As Lan Yun looked at Liang Chen, she couldn't help but be a little dumbfounded. Lightning crackled around him with each step, arcing through the air as it vanished from sight. But without fail, each little crackle caused shrieks and wails to pierce the air, almost hurting her ears.
She was sitting safely on the back of Yumao, her older brother. Well, he said he was the older brother, but she could take human form and he couldn't, so hmph, it really would be better to say that she was the more mature one.
Anyway, Yumao didn't take any action, he simply followed Liang Chen closely. No, all the chaos that swallowed the city, the source of all the screams, all of it was Liang Chen. One step brought chaos, the second step brought death, and on the third step, there was only silence. Well, at least for the moment, new screams quickly filled the silence.
Lan Yun wasn't a stranger to scenes of battle, she had seen more than her fair share of them when she travelled with Yan Ling. Single combat, one against many, many against one, outright massacres and close scrapes, she had seen them all. But never before had she seen anything like this. Every step brought destruction without any chance for resistance, every action caused carnage on a horrific scale.
If Lan Yun had to liken the current Liang Chen to anything then it would be a certain scene she had seen while travelling with her mother. A horrible earthquake had rocked the place they were at, it was so bad that the earth cracked open like a wicked jaw, razing the city. Not even the earth-law cultivators had been able to stop it.
And then came the wave. An ocean had been located not far from the city, and it seemed like all of the water in it had been brought to life by the earthquake. A wave several thousands of metres tall swept across the land, it swallowed everything in its wake, no one capable of stopping it. They had nearly died there, they would probably have died if they hadn't gotten to a spatial array in time and fled the area.
That was what Liang Chen, her Paparan, looked like right now. A natural disaster, something that could not be resisted by living beings. It came, and they had to fall to their knees in response, only the luckiest among them would get to flee, the rest would fall.
But as she looked at him from the side, she couldn't help but notice a slight difference between him and Yan Ling. It was their expression. Yan Ling looked happy after she won a battle, be it a close one or a massacre. She had survived, she had taken a step further, proven herself, it was something to be happy about.
But Liang Chen didn't smile. He didn't show any happiness as his power tore down the enemies, no joy as he walked forward. He just looked steely and solemn, with hints of sorrow and tiredness barely visible in his eyes as they swept the surroundings. Was this the expression of a winner? The expression of a natural disaster that couldn't be stopped? If he couldn't even be happy about it, then what was the point in doing it?
--
Liang Chen didn't know what Lan Yun was thinking as she looked at him with those sparkling eyes, his own gaze roaming the chaotic city. Again, it was a city filled with death, a city filled with evil. Liang Chen refused to believe that it was just the nature of man to be evil once they were given the chance, their nature to trample others just because they could.
He had seen good people, kindhearted people who seemed too good for the world. But perhaps it was the existence of people like this that made it all the sadder to come across people like those he hunted. The dark wasn't more eye-catching than the light, but a single cruel deed would always outlast a good one, the pain was far easier to remember than the joy.
"No good, getting distracted."
Liang Chen shook his head and dispersed the thoughts with a mutter, he was finding himself thinking to himself like this more and more these days. In the past, it had always just been a simple process, find a sinner, kill the sinner. But now his mind was moving more and more, he couldn't stop asking himself why. Why did they move, why did they act the way they did? Where was the worth in it?
But he knew that it was a pointless thought. It didn't matter how or why they crossed the line, all that mattered was that they crossed the line. So his thoughts would never bear fruit, his questions would never receive a meaningful answer.
Liang Chen's steps stopped suddenly, he had reached his target before he even realized it, caught in his own thoughts. Stretching out in front of him was a mansion-like building that spanned several kilometres and was built around a mountain, an unnatural number of glass-less windows dotting the circular house. The lightly red doors to the mansion were tightly shut, but as was to be expected from a place where fighting and killing were the main goals, there was no array engraved on the door to secure it.
But even so, his hand stopped before he touched the door, his eyes narrowing. He hadn't noticed it initially, but now that he looked closer he could see that the entire surface of the door was covered in minute barbs, each one so tiny that they looked like nothing more than grains of dust. He hadn't noticed the barbs due to his sight, he had only noticed them because of the faint poison they all contained, ready to invade him with the tiniest prick.
"Yeah, I guess something like that is to be expected honestly."
The mansion in front of him was the base of the Thousand Flowers Valley, the sect that ruled this city. But contrary to what one might expect from the name, the valley specialized in poisons. Its name was derived from the multitude of poisonous flowers they reared, according to the information Liang Chen had extracted from the previous men, this sect was rumoured to hold the largest field of poisonous ingredients within Purgatory's Cradle.
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They were also responsible for the poison that was scattered throughout the entire city. Those who couldn't resist the poison would eventually succumb to it, or be weakened by it, and they could be killed to please Purgatory. As for those that could resist it, they would be left alone most of the time, if not absorbed into the sect so that they could spread their own influence, or just get more cattle to be slaughtered when the time called for it.
Liang Chen's hand crackled with power, a blast of wind erupting from his palm and tearing down the door, the splinters getting launched into the hallway beyond the entrance. A few people had been standing there so the splinters tore into them, gouging out flesh and piercing straight through them.
Liang Chen was getting tired of this place, of this cradle that nurtured evil. Usually, the cities he visited would house so many good people that those he killed were the minority, oftentimes so small that they almost weren't worth counting. But here? Here he would be lucky if there were ten or more people worth sparing in each city, the rest were as marred in blood and sin as he was.
He entered the mansion with slow steps, quietly strengthening the Qi he used to shield Lan Yun and Yumao. There was no telling what sorts of poisons they would use to attack him, it was better to be safe rather than sorry when it came to his family.
But in the end, that worry luckily became something unfounded. He tore through the mansion without problem, his lightning tearing apart everyone before they could even get off a single attack. The difference in power was simply too great, a Soaring Immortal cultivator could not hope to stand against a Primordial Immortal cultivator. Liang Chen had been a bit different, but he had a lot of blessings most other cultivators didn't have, that was the only way to fight above your own cultivation realm.
Liang Chen reached the sanctum of the mansion without having to stop once, arriving in front of the metal door that separated the mansion from the mountain it was built around. A strange mixture of scents tickled his nose despite the thick metal door that separated him from the land behind it, his soul gleefully gobbling up the poison carried within the scent.
"Yumao, be prepared for anything."
Liang Chen didn't really need to give Yumao the reminder, but he did so just to be safe. He could feel the cultivator on the other side, an early-stage Primordial Immortal, the lord of this sect. A normal early-stage Primordial Immortal wasn't really worth any worry, not to him at least, but there was no telling what tricks he may have up his sleeves.
Liang Chen's hand touched the door, lightning crackling out and spreading across the entire door. The heat became too much to bear, the metal turning to liquid and dripping to the ground. A small earthen cavern spread out in front of him, leading into a narrow cave that led towards the source of the mixture of scents. And standing between Liang Chen and that cave was the leader of Thousand Flowers Valley, Meng Bao.
"You know, it's times like these where I hate that things are going exactly as I expected. Couldn't you have ruined my expectations and let them stop you?"
Meng Bao looked like a man approaching his late 40's, his black eyes polluted by a dim green light that also spread to his bronze hair and the skin right around his eyes. His hands were covered with rough skin, marks of tiny pricks covering his palms. Contrary to Liang Chen's expectations, the man didn't carry the soft scent of any poison, he was instead surrounded by the familiar fragrance of dirt and fertilizer.
"But oh well, that's just life. One way or the other, things will end here."
Meng Bao waved his hand in a seemingly casual manner, but a faint bolt of lightning rose from beneath Liang Chen's feet as he spoke, sinking into his body. He had already expected Liang Chen's arrival and prepared appropriately, he wasn't going to just lie down and die.
The lightning sank into Liang Chen's body, but that was one of the laws he used to cultivate his body so it was quickly absorbed and rendered harmless. Meng Bao clicked his tongue when he saw that Liang Chen hadn't even flinched, but a faint light flashed in his eyes when Liang Chen raised his arm.
"Let's just get this...oh?"
Liang Chen stopped before he finished his sentence, his gaze lowering to look at his own arm. He couldn't see anything from outside, but he could feel that the liquefied element that formed his blood had started to thicken the moment he raised his arm. It was like blood coagulating, quickly clogging his veins so that it couldn't flow properly.
Meng Bao immediately took advantage of the situation, another faint flash of lightning hitting Liang Chen, this time descending from above. It was absorbed again, the lightning not doing the least bit of damage. But then Liang Chen raised his head to look at Meng Bao, another soft mutter of surprise escaping his lips.
"He~?"
He could feel himself getting a bit dizzy as he raised his head, the 'blood' in his head had suddenly thinned greatly, carrying so little energy and oxygen that it seemed like it was trying to deprive his brain of it. Liang Chen wasn't a fool, he quickly discovered what the cause was, and the rather unique trick behind it.
"I see, you've fused lightning and poison into something rather insidious. Even if the lightning has no effect, the poison will quietly activate without the opponent even being aware of it. That's a very interesting way of using it, I hadn't even considered it."
Meng Bao's lightning and poison laws were fused into his unique law, and the way he used it was definitely worthy of being called insidious. It evaded the opponent's body and sank into his nerves, merging with the electrical signals that were used to control the body. Once the remnants of his Qi got the signal to move in a specific way, for example raising the arm to attack, then the poison inherent within the energy would activate, either thinning or coagulating the blood as needed.
Liang Chen would have to experiment with it for a bit, but he was confident that this poison would probably be able to lay dormant for years, just waiting for that one move to be made. It was quite scary to think about, you would just go about your day when you suddenly made one wrong move and ended up activating the poison.
"If you're going to praise it, the least you could do is get affected by it."
Meng Bao didn't let Liang Chen's praise get to his head, it only made him appear aggrieved. He could tell that his poison had activated, but it clearly had no effect on Liang Chen. On the contrary, he could feel his poison get absorbed by something not long after it awakened, it had less than zero effect. But that was just the nature of this matchup, Liang Chen was the enemy of all people who used the same laws as him. As long as they hadn't fused in some other laws, then they would just help him grow stronger. Meng Bao hadn't known this, and if he did he would probably just be all the more exasperated.
"Oh well, seems like that's how the pieces fell this time. But that's not everything I have up my sleeve, so I won't just sit down and let it end. Five steps, boy, let's see if it's you or me that will end up seeing the sixth one."
Meng Bao hardened his expression and brought out a sickle that looked like it was made for farming as he spoke. Five steps separated the two of them, only the winner would get to see the sixth step. Liang Chen raised his arm, his spear landing in his grasp, the tip scraping against the ground as he raised his leg to take the first step.
"Don't worry, you won't even be around to see the fourth."