The metal door opened with a creak as the fresh air swept into the dark room once more, a few sets of footsteps made their way inside as the weak rumbling shook the ground once more signalling the closing of the entrance.
"Finally here…" One voice sounded, it was that of a young man, it was filled with exhaustion and weakness.
One of them reached out to the wall and touched it, lighting up the torches on the wall.
"I'm calling dibs on the bath first, I'm filthy from all this mud and rain" A feminine voice replied.
"We all are, don't take too long" The first voice replied.
"I'll go ahead and top up, we need to hurry, if we take too long you know what will happen to us". A third, more mature male voice added.
"Ugh, that bastard, I wish I could just strangle him" The girl complained, kicking a box that was laying on the floor.
"Don't let him hear you say that" The younger man said seriously.
"You two should understand by now what our position is, we either obey or we'll be dealt with".
The older man spoke as he walked down the hall, heading towards the larger room.
"…I wish I hadn't taken that offer back then." The girl lamented as she stripped off her robes and began to wash herself with the running water.
"No point regretting it now" The young man said as he laid with his back against the wall near the bathing area.
"Do you mind?!" She yelled at the young boy who was glancing her way out of the corner of his eye.
"What's the problem? Not the first time I've seen you naked, won't be the last either". He laughed.
"Go elsewhere or I'll gouge your filthy eyes out!".
"Alright, alright, no need to get violent" He threw his arms up while shrugging as he headed to the room with the stone slabs.
Meanwhile the older man had entered the room and glanced at the sitting corpse, he wasn't startled, he merely walked on with a sight glance of pity and dread.
He felt like he was looking at his future.
"You two shouldn't argue so much, at least you haven't completely thrown away your future" He said as he sat down in a meditative position facing the urn.
"But aren't you getting more from them because of it?" The boy replied, thinking the man was being overdramatic.
"Sure, but how would you feel with a living bomb eating away at you from the inside?"
"…Point taken" the younger man shifted on the stone bed, clutching his chest.
The older man sighed; he stabilised his breathing rhythm and circulating his Qi, as he did the Baleful Qi that filled the room began slowly moving towards him like a cumulonimbus cloud that floated towards his chest, or more specifically his heart.
As it entered, the man's pale skin regained some of the redness a living person should have as he sighed with relief.
"I was cutting it close…" He murmured.
…
Shu He watched on in utter silence, he was hidden in a crate inside the furnace room, there wasn't anywhere else to hide in particular, so he went with a place they were unlikely to look.
He used his sense to watch the entire thing as if he was there, the woman seemed to be in her early twenties, same for the other young man, they didn't have the same pale skin or white hair that he had seen on other people from black sects before, but brown and black respectively.
The third person, however, was seemingly in his late thirties, however his skin was pale, and his hair was white and short, he had dull black eyes that listlessly watched the black urn spurt out the black Qi.
From this simple glance, Shu He knew he couldn't risk revealing himself.
He could understand the cultivation levels of the first two, they were both a stage above him based on their Qi quality and the remnants of Elemental Qi flowing in their bodies, so they would already be a tough opponent for him individually.
The third one however was similar to Jin Bao, he was also a stage above him but right where his heart should be… was a black, fleshy being.
He watched as it fed on the Baleful Qi that was flowing into the man, it was like a child that had been starved for weeks as its form pulsated and distributed fresh Qi throughout the man's body.
'So that's how it works' Shu He realised, he hadn't been able to put together quite how that thing in Jin Bao's body worked before but based on this he had arrived a theory.
It was likely some form of homunculus that is then implanted into them, its modified to feed off of Baleful Qi and then produce Qi matching the user's wavelength, bolstering their strength, this was how Jin Bao seemed stronger at first.
The caveat was, of course, It needed to be fed Baleful Qi regularly, otherwise there would be consequences.
And those consequences were what he saw from Jin Bao, when it becomes starved it begins to consume the user to substitute for the Baleful Qi, before eventually taking over them.
'At least, that's how it worked theoretically… there's specifics I still don't know, for example just what is that little being'.
He focused on the black being in the man's chest, he felt uncomfortable looking at it no matter how long he spent staring at it, something just felt off about it to him, an instinctual discomfort.
Soon the girl had finished bathing and put her clothes back on as she glanced in to the larger room.
"Ugh, we're just going to leave that there?" She said as she grimaced at the corpse.
"Why not?" The young man said behind her as he stripped off to bathe.
"It's creepy".
"You can clear it up if you want" The older man said without moving an inch.
"No way" She refused as she looked around "By the way, what's in the rooms over there?".
"Ah, that's the butchery, and the furnace room" the young man's voice echoed.
"There's a furnace here? It's as cold as hell in here, let's turn it on".
'?!'
Shu He suddenly froze up completely, his breathing ceased as he tried to restrain his Qi as much as possible.
'This damn girl!' He cursed in his mind.
He saw her walking over and heard her footsteps getting closer, he felt his throat begin to dry as he shook lightly before stopping.
"It's a bit small isn't it?" She said after glancing into the room.
"It's not meant to heat the place".
"Oh, then what's it for?"
"Burning stuff we can't use, getting rid of anything dangerous or such".
"Tch…" She walked away, glancing over the room as she went, soon she was gone and Shu He relaxed his muscles, he had avoided a worst-case scenario.
The next couple of hours were some of the longest hours Shu He had spent still in his life, confined to the box without being able to make any noise.
There were a few more close calls as the two younger members wandered the place while waiting for their older companion to finish recharging, one of them was when the young man was searching for weapons and glanced into a crack in the crate, Shu He managed to push himself to a corner to hide.
Eventually, three hours passed, and the older man stood up.
"I'm done, let's go".
"Finally!"
"We can't keep him waiting, we need to tell him about the lens".
'The… what?'
Shu He's heart skipped a beat.
"If someone is capable of erasing the bounding mark then they're probably a high-level cultivator… maybe we'll get out of the punishment because of it". The older man said, a voice filled with contemplation.
"The damn rat ran away faster than a headless chicken, if they're strong they shouldn't have needed to" The young man said with spite.
"Either way we can't do anything when we've lost their trail".
"Let's go".
With that, the three of them went through the metal door and triggered the formation, creating the exit as they left the hideout.
Shu He, who was still in the wooden crate didn't move a single inch.
His heart was beating at three times the normal rate, he felt like it might burst out of his chest.
'They were chasing ME?!'
He couldn't believe his bad luck, he had run away the moment he erased it and then ran even more, just on the off chance there was someone chasing him.
And now he finds out someone WAS chasing him, and he ended up in the exact same place as them.
'… I'm screwed if they find me, I can't handle them alone'.
He was truly in deep trouble right now.
He didn't think that taking a lens would bring so many strong people to him.
He sat in the box, thinking and planning, he wasn't going to leave the hideout right now since he'd just run face first into them, that would be stupid.
He needed to wait some time, and so he did.
6 hours passed in silence, not another sign of a rumble or such, the pushed the crates lid off before replacing it and briskly walking toward before he slammed open the steel door letting it close behind him.
He touched the mark on the wall that activated the formation, shifting the earth as he then made his way up the dirt stairwell, soon exposing himself to the fresh air that he breathed in with great relief.
He unsheathed his sword and make a x cut at the top of the tree with the formation, high enough to not immediately be visible but not too obscure.
But of course, he didn't stop there he ran off, away from the village to deep in the woods, he didn't know if they were still here or not even though he gave it some time.
As soon as he was sure he was alone, he picked out a charm from his robes, the one that he had been given by Wu Zhong for emergencies.
He channelled his Qi into it as it glowed and spoke.
"I've found a black sect hideout, in the forest between Redaloy and the nearby ravine, marked the entrance tree with an X; I'm being pursued by three members, I cannot handle them alone, what should I do?"
After he finished the charm floated and folded into a bird shape before it shot off into the sky and headed in the direction of the sect.
All he had to do now was wait for the reply.