A tiny little leech was moving beneath the surface of the earth.

It was digging steadily, it was both hunting for prey and acquiring intel.

But suddenly, the leech felt as if it's body was being pulled up, it felt very uncomfortable, and somewhat stressing, but with some effort he managed to take a glimpse at the surface.

Currently, he was dozens of meters higher than before, and the height kept increasing steadily by the second.

Not only that, but while the peak was growing, the wildlife became richer and richer, many old withered flowers began to regain their vitality, it's branches shone with a translucent aura, a myriad of bushes began to grow from seemingly nowhere.

Beneath all of this there was a man who half of his body was buried in the dirt, his body was shining intensively with a green light, he was gritting his teeth in pain while releasing more and more of his aura.

"That is enough, Zhan Shu Yang." A soft voice said.

"You've done enough for now, I'll take your role now."

Then, the woman simply put her hands on the ground and a mysterious brown light surged.

The leech looked at those figures strangely, while thinking to himself.

"Such figures...

My skin shudders, when I feel the Qi circulating outside their bodies.

Even though it's still lacks form, and substance the fact that they can do it without using any external object, is a sign that they're at the Qi Gathering Realm at least."

He frowned lightly.

"The vibrations...

The hard and firm sensations of their Qi.

Everything points that they're very likely Earth Cultivators.

They're using the powers to acquire the high-ground, but why, what would be the point?

Well, now that I think about it, at an enough distance anything becomes a weapon, maybe if I could spit while standing at the peak of a mountain, I could pierce through the head of someone?

...

Yeah, that sounds stupid."

Suddenly, he felt yet another presence, another Qi surging.

"It feels warm..." Suddenly, the little vision of the leech expanded.

The leech trembled, as a yellow light enveloped everything.

"T-This technique, a beam light, they have used it again."

But that wasn't the only surprise.

Just a moments after, many figures appeared, their bodies were dyed with red.

They're faceless, and their bodies looked very strange, constantly changing of shape and form, almost like an ethereal cloud.

Tiny drops of their blood constantly hit the ground, their aura was so unstable that it seemed as if they may vanish at any second.

"This feeling...It reminds me of both Soul and Blood, is that a Blood Specter?"

Not wanting to miss a second of this, he used a self-made technique.

"Bloody Eyes." Gu Ten Long used a strange technique, this technique was inspired by Wu Yong's Shiny Eyes, but instead of relying on the power of light, that sent a massive ray of light that would then be redirected towards it's caster allowing them to see any light trace they casted, whilst his technique consisted on creating an artificial blood construct.

"Damn it, this was supposed to be a stealth mission, how did they discover us so early?"

Initially, the plans of their leaders consisted on delaying the advancement of the Earth Vein Sect Cultivators, at least not until they crushed them offensively through the True Light beam, unfortunately the Zhen Yiyi adapted to each of their plans.

By using the power of his Formation he managed to turn the fog dozens of times thicker, then he proceeded to decrease the size of the ring, to increase even further the mist, with this he clouded most investigative methods.

Another method he used was also to sneakily send a few of brainwashed opponents, among them there were people of the coalition themselves, however there were also civilians mixed in acting like spies.

Of course, they couldn't allow any sabotage to appear among their forces, therefore even though it was hard for the troops, they're forced to kill people from their own coalition and even civilians, this act decreased their morale, whilst also decreasing the local support of the civilians towards them.

This may seem illogical at first glance, after all why do they blame the coalition and not the demonic sect?

Well, it's pretty simple.

Think about it, you, a local who had never left your village or city, who did nothing wrong nor messed with any local powers, one day heard that many powerful organizations wish to head to your territory to destroy a local demon sect.

This is rather frustrating, as your cities would begin to get filled with soldiers, and they may destroy your local fauna and even try to recruit among your population.

However, due to the righteousness of their actions most of their actions are forgiven.

Yet, after the days pass you see how they murder a person you knew, perhaps a friend, a parent a son.

How would you feel?

Even if they gave you justifications for their actions such as that they're being brainwashed, would you believe them?

Even if they're being truthful in their words, the fact is that they still murdered your family.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

In comparison to the demonic sect, well, most people who ended up messing with a demonic sect were already dead.

Whilst those who were recruited, well, they may have been kidnapped, after wandering too deeply onto the forest, but of course there were no witnesses.

Of course, if so many people die around the areas where the Demonic Overlords live, people would naturally get suspicious, fearful and angry at them.

But so what?

They were already branded as Demons, so what harm would a bit more of infamy do?

Of course, as the Villagers didn't knew this, they believed that both sides were equally harmful to them.

Thereafter, many public protests and even small conflicts began, as the days passed some even scaled into guerrillas, as the Villagers fought with nail and teeth against their invasors.

They did so by relying on their local Cultivators or on mercenaries they hired.

And so both sides expended strength pointlessly, Zhen Yiyi moved to the next step of his scheme, he begun to sold thousands and thousands of copies of a myriad of Blood Path Sutras on the market.

Both to empower the locals, and to further his ambitions.

If things went on, the Righteous Forces would get repelled even before beginning their true siege.

So, they were forced to accelerate their plans.

And just when they did, they were struck by hordes of Blood Specters with unfathomable abilities.

A man with thick eyebrows, green robes and a slim body released his aura fully.

With a flicker of his hands, he sent a powerful wind wave, when they're struck by this, the specters turned into a thin fog, that camouflaged itself with well, the other red fog that covered every corner of the land.

"Quickly, contain them!" The man shouted, the rest of the group quickly followed suit.

Multiple earth pillars appeared, forming a cube which forcefully restrained those Blood Specters.

"To kill those phantoms we need to compress them!" One of them said, the others quickly followed suit.

But before they're completely sealed, another specter appeared beneath the ground, it forcefully entered on the body of one of them.

Upon entering into his body, he won absolute control over his body, the 'Cultivator' smirked, before stabbing his own heart, due to this, one of the pillars collapsed, allowing the rest of the specters to escape.

In that moment, Gu Ten Long returned to his main body.

He turned his head towards Wu Yong.

"Good news, I already found the sniper's location, and they're being distracted by Zhen Yiyi's Puppets, this is our chance to return to the main base!"

Wu Yong nodded excitedly, before tilting his body down and saying.

"We cannot miss the chance, get on my back.

We will move faster this way."

Gu Ten Long sighed lightly, he was hesitating somewhat, however in the end he agreed.

"Fine, Fine..."

Then, he jumped to his back and added.

"In any case, you may be quicker, but my scouting abilities are superior to yours.

If we want to escape, we need to run towards those hills, they will conceal our advancement." As he said this, he could not help but look regretfully at his army of leeches.

Unfortunately, those leeches were too slow, to follow their pace, and so would have to be discarded.

Hopefully, he could find some use for them on the near future.

For now, though they were merely useful as stand-by passive Cultivation, even though the process of remote Cultivation was slow, perhaps with some luck he could create some strands of Puppet Qi that he could send from his Soul-Network to himself.

As long as he had some drops of this precious Qi, he could rapidly breakthrough with ease.

Hell at this point, he had already broken through once with the power of his Crystal Bat.

That may not sound like much but for someone so young to breakthrough to the 2th Stage of Body Tempering, and rapidly head to the 3th Stage was simply exceptional.

His progress was not hidden to Zhen Yiyi who even now was studying the progress of each of his disciples, even now with greater dangers ahead, his paranoid nature did not allow him to take his eyes out of them.

...

After many hours, they managed to finally reach the headquarters of the sect.

There they saw the sect leader, whose body had morphed yet again.

This time he had a hundred of eyes.

Each eye was looking at a different direction, some were inspecting other disciples, others looked at the battlefield, others were used to control many Blood Specters remotely.

The chaotic scene of his eyes moving randomly, could look either horrifying or hilarious to any bystander.

But to Wu Yong, who knew the implications of what the Sect Leader was doing was completely shocked.

"A Void Cultivator...

My father once said that those who reach this Realm go from being slaves of their bodies, to their masters.

Those who reach this Realm are no longer limited by their flesh nor bodies, they can use their Profound Cultivation to turn their world on their vessel!"

...

The process of reaching the Void Realm was too risky, too difficult, no matter how well prepared the Cultivator was, death was not only likely, but was almost certain.

But those who were daring enough to reach this step were blessed with a certain power, that went beyond numbers, beyond logic.

The power to change the world with their will.

By relying on their understanding of the Heavens and prowess, they could forcefully bend the clouds and skies to their whims.

This was the reason why Void Cultivators were said to be invincible against armies, even though they could get easily outpunched by a group of a thousand of Mystical Condensation Cultivators, they were never without options.

They could slowly grind them down by attacking from afar, could easily retreat and possessed a terrifying intuition that would allow them to foresee their arrival.

With those tools at their disposal, they were almost impossible to catch and hunt.

Only on rare instances through history were Void Cultivators defeated by large groups, and even then they were only beaten when their enemies relied on special Formations to catch them off guard, or by exploiting a certain weakness they had.

Like protecting a loved one, or exploiting their greed for a certain treasure.

Of course, on most of those cases the downfall of the Void Cultivator was mostly due to their own carelessness, somebody as paranoid as Zhen Yiyi would never allow things to reach such an state.

Speaking of which, with one of his eyes he looked at the two, and through his lone eye he showed an expression of amusement.

"Good, It seems that both of you were wise enough to exploit the opportunity that I gave you.

earlier than expected, even."

Gu Ten Long looked at him with annoyance and replied.

"If you say so, hah!" He snorted coldly.

Then, he squinted and added.

"You knew that they were about to arrive, if you truly wanted to help you would have warned us earlier.

And even if we said, you were unaware of this before, once you made your plans you could have simply given us instructions to leave by using that little magic talking-fog instead of leaving us there, to figure it out ourselves!"

The amusement on that eye grew.

"i did not give instructions, but i gave plenty of opportunities.

when you concealed yourself as a leech, i struck against them giving you the opportunity to flee.

even if you had failed to notice my intent, the subsequent actions of my army, as well as their attacks would give you even further opportunities to flee.

if even then you failed to notice my intent, or you were too fearful to act on them...

what is the point in keeping you alive?

my sect has never catered to the weak or idiotic.

those who cannot think on their feet, who can only act upon instructions, they are unworthy of my protection.

their only use is as a fuel to ensure the growth of those who are worthy."

After a small pause, the sect leader finally concluded with.

"and those who are worthy, shall be the pillars of my future empire.

now, go.

i have already spoken far too long with you, i arranged you to meet the group 23.

even though you are both weak, you may prove to be useful to them on their scouting missions."