Chương 228: Chapter 227: The Seventh Companion

A purple-edged tear appeared in the sky. And a person stepped out. The black boots stepped on air as if it were solid ground. It was a tall man clad in deepest black robes, embroidered with intricate grey patterns and a grey inner robe that peeked through at the collar. He had greyish-white hair reaching past his waist, let completely loose, and blowing unnaturally in the air. And he was handsome. If Yang's Master would be called beautiful, then this man was the absolute pinnacle of masculine beauty.

He even surpassed Senior Brother Zhen Hao in looks, who, while not as striking as their Master, Yang had always considered the benchmark of masculine beauty. Though instead of the warm, life-of-the-party charm Senior Brother Zhen Hao seemed to carry, this man radiated something far more terrifying. He stepped out of the pitch-black tear that closed soundlessly behind him. Yang's gaze instinctively rose to meet the man's eyes and immediately dropped.

And in that split second of contact, where their gazes almost met, he felt it. He had never faced it before, but he knew what it was in the very pit of his stomach as he felt the gaze of the cultivator pass over his form. A killing intent. So dense and so overwhelming that Yang could practically feel it like a razor-sharp blade pressing against his throat. Like he was a helpless lamb standing before an ancient apex predator. It was then that Yang understood that it was not some technique holding them frozen.

Rather, it was the sheer presence of this man. It was enough to pin them in place.

"You were looking for me?" The man asked in an even, unbothered voice as he took a single step that closed the hundreds-of-meters-wide gap between him and the black-robed leader. Yang peeked up, only to see his white hair fanning across his back. At the question, his mind went back to the seventh companion the black-robed cultivator had mentioned previously. So this was who they were looking for.

Watching the horrified expression on the black-robed cultivator's face, Yang couldn't help but wonder if these idiots had the slightest inkling of what, or rather who, they were hunting. The man looked like he buttered his toast with a sword and used blood in place of jam.

"Are you not going to step out?" Their presumed seventh companion spoke. Yang looked around, wondering whom he was addressing. No one replied. But the cultivator raised his open right hand and suddenly clenched it into a fist. Immediately, Yang heard a blood-curdling scream tear through the air as a man was dragged through the air, pulled by an invisible force before coming to a halt on his knees in mid-air, right before the white-haired man.

It took Yang a few seconds to look past the facial lacerations and burned skin before he jolted back in recognition as he realized this was one of the cultivators they had fought with. Probably the third one Senior Brother Qing An had presumed dead. Looking at the condition he was in, Yang had a pretty good idea why his Senior Brothers would believe him dead. He had weeping lacerations and burns on every inch of visible skin, leaving Yang to wonder what horrors this man was hiding beneath his robes.

Now that he was seeing the three black-robed cultivators standing— Correction: two standing and one kneeling. Yang felt it was an offence to lump all three of them into the same category. Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

To say all three were clad in black robes was true, but the two thugs looked like the cultivation world's version of bouncers in some seedy back alley club, especially when compared to the newly arrived cultivator standing beside them, who looked like he belonged on a throne. The white-haired cultivator didn't ask anything more. He simply snapped his fingers. And Yang almost threw up at the immediate aftermath. The man kneeling on the ground was flayed in an instant.

His skin and flesh were stripped from his body in a single horrifying motion, leaving only his cleaned, exposed skeleton, caging the internal muscle and tissue along with the still pulsing organs. Yang saw the white-haired cultivator reach out and grab hold of the man's intestines, ripping them out and wrapping them around the kneeling cultivator's neck. Then the white-haired cultivator let go of whatever magic was keeping the kneeling man suspended in the air.

The skinned cultivator immediately plunged down and snapped to a sick halt as he hung suspended from the noose made from his own entrails. Choking and flailing against his own intestines, pulling taut against his neck. The other one. The leader immediately collapsed to his knees on the boulder where he had previously stood, playing tyrant. He began prostrating and begging.

"Mercy."

"Mercy. My Lord. I am a disciple of Elder Ju Ji Xiao" The white-haired cultivator merely tilted his head to the side.

"Elder Ju Ji Xiao. I gathered as much by your persistence in trying to locate me." The cultivator let out a gentle smile.

"Do not fear. Now that we have finally met, I shall certainly repay the 'hospitality' Elder Ju provided by ensuring my thousand year vacation in this beautiful realm." The kneeling man looked even more terrified at the response and could only continue slamming his bleeding forehead against the boulder, accompanied by incomprehensible, desperate blubbering. Now the white-haired cultivator turned to them.

Behind him, the boulder burst into dust, throwing the kneeling cultivator into the valley wall hard enough to knock him out. He coolly swept his gaze over all of them, settling on Senior Brother Weilong for a fraction of a second longer.

"You may leave," he said without any preamble. Yang saw his Senior Brothers giving this cultivator a bow and followed suit mechanically, his mind still reeling from the horrific scene of the last few minutes. He noticed Senior Brother Zhen Hao nod at him and he immediately jumped on his flying carpet and tore through the air, following in his Senior Brothers wake.

The ice-blue token was thrown in the air towards Senior Brother Qing An, who grabbed it and took the lead with their flank covered by Senior Brother Fan Xiao. They quickly followed the twists and turns in complete silence, going as fast as they could in such tight paths with interworld portals looming on either side. Almost an hour into their silent flight, Senior Brother Qing An slowed down in front of a small archway.

It was one of those rare rifts whose frame wasn't engraved, nor did it have a formation in front of it. Senior Brother Qing An threw the talisman towards Senior Brother Fan Xiao.

"I will check it first," he said as he stepped through the rift and disappeared from view. After a few agonizing seconds that felt like years, Yang finally saw him reappear with a smile.

"It's safe. It opens into the Vermillion Cloud Realm." Yang heard them all let out a collective sigh of relief.

"Quickly. Let's leave this place." Senior Brother Qing An said to all of them as he gestured towards Senior Brother Weilong, who was in the front. Suddenly, a dark purple light shot straight at Senior Brother Weilong. Senior Brother Fan Xiao jumped in the middle and used a talisman to instantly summon a silver shield that blocked the attack. The purple light slammed against the barrier and dissolved. Yang looked towards the source of the attack and felt his heart skip a beat. It was the white-haired cultivator.

This really is a dog-eat-dog world. Everyone is out to kill each other. The grey-haired cultivator let out an amused smile and shot the same spell at Senior Brother Weilong again. This time, freezing them all in place. Yang knew because he did attempt to summon his own talismans to add to the multiple defenses he was sure his other Senior Brothers were also planning on adding to protect Senior Brother Weilong. But his body refused to so much as make a twitch.

The purple light reached Senior Brother Weilong and was absorbed into him, making him light up in a dark purple, almost black light for a second before fading completely. They all waited with bated breath to see what would happen, but nothing. It did nothing. The white-haired cultivator looked satisfied with his action and disappeared in a plume of thick dark purple smoke. They all looked at each other for a moment before Senior Brother Fan Xiao waved his hand and used his qi to shove them all through the door.

Yang let out a grunt as he slammed into someone and felt another one of his Senior Brothers slam into him. They all scrambled up out of the tangle of limbs and robes, only to see Senior Brother Fan Xiao, who himself had made a much more dignified exit, raise his hand to blast the rift into smithereens. The rift was gone.