Liang Chen put away the jade slip after spending a few quiet moments looking at it, walking past Juye Gong without saying a word. He opened the window and jumped out of it, an orb of darkness surrounding him before receding, his and Yumao's form already gone. He didn't say what he was going to do, nor did he make any promises, but Juye Gong still felt confident that Liang Chen would help them.
Yumao brought Liang Chen through the darkness until they were a good distance away from the inn, bringing Liang Chen out in an area where there was no one else. He could sense that the surrounding streets were still deserted, people electing to stay in their homes so that they didn't risk running into Liang Chen or whoever was kidnapping the children and Demonic beasts. Since the streets were still deserted, Liang Chen found himself left with no other choice, patting Yumao on the head.
"Guess we'll have to give a few surprise visits."
Yumao snickered at Liang Chen's attempt to reword what they were going to do, another orb of darkness swallowing the two and bringing them away. And the place they appeared again was directly inside one of the houses, right in front of the residents living there. And the moment they appeared, Liang Chen produced a hushing gesture and invaded the three people with his poison.
He wasn't going to just trust the words of the governor and the jade slip, first he wanted to gather more information from other people. But to his surprise, most of the people in the city had a pretty uniform opinion of the Sword Dancer's sect.
"The Sword Dancer's? I don't trust them, they settle down and suddenly people start disappearing? No thank you, I'm staying far away from their territory."
"I've got a daughter who's a member of the Sword Dancer's, she used to be such a sweet kid, but now she rarely ever comes home. And when she does come home for the rare occasion, she looks so drained and sickly that I fear she is on the verge of death."
"I don't trust the Sword Dancer's one bit, my uncle's hawk companion squawked at one of their members one day, and three days later Little Green vanished without a trace. It must have been them, it has to have been them!"
"I saw some members of the Sword Dancer's one late evening, they entered an alley with two young men, but only the three Sword Dancer's ever left that alley. I didn't even dare to enter the alley to see the result, I just ran for my life and hid for the next month."
"The governor ought to just chase out to bastards! He's always made sure that things are as they should be so I don't see why he ain't doing so now!"
Liang Chen moved from house to house and asked person after person, questioning both normal citizens and guards or members of the governor's office while the hours passed. But not a single one of them trusted the Sword Dancer's sect, few of them were even willing to enter the area around the sect's main headquarters. And with so many people distrusting them for various reasons, it became suspicious enough that Liang Chen decided to take a closer look at the sect itself.
Evening had already arrived while he was questioning so the twin suns circling the planet were starting to set, Liang Chen approaching the area around the sect while Yumao covered him using the darkness. He stretched out his senses as far as he could, scanning the surrounding area for any living beings or any movements as he moved, eventually picking up something.
He headed for what he had discovered, quickly coming upon four people clad in silver robes decorated with an emblem featuring a woman who seemed to be dancing while wielding two swords. But Liang Chen was more occupied by what the four people were carrying, two other youthful people who were beaten and bloodied, their legs and arms were broken so that they couldn't struggle too much while their mouths were stuffed with a large wooden orb so that they couldn't make loud sounds.
Liang Chen would interfere in this even if it wasn't done by people he was currently investigating, his body flashing forward as he invaded the four silver-robed people with his poison. He knocked out the two beaten youths so that they wouldn't suffer, putting them aside for a moment after stuffing some pills with regenerative effects into their mouths and helping them swallow them.
He then turned his attention to the four other youths, who were standing still with blank expressions that resembled those of dolls. They were from the Sword Dancer's sect so he simply asked them directly about what they had been planning on doing with these youths and what exactly their sect was doing. And the more the four youths spoke, the lower Liang Chen's expression sank. He eventually raised his head to the sky and let out a long sigh.
"Ha~ah, I guess hoping that the only nasty corporations in this universe were the Golden Branch and the Tranquil Lake was too much to ask for, it's really saddening."
Liang Chen waved his hand once he finished lamenting, the poison that had invaded the four silver-robed youths melting away their souls. The Sword Dancer's sect was just as bad as the Golden Branch, it was just that they operated on a smaller scale, staying within this city. But they still did the same, killing and kidnapping to experiment on people and beasts alike, all to further the strength of their own sword skills by discovering every single weak point on a living being's body.
Liang Chen stored the four corpses into his interspatial ring and dropped off the two still bloody youths at the closest hospital that wasn't within the Sword Dancer's territory. Once that was taken care of, he jumped onto Yumao's head and headed straight for the headquarters of the Sword Dancer's sect.
The sect itself looked like a spiralling starfish, a grass-covered plain filling up the area around the sect as well as the open space between the six squiggling buildings that served as the 'limbs' of the starfish. The moment Yumao approached the sect, a blaring alarm was raised within the sect, calling all the disciples to arms. The approach of Yumao brought with it a fate that was exceedingly clear to people, it was not something they would just sit back and accept.
Seven people rose into the sky from the sect as Yumao got close, four women and three men standing in the air in front of Liang Chen, each one wielding a sword of some variety as they nervously faced him. But while this sect was doing the same as the Golden Branch sect, their strength was far lower, with their sect leader only being at the early stage of the Primordial Immortal realm.
As such, when Liang Chen took a step forward and vanished from Yumao's head, no one was able to react and stop him before his hand landed on the throat of the sect's Third elder. His poison immediately invaded the woman's soul, Yumao letting out a thunderous roar and forcing back the six others so that Liang Chen could question the elder.
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And the answers he got from the elder were the same as the ones he had gotten from the earlier youths, causing Liang Chen's expression to harden mercilessly. He had the elder point out all the innocent people in the sect, the number so low that it further served to disappoint Liang Chen. He got everything he could from the woman and then clenched his fist, crushing her throat and chucking the corpse into his interspatial ring. He then descended upon the sect itself, crashing into the ground like a meteor.
He crashed right through one of the six squiggling buildings, his body cultivation bringing with it such force that the metallic material shattered beneath him. A nearly six-kilometre section of the 10-kilometre long building was shattered just by his descent, metallic scrap launched through the air like debris.
His spear appeared in his hand and swept out, torrential arcs of brown lightning tearing through the air and eviscerating all the lifeforms they touched. His poison would occasionally sweep out and invade the souls of those close to him, forcing them to spit out all of their secrets. And the more he heard, the angrier he got. How could it be that a sect was this evil, how could they corrupt the souls of such a large portion of their disciples?
"Wait..."
The moment that thought struck Liang Chen, his body nearly froze in place. That's right, how did the sect corrupt the souls of such a large portion of their disciples? Even in the earlier sects he had wiped out, it had only been around 50 or 60% of the disciples that had actually been in on it, the rest were normal disciples that had served to make the sect seem normal. Yet, about 90% or so of this sect seemed to be in on everything they were doing, an almost nonsensically large number.
Granted, this sect wasn't part of the Golden Branch or the Tranquil Lake, but they should follow a somewhat similar pattern at the very least. After all, if they were too evil, at least blatantly, they would just get wiped out immediately by everyone else. If he added that along with the things he had heard from the citizens, who didn't have anything good to say about the sect, then it seemed like the sect was wholly evil, meaning that it should have been wiped out long ago even if the governor didn't have enough evidence.
Liang Chen felt a sinking feeling in his stomach, but he didn't get the chance to think much further as an incredible sense of danger struck him from behind. He spun around and saw that the sect leader, a man with flowing ashen hair, was charging straight at him after having escaped from Yumao by sacrificing one of his arms.
Energy started to gather in his dantian, swelling forth in a rhythm that was far too familiar to Liang Chen at this point. He was planning on self-destructing, the desperation and pain in his eyes making it clear that he had least hoped to drag Liang Chen down with him. The energy within his body started to rampage and turn violent, Liang Chen gritting his teeth and stabbing out with his spear.
"Third step shatters mortality."
He sent out one of his strongest attacks to prevent the self-destruction, he could think further about the oddness of the situation after he ensured his own survival. A thick brown lightning bolt swirling with ferocious wind was launched straight at the sect leader, but just as it touched his body and tore through his dantian, a strange scene took place.
The man's back exploded and splattered blood through the air, the blood gathering together to form an array that surrounded the lightning bolt. The lightning bounced around within the array, gathering more energy with each bounce as more and more of the runes within the array sank into it. And then, when the attack had nearly tripled in power and the entire array had sunk into the lightning bolt, the attack turned on Liang Chen and rushed straight at him, the body of the sect leader turning to ash under the heat of the lightning.
Liang Chen's expression turned grim at the sight, he thought about just absorbing the lightning and wind into his body, but there was so much foreign energy mixed into the attack that he wasn't confident that he could absorb it properly. Even worse, the foreign energy that had gathered inside his lightning felt familiar to him, further increasing the sinking feeling he felt in his stomach.
He spat out a long breath and brandished his spear, the incoming attack was one he had to deal with seriously, otherwise, it might harm him grievously. Yumao was still caught up with the five remaining leaders of the sect, who had gathered together into some type of formation along with some of the older disciples to withstand him and tie him down. As such, Liang Chen could only rely on himself, all his energy bursting forth.
But just as his energy burst forth and gathered in his spear, he sensed a person appearing right next to him. It was as if the person was stepping into existence, his existence appearing in Liang Chen's senses in a manner that resembled film being pulled away. And the person was already launching an attack by the time he started to appear, forcing Liang Chen to deal with him as the weapon he was holding felt dangerous.
His left arm swung out and slammed into the person's abdomen, the sensation of flesh giving way clear on Liang Chen's hand. But as his hand tore through the man's abdomen, the man's weapon, a strange three-bladed sword, reached him. The upper blade cut into his shoulder, the middle one the back of his chest, and the lower one his waist, seemingly ignoring his bodily defences as it gouged through his flesh and caused blood to gush forth.
But this attack wasn't the only one Liang Chen had to deal with, there was still the matter of the one coming straight at him. He removed his own sense of pain with his poison and pushed his spear forward, drawing upon his law of the void, the devoured energy he had stored up, and then unleashed his strongest attack.
"Fourth step pierces the sparrow."
The fourth step of his Dragon King's Six steps was further augmented by the skill he got from the Chaos King technique, Chaos King's Punch, his law of the void roaring forth to fully erase the incoming attack. The moment he unleashed the attack was the same moment he suffered the slash from the strange sword, throwing his energy into disarray for a slight second. And that disarray in his energy, which left him unable to properly control even his own attack, would prove to have terrible consequences.
His lightning bolt-shaped from the law of the void rushed forward, but just as it was about to block the incoming attack, the situation changed again. Crimson runes appeared all over the incoming attack, the brown lightning bolt dissipating as if it had run out of energy. And without a target in front of it to block it, the law of the void continued to shoot forward in a rampant manner.
It was fueled by all of Liang Chen's power so it tore through everything in its path, gouging a nearly 20 kilometre-long and four kilometre-wide gash in the city beyond the sect. And the alarm of the sect had drawn more than just a little bit of attention, swathes of citizens vanishing as the dull grey lightning bolt washed over them. Whole families, in some cases multiple generations of them, vanished without a trace, erased from existence without even a chance to resist.
Liang Chen stared blankly at the destruction in front of him, at the sheer and utter horror that his attack had unleashed upon the city. Blood poured out from the three gashes in his left side, sizzling with lightning as they splattered on the ground. But not even that sizzling was enough to drown out the howling that now came from the city, the screams of those left behind as they searched for the departed, the departed that weren't even going to be able to be reborn and lead new lives.
Liang Chen's head snapped to the side, his gaze landing on the person he had sent flying as they attacked him. And standing a short distance away from him with staggering steps was the brown-eyed and emerald-haired Juye Gong. His abdomen had a large gash torn it, almost severing his torso from his lower body. But even so, Juye Gong was laughing victoriously, the sobbing screams from the city seeming like no more than music to his ears as the disgustingly familiar voice of the Sky-Piercing Sparrow came out from a blue whirlpool pin on his chest.
"You wanted to play at being a hero didn't you? I wonder how that's going to work out now? Come, join us here in the pit of monsters, we've got plenty of people who are the same breed as you!"