Chapter 80 - Qiao An

She did a final glance at everyone before asking us again, "So all of you will come with us, right?"

I looked around us and behind them at the battlefield we stood on. Bodies were scattered around on either side of us. Behind them their members could be seen carrying some of the corpses and moving them towards the beginning of a pile. Some of the bodies were missing limbs while others lacerated to deformation.

A portion number of the bodies had charring and burn marks as well. Blood covered the grass around; where the core of the fighting happened the patch of grass and soil beneath was dyed a deep red. A number of the Spirited Sun Sect members had blood covering them as well.

The people behind carrying bodies for example, but the blood which soaked into their robes could not be seen to easily. The dark red which they wore blended in with the shade of blood which coated them. The only way the blood was even known was the slight glimmer from light and barely noticeable difference in shading.

Teng Bai stepped up to speak, "Of course we will, we like to thank you in advance for taking us along! 𝘈𝘧𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘢𝘭𝘭 𝘥𝘰 𝘸𝘦 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘢 𝘤𝘩𝘰𝘪𝘤𝘦?"

"Excellent! Then I'll have to trouble you all to wait around a few moments more while we finish something up."

"Oh I'm sure after all the walking we've been through, a little rest would surely help us." Teng Bai gave a flattering smile to Qiao An. She turned around towards her sect members hauling bodies before leaving our group alone.

"A-Are they going to kill us now? We saw them murder others!"

"Don't you remember that killing others was allowed?"

"But it's still terrible to do it!"

"They could have just been defending themselves, like they said!"

"OR it was all a lie to get us to let our guards down! What about what that captive said?"

"So? He could have been lying too!"

As my group members argued between whether or not to trust them I looked out at their operations.

People were paired up and went after bodies together. Whenever they made it to one they would search their corpses for loot and share it amongst themselves as that was their body. After which they would bring the body over to their newly made pile of bodies and throwing it onto the pile.

The cycle would rinse and repeat, but when the pile consisted of 60% of the bodies someone went over and sent a flame into the core of the pile. Slowly, but surely the pile was engulfed in flames. Seeing the tower of flames engulfing bodies made me remember yesterday. The moment we met those people within the stronghold they were burning bodies of the dead.

Thinking back gave me some PTSD vibes, a reminder of what happened still lingers on me. I looked down at my left hand; although nothing looks out of place above the nerves below still haven't fully healed.

..

By the time I'm done reminiscing the field is cleared of bodies with the only trace of them burning in a pile. A few members of the Spirited Sun Sect approach us and escorts our entire group along side them.

Our group was positioned towards the front, yet still situated in the middle of their members. The prisoners they have restrained are near the back where most of their sect members are. At the front of the group, Qiao An leads with five men just behind on either side of her.

It doesn't seem like she's heading in any particular path. Once we started walking, we kept going making a few curves and turns here and there. It was like when we were walking through the forest on our own. The only difference this time was the fact that there were more of us going around randomly.

"Ahhh!!!" "Aargh-!!"

Suddenly the screams of people dying in the distance appeared. The quiet and boring walk feeling which was starting to appear again was broken.

Upon hearing the screams our escort leader Qiao An started running towards it. Along with the entire rest of the convoy which followed behind her. The screams were quite deep into the forest causing us to run quite far.

Soon though we spot the place it radiated from ahead of us. The area itself used to be part of the forest as multiple trees around could be seen toppled over and uprooted. There was even a path of trees which had been knocked down, probably where they had ran from.

At the area 20-ish armed green robed men faced a large beast that was twice the height of a man; It looked like a large boar with it's features such as tusks and massive head which covered most of it's body from the front.

*Snort* *Snort*

Out of the 20 men there only 7 were still standing, and 2 lied injured sprawled across the ground clutching their wounds. The remaining 11 lied motionless across the field, some seemed to be crushed by fallen trees, some looked a little extra curvy near trees forming a C shape around it, and a few weren't near anything, but it could be easily seen that they were most probably dead. Their limps bent and curved at unnatural angles, with a few even have broken bones jutting out of their flesh.

The 7 which stood looked weary and tired, yet they still looked cautiously at the boar-like beast which kept running at them.

*Crash!*

Another tree falls down from the boar's charge and the seven men take their chance. They all began attacking the main body of the creature, but they only landed a few scratches against it's hide, before it turned around, pushing them all away at the same time.

One of the seven men fly towards one of the trees from being directly hit by the boar. Before he came close to the tree though someone jumped and caught him from the side.

"It's ok! You're safe now I, Qiao An, won't let anymore harm come."

It was Qiao An who dashed forward catching the man in her arms, before setting him down to let him deal with the wounds which came from being directly hit.

Hearing the declaration the remaining 6 on their feet looked over. The expressions on their weary faces turned to shock before changing into hope as they looked over at the mysterious new voice.

"S-She is someone from the Spirited Sun Sect! Look! Look at her robes!"

"We're saved!!" The man got onto his knees like he was going to start praying.

"Hey! Get up! We haven't been saved yet and we're still within range of the boar dumbass!" A man near the praying man grabs his arm before forcefully dragging him back onto his feet.

*Snort!* The giant boar scratched the ground a few times clearly ready to charge at one of the men. Suddenly Qiao An arrives next to it, beginning to slash at it's side over and over. While she does so the six green robed men began scurrying away to some nearby trees, like that would protect them.

'Why am I so slow? I feel like I should have been there by now with the rest of the forces. It's not like we were that far away from her when she went ahead. Oh, what the fuck? Where did these beasts come from?'

Suddenly a horde of boars came out of no where surrounding our forces. Their size was a pretty manageable half a person tall, still bigger than average but definitely more manageable then the one Qiao An was dealing with. Their numbers were double our own making it a little difficult to instantly cull them. Though, throughout our fighting I still looked over at the situation where Qiao An was.

The exchange between Qiao An and the Boar consisted of her dodging whenever the boar attacked and then slashing the side of it's hide with her saber. The marks left by her were significantly more damaging then when the green robed men tried hurting it. After each of her strikes she would at least draw the blood of the boar.

After another one of these exchanges she mistimed her dodge and took a direct hit from the boar; Though, it didn't injure her too badly she flew a short distance away, sliding across the ground as she used the friction of the dirt to slow herself.

When she looked up the boar was charging directly towards her. She might be pierced by the tusks considering the speed the boar was accelerating at and the sharpness of it.

When she looked up she must of blanked out for a second or maybe wasn't thinking straight from the possible imminent death approaching. She raised up her saber to "block" the boar's charge, instead of just dodging like before or jumping out of the way.

Just before the boar could reach her, flames erupted in front of her. A man had appeared welding a flaming saber and also extremely familiar looking robes. Of course it was our pal and almost definitely an MC, Chen Huang.