“And then what happened?” Leady asked as he sprang away from the incoming corrupted art, using one of the branches of a tall mangrove tree as a springboard.

Three cultists came falling from above, their sword-like grafts aimed straight at him. But Leady spun his body at the last moment and dodged the deadly attacks, using his dao shard to connect his body to one of the other nearby trees and fling himself toward it.

He wouldn’t be able to cast this spiritual art forever, but up till now, he was able to gradually move eastwards, where Soupy and Hairy had already joined up with Lanky and were fighting off another conclave of void cultists.

“And then? And then the lord descended, and the stupid cultivators of the Dim Gold City did not even know! Even after nearly fourteen years, they still think it was a ‘random’ void rift that just happened to open.” The madlander cultist woman laughed as she tried to pin Leady down with strike after strike.

“You monsters! I have heard about the lower town tragedy.” Leady spat, he didn’t need to feign disgust, “Do you know how many people died that day?”

“They did not die! Their sacred soul was invited away by the lord, and even though we couldn’t deliver all their heads, they are happier now!” The cultist woman screamed defensively.

“Do you even hear yourself? You said you couldn’t deliver all of them, whatever that even means!” Leady said, “You killed them, all those innocent people.”

“Sacrifices are necessary for the lord’s great ambition. He does all for us; his life is laid down for the little folks.” The pitch in the cultist woman’s voice rose even further.

“Is that what you say to convince yourselves?”

“Annoying! And why do you care, accursed cultivator? I’d say arguably you parasites kill far more mortals than us! For us, their lives are sacrificed for the greater good. For you, you purge entire mortal clans for one mere offence, for reasons as flimsy as having a loss of face!”

Leady was stumped. Reputation did matter to cultivators and–No, he couldn’t argue. The cultist woman laughed even louder seeing his hesitation, but Leady took the chance to connect a boulder to the woman’s face with his dao shard, and a moment later the mass of rock crashed into the woman’s mug with a loud crunch.

“Take that loss of face, you crazy crone!”

The cultist woman cried, her void qi turning the offending rock to dust in an instant. But she was dishevelled, her nose bent the wrong way. She snarled, breathing slightly heavier. But then, a strange aura descended upon her being, and she visibly recovered, her nose aligning into position with a gross animation.

With a crack of her neck, the madlander cultist woman readied more void qi to throw at him. Yet her monstrous smile seemed to get just a bit lower, her eyes just a bit angrier.

By now, they were far out of the sounder’s territory. The Demonic Plaguehide Pigs could still be heard oinking and squealing, and from time to time, Leady would see one randomly crashing through the trees with their tuskless tackles.

The fight continued, perhaps only for minutes, but it felt like hours. Leady caught up to his three teammates, all wounded to various degrees, with Soupy missing a leg. She would heal if they managed to live.

They were in an area of the swamp where the muddy water was starting to dry out, blending in with a more bluish forest flora to the east. The pigs couldn’t even be heard now, and except one last member of the chaosfiend sounder lying dead on the ground, all had run back to their grazing swamps.

It was the Demonic Plaguehide Pig King. Its shredded body was scattered through the area, with armour-like hide and serrated bones hanging from branches and boulders.

“Sneaky bastards.” The cultist woman gasped. In her hand was a chaosfiend core radiating Imperfect Heaven 2nd Order qi.

While Leady had lured his pursuers to a pre-planned location, Lanky threw the Red unit of the Twin Flare towards the cultists. It was like siccing the pig king to them, but the behemoth glutton did not last long. The madlander cultist woman seemed to really possess an unending supply of void qi.

The pig king managed to take down one of the other Imperfect Heaven 2nd Realm cultists, but that was it.

The cultist woman grinned. Her mouth opened wide like a snake, and she gulped the chaoscore down like it was a lozenge. Her throat bulbed up, but the core slid down, and her menacing aura intensified even further.

“Thanks, parasites. Funny how even your last ditch effort plays a part in the lord’s grand plan, isn’t it?”

The other cultists laughed alongside her.

The mercenaries were now surrounded.

The sad cry of strange birds was heard overhead. The sky was dawn, but almost turning dusky. The chaos qi was retreating, and the void was taking over.

“Heh, heh, heh,” The cultist woman gasped and took a step forward as she kept on ingesting the chaos qi from the core, her body shaking in fatigue from the long game of cat and mouse but recovering at speeds visible to the naked eye.

Around her were her hooded goons, creeping the circle closer.

They were weaker and missing a lot of members, but still with no shortage of Imperfect Heaven 2nd Realmers. Their skin was cracked, their eyes bleeding green.

“You parasites, wasting our time. Just be obedient and go to the lord. Your friends are waiting!” The woman roared, covering her whole body in purple qi, the chaos core seemingly fully absorbed now.

Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

The other cultists readied their own attacks, and the four mercenaries moved closer together and put up the last of their own qi as a defence.

“Yes, yes, cower like that. Flatworms, leeches!”

Leady grinned.

“What are you laughing at?” The woman was not satisfied that the cultivators weren’t begging for their lives.

“Oh, nothing. Going by your logic, if my friends are alive and your friends are the ones who are dead. Then shouldn’t you guys be the ones to give up and go join them?”

“What?” The cultist woman was taken aback.

A shadow with abnormally long arms and wearing a bone mask fell behind her from above.

“H-How—” The woman hastily turned around, gathering all the qi she could muster in her hands.

But a punch from an Imperfect Heaven 3rd Realmer couldn’t be blocked by just that.

An Xing struck with a simple left hook. It broke through the disgusting void barrier and connected squarely with the cultist woman’s ugly purple face.

***

Gangbao couldn’t see.

“W-What’s happening!”

“I don’t know. But it’s an enemy! Don’t split, and someone light a—aaaargh!”

Even though the young chef’s eyes were wide open, it was as if suddenly the whole world had gone blind.

“What happened? Oi, don’t suddenly go—oof!”

“Show yourself, coward! Why fight in the dark like a raaaaaaaaattt— mercy, mercy, it hurts!”

But Gangbao could hear perfectly. The screams of the hooded figures, the rustle of clothes, and the slithering of some strange creature on the floor.

“Bao Bao, I’m sorry. Where are you? I’m sorry.” Ding Shi was still crying. Gangbao hugged her closer.

He was alive. But how? And who was fighting the cultists? Gangbao’s mind raced with a million different thoughts. He considered escaping, but which way was the exit? What about his old man? What if he came back now and walked into this chaos?

“Ding Shi. I’m here. It’s fine. J-Just stay close to me and we’ll leave this place.”

“…okay.”

The young chef took a deep breath. Keeping his wife close, he stood up. The pain from the knife wound made him tear up, but he limped forward nonetheless.

They had to get out!

Something rustled beneath his feet. Gangbao jumped like a spooked cat. The thing touched him! It was wet, slimy, furry, and cold. Like a snake made out of iced shadows, and it now had Gangbao within its grasp. The boy shivered, his hair standing up. The thing did not care. It slithered up his thigh and under his clothes.

It went for the area where the knife was stabbed, and its rope-like body constricted around his thigh.

There was another sudden pain in his leg.

Then.

Light returned to the world.

And a knife fell to the wooden floor with a clank, squarely onto a pool of blood, making the purple and green liquid splash on Gangbao’s clothes.

“B-blood!” Ding Shi gasped from behind, moving closer.

How can blood be purple and green?

But his wife was right!

The floor was littered with bundles of black masses.

Snakes! Gangbao realised. Large shadowy snakes with fox heads were constricting the hooded figures to the ground. They bit and squeezed, making some of the people burst like watermelons, splattering their strange blood on the walls and floor of the restaurant like a bad paint job.

For the rest, it was a slow, agonising death.

“Sis Feng was right,” said a youthful voice. But it was muffled, as though coming through a layer of cloth.

Gangbao snapped around and saw a tall youth leaning against one of the walls. He was clad in all black, but the fox yao features were unmistakable. In his hand was a paper charm, the one that the scary fox maid had given Gangbao!

This yao, Gangbao recognised him. It was the young man who was with Ziyou Yung that day! The day the divine hawk gang had—

Ding Shi tightly squeezed his hand.

“Oops, should get those fixed.” The man said, snapping his finger. A snake leapt out of the man’s shadow and headed for Ding Shi.

“W-What do you want?!” Gangbao yelled, protecting his wife with his body. But the snake creature simply slithered under his feet and climbed up Ding Shi’s leg.

“Kyaa!”

In no time, it reached her twisted arm and constricted around it like a bandage.

Then, it vanished, with a poof.

And in its place remained Ding Shi’s broken limb, now set back at the correct angle, with indeed a bandage that had glowing letters engraved upon it.

“That should do it. Impressive job staying alive, you.” The man said with a whistle.

It was then that Gangbao noticed that the pain in his leg was gone. The wound was also wrapped in similar magical bandages.

The man wasn’t an enemy. He was their saviour!

“T-thank you.” Gangbao said, barely managing to keep his legs from giving in.

“I wasn’t speaking to you, kid. But the girl.” Said the man. He walked up to one of the snake bundles and kicked it. The snakes slithered away and joined his shadow. What was left was a mangled mess of ren flesh and bones.

“What?” Gangbao asked in confusion.

“What?” The man asked back.

“B-Bao Bao thanked you for saving us. N-Not because you said it was impressive that we were alive.” Ding Shi explained, looking left and right with nervous twitches.

“Oh… yeah, you're welcome. But again, I was talking about you alone, not the kid.” The fox yao rolled his eyes before kicking the other snake bundles.

“What do you mean?” Gangbao asked. The fox yao was insinuating something and the young chef did not like it.

“It’s a mystery how these cultist scum managed to hide her during the sect recruitments. But now it’s clear as day.” The fox yao muttered, looking straight at the nervous girl, “Your genitalia, uterus, ovaries, heck, wow, your whole reproductive system and even breasts… they’re voidfiend grafts. It’s been a long time since I saw a Dark Mother Physique. You, girl, have one heck of a voidborne bloodline.”

The yao stopped. The last seven snake bundles he had kicked contained no corpse, but thin wisps of smoke that cackled with malice.

“Good,” The man grinned, “they escaped.”

Gangbao was confused. Dark Mother? Grafts? What? “Why is it good that they escaped?” He asked.

“It would be boring otherwise.” Su Haochen grinned.

Yes, he was Su Haochen!

Gangbao finally remembered his name, the depraved yao that crawled the night and beat up alcoholic men for sport.

What a terrifying being!

***

The cultist woman flew. Past her allies, through some of them too, across the forest and finally crashing against a cliff, blasting apart a crater thirty metres deep.

The dust rose along with an anguished cry.

A link of void qi seemed to connect the crater with some hellish place beyond the sky. The dust cloud was then swept apart by the sheer magnitude of void qi radiating from the hole.

“Boss,” Leady said, finally breathing a sigh of relief.

It wasn’t over yet. By the looks of the void qi, it was far from over.

But now An Xing was here. He would take care of the rest.

Leady’s team were truly at their limits. Barely hanging on to their last remnants of qi, they were almost forced to use some of their true qi, too. In fact, Soupy had. If not, her injury would have been way worse than just one limb.

“Join up with the fourth squad north. I’ll take it from here,” An Xing said.

Leady nodded. He helped support Lanky, the poor man looked fine from the outside, but he was poisoned quite thoroughly. Hairy carried Soupy, the latter acting strangely coy. Leady cast one last glance at the crater where the cultist woman was buried.

The void qi subsided. The woman stepped out.

She was now hunchbacked, half of her face twisted into itself. Her skin was purple, the hooded robe nowhere to be seen. Her veins were putrid green, and where her heart should have been, there was a stone.

A deep stone, sickly and rotten.

A voidcore.

“GGRahrahhahhahggga!” The woman, the thing roared. Its power definitely surpasses the Unfolding Heaven 2nd Realm, no, 2nd Order.

But it would not be enough.

Leady grinned once more. The madlander cultist monster saw it. It roared again, this time the humiliation strangely audible in its gurgled voice.

“YOU WON’T GET AWAYYYYYY!”

Leady could not be bothered to respond. Plans be damned, he needed a nice bath and a nicer gourd of wine.

The tired mercenary jumped, leaping away!