Barely two seconds after Patriarch Auna made his exit, three figures made their appearance.
Two of them, a raven-haired woman and a muscular man, were on flying swords. The other was younger looking, floating in the air without any external aid.
All three of them wore plain robes with the same insignia on them; a globe illuminated by an eclipse halo.
As soon as they appeared, they ignored the damage below and paid more attention to the energy fluctuations in the Void.
"The radar was right, a cultivator was here all right," the muscular man said. "Can we still track them?" He looked at the woman as he said this. She was a spatial cultivator.
"I'll try," she replied. Several arcane runes danced in her eyes and allowed her to glimpse the nodes fixed in space. As she gazed intently at the area, her gaze settled on a specific spatial node.
"I found the entry node and can reconstruct an overlapping channel," The runes vanished from her eyes as she spoke, shaking her head. "But we can't enter as the Void in the area is too turbulent at the moment. We can only wait until it stabilizes."
"They'll be far gone by then though," the young man suddenly spoke, bringing out an object in the shape of a skeleton hand from his storage space.
The muscular man, Chen Qingke, glanced at it apprehensively. The skeleton hand was the young man's lifebound and signature weapon, refined from the hand bones of a former powerhouse at the eighth stage. As it was, the young man, Fang Ao was able to fuse perfectly with it at will to unleash a portion of its strength.
Fang Ao had a cold look in his eyes as the skeleton fused into his right hand. He turned to ask the lady, Shen Li, "Where's the spatial node?"
She tapped a finger on his temple, sending him the coordinates.
"Wait," Chen Qingke suddenly spoke. "Are you planning to destroy the node?" He recalled that the skeleton hand's destructive ability had an element of space shattering.
"Yes," Fang Ao said cooly. "By the time we stabilize this space, the target would have escaped and reached their destination several times over. Rather than that, I can destabilize their spatial tunnel from this point and compromise their safety."
"But they'll be swept into chaotic space and we'll lose all traces of them," Chen Qingke frowned.
"It's either that, or we still lose them anyways," Fang Ao said. "It's a win-win, or should I say lose-lose situation."
Right after he finished speaking, he clenched his right hand and unleashed a fist punch at a certain area in the void.
"Done?" Fang Ao looked at Shen Li.
"Destroyed, yes," Shen Li said. "Whatever spatial tunnel they are in will collapse with the destruction of this node."
"Good," Fang Ao said, waving dismissively. From the look of things, he appeared to be the one in charge here. "We can now carry on with the rest of our investigation."
"What's left to investigate?" Chen Qingke grumbled, making to fly away. All of a sudden, he stopped.
His Divine Sense just captured some faint heartbeats in the wasteland below.
"There's someone alive in the rubble," he informed his mates, pausing for a beat. "Several, from the look of things."
Because Patriarch Auna's attack had a large area of coverage, the dorm buildings in the immediate vicinity had been implicated, turning the area into a death zone. This was why the cultivators hadn't bothered to extend their Divine Sense. There was little hope for mortals to survive in the situation.
"Just ignore it, it's probably someone on the verge of death," Fang Ao said, making to fly away.
"No," Shen Li stopped him. "We'll start our investigation here; this is the area where the energy surge occured according to the scan." As for why she didn't suspect there was a cultivator below, it was because she was extremely sensitive to energy signatures by virtue of her Space Dao; she would have sensed it.
"I'll try to find entry nexuses nearby safe enough to venture into the Void for one last investigation," Turning to Chen Qingke, she continued, "Release your Divine Sense and see if anyone survived here. We'll ask them if they saw anything."
With these orders, she made it clear who really gave the orders as the men followed her instructions without complaints.
In a flash, she vanished. Meanwhile, Chen Qingke's Divine Sense started to scout the area carefully, starting the exact spot he had sensed the life signature earlier.
Fang Ao did the same, albeit a tad grudgingly.
*****
Jiang Po was lucky.
At the very last minute, Di Tian had used his body to shield him from direct impact. As a result, he only suffered minor injuries.
Da Sha, on the other hand, had his body wrecked by the devastating energy and utterly destroyed.
As for Di Tian,....
He slowly regained some sense of self, finding himself back in Omnipresent Consciousness Mode in his Soul Space.
"Am I alive or dead?" was the first thought that flashed through his mind. He could still recall the wrecking sensation of his body being battered by the destructive energy, so it was a wonder how he was presently conscious.
Di Tian tentatively connected to his passive perception of his external environment and was able to sense the present state of his physical body.
"So that's how it is...." He thought, feeling a huge sense of relief. His body was recovering rapidly, he was alive!
Actually, it really was a close shave for Di Tian. The only reason he survived was due to a stroke of coincidences; his body had absorbed the explosive impact of the energy attack. While this would be a sure-kill situation for anybody else, it was a perfect fit for his newly gained physique.
His Variant Energy Conversion Constitution.
As it was, the explosive energy did ravage his body from inside out. But at the same time, his body absorbed the same destructive energy to slowly recover.
By the time Chen Qingke retrieved Di Tian's body from the rubble, he was already fully healed and conscious.
"That's strange," Chen Qingke was surprised as he scanned Di Tian. The others he had retrieved alive from the rubble had been at least unconscious.
"Errr," Di Tian blinked under the intense stare. "Hiii?"