that.
Compared to him, Tiang Fu was in a little better shape. That Wood Shield Talisman he’d used just before the explosion had saved him from grievous injury, but his clothes were blasted apart, and he couldn’t save his skin from scratching. Moreover, he had lost the effect of the Wood Shield Talisman, the efficacy of the Golden Healing Pill was used up, and his thigh wound wasn’t fully healed.
If Wei had triggered the explosion a few breaths earlier, Tiang Fu would’ve been toast.
“You cheater,” Tiang Fu roared, tearing his robe apart and exposing his bare chest. Was he showing off his body? Even Wei could show off his muscular chest now, but that thought left a bitter taste in his mouth. He had lost too much fat recently. A disgrace to his mantle.
“How can you trade injury for injury?” Tiang Fu howled and scattered his already disheveled hair, looking like a hideous evil from street dramas played in large cultivator cities.
As if he hadn’t shown enough craziness, he cut his hair in half with his naked sword.
Err! Now he looked like a leech.
Anyway, why would Wei care? Dusting off his robe, Wei got up. Taking out some Minor Healing Pills, he gulped two down. They should help him with his healing.
After waiting for a few breaths, Tiang Fu didn’t pull out another talisman, so Wei dashed forward with his sword. Giving Tiang Fu more time would be like dipping his hand in a bee hive. Who knows how many trump cards he might pull out?
Tiang Fu jumped up and pushed his sword horizontally backward. A brown glow accumulated around the tip of his sword.
“Basic Movement Art.” Wei pushed a thread of qi into his legs, and his speed increased exponentially. That bastard Tiang Fu was preparing something big again, and he would not give him more time.
Suddenly his gut screamed at him, as if immense danger was heading for him. Even before his divine sense detected it, he felt a chill down his spine, and without thinking about it, he instinctively activated Gravity Field and dashed away.
A beam of white light scorched the ground where he’d just been. When he glanced to his right, he found a disheveled Wen Shang standing with his sword raised above his head. It was a full-force attack from a Marrow Cleansing Realm cultivator with his Marrow Manifestation brought out. If Wei had moved a moment later, he would have died.
But if Wen Shang was attacking, where was his grandfather?
Panicked, he spread his divine sense around and found his grandfather lying on the ground. Wounded, bleeding, but alive. And he was getting up with a dignified expression.
His mind relaxed.
“Kid, are you nuts? How can you relax in battle?” Xue Qi shouted in his mind.
Wei’s mind shuddered, and the same sense of danger wrapped around him. But before he could react, a red beam had reached him.
Twisting at the waist, he tried to dodge the beam, but he was too slow, and the red beam pierced his heart. The beam left a fist-sized hole in his chest, and his heart was missing.
Blood gushed out like a beast tide let loose. He tried to pull a healing pill from his pouch, but what was the use of a pill without his heart. Everything went dark, and he lost it.
Had reincarnation changed his destiny? Finally, he knew the answer.
Yes, it had. It had made it worse.
Chapter 94
Sacrifice
When Li Wei opened his eyes, white surrounded him. It was a completely white world filled with nothing. There was no smell, no sense of anything, just nothing.
Was this hell?
Something moved, and his gaze jumped to a white woman floating in midair.
Her skin, her dress, and even her eyes were white. If she hadn’t moved, he might have missed her.
“Are you a reaper?” Wei asked. Thinking about it, he didn’t remember seeing one after Wang Zia killed him in his previous life.
“No. I’m Xue Qi.”
“Oh, it’s you?” He looked her over thoughtfully. She had an alluring body. Although white, she had curves where they needed to be.
“You can’t resist your lecherous gaze even in your last moment. How evil.” She frowned.
Wei shrugged. “It doesn’t matter the second time.” In fact, it didn’t really bother him. Other than disappointment over failing to protect the Li clan, he had no lingering attachment to the world he’d just left. Fei’er was in good hands, and that was all that mattered.
A strange light flashed in her white eyes. “I have little time. If you promise me one thing, I can save you from this situation.”
“What’s there to save? My heart is gone, and I don’t have a Heaven Grade pill
to save my life.”
“Stupid kid. When I say I can do it, I can do it,” she shouted and flew close to him, hand poised to strike. “Why can’t you trust me?”
A weird taste coated Wei’s tongue. He wasn’t sure if he should say this. “You’ve said that before, that you would save me. Look how that turned out.”
“And I lost half of the energy I’d accumulated over the last five hundred years opening a portal to Ten Beast Valley. Did you forget that?”
He nodded. That was true. She did open that portal. If she hadn’t, he would have died. But she’d also left him unprotected from attack. If not for Sun Nuan, he would already be swimming in the yellow spring.
“Anyway,” she said. “Promise me you’ll kill someone for me, and I’ll use my remaining energy to save you now.”
“Are you trying to blackmail me in my perilous situation? If you had the power, why didn’t you stop the attack?” His voice rose. Most of the time, she was a total bitch. He hated that.
“Helping you means losing my remaining energy.” She sighed. “I might not wake up after that.”
A heavy feeling gripped Wei’s heart. Well, he didn’t have a heart anymore, but it was the same feeling.
“Then why save me? I bet you can live in someone else’s body, and there would be many people willing to help you for your alchemy knowledge.” She was very much a master alchemist. Although he hadn’t seen her entire inheritance, he knew it was top class.
Looking away, she floated away from him. “I can’t. I established karma with you when I teleported you out of the Prison of Mayhem.” She shook her head. “No, we established karma when I tried to prevent you from testing your Soul Root, and then when I planted a marker in your mind while attacking you. My path merged with yours in that moment, and I couldn’t seek help from anyone else.” She sounded dull and heavy, as if that was a bad thing.
“Prison of Mayhem?” Mayhem was the same name the little fox had mentioned. Lord Mayhem.
“Yes, it’s the same person who sealed Ten Beast Valley and who left the Alchemy Comprehension Tower behind. That tower used to be called the Prison of Mayhem. That bastard kept his disciple’s souls locked in there.”
“Imprisoned his disciple’s souls? What are you talking about?”
“He was an evil bastard who kidnapped me from my family and then took me as his disciple. And one day he killed me in a cauldron explosion and then stored me inside the prison.” Tears flew down her cheeks, and she grabbed the neck of her white dress. “He didn’t even let me reincarnate.” She sighed, shaking her head. Her voice turned soft. “It’s not good for you to know too much about this right now. When you reach the Alchemy Plane, you’ll realize how terrible he is. Just promise me you’ll kill Lord Mayhem, and I’ll save you.”
“I can promise you, but I can’t promise about the timeline. If I reach that power level, I’ll kill him. I won’t jump in a fiery pit.”
“Straightforward and honest.” She relaxed visibly. “I’ll heal you, then. And undo the seal on your body cultivation. But I’ll fall into a slumber after this, and I’ll also lock a portion of the inheritance you accepted from me. If I don’t do that, then I’ll vanish from this world.”
“Why would you lock your inheritance? That’s my reward.”
She giggled. “Do you think there’s a free lunch in this world? Our inheritances are what kept us here, remnant souls lingering in this world even after a thousand years. Do not forget, there is always a price to pay.”
A chill permeated the depths of Wei’s mind. What kind of evil plans lay in these inheritances? If he accepted any inheritance in the future, he should choose wisely. Suddenly he remembered the error the system threw at him when he’d received the inheritance. It was something about linked information.
“Okay. I promise to kill this Lord Mayhem if I get strong enough,” Wei replied earnestly.
“I believe in you. Also, take care of that Nuan girl. If I was alive, I would take her as my apprentice, but our fates aren’t entangled anymore.”
Suddenly, the white world vanished and Wei felt a deep connection with his own body. A river of blood vitality gushed through his body, and he finally felt his body cultivation.
Fuck! What had happened with his body cultivation while it was sealed away?
Chapter 95
Impossible
The Blood Consuming Strike pierced Li Wei’s heart, and Tiang Fu released a breath.
It was finally over, but the hatred still remained in his heart. Hatred for pushing him so far. Hatred for making him use his vitality-damaging Blood Consuming Strike. To perform this attack, he’d had to sacrifice a quarter of his heart blood, and it would take months—and too many pills—to regain his vitality.
In actuality, the fight had ruined his cultivation for the next few months, if not a year. He could only grind his teeth and endure. The only good thing out of this was now he could lay claim to the treasures on Li Wei’s body. They were all his.
But exhaustion overtook him. He dropped to the ground, his knees hitting a broken stone and sending a surge of pain through his body. He was utterly exhausted and had used all his trump cards. This one fight had pushed him to the brink of death, and yet it had taken Wen Shang to help him kill a mere Foundation Realm brat.
How hateful. He was angry with himself for not being deceitful enough. For being weak. If he had acted when he first saw Li Wei, this wouldn’t have happened.
“Wen Shang, seal his soul before it dissipates,” he ordered in a weak voice. Fumbling through his pouch, he searched for a Quick Recovery Pill. He needed strength to get back on his feet and then depart from here before the State of Zin officials arrived.
“You bastards, you killed my grandson. I’ll kill you all!” An old man with a blood-tainted beard came running at them.
Wen Shang sneered and sent a palm at the old man.
The old man let the palm hit him, but at the same time his sword pierced Wen Shang’s gut.
Tiang Fu shivered. What a hateful guy. Like his grandson, this old man had traded injury for injury. The Li clan was full of lunatics that disregarded their lives. How had they survived until today?
The old man spat mouthfuls of blood and then dropped back, his breath turning cold in a breath. Wen Shang had put all his strength in this attack, and the old man had paid with his life.
But before the old man’s body touched ground, Li Wei moved and grabbed the old man in his arms before letting loose a heaven-shaking roar.
“You bastards, you hurt my grandfather. I’m going to tear you apart!”
Impossible. Li Wei had become a ghost.
A strange power surged through Li Wei’s body and healed his broken heart in the blink of an eye. It even healed the injuries he’d accumulated throughout the battle, leaving behind a familiar strength. It was his body cultivation, and he couldn’t restrain his smile.
System: Inheritance indexation is stopped. 70% of data is encrypted by an unknown entity. Cannot access the encrypted data. Unknown error.
The smile was short-lived. An empty feeling grasped his heart. Xue Qi had used all her energy to help him, and she might not wake up again.
“Xue Qi, I’ll definitely kill that bastard Lord Mayhem.” He vowed inside his mind, this time he with sincerity.
“You bastards, you killed my grandson. I’ll kill you all!” Grandfather Shua’s voice struck his ears, and he opened his eyes, prepared to spring into action. But he was too late. Wen Shang’s palm had struck, and Wei sensed Grandfather Shua’s life energy dwindling rapidly.
Wei’s mind blanked out for a moment before he dashed with all his might to catch his grandfather. But by the time he caught him, grandfather’s life was almost vanished. Only a single thread of life hung him to the world.
Wei’s heart thumped like a thousand-foot-tall beast clashing against another beast.
“You bastards, you hurt my grandfather. I’m going to tear you apart!”
“Wei’er.” Gr
andfather Shua opened his moist eyes. “You . . . are a-live. I can d-ie now.” Green blood leaked from his mouth. He was poisoned. That bastard Wen Shang had used poison to kill his grandfather.
“Grandfather no. I’ll save you.” He looked through his storage ring, but he had nothing at hand that could save him. If only he had a Gold Grade healing pill.
“Don’t cry. Find y-your mo-ther.” The last wisp of life extinguished.
“No!” Something burst inside Wei, and his vision clouded.
In that weak moment, a sword pierced his shoulder, missing his heart by in inch. But Wei didn’t feel any pain. Instead, he felt hatred—hatred for the Du clan bastards, and hatred for the Destiny Mirror Sect. In this life, he didn’t want to meddle in other people’s business, just live a carefree life as a lazy immortal. But destiny didn’t want him to walk on a carefree path.
“Then I’ll change my destiny and go against the heavens to make my path carefree. But before that, I’ll kill these bastards.”
Two hundred blood pearls burst inside his shoulder, recovering his wound at a breakneck pace. An immense power surged through his whole body. A power that could shake the earth. His eyes turned bloodthirsty, and he slowly put down his grandfather and got up.
“You . . . How are you alive?” Wen Shang’s panic-driven voice struck his ears, but Wei wasn’t in any condition to reply.
Turning, he stared at Dan Kuang who held the sword that had pierced his shoulder. If it wasn’t for this bastard, his grandfather wouldn’t have died.
