In the eyes of this group, A Guxi and his people were a spent force, with no hope of escape.
However, when their eyes swept over their fallen Tianlan Clan companions on the ground, their chests swelled with rage. Those same companions who had been laughing and talking just moments before were now cold corpses.
The four leaders formed a semi-circle around them. There were three men and one woman: a man of exceptionally brawny build, two robust men in their late twenties, and a woman of bewitching beauty. The woman also wore tight-fitting clothes, which on her body, sketched out a tantalizingly curvaceous figure that could drive a man mad. Her full, round buttocks jutted out high behind her, and her long, shapely legs stood in stark contrast to the towering peaks above her flat abdomen. Her pair of alluring apricot eyes often carried a charm that was impossible to resist.
The woman held a long, purple whip, a captivating smile on her face that was utterly incongruous with the scene of blood and rainwater below.
The burly man held the end of the black iron chain in one hand, while his other hand gently twirled the middle section, the massive hammerhead tracing circles of varying sizes, emitting a humming sound that came and went, casting an invisible pressure over the silent prairie.
Among the four, one of the two men's arms hung limply, a transparent, bloody hole at the elbow joint. It had nearly severed his arm completely. That was the most powerful strike Ai Ni had delivered before she fell. Though she had crippled her opponent's arm, the tail of the purple whip from the foxy, green-clad woman, which had transformed into a long serpent, had struck her in the back of the heart, leaving her state between life and death after she collapsed.
A Guxi had used all his strength to block the burly man's hammer strike with his shield, managing to drag her to his side. As a result, A Guxi himself was bitten on the calf by the long serpent-whip after it coiled in the air. Half his body was now numb.
Ai Sang, on the other hand, had fought with all his might against the last of their Foundation Establishment opponents. The reason he only focused on one person was that he had another mission: at the critical moment, he had to save as many of their own falling Qi Condensation disciples as possible. Under his protection, not all of the Giant Wood Clan's Qi Condensation cultivators had perished.
However, the four remaining Qi Condensation cultivators were all injured, and their condition was dire.
The disparity in numbers was simply too great. Ai Sang's cultivation was originally a minor realm higher than his opponent's, but with his attention constantly divided, he had a moment of carelessness, and a great axe had swept across his waist. Crying out in pain, Ai Sang had unleashed all his magical power without reservation, executing the "Dragon-Stab Tendon-Rip Art." He pierced his opponent's thigh, nearly destroying the man's entire lower body. After using this art, Ai Sang was completely drained and could no longer fight.
"Don't even think about detonating the formation. You won't have the time!" the burly man opposite him roared, his killing intent soaring. The two injured, green-clad Foundation Establishment cultivators had even more sinister looks in their eyes. They had actually been injured in this battle. In the future, whenever this training expedition was mentioned among their clan, it would be a mark of shame.
They had long since investigated the situation of this remnant group of the Giant Wood Clan. Due to a prolonged lack of cultivation resources and constant warfare, their combat strength was far from its peak, and they had no medicinal pills or Spirit Stones to recover their magical power. Yet, even such a crippled force had put up a fight where not only did they fail to take them down in one go, but eight of their Qi Condensation disciples on the training expedition had died. And of their four Foundation Establishment cultivators who had joined forces to encircle and kill the enemy, one had a crippled arm and another a useless leg.
"You'll have to give me three children later. Otherwise, if you all take the women, wouldn't I be at a loss!" the foxy, green-clad woman said, her eyes shimmering as she looked at the five remaining children behind A Guxi.
"You sure know how to pick. Three children at most!" the burly man said with dissatisfaction.
The foxy, green-clad woman shot him a sideways glance and gave a charming smile, full of infinite allure…
A Guxi paid them no mind. With a calm expression, he rapidly regulated the last vestiges of magical power in his body. They had long learned how to recover as much magical power as possible in a short time; it was their way of survival. But to his despair, although his magical power had recovered slightly, it was laughably insufficient against the group of green-clad Tianlan Clan cultivators.
He might still have the strength to strike once against the other three, excluding the burly man, but it was obvious that the burly man had him locked down. Besides, what if he did manage to take down these four? There was still a group of Qi Condensation cultivators behind them. These minor cultivators, usually insignificant, would be like tigers let loose upon sheep when dealing with his own few Qi Condensation disciples and a group of mortals.
"Hmph!" The burly man had no desire to wait any longer. His chain hammer flew like a meteor, shattering the heavy curtain of rain and hurtling straight towards them.
The instant he moved, the other three also attacked in unison with either magical treasures or magical arts.
What A Guxi's side had not expected was that the four of them completely ignored A Guxi and instead attacked the exhausted Ai Sang, who was leaning on his long spear.
"Fall back!" A Guxi's hair stood on end. He hadn't anticipated this move. He had been gathering his power, ready to act. If one strike failed, he would follow it by self-detonating his physical body and the black flag in his hand. If both exploded simultaneously, any Foundation Establishment cultivator within a thousand-zhang radius could perish.
The enemy's sudden attack on Ai Sang created a flaw in A Guxi's preparation. As long as his body remained still, he could maintain a state of readiness, unified and whole. But upon seeing Ai Sang under attack, he subconsciously raised his shield, and that single action exposed his weakness. By the time he realized it, it was too late. He knew he had been tricked. The burly man's washbasin-sized hammerhead was not in the least bit clumsy. In an instant, it was like the head of a nimble python, making a light turn in the air and meeting the shield in a flash.
With a deafening "dong," A Guxi's body was thrown backward by the impact. His magical power was insufficient to clash head-on with the burly man. He had intended to avoid the strong and strike the weak, but now it had become a direct confrontation.
Instantly, A Guxi's defenses were wide open. A purple phantom appeared at his throat in a flash, its pair of emerald eyes like those of the god of death from the nine serenities. It opened its mouth, and with a foul stench, its massive fangs bit down. At the same time, two points of cold light shot toward A Guxi's undefended abdomen as the other two men also made their move.
Ai Sang first felt himself locked down by the enemy, and the sensation of death washed over him in an instant. He struggled to raise his spear for a sweeping block, but in the next moment, the auras vanished completely. To his horror, he saw A Guxi suddenly trapped in a deadly siege. In a panic, he took a fierce step diagonally, but the magical power in his Dantian was as weak as a silken thread. His body went limp, and he fell to the ground.
Everything happened too quickly. By the time A Guxi realized something was wrong, it was too late to even detonate the black flag in his hand. The great hammer's impact had sent his internal magical power into turmoil, making it impossible to gather it again for a short time. The bone-chilling cold at his throat and abdomen made the hairs on his body stand on end. He let out an unwilling roar.
A Guxi's aged face twisted into a demonic visage. The savage smiles on the faces of the four people were now within arm's reach, their wild laughter and cruel sneers blending into one…
A Guxi awaited the coming of death in the next instant, filled with grief and indignation. He had given it his all, but things had not gone as he had wished.
"Old Clan Chief, the clansmen and I… are coming!"
At that moment, he completely gave up resisting, allowing the four opponents to attack!
However, even as his flying body began to fall, A Guxi felt not the slightest pain. What he found unbelievable was that the scene before his eyes had suddenly frozen. The group of savage faces, the purple serpent, the two points of cold light—all were suspended in place. Then, the images he saw began to crumble like sand in the wind. The cultivators' savage faces started to flake off like old plaster, falling piece by piece onto the grass.
Then, their bodies rapidly disintegrated, collapsing like loose sand, and were immediately washed clean by the torrential rain. The few attacking magical treasures also vanished into thin air, leaving no trace!
Only then did A Guxi's body, which had been flying backward, fall heavily onto the grass with a great splash. He was completely oblivious to the pain.
Ai Sang and the clansmen behind him were equally dumbfounded. Before them was only the vast curtain of rain. It was as if that group of demons had never been there at all. If not for the corpses already lying on the ground, they would have thought the entire ordeal was just a nightmare.
"It seems I'm not too late. A Guxi, are you still willing to leave this place?" A somewhat unfamiliar ancient immortal world tongue echoed in everyone's ears, and two figures appeared in the rain.
Their faces were blurry, but their figures and voices felt somewhat familiar to A Guxi's Divine Sense.
Zhao Min glanced at Li Yan.
'Junior Brother's Fragmented Poison Body has become even more terrifying,' she thought. 'I remember during the great battle on Windy Cool Mountain, he couldn't use it with such ease. Just now, he only waved his hand, and those people completely vanished from this world.'
Zhao Min knew she could have killed all those people with a wave of her hand as well, but to do so without leaving a single trace would have required her to use other arts to destroy the bodies and evidence.
"What's the matter? You wanted to leave before. Don't you want to go now?" Li Yan said softly again.
In the past few days, he and Zhao Min had reached the central part of the Tianlan Prairie. Although they had encountered many cultivators along the way, they had managed to avoid them all, and no powerful experts had appeared to obstruct them. Afterward, the two had captured three Tianlan Clan cultivators of varying cultivation levels and performed Soul-Searching on each of them. The information they obtained was more or less the same as what A Guxi had told them.
The Tianlan Clan truly only had two Nascent Soul cultivators, and both had been in seclusion for a long time.
"Senior… is that you? I… we are of course willing to leave this place. We are willing, we are willing…" A Guxi was the first to react, and he immediately sat up from the puddle.
"Alright, we shouldn't stay here long. Put your clansmen into these two Spirit-Storing Pouches. There are medicinal pills, food, and drinking water inside. I have more questions for you."
As he spoke, Li Yan made two Spirit-Storing Pouches float in front of A Guxi. These were the pouches he carried with him for concealment. Li Yan would never reveal the kind of Spirit-Storing Pouch with an extremely vast space that Meng Zhiyuan had given him. He had already given one to Zhao Min and planned to give the other to Gong Chenying in the future.
Looking at the Spirit-Storing Pouches, A Guxi still couldn't believe what was happening, but after just a breath, he regained his senses.
"If we had Spirit-Storing Pouches like these, I don't know how many fewer of our clansmen would have died!" he lamented internally. He scrambled to his feet and hurried over to Ai Ni, who was lying face down on the ground.
"She's fine, just knocked unconscious by a single blow. It's you who has been poisoned. First, swallow the white detoxification pill, then give the other pill to her!"
Just as A Guxi bent down to check Ai Ni's injuries, two medicinal pills, one white and one green, appeared before his eyes. The voice that accompanied them, though its pronunciation was still off, was exceptionally pleasant and clear.
A short while later, A Guxi, holding the two Spirit-Storing Pouches, looked up at the blurry figures.
"The opening of the Spirit-Storing Pouch is limited. There's no need to take your clansmen's bodies. I'll destroy them all to prevent us from being tracked!"
The Cloud-Piercing Willow shot through the rain-filled sky.
A Guxi stood at the rear of the Cloud-Piercing Willow, a Spirit-Storing Pouch in his hand, his head bowed. He still couldn't see the faces of the two people clearly, and his heart was filled with questions!