Nearly three months had passed since Futian had been stranded in this forest, despite his best efforts the number of people surviving in his camp steadily decreased.
He had tried to improve security together with Arius. When they hunted for food they all hunted together and avoided targeting second order demon beasts.
He made strict policies regarding who keeps watch at night, even implementing a rotating shift system in which there was no time that the camp wasn’t protected.
But even with all his tactics and planning, five people had ended up dead, and displayed in a manner that struck terror into their hearts.
Once the dead body of a disciple was cut into pieces and placed before the entrance of each makeshift tent.
Another time a disciple’s bodied turned up with engravings that read DEATH DEATH DEATH.
The most terrifying incident was when a disciple walked into the camp and screamed hysterically before ripping his own head off his shoulders.
He was slowly but surely approaching his breaking point, all eyes were on him, the entire time he was awake he would agonize over his strategies and try to fix the flaws in his system.
Whenever someone turned up dead he would receive the blame, and to top it off he hadn’t found even a slight clue on how to escape or where the elders were.
This freakish place never had a daytime, it was always night, there was no daylight they could travel in.
But today was worst, of all as he left his tent he was greeted with something that pushed him over the edge.
Futian was livid with rage as he saw the three bodies strung up to a tree in the middle of his camp. The eyes were once again gouged out, the arms were slit down the middle and blood slowly dripped to the ground.
His expression slowly shifted between fear to helplessness to intense anger.
“Senior brother, the disciples are starting to doubt you.” Arius meekly whispered to him.
Futian glanced at him for a moment, before turning to face the rest of the disciples that stood before him.
They all looked at him with uncertainty.
He slapped Arius, knocking him to the ground.
“F*ck, I’m not your damned father, you ungrateful fools! Instead of getting angry at and doubting me, how about you all look at yourselves!”
He made eye contact with them, as if he was individually calling all of them out.
“How the hell did someone manage to not only murder, but hang your fellow disciples in such a way without a single one of you dullards noticing something?”
The disciples looked to the ground in shame, their eyes trying to avoid his gaze.
“When the elders… If the elders ever find us and see that I let so many of you slow brained morons die, it’ll be my head on the chopping block not yours!”
A silence ensued for a moment as the disciples listened to him.
“Incompetent F*CKS SPEAK UP!”
They quickly realized that the question wasn’t rhetorical in nature as Futian awaited a response, one of them gathered their courage and raised their head before speaking out.
“Senior brother, these three decided to hunt for food, as you know cultivators at the Qi condensation stage still get hungry and must eat when needed.”
Futian's anger flared uncontrollably, causing his frustration to explode. He then violently slugged the disciple with such force that the disciple's head almost shattered.
“I told you imbeciles that no one is to leave the camp! You in all your collective idiocy not only let them go but failed to inform me! ARE YOU ALL INCAPABLE OF FOLLOWING ORDERS?!!”
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The disciples who had been docile before him began to slowly walk backwards, the image of the fun loving scholar began to slowly fade and was replaced with a wrathful man.
“You hungry f*cks, if you wanted food then chomp down on the goddamned trees! did you lose your brains somewhere, even after I warned you all to stick together!”
Arius, unlike the rest of the disciples, walked towards him. The other disciples watched in disbelief and doubted his sanity, how did he have the confidence to approach Futian at this point?
“Senior brother, she says that she saw something.” He motioned to a female disciple who stepped forward.
“Speak!” Futian barked, fixing her with a stern gaze.
“I saw something that looked like a woman with blue hair tying up the bodies to the tree, she quickly ran away after I caught a glimpse of her.”
The female disciple looked to the ground while speaking, her voice trembling, afraid of being the next victim of Futian’s rage.
Futian struck the ground with intense force, causing a crater to form at the sight of impact.
“THAT WHORE! THAT F*CKING WHORE!” his shout reverberated throughout the forest.
A few moments after he shouted, three figures slowly walked out from the bushes.
Orion, Daiyu and Krimin had finally found the others, after a gruelling three months of walking around aimlessly.
Orion looked at Futian with a relieved expression.
“Finally we found someone.” he was the first to speak.
“Futian, it’s not wise to shout in the forest, are you trying to become feed for demon beasts? Also, why have you lit fires, they attract far too much attention.” Daiyu added, seeing Futian's unhinged demeanor.
Krimin remained quiet, after-all he was still from the unorthodox faction, he didn’t have any say over Futian’s behavior.
However his nostrils twitched, he smelled someone familiar but couldn’t quite put his finger on it.
Futian’s face shifted from slightly hopeful upon seeing them, to a wronged and betrayed expression.
“You….”
He began to speak but stopped for a moment.
“For three month, for three damned months! I had to manage, feed and protect all of these pitiful, pathetic excuses for cultivators, and now you want to come here and look down on me, as if I’m some idiot!” he glared at the three of them, a glimpse of hostility present in his eyes.
Orion tried to say something but stopped as Daiyu held her hand out in front of him.
“You’re acting as if we were out there frolicking in the fields.” she replied with an icy gaze, as she raised her hands above her shoulders.
Her sleeves fell to reveal all sorts of brutal scars.
The surrounding disciples gasped at the sight, there were claw marks, bite marks and even marks of pincers, still in the process of healing.
Krimin and Orion weren't any better, although they didn't reveal their arms, the torn sections of their clothing hiding the proof of their battles were enough to see that they had been to hell and back.
“We had our fair share of troubles out here too.” her hands came down to her waist and the scars were hidden.
Futian wanted to reply with something that he wouldn’t consider polite but he withheld himself.
“To hell with your troubles, If you want to stay, then stay, if you want to leave, then leave. But what you do not get to do is come into my camp, after three months of abandoning your fellow disciples and tell ME! how to manage it.” He waved his hand dismissively.
a young man wearing black cultivator robes with long hair yelling at a woman standing across from him wearing a translucent hanfu face veil, in a forest at night surrounded by a few people, in manhwa style [https://th.bing.com/th/id/OIG1.u6LFJEproQEcqUHMbYGk?pid=ImgGn]
“FINE! Do what you want, but I’m warning you there's something going on here, something you can’t solve.” Daiyu had a limit to her patience and she did not have the luxury nor time to save one who had no intention of being saved.
“Brot-” Orion once again attempted to say something, but this time it was Krimin who cut him off.
“Don’t, he’s not in the right state of mind, I speak for your own safety.”
A month ago Orion would have spit at him. But after so much time that they spent surviving in this wilderness he had become slightly more tolerant of Krimin.
His mindset that operated under the black and white distinction of orthodox and unorthodox factions had shifted into an ambiguous gray.
He didn’t know it at this point but it had begun to resemble the thought process of the elders and the people at the peak of the cultivation world.
In reality all those who lived long enough would realize, the titles of orthodox and unorthodox were just those, mere titles.
As Futian walked away from the three and towards his tent, it was clear he was done with the conversation. Yet Arius followed him before asking him something.
“Senior brother, you don’t think it's…. The demonic faction?” Arius tried to confirm the reason for Futian's sudden outburst earlier.
“Who else would it be!? There were a few women in Liza’s group with blue hair, even the woman who joined her along with the Heaven fallen Knight and Nether witch had blue hair.”
He exhaled deeply before finally calming down.
“You were right Arius, we should have exterminated them then and there. I made a mistake….”
His eyes shone with a newfound goal and an inextinguishable fury.
“Time to slay some demonic f*cks….” he spoke in a vengeful yet composed tone, this time he would not make such a mistake.
20 disciples remaining within the Orthodox group.