"I can't believe it... Tai Qi is dead! Do you know what that means for us? If the other main sects find out, we are doomed!" One of the elders exclaimed. Zhou Qing knew that the elder was right, but he still could not bear to admit that Tai Qi was dead.
When he was around the Dragonic Sect as a small Qi Absorption Realm cultivator, Tai Qi already was the Sect Leader is the Dragonic Sect. With the "Dragon God" and his powerful "Dragon Scale" armour, he dominated the monsters that lived around the area and destroyed them with one sweep of "Dragon God".
Such a fearsome person had died along with another legendary figure in the cultivation world, Liu En. He was the one who had mastered the Unbending technique, making his body impenetrable to even sword aura. He could be said to be the strongest body cultivator in the Five Stars Continent.
"The person who killed them should have been gone by now, right?" Zhou Qing asked his fellow elders hesitantly. Even if they were powerful cultivators, they would still react with fear to something that could kill them.
"Yeah, that person should be gone by now. Who would stay behind after they have killed their targets?" Another elder spoke up. Even so, the tone of that elder was not convincing, since it sounded very shaky.
"So, who's going to investigate the corpses first?" The elders started to look at each other. Eventually, all their games landed on Zhou Qing, who squirmed around nervously.
"Zhou Qing, you're the strongest among us, you do it." "Yeah, Brother Zhou Qing, if you do it, I will give you the Earth Shatter Sword from my collection." Zhou Qing wanted to cry. The support of the Dragonic Sect was dead and the elders still had time to be utterly shameless.
Phew. In the end, only I can rely on myself. With shaky legs, Zhou Qing flew over to the corpses. As he descended on the rock on which the corpses laid, he could feel an abnormality within the area.
This was... the same demonic energy which he had felt on that mountain! As he got closer to the corpses, the demonic taint started to make him weaker, but he did not care. There was nothing that would stop him from seeing his Sect Master.
Zhou Qing touched the corpses of Tai Qi and Liu En. As he thought, the demonic taint inside of them was very dense. All the treasures that they had on them were all destroyed, which was a giant loss to both the Unbending Sect and Dragonic Sect. Sect Masters usually carried 3 Perfected Master Artifacts on them and several other treasures, which could be amounted to half of the entire sect's wealth.
Zhou Qing was sure that the person on the mountain surely had something to do with the death of the sect leaders. It was too coincidental, him being on the mountain and the leaders dead. He needed to interrogate him for information!
First, he needed to inform the other elders about the relation to that person on the mountain and the corpses. He was confident that the person would not be able to escape his speed, even if he spent time discussing with everyone else.
As for the person he was talking about, Tang Peng had already started to recover from the injuries. The Hatred Form that he had been in earlier had slightly mitigated his injuries and had produced a warm feeling as it fixed his internal organs and bones.
Even though Tang Peng had lost some lucidity as a result of the partial Hatred Form, he knew that the most important thing he needed to do now was to escape.
Tang Peng used his hands to pry himself out of the crater that had formed when he had slammed against the mountain. When he managed to get out of the crater, he fell face first onto the steep slope.
Tang Peng spit out the mouthful of dirt in his mouth, and wiped the remaining dirt from his lips. As he tried to use his arms to support him while he stood up, the dirt came loose.
Tang Peng did not even have time to yell out anything before he started to slide down the mountain. His muscles tightened, as adrenaline started pumping into his veins. Even though he was scared of dying, Tang Peng could feel an excitement within him.
He pierced the dirt violently using his fingers, trying to slow his descent. However, the dirt crumbled instantly under his fingers, it could not resist the momentum that Tang Peng was going at.
"There's no way I'm going to just die!" Tang Peng filled himself with determination, and hastily shoved his fingers inside his mouth. He tasted dirt and several more unsavoury objects and cringed, but he licked his fingers before slamming them back into the dirt. The most important thing was life!
Tang Peng repeated the process for the other hand, and the dirt eventually turned into mud as it contacted his saliva. The gooey mud then started to slow Tang Peng's momentum, but he was already close to the foot of the mountain. It was a fairly steep mountain after all.
When Tang Peng finally contacted the ground, he could feel his leg bones snap almost instantaneously. The pain was almost unbearable, but spurred on by his will to live, Tang Peng shoved his hand into his mouth to stop the scream. He could not afford to alert the cultivator that was in the sky.
However, he needed to escape from here. That cultivator was probably already searching for him, presenting a risky situation for him. He had to use the Hatred Form to recover from his injuries for now. Even though he had the random bottles stored in the ring, he could not trust them at all.
Tang Peng closed his eyes, and diverted his consciousness towards his soul. He could see the barrier that he had touched before, and he willed the barrier to activate once more. It glowed with a bright red light, before absorbing the spiritual soil inside Tang Peng.
His body started to repair his leg bones as a result of the activation, creating a cooling effect there. Tang Peng felt delighted at first, but his delight turned to horror as the Hatred Form started to transmogrify his body.
"Stop now! I can't turn into thisss formmm..." Tang Peng's teeth started to multiply, as his body started to expand in size. Now that he had dedicated his spiritual soil to the Hatred Form, its effects were magnified, but so were the side effects.
The rest of Tang Peng's bones that had not been destroyed spontaneously cracked at the same time, before fusing into a weird bone structure. Enormous wings started to form out of Tang Peng's back, while a ring of demonic fire was formed around Tang Peng. This was the body of a Hatred Soldier, a fearsome demon.
A large roar came out of Tang Peng's mouth, which could be heard throughout the Lang Tian mountains. Zhou Qing turned to face the direction of the sound. He had already informed the elders of that suspicious people, and they had already heard a scream and a roar.
It seemed like they were dealing with a demon's descendant here. Demons had physical beings, and unlike devils, have long spread their genes across the human race, and the descendants of these creatures normally had some evil tendencies. This descendant could have also been responsible for the red shockwave which had hit their inner boundary shield. They had only resisted it by using all the collected power of the shield.
Devil descendants needed powerful damage or something impactful to awaken their bloodline, which lead them to release their full potential as an evil monster. The power of the red shockwave has already revealed the capabilities of the descendant. They needed to deal with the devil's descendant before it dealt too much damage to the outer boundaries!
Zhou Qing and the rest of the elders headed off to the direction where the roar had emitted from. They prepared their swords and mystical treasures, intending to end the fight as quickly as possible!