Book 3. The Long Journey. Chapter 148. Sacred Guardian.
Almost immediately after making the sharp turn, Laien and Yin both jumped off their horses, towards the greyish and rocky mountain slope that extended to their right side. Still in mid-air, Laien felt Yin grab him under the shoulder as the two of them were about to land. Prepared for what was about to happen, he relaxed his body and allowed Yin to pull him along with his Lighting Steps. What should have been impossible became the reality thanks to their Blood Pact and the next split-second, the two of them reappeared on top of the rocks, having cushioned all the forward momentum of theirs.
Before the two men chasing them arrived, Yin’s interspatial ring flashed briefly as he took out quite a few large and medium-sized stones he had picked up along the way. With their auras still hidden, he and Laien crouched behind their improvised cover. They didn’t dare to even breathe as they waited for the two men to appear, but it wasn’t exactly because of those two men that they were so tense. The very moment they had entered this part of the road, an invisible pressure came crashing unto them, causing them to feel as if they were going to suffocate. It wasn’t aura, it wasn’t killing intent… it was almost as if the air itself was so heavy and oppressive that it could kill all weaker practitioners.
The one second they needed to wait for the two men to catch up felt like an eternity, but when the two auras sped past them at incredible speed, the two of them relaxed ever so slightly. According to what Yin knew, entering this part of the road was equivalent with certain death. If possible, they would have rather stayed away from this place too, but they needed to lead those two men in here in order to get rid of them… and as they looked at the backs of the two men, who suddenly started slowing down as the strange pressure of the area started affecting them, they trembled.
They could swear that that person wasn’t there before, but in a period of time far shorter than one would need to blink, he appeared a kilometers away from them. He was standing good three hundred meters in the air with no signs of Qi or spiritual energy around him or even any kind of an aura or presence to him. If they weren’t looking in this exact direction, they wouldn’t have even noticed him. From what they could see from this distance, the man had waist-long silky, bright-silver hair and was wearing a loose, pure-white robe. He was almost two meters tall… and his eyes seemed to be shining with a mixture of white and silvery light.
The second it took Laien and Yin to take a good look at the white-robed, silver-haired man was similarly the amount of time it took the two men who had been chasing after them to come to a forceful stop. However, just as the two of them turned their backs around and were about to flee, just as they noticed the figures of the two boys who they had been trying to catch, the white-robed man waved his left hand lazily, almost as if he was shooing a slightly annoying fly away.
Contrary to the white-robed man’s casual action, the immensely powerful Qi which burst from his body caused the whole world to momentarily lip up and turn deathly silent. Accompanied by the aura of omnipotence, the man’s Qi transformed into an avalanche of white-silvery lightning which rolled through the middle of the road just as fast as a thunder that would split the sky.
Subsequently, the surge of lightning engulfed the two men and before they could even cry out, it turned them to dust in the place they were standing at. In but an instant, their whole bodies turned into ashes which were blown away by the strong wind the very next second, only two golden interspatial rings falling down on the untouched stony road they had been running through.
Stunned, Laien and Yin were unable to move as the wave of incomprehensible power had just flown by a mere few dozen meters away from them. So far, the most powerful being the had ever met were definitely the two ‘demons’ from the Anarchic Lands, the crimson-haired young woman and the azure-haired youth. However, their cultivations were in a different dimension; although they felt respect towards those two siblings, they couldn’t fear them as they couldn’t comprehend their true power. On the other hand, this white-robed man here… although they couldn’t be entirely sure, his Qi alone seemed to be at the level of a martial master of the ninth rank!
It needed not to be mentioned that someone who could reach the apex of the Realm of Heroes would possess an innumerable amount of powerful insights, too. Yet, the white-robed man had attacked casually, so there appeared to be no insights contained in his attack. At the very least, there were none of those that the two of Laien and Yin could realistically sense or comprehend.
“Two children,” the white-robed man spoke calmly, his voice somehow reaching Laien’s and Yin’s ears despite him using no Qi to enhance it. “But intruders are intruders,” he added, causing the minds of the two boys to blank out for a split-second. Then, he raised his left hand ever so slightly and flicked his finger, sending a surge of white-silvery lighting towards the two youths. He needed to admit that they were incredibly daring to have used him to get rid of their pursuers, but there was no reason for him to spare them once they entered the off-limits area, even if only by a hundred meters.
With the kind of a speed the white-robed man’s lightning moved at, it should have been impossible for most people to react to it in any way. Luckily, since his words had given Laien and Yin a bit of a warning, the two of them had had enough time to at least do something. Alas, Laien was entirely spent; he didn’t have one drop of Qi or spiritual energy left in his body, so even if this attack had been several times weaker, it would have been deadly to him.
Naturally, Yin understood this fact very well. Thus, knowing that he had little to no time to react, he didn’t hesitate at all and immediately transformed into his magical beast form. His clothes ripping from his growing form, he jumped at Laien mid-transformation and pushed him down to the ground, covering his body with his own. At the same time, he roused his Qi to the limits, merging it with the Heavenly Lightning that dwelled within him. His Qi Origin shook from the strain as the entirety of its reservoir was being poured out in the matter of split-seconds, but as it had been reforged into the Heavenly Lightning Martial Realm, it didn’t sustain any damage despite the ridiculous overload.
The same thing couldn’t be said about Yin’s Qi paths and his body, though. Yet, since Yin had instantly made the choice to transform into the sturdy and physically powerful magical beast form, which even increased his control of the Heavenly Lightning, he merely sustained some minor internal injuries that would heal within a day of rest. The backlash resulting from using up all his Qi in one go was a relatively small one, considering that the same act would have killed the very majority of cultivators were they attempt it, but most importantly, this overload wasn’t the main threat.
“Eh?” the white-robed man’s eyes opened wide. The very same instant he sent his attack out, he sensed the extremely familiar aura coming from the green-haired youth and saw him transform into the magical beast form of their Shenlei Clan! “Impossible, how come I didn’t sense his aura earlier? Rules may be rules, but I could overlook one little intrusion since the kid is one of ours!” he cried out inwardly. He had already sent his attack out; although he was infinitely far away from having struck with his full strength, the surge of lightning was still extremely fast. He would have stopped the surge from hitting those two boys, but now that he had already sent it out, there wasn’t anything he could do.
He fully expected to see the two youths to turn into ashes the moment his lightning reached them. He had used just a minuscule amount of Qi, but he did enhance it with a portion of his insights. Speaking in the human standards, this one attack should be enough to directly slaughter an elite marital master of the fifth rank and was only slightly short of being able to claim the life of a supreme martial master of the same level. The people of their Shenlei Clan were more resistant to lightning, but for a kid who was still in the mortal realm and was yet to go through the Bloodline Awakening… although he was feeling sorry, he had no hopes of seeing those two kids survive.
And yet, he was surprised once again within the timespan that was much shorter than half a second. First, he sensed the aura of that kid from their clan increase exponentially, then saw the boy release a huge amount of emerald lightning…. of the Heavenly Lightning that the main branch of their Shenlei Clan wielded! Finally, he saw how his white-silvery lightning crashed against the emerald lightning of the youth’s and to his further shock, it actually wasn’t able to directly break through!
“The main bloodline?! How can he be from the main bloodline?! We’re informed about every inheriting descendant leaving the Forbidden Lands! But more importantly, what’s up with the ridiculous strength of his Heavenly Lightning? How can he make it so powerful? How can he release it without destroying his body and without losing control of it?” the white-robed man couldn’t help himself from panicking as a torrent of thoughts flooded his mind.
He was fulfilling the duty of a Sacred Guardian and he was a powerful practitioner, but even he wouldn’t be able to escape consequences if he killed one of the inheriting descendants, be it by an accident or not! He was powerful, yes, but his future was closed-off. After five or six thousand more years, he would grow old and die without being able to step across the final barrier between mortality and immortality. As mighty as the power of the bloodline of their Shenlei Clan, and of the other once-mighty clans, was, they were all still limited by their Bloodline Constraints. Thus, since he had failed to advance for so long already, his life likely wasn’t worth that much to the Ancient One.
“Will he actually be able to defend?” the white-robed man wondered hopefully. The two clusters of lightning, one white-silvery and one emerald green, struggled against each other for a good half a second. However, to the white-robed man’s dismay, his own attack proved to be superior and after shattering the barrier of emerald lightning, it struck at the bodies of the two youths. In the end, although Heavenly Lightning of their main bloodline was the mightiest, his own lightning also belonged to the same class, albeit to the lower-ranked one. Paired up with the difference in the quality of their Qi, this clash couldn’t possibly have ended in any different way.
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“I’m so screw-… eh?” the white-robed man was about to let out a sigh, but he froze when he noticed that the bodies of those two youths didn’t turn into ashes. He instantly took one step forward and appeared before them and quickly inspected their bodies with his aura. “They’re both heavily wounded, but there doesn’t seem to be any critical damage. Did this kid manage to offset far more of my attack’s power than I thought? But then… his strength….” he thought to himself, a heavy frown appearing on his face. This green-haired kid’s talent was beyond anything he had ever seen!
He was no longer involved in the matters of the clans, but he could only be impressed by the level of strength this descendant of their Shenlei Clan had displayed. Had he not taken on the brunt of the surge with his body in order to protect his friend, the kid might have gotten off with merely some light wounds. Considering the level of strength he had used to attack… this youngling’s talent was truly an exquisite one! However, it also looked like his situation was complicated.
“Our old generation isn’t allowed to get involved with the matters of the youngsters,” he murmured, a look of affection appearing in his eyes. “But I doubt the Ancient One will care about this little bit of help I’m going to give them,” he said to himself and produced a few drops of crystal-clear liquid, which he quickly covered with a layer of Qi in order to prevent them from slowly dissipating. “This one should be his blood-bound partner, seeing as that surge of emerald lightning didn’t incarnate him into nothingness,” he added and after hesitating for a second, retrieved three more drops of the crystal-clear liquid.
“Let’s see how much your bodies can handle,” he said with a slight smile and directed five drops of the liquid past Yin’s fangs and into his throat, then sent three of them into the throat of the other boy. “For the time being…” he murmured, his figure disappearing the very next instant. After he had extended his aura, he had long since sensed the three riders who were making their way through the secret pass. He could also guess that those people were most likely enemies of those two boys… so meeting up with them early on would be the most efficient choice he could make.
“Stop.”
The three men, who were following on their horses came to an abrupt stop when they saw a white-robed man appear out of nowhere just a few dozen meters in front of them. They could swear they were going to crash into him, but somehow, the man moved away smoothly as they were attempting to make their horses stop. A few seconds later, the three of them came to a halt and the man with long, bright-silver hair asked them a question in an almost unnaturally calm tone.
“Are you with those two long-haired men?”
It didn’t take a genius to know that answering ‘yes’ wasn’t the best option, but the three men found themselves unable to focus as if they were in a half-asleep state. They nodded in a muddleheaded manner, what caused the white-robed man to reveal a slight smirk. The next second, a flash of white-silvery lightning rolled through the tight passage, turning the three riders and their horses into piles of grey ashes.
“Now for the horses,” the white-robed man said to himself and disappeared once again. A few seconds later, he appeared in front of the two collapsed, half-dead horses. The two mounts had been frightened silly by his two attacks, so they had run forward while ignoring the consequences the protective barriers of the area brought to them. “Quite sturdy, they aren’t dead despite getting this far in,” he praised sincerely. The opportunity was just right, so he decided that he might as well give it a try and if it fails, then he could always bring two new mounts for the boys.
He crouched between the two collapsed horses and put one hand on top of each of them. He proceeded to pour a slim amount of Qi into the body of the war horses, into their Qi paths and towards their Qi Origins. In normal circumstances, the Qi of those magical beasts would have rejected the foreign energy, but since it was thoroughly suppressed by the effects of the barrier, it was docile and weak, too weak to react in any significant way. As for the half-conscious horses themselves, they had no strength to resist but importantly, they were stubbornly clinging to their lives.
“Slowly expand the Qi paths, nourish the Qi Origin with energy,” he murmured, thinking that it had been quite some time since he last helped a horse through the bottleneck between the mortal realm and the Realm of Heroes. Usually, it first required befriending the animal since making it submit through force was far less effective, but on this occasion, he could skip the troublesome process and go straight through to the attempt. “Really good,” he praised when he sensed that both of the mounts reached the breaking point. He withdrew his Qi from their bodies and lifted them up with it, then carried them towards the two youths he had left at the early parts of the main road.
“Now how are you two…” he mused as he extended his aura to probe the bodies of the two boys. He had been slightly worried if he hadn’t given too much of the Liquid Life to that human kid, but it looked like today was a day that would keep giving him surprises one after another. “It’s been only five minutes, but they both already absorbed the entire strength of the Liquid Life I’ve given them?” he muttered, unaware that over the years of solitude he had developed a habit of talking to himself.
“Liquid Life mainly nourishes one’s physical body, destroying the impurities within without leaving any squall behind. However, that only applies if there’s a potential for the body to evolve. The end effect is basically increased physical prowess and faster marital cultivation… I could still understand our kid to have absorbed five drops in five minutes, but this human too?” he kept wondering aloud, but at the same as he did, he continued to send more drops of crystal-clear liquid into the throats of the two boys, one drop at the time.
Needless to be said, as the precious drops of Liquid Life were being greedily devoured by the two youths, the white-robed man continued to grow both more amazed and more appealed. Liquid Life might not be of that much use to him anymore, but he still had worked incredibly hard in the past to earn just one small vial of it. By this point, thirty-six drops out of the hundred the vial contained were gone, all having easily dissolved within the bodies of those two youths. Had it not been for the apparent effects the elixir had on the boys, he would have been ready to swear that he was feeding them normal drops of water.
“Well, no matter. Go ahead and eat as much you want, you damned gluttons,” he complained half-seriously. Personally, when he had received the chance to take Liquid Life before going through his Bloodline Awakening and breaking through to the Realm of Heroes, he had absorbed eighteen drops of the elixir before reaching his limit. At the moment, the human kid had taken in seventeen and the kid from their clan had taken nineteen. This result was already impressive in itself, but the main issue was that the bodies of those two showed no sign of reaching their limits at all.
“All their wounds have long since healed, but they shouldn’t wake up anytime soon,” he mused as he continued to feed Liquid Life to the two youths. Thirty-eight drops, forty… fifty, sixty… ninety… “Holy shit,” he cursed quietly and let out a helpless laugh. He looked at the empty vial in his hand, laughed again and put it back into his interspatial ring. “Ridiculous. Forty-nine for the human kid and fifty-one for the one from our clan. Even in the records, there are no mentions of this kind of an absorption rate. Could it be that their bodies are special in a way? It didn’t feel like they improved that much physically onwards from the mid-point, so could it be that the energy was used up in some other way?”
The white-robed man probed the bodies of the two boys with his aura, curious to find what was the cause of this weird incident. However, after attempting to find the cause for a few dozen seconds, he gave up. He couldn’t see anything out of place nor could he sense that some specific place had changed, so unless he was stubborn enough to attempt some more invasive methods, he wouldn’t find out anything relevant. As for those forceful methods, of course, he was unwilling to try them.
“Those two seem to be doing good too,” he said contentedly. The two war horses were past the dangerous part of their breakthrough, so in a few more minutes they would safely reach the Realm of Heroes. “As for you two…” he added, turning his gaze back towards Laien and Yin. The thought of taking them to his own house for the period of time crossed his mind, but he gave up on the idea just as quickly. He shouldn’t interact with those two too much, both for theirs and for his own sake.
Before he left, he waved his hand, lifting the bodies of the two slightly as he placed a layer of soft furs below them. He placed the two of them down, allowing the human kid to rest against the side of the magical beast form of the kid from their Shenlei Clan. For blood-bound partners, the mental recovery would always be faster if they stayed close together, not to mention the benefits of having a trusted partner brought to their races. Since those two seemed to be quite special, he couldn’t help but wonder if this scion of their clan would be able to shatter the shackles of the Bloodline Constraint or if he would end up like him and the countless others, all with the exception of the Ancient One.
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A few hours later, on the rugged slopes of the mountainside to the Forbidden Lands, just a few kilometers away from where the entrance to the hidden passage was located.
“So they apparently disappeared somewhere around here,” the muscular ruby-golden-robed man, Abdain, mused aloud. He had already gone around and scanned the whole area with his aura, but he failed to discover anything. “Did some hidden passage open? According to what those guys are saying, it looked like they all disappeared straight into the mountain,” he wondered, but no longer spoke his thoughts out loud as he felt that it was a stupid thing to do.
“It’s apparently been over two hours since they’ve gone there. There’s a road leading to the Forbidden Lands a few hundred kilometers to the north… they would have come either out of here or there if they were still alive. Eh, did they chase too far and ended up dying with those kids?” he asked himself. There had never been anyone who intruded the Forbidden Lands and returned alive, so he had no excessive hopes to see either of those two parties, his men or the two boys, to return alive.
Whether he liked it or not, he was forced to admit that those two boys were impressive bastards. They realized that they had no chance to flee and chose the only possibility that offered them a future that didn’t involve committing a suicide or getting captured. He wasn’t willing to send in groups of his people merely to look for their corpses, though, so it was unlikely that he would be able to confirm what had happened to the boys and his men anytime soon… unless the Forbidden Lands chose to spit their bodies out as a reminder to all the potential intruders.
“Maar isn’t going to be too happy,” he said with a helpless chuckle. “Well, no other way about it. He’ll need to be satisfied with Jasmine’s head,” he said to himself, not quite aware that he had once more started speaking his thoughts aloud. “Might as well station some people around here and around that road to the Forbidden Lands too, just in case,” he murmured. Although it would be unwise to station any elites here, especially now that he had lost five of his best men all at once, leaving behind some average ones just to be safe wouldn’t be a problem. Those low-level martial masters were merely meat shields against the White Guard anyway; a few dozens here or there wouldn’t make much of a difference.
“More importantly,” he said with a smile. “Let’s see what Mustafa’s kid does now that his messengers are gone,” he mused aloud, looking forward to having another bout with the White Guard. As for Mustafa… he was honestly glad that Arakar had managed to disable this monster. Even though Arakar and Mustafa had been in the same realm of cultivation, Mustafa had easily overwhelmed the three of them and many dozens of their elite subordinates on his own. The strength of the legendary figure of Arkaria… it had been a sight to behold, but it was no more.
“Either way, one last clash is probably coming,” he murmured, his smile turning bloodthirsty just for a second before his expression returned to his usual level-headed one.