Questioning Heaven, Desiring the Way - Chapter 133

That outcry from Gu Suihan attracted everyone’s attention instantly. All of them exchanged glances and they didn’t know how to react.

They were all at Mid to Advanced Foundation Establishment cultivators who were already the best among their peers. They knew well what would happen to them if an Origin Core cultivator appeared in such a situation.

There was only one way this whole thing would end. The warring puppets would be killed, then it was their turn to die.

There was no way they were going to survive this.

As for those stories and legends about how an MC would ~suddenly~ become super powerful and level up at the most important moment and slay the bad guy like he was merely slaughtering a chicken, that was bullshit. In reality, the difference in the quality and quantity of qi between these stages could not be compared at all. A cultivator at Origin Core could gather three hun and refine murderous qi to become part of themselves even at the initial stages. They could even form a simple domain.

The Foundation Establishment cultivators, on the other hand, could only rely on their level of aptitude to use some fiendish and murderous qi to hurt their enemies, and they could barely even manage that. The difference between the two stages was like the difference between the clouds and the mud in the ground.

In the blink of an eye, not a single person remained within 50 meters of Xi Ran. All of them were huddled by the side in small groups as they watched Xi Ran cautiously. They were afraid that Xi Ran might suddenly thrust a palm at them and they’d lose their lives if they weren’t careful.

Xi Ran didn’t expect Gu Suihan to be so observant. He had only let slip a tiny bit of fiendish murderous qi and Gu Suihan had caught sight of it. On top of that, Gu Suihan even announced it so loudly. While he was still feeling a little stunned by this sudden turn of events, he noticed the warring puppets that were slowly approaching him, staring at him like he were prey. His expression grew grimmer and grimmer by the second.

“I…well…hurhur…we’re all in the same boat, aren’t we? Why behave like this?” Xi Ran compared what he was capable of against the warring puppets that didn’t seem the slightest bit affected by the earlier attacks and wasn’t confident of fighting them.

“To hell with you! You’re powerful enough to send out your spiritual sense in the midst of battle to distract us! We wouldn’t even have known what hit us!” yelled Zhang Yan angrily as he silently shifted further backward, hoping to increase the gap between himself and Xi Ran.

Zou Kai’s face was pale. Thinking about how he had been with such a dangerous person for such a long time made him feel fearful.

“Well…” Xi Ran looked at the looming warring puppets and gulped. He suddenly spun around and disappeared like an apparition. Before anyone realized what was going on, Gu Suihan ran to the other side of the hall like a frightened bunny, while Xi Ran slowly appeared where Gu Suihan had been hiding earlier.

“You’re asking to get killed!” spat Gu Suihan. His expression was as dark as the night sky as he executed a technique that helped him to disappear beneath the floor, and reappear in the shadows beneath Wan Xin’s feet before pasting a body hiding talisman, a sword qi hiding talisman and other similar talismans on himself in less than a second, then curled himself into a corner of the hall like a little rat.

The rest of them were no ordinary humans after all, so when Gu Suihan reappeared for that instant, they noticed the movement of qi in the air, but he then disappeared without a trace immediately after that. They were so confused that they started looking around them in hope of finding out where Gu Suihan was hiding.

The warring puppets had a warring spirit within them, so they were not mindless puppets. They had sensed the burst of qi from Xi Ran when he tried to attack Gu Suihan earlier and knew that he was the biggest threat to them. They started to target Xi Ran, changing their formation to slowly look more like a large web that surrounded him.

Most cultivators would run the other way if they ran into someone at Origin Core, but Gu Suihan was in a rather different position. If he put old Suihan’s spirit back together again, he would be at Divine Soul. He had split it into three parts, but each part was complete. If he wanted to, he could pay a high price and kill Xi Ran. The problem was, what was he going to do with these warring puppets, as well as these equally scheming other cultivators here with him?

If he were to be severely injured, he was certain that the other cultivators would be more than happy to slaughter him.

“I can’t deal with so many warring puppets all by myself. If you don’t want to die, help me to stall four of them, I’ll deal with the other five,” said Xi Ran with a nasty expression on his face as he looked toward the other cultivators.

“We’ll need two of us to stall one, so the maximum number of warring puppets we can stall is three. You deal with the other six.” Zhang Yan exchanged glances with the rest and they all nodded.

They had gone through working together, a split in faction and now, they were back to working together again. Only an idiot would treasure their pride now. Pride wasn’t as important as life, after all.

Cultivators were selfish pricks who loved their own lives above all solely because they needed to stay alive to attain the Way and control the laws of nature. They were willing to pay any price to do that.

“Gu Suihan, you’re still going to keep hiding?” Wan Xin looked around for him, her shrill and icy voice making everyone shudder.

“Well, I mean, if I didn’t have to…” Gu Suihan laughed awkwardly and slowly reappeared behind them.

“I’ll try to separate the three on the left from the rest,” whispered Zhang Yan. He drew a line in the air with his metal pen and its red ink made a long trench appear that divided the three leftmost warring puppets from the rest.

“The three warring puppets are connected with a formation too! shit!” Li Xiaoyao glared at the faint reddish formation diagram beneath the three warring puppets’ feet.

“Based on their actions, I think there’s no way to actually separate them. We’ll have to fight them as a whole.”

The warring puppets were now nearer and were less than 60 meters away from them now. Wan Xin slammed a palm against her zither and the sound of metal strings ringing filled the air. It made their pores enlarge and their blood move faster through their bodies.

A light green beam of qi gathered and turned into several ghostly soldiers that roared and howled as they pounced at the warring puppets.

“Borrowing Power from the Heavens and the Earth – Turn the Ground into a Prison with One Stroke!” Zhang Yan bit his finger so that his blood sprayed over his pen. Runes appeared and the bloody red ink on its tip instantly turned as black as ink. Qi turned into an invisible chain that wove itself such that the warring puppets were stuck where they were.

A warring puppet with a spear let out a long howl and angrily slashed at the chains with the wide and heavy blade that was a blackish red from the murderous qi around it.

“10,000 Transformations Sword of Three Lives – Dust Returns to Dust!” Gu Suihan rotated his sword and the aggressive sword qi instantly turned into thin, pliable but resilient strands of silk that wound around the joints of the puppets’ four limbs tightly.

“Seven Emotions Return to the Soil – Unending Love!” Li Xiaoyao finally made his move. Everything seemed to suddenly go dark, as though the only source of light was his sword. The brilliant sword was like an evil spirit coming to take one’s soul away as it silently aimed for the warring puppet’s neck.

“Its weakness is the soul fire in its skull, not its joints!” Zhang Yan became very anxious and his body kept trembling. He was clearly having trouble holding on.

The warring puppet roared angrily and it was impossible to meet its bright red eyes. It took a heavy step forward, brandishing it like a dragon as it broke through the silk strands and the chains. The warring puppet thrust the spear straight at Zhang Yan.

The entire hall suddenly shook and everyone couldn’t help but back off in horror. Zhang Yan’s face was pale as he saw the spear coming for him. Countless talismans flew out from his sleeve and turned into mud wall after mud wall, ice wall after ice wall that stood between himself and the spear.

But the spear kept moving as though there were nothing there. It pierced through every obstacle and nothing could hold it back for even one moment.

“Li Shu Dies for Tao Shu!” yelled Zou Kai. He leaped up, leaving a deep impression on the floor. He threw a punch so hard that it made a crackling noise as it sliced through the air. The soul of a beast flew out from the tattoo on his right arm and stood right in front of Zhang Yan.

There was a muffled sound as the spear pierced the beast. It looked like it was in terrible pain, but it bared its teeth and refused to move away.

“A Thousand Moving Shadows!” Now that he was given time to take a breather, Zhang Yan instantly turned into a thousand shadows, moved several meters away, and then merged together again, thereby dodging that fearsome spear.

“It’s not damaged in any way at all. What is this armor made of? It’s even stronger than the 18 warring puppets we fought the last time,” murmured Gu Suihan with a somber expression. He had noticed that the armor of these warring puppets had remained just as shiny as before despite the continuous attacks on them.

Zhang Yan moved even further back and his gaze also fell on the dark-colored but shiny armor of the warring puppets. He said in a dismayed voice, “These warring puppets are made of way better material than the ones we saw earlier. They’re not getting damaged at all. We have to fight them from the inside.”

All of them knew what he was saying. Despite how all of them had joined hands to attack the warring puppets, they hadn’t even zinged a single hair on their heads and one of them had nearly been stabbed by a spear. Fighting them from the inside meant attacking the warring spirit inside their heads. They had to find some mysterious method to wipe that spirit out.

“I think Brother Gu has a way to deal with this.” Li Xiaoyao instantly betrayed Gu Suihan without hesitating. He remembered the Soul Ambush and Destroy secret technique that Gu Suihan had used to strike a deal with him.

“Well…I know a secret technique, but I’ll need time to cultivate and it also requires some extremely rare and expensive natural treasures to make it more effective. I’m sure Brother Li knows what I’m talking about.” It wasn’t so easy to trip Gu Suihan up. He kicked the ball right back into Li Xiaoyao’s court.

“That…is true.” Li Xiaoyao nearly gnashed his teeth to powder in anger. The secret technique he got from Gu Suihan was essentially sorcery. In order to master it, one had to reach Origin Core, then refine the core with the souls of 10,000 people to turn the soul into a pearl and you would be able to execute this technique.

But he wasn’t like Gu Suihan. Massacring living creatures for himself was something that he could never bring himself to do. In other words, this secret technique was useless to him.

Gu Suihan had given him a secret technique like what he had asked for, but whether he could attain it or not was part of the conditions set out. You could say that Li Xiaoyao had gotten the short end of the stick, and it was a very, very, short end.