Awkward

The black-clad men moved as fast as lightning, blades flashing down at them head-on.

The auras emanating from their bodies were all at Qi Gathering Fourth Level or above!

And farther away,

the leader of the black-clad men erupted with the terrifying pressure of Peak Qi Gathering Sixth Level!

The dreadful pressure bore straight down upon their hearts,

giving the village Patriarchs, who were only at Qi Gathering Third and Fourth Level, a suffocating sensation!

It was over!

Everyone's hands and feet trembled slightly, their faces drained of color.

How could they possibly withstand such strength?!

"Run!"

Following an unknown person's shout,

the taut string in the hearts of the Patriarchs, who had been on edge this entire journey, finally snapped.

In an instant, they scattered like birds and beasts, fleeing in every direction.

Within the convoy,

the mortal martial artists who had come along to lend a hand as drivers and guards saw the immortals fleeing and also descended into panic and chaos.

For a moment, the long convoy actually showed signs of collapsing.

Yet at this critical moment,

Clang!

A crisp bell chime rang out,

and an invisible wave spread forth,

enveloping the area ahead almost instantly and engulfing every black-clad man within it.

The black-clad men rushing over at high speed stiffened in midair, as though the backs of their heads had been brutally smashed by a huge iron rod. Their minds went blank in an instant, the spiritual power circulating through their bodies fell into chaos, and the spiritual light around them exploded and dispersed.

Then, one after another, they tumbled to the ground like dumplings dropped into water.

Even the black-clad men closing in from both sides in the distance, including their leader at Peak Qi Gathering Sixth Level, were struck by the bell chime and froze where they stood.

At that moment,

Shen Changchuan gripped the Soul-Snatching Bell in his hand, pouring spiritual power into it as a faint white glow flickered across its surface.

One strike from the Soul-Snatching Bell had controlled nearly everyone.

In that brief pause of a breath,

Shen Changchuan raised a hand and spread his palm toward the strongest black-clad leader,

and in an instant,

Boom! Boom! Boom!!!

Scarlet fireballs shot through the air one after another, their scorching heat sweeping out as they smashed ruthlessly toward him!

The terrifying temperature warped even the air in ways visible to the naked eye!

The black-clad leader was, after all, only human.

He was neither a Peerless Prodigy nor a demon beast like the Gale Falcon.

A Peerless Prodigy could withstand the Soul-Snatching Bell's soul attack and launch a counterattack.

After suffering a blow to its soul, a Gale Falcon could still rely on its instincts as a demon beast to resist.

But the black-clad leader clearly could not.

Within the span of a breath,

before he could recover from his loss of consciousness,

five Crimson Flame Fireballs had already crashed down upon his head!

Boom! Boom! Boom!!!

The fireballs exploded in succession,

and a towering storm of flames swept in all directions like a raging flood, swallowing the black-clad leader in the blink of an eye.

The dreadful flames instantly burned the fallen leaves on the ground into ash.

Even the black-clad men more than ten meters away

were engulfed by the intense heat, their hair scorched away!

Several breaths later,

the swelling, explosive flames receded, while lingering fire slowly burned across the charred earth.

The black-clad leader had already become a charred corpse,

which crashed heavily to the ground,

without the slightest trace of life remaining.

It sounded like a long sequence of events,

but in truth, from the ringing of the Soul-Snatching Bell to the black-clad leader being blasted to death on the spot by five Fireball Techniques, everything had happened in the span of sparks flying from flint.

Before the village Patriarchs fleeing in all directions could even react,

Shen Changchuan did not pause in the slightest.

With a wave of his hand,

Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh.

Azure wind blades shaped like crescent moons tore through the air, flashing across several zhang, even over a dozen zhang, like lightning as they slashed toward the remaining black-clad men frozen in place by the Soul-Snatching Bell.

Amid dull sounds of flesh being torn apart,

the black-clad men around them were injured at a touch and killed at a brush.

Blood and severed limbs flew everywhere.

Within just a few breaths, eight or nine black-clad men had been slain on the spot.

And during that time,

the others who had been suppressed and controlled by the Soul-Snatching Bell barely managed to recover.

The moment they opened their eyes, they saw the bloody sight of corpses strewn everywhere before them!

"Ah! There's an expert here! Retreat!"

"Don't kill me!"

"Run!"

Their leader had been effortlessly slain,

and in mere moments, more than half their companions had been lost.

Such a horrifying scene frightened the remaining black-clad men who had survived by chance until their livers and gallbladders split apart.

They immediately endured the splitting pain in their heads and scrambled away into the distance, rolling and crawling as they fled.

They wished their parents had given them two more legs.

Shen Changchuan did not pursue them either,

allowing them to leave.

As the saying went, a trapped beast would still struggle.

Among those fleeing were cultivators at Qi Gathering Fifth Level and Qi Gathering Fourth Level.

It was not as though they had absolutely no strength left to resist.

If he insisted on exterminating them all, no one could say for certain whether, in their dying struggle, they might pull out some great killing weapon and make him suffer a disastrous loss.

"Do not pursue a desperate foe. Better to play it safe."

Shen Changchuan thought to himself.

He might have killed the black-clad leader at Peak Qi Gathering Sixth Level with such ease, then slaughtered more than half the black-clad men.

But in truth, most of the credit belonged to the Soul-Snatching Bell he possessed.

By suddenly launching an attack with the Soul-Snatching Bell, he had trapped them in a frozen state without the ability to resist for a short time.

Combined with the Mastery Level Spells he could cast instantly, that was how he had achieved such tremendous results in just over ten breaths.

If they had confronted one another head-on from the beginning,

facing so many enemies,

even Shen Changchuan, despite mastering numerous Mastery Level Spells, would have had to avoid their edge for the time being.

Regarding this,

Shen Changchuan understood himself very clearly.

Besides,

his consecutive bursts of power in such a short time had left only seventy percent of his spiritual power remaining.

Better to be as cautious as possible.

Shen Changchuan did not pursue.

The remaining black-clad men soon fled into the mountain forest, their figures vanishing from sight.

The surroundings suddenly became empty,

leaving only scattered corpses across the ground ahead.

The air abruptly fell silent.

Within the long convoy behind them, the mortal martial artists who had been thrown into panic by the attack stared blankly at everything before them.

These mortal martial artists had originally come to help with the transport.

When the black-clad men had attacked earlier and the immortals scattered in flight,

they had thought they were about to die.

Yet they had never expected

that in merely a dozen or so breaths, the situation would be completely reversed!

That young immortal had suddenly displayed divine might, effortlessly routing every enemy who had come to attack.

Such a massive reversal, like a roller coaster plunging and rising, left them speechless for a time.

Not far away,

the village Patriarchs who had fled at the very beginning

watched Shen Changchuan dispatch the incoming enemies in three strokes and two moves,

and nearly all of them sucked in a sharp breath!

Had the black-clad leader not erupted with the aura of Peak Qi Gathering Sixth Level?

And the other black-clad men who had charged forward were also at Qi Gathering Fourth and Fifth Level.

How had they suddenly fallen to their knees so quickly?!

It was simply unimaginable, impossible to comprehend!

Just who was Shen Changchuan? How could he possess such terrifying strength?!

He had crossed two Cultivation Realms and easily slain his enemies.

If that was the case, then the one who had personally killed the Four Fiends of Heshan back then—was it not this young Shen Family disciple standing before them?!

However,

they soon had no mind left to think about that.

Because

they realized something.

When the battle had erupted,

they had run!

They had abandoned the Shen Family youth and fled ahead of him.

Now, they were still halfway through their escape.

Though their feet had forcibly stopped,

they did not know whether they should continue fleeing or turn back.

They looked at one another in dismay,

and the awkwardness

was written all over their faces.