Chapter Ninety-One: Cultivators of the Five Sects

No wonder cultivators at the Qi Condensation stage generally do not make mortal enemies of one another, especially those with deeper cultivation. When such a cultivator blows himself up with spiritual energy, the force is considerable and not so easy to withstand. Such an explosion harms both oneself and one’s enemy alike; it is a desperate measure that injures others without benefiting oneself.

At that moment, this thought passed through Yang Xiao’s mind. He wiped the blood from his lips, then steadied the fluctuations of spiritual energy around him. In particular, during Wang Hai’s self-detonation, the Bloodthirst Pearl in Yang Xiao’s storage pouch had violently battered against its confines, trying to seize the chance to escape his control. But Yang Xiao naturally would not let it have its way. He sent another surge of spiritual energy into the pouch, forcefully suppressing the resisting pearl and beginning the slow process of refining it.

This time, Yang Xiao was fortunate indeed to have used flying swords for the attack, without unleashing spiritual energy of his own. Otherwise, his losses would have been far more severe. Wang Hai’s self-explosion had merely thrown back the lightning dragon and the Dragon Serpent Sword; the force that reached Yang Xiao’s spiritual energy was not too great, and as a result he had suffered only a minor injury.

Wang Hai had taken advantage of that explosion, of course, intending to break away from the assault of the lightning and the Dragon Serpent Sword and flee for his life, because if he continued to confront Yang Xiao, he would gain nothing at all. In the heart of the desolate thunderlands, Wang Hai simply could not defeat Yang Xiao. Now that even the spiritual treasure on his person had been taken by Yang Xiao, defeating him was even more impossible.

After the spiritual energy explosion, Wang Hai’s body had become extremely weak, so at that point he had only one path left: escape. Fortunately for him, he possessed an extremely formidable art of flight known as Blood Escape, which relied on burning his own blood to increase his speed. With this technique, he had already fled a considerable distance in the blink of an eye.

“Brat, I’ll remember this grave grudge. When my strength recovers after some time, I’ll naturally come for my revenge. By then, I’ll tear you to pieces,” Wang Hai said viciously to Yang Xiao before leaving, after which he hurriedly fled.

“Another time? I’m afraid there won’t be another time for us to meet. If you cut the weeds but do not uproot them, they will grow again when the spring breeze blows. I understand that much. So this time, I will not let you leave so easily. Since I have already made an enemy of you, how could I possibly do something so foolish as letting you go? Especially when your ability far exceeds mine, I have even less reason to keep worrying about a great enemy appearing at any moment.”

Yang Xiao gave a cold laugh in return. Then, with a flicker of movement, he borrowed the surrounding power of thunder and his exquisite movement technique to pursue Wang Hai.

Now Yang Xiao moved as freely as a fish in water amid the lightning, his speed no longer comparable to what it had once been. In terms of speed alone, he was not far behind Wang Hai’s Blood Escape at all. More importantly, Yang Xiao repeatedly used the power of lightning to block Wang Hai’s path, turning his escape into a journey full of obstructions.

In this way, Wang Hai found it no easy matter to flee. Before long, Yang Xiao had successfully caught up to him.

“Trying to run? Not so easy. You’d better die now—that will put my mind at ease,” Yang Xiao said after catching up. He then brought the power of lightning together with the Dragon Serpent Sword to bear fully upon Wang Hai.

Once more, the lightning dragon and the hundreds of flying swords surrounded Wang Hai. By this point, however, Wang Hai’s strength had already been greatly diminished, and he was no longer Yang Xiao’s match. In fact, he could no longer even manage another spiritual energy explosion. For a cultivator at his level, being able to use such a self-detonation once was already the limit; it was impossible to do it again in the short term.

Since one spiritual energy explosion had failed to stop Yang Xiao, when Wang Hai was surrounded again, he could only submit meekly to death, with no room left for resistance.

“I’m unwilling to accept this! I used a spiritual energy explosion, so by all rights you should have been heavily injured. How could you possibly be unharmed? Could it be that Heaven itself seeks my destruction?” Wang Hai said resentfully to Yang Xiao. Earlier, his explosion had clearly shattered the lightning dragon and the hundreds of Dragon Serpent Swords into pieces, and yet even under those circumstances it had not posed much of a threat to Yang Xiao. That truly left him bewildered.

“You don’t understand? Then I’ll tell you. The lightning dragon you saw was not formed from my true qi. It was formed from the surrounding power of lightning that I drew upon. Because of that, even if you shattered the lightning dragon, the harm to me would not be great.”

“So that’s how it is. You can actually command the lightning in your surroundings. Such a means is truly earthshaking. Losing to you isn’t really such a disgrace,” Wang Hai said.

“Brother, please spare my life. I will repay you handsomely in the future.” Seeing that there was no hope of survival, Wang Hai began pleading while resisting Yang Xiao’s attacks.

“I can’t trust a word you say. It’s safer to kill you.” Yang Xiao looked at Wang Hai’s cunning expression and knew that he was surely lying. Once he left the desolate thunderlands, he would certainly come looking for trouble. By then, defeating him again would be far too difficult. It would be better to settle him completely here and now.

“You... how despicable.” Wang Hai glared at Yang Xiao in fury at the end. His face was full of unwillingness, but there was nothing he could do. Under Yang Xiao’s relentless assault, he had no path to survival at all. In the end, his body was cut into several pieces by Yang Xiao’s flying swords, and Wang Hai died utterly.

“Against the despicable, one naturally uses despicable means,” Yang Xiao said to Wang Hai’s corpse after his death. Having said that, he searched Wang Hai’s person and found quite a few items, including spirit weapons and spirit stones. There were also several fist-sized thunder crystals on Wang Hai’s body, clearly treasures he had obtained from the core region of the desolate thunderlands.

By stripping Wang Hai of his possessions, Yang Xiao had made a small fortune once more.

However, just as Yang Xiao was preparing to leave, two young cultivators suddenly stepped forward and blocked his way. Their cultivation was also rather formidable. Though they could not compare with Wang Hai, they should at least have reached the later stage of Qi Condensation; otherwise, they would not have been able to enter the core region of the desolate thunderlands.

“Please, brother, wait. Was Wang Hai slain by you?” asked the older of the two young cultivators.

“Are you two cultivators of the Five Sects?” Yang Xiao did not answer the question, but instead asked one of his own in return. Naturally, he had to be more guarded around them. In such a perilous place, accidents could happen at any time. Although Yang Xiao was not afraid of them, it was still better to learn their background first.

Especially now, when it was not yet known whether they were friend or foe, caution was required at every step.