There was something to Jing Mingfeng"s confidence and att.i.tude that unnerved Qi Duanbei. Jing Mingfeng wasn"t as scared as he thought he"d be, but that would most likely change once they got their hands on him for interrogation.
As he was about to give the order to have Jing Mingfeng captured, the person in question leaped backward to cry out, "Ancestor, I can"t fight them for long!!"
"Pah! Don"t spout silly lies!"
Qi Duanbei sneered. It was ridiculous to be hearing such a lie coming from Jing Mingfeng now, and it was equally ridiculous to think anyone would fall for it. Did Jing Mingfeng think Soul Kings to be as common as commoners? Was there even someone behind Jing Mingfeng?
Not even caring in the slightest for Jing Mingfeng"s cry, Qi Duanbei was already circulating his soulforce into motion. But just as he was about to take action…
He realized the moment before that something was wrong with the scrawny elder with him. The elder looked frightened. As if something had forced him to take action as quickly as possible in preparation to defend himself.
"What?!" Qi Duanbei was dumbfounded by his actions. The elder didn"t look at all ready to capture Jing Mingfeng, but to turn around and…
There was something else that added to his confusion. In that one moment when the scrawny elder"s eyes met with his, Qi Duanbei noticed a flicker of emotion run through them.
The emotion of…
"Fear?!"
Again, Qi Duanbei was confused.
He felt something in the back of his head start to hurt exactly like if a sharp object had poked into it. Then, the world grew dark and he knew no more.
"Thud!"
Qi Duanbei"s body fell to the ground, completely still as if he fainted. And yet, that wasn"t the case. There wasn"t a bit of life to Qi Duanbei"s body.
He was dead!!
A fate most similar to Qi Duanbei was also happening to the scrawny elder at that moment. He was hardly beyond a half rotation before he too came to a complete stop. Now completely stricken with fear, the man was completely motionless but alive.
"……"
As if the world had gone still for that one moment, none of the three persons uttered even a single sound.
"Ahhh!!"
Then, someone cried out.
It was the young man drabbed in embroidered robes. Reacting as if he was a cat whose tail had just been stepped on, he flew backward, a shaking finger pointed at the area behind the scrawny elder.
"Wh—who are you?!"
Right there behind the elder, an elderly person in black robes and grizzly-white hair had appeared!
His right hand was stretched outwards from where he stood, the forefinger pointed in the direction of Qi Duanbei"s head. His left hand was raised upwards as well, though the forefinger of that hand was currently pressed against the scrawny elder"s temples…
This newly-appeared elder had not even an eye to spare towards the young man. He was focused on the scrawny man in front of him. Calmly, he moved his left hand downwards and pressed his finger to the points on the chest where the heart was located.
The elder trembled with each point that was pressed. Less and less soulforce was coming out from his body now, and after a few points were pressed, his soulforce was practically locked within his body like it was being bottled up and sealed.
By the time the elder was done poking at the points, the scrawny elder was already buckling at the knees and fell to the ground! From the looks of his bloodless face, it seemed that his entire person was completely devoid of energy to do anything…
In what could hardly even equate to two seconds, one Early-stage Soul King was killed and the other was rendered incapacitated!!
The young man was struck dumb. This felt like a nightmare, one of which he couldn"t wake up from. Jing Mingfeng was looking on as if nothing was strange though. In fact, he was smiling at the situation with a glare as frosty as winter.
Even the elder that had taken care of the two other Soul Kings looked as though he had done nothing of significance so far as he stared at the still alive Soul King on the ground.
"The Black Hand Sect…a tiny sect that hadn"t even a Soul King up until a hundred years ago. Who gave you the right to act as you did to my Jing family?"
As if those words being spoken directly to his soul, the scrawny elder trembled heavily at them.
"You…you are…"
The elder was hardly able to believe his eyes at what he was seeing. This elder who looked to be over a hundred years old—hadn"t Jing Mingfeng called him "ancestor" just a moment ago?
That could only mean one thing!
"The ancestor of the Jing! You"re Patriarch Jing!! "Shadowless Death" Jing Wuying!! How are you still alive?!"
He was s.h.i.+vering intensely now. Even his voice was quivering like the ringing of a gong, completely terrified and not at all showing any of the calm bravadoes he had before.
"Ah, so there was someone that still remembers an old man like me…" Jing Wuying sighed in sorrow, "But that was not the answer to my question."
"It really is you! Impossible! You haven"t been seen in the last hundred years, everyone thought you were dead! You didn"t even appear when your entire family was ma.s.sacred, how are you still alive then?!"
There was a reaction to Jing Wuying when the scrawny elder mentioned the word "ma.s.sacre" and of his absence from it. Pain and guilt flashed across his eyes shortly before giving way to chilling anger. Lifting his right hand, he pressed it against the elder"s left shoulder!
"Pcht!"
There was a large splurt of blood as an entire arm fell down to the ground—the scrawny elder"s left shoulder had been severed!
Jing Wuying had only "pressed" against his shoulder, but it managed to completely sever it!
"Aghhh!!!"
There was a heart-wrenching scream from the elder as he tried to clutch at his left shoulder with his right arm. All he could do was widen his eyes and scream in pain, however. Try as hard as he might, his soulforce was completely sealed and unable to staunch the bleeding, so the pain he was feeling was almost enough to make him feel like pa.s.sing out.
"You talk too much. Tell me what I want to know. Who was it that ordered you to go after my family?" Jing Wuying demanded.
Barely managing to stop himself from pa.s.sing out, the elder clenched his teeth together from the pain. Sweat dripped from his forehead for one brief moment as he despaired to himself.
He looked up to face Jing Wuying, "I"ll tell you but…spare him!"
Unable to point his finger, the elder flicked his eyes over to the still stunned young man near him.
Jing Wuying didn"t avert his eyes at all. "Tell me what I want to know and I won"t kill him."
The elder looked a little surprised that Jing Wuying had actually agreed, though it still remained to be seen if Jing Wuying would actually abide by his words. There was no room for him to bargain or even make sure about, so the man could only pray for the best-case scenario. "It was a wandering soul cultivator that handed out the reward for killing any surviving member of the Jing. We did our investigation and found out that the actual person is someone from the house of Qin from the Swallow Province…"
"House of Qin from the Swallow Province?" Jing Wuying glanced over to Jing Mingfeng.
Jing Mingfeng narrowed his eyes, "Them? That"s a lie! The Qin and the Jing have never any conflict before! We haven"t even come into contact with them even, why would they suddenly attack us without any reason?!"
"Reason? That"s not something we investigated for. But has our world always needed a "reason" for conflicts? Perhaps…they wanted to take the hidden secrets of your clan for themselves?" The elder fired back in defiance, "It matters not to me if you don"t believe me, but that is what our Black Hand Sect found and is what it will be."
"Is that it?" Jing Wuying pressed again.
"We were only able to meet their middleman in our dealings. There"s nothing else I can tell you. If you want to know more, then you"ll have to do the resea—what are you—agh!!"
Jing Wuying had suddenly raised his hand as the other elder was talking, and before he could finish his sentence, Jing Wuying had struck his hand out! Without meeting any resistance, Jing Wuying had grabbed onto the man"s head!
His screams came to a quick and abrupt stop. Eyes rolling to the back of his head, the elder"s body started to convulse as if his soul was being ransacked.
This was…Soul Scanning!!
Suspended in the air like how a goose might be caught by its neck by a human, the Early-stage Soul King was held there briefly before being dropped.
But he was dead by the time he hit the ground.
There was a flash of light in Jing Wuying"s eyes as he took in the information he had just got. It took several moments before he closed his eyes and turned to the young man there.
By now, the man was a s.h.i.+vering mess that could only just stand there and watch as the elder turned to him, "D—don"t kill me! You promised to elder Li you wouldn"t kill me!!"
"I won"t kill you. Leave this place." Jing Wuying replied half-heartedly as if he was still trying to process some information.
Gaping at his stroke of fortune, the young man immediately turned to flee with a smile of joy on his face!
"Whoosh…"
It was with great speed that the young man ran away from this place. It was only when he was a great distance away that he decided to turn his head back.
Seeing Jing Wuying there, the man sighed a sigh of relief.
But there was also something that made him startled!
Jing Wuying was standing right where he was, but there was something missing. A person to be exact!
"Looking for me?"
A cold voice spoke out, the words were spoken so close to his ear that they practically tickled it.
"My ancestor said he wouldn"t kill you, but I didn"t. You can"t run away from me, so…
"Die!"
The last word was accentuated with a thrust of a dagger through the man"s throat. With hardly a chance to fight or even gasp, the young man looked on at the black dagger that had just blossomed from his throat…
……
It was in silence that Jing Mingfeng returned to Jing Wuying"s side. "Ancestor, where shall we go next? To the Swallow Province?"
"Let us slow down…" Jing Wuying shook his head, "You absorbed a decent amount of the Extreme King Pill fragrance. Take your time and absorb it. We"ll let you breakthrough to become a Soul King. Then we can head for the Swallow Province."
Jing Mingfeng quickly looted the corpses of the two Soul Kings of their possessions before he and Jing Wuying took off into the air and disappeared into the horizon…