The Grudge

Wu Dao's guess had been right.

Zhao Wei had not returned all night. Whether he was alive or dead was unknown.

After the three fist masters left behind to guard Panshui Town—Zhang Long, Li Hu, and Cui Shan—had waited anxiously through the night, they finally realized something had gone wrong. Before dawn, they hurried into Canyun Mountain.

All three were fist masters.

They were skilled fighters at the peak of Internal Strengthening, with far greater speed, eyesight, and senses than ordinary people. They soon found the tracks everyone had left the night before.

The three followed them with uneasy hearts. By the time daylight had fully broken, they finally reached the forest battlefield where the previous night's fighting had ended.

The pungent smell of blood.

After the wind passed, it spread through the air once more.

The ground was littered with severed limbs, most of them belonging to Red-Armored Bat Foxes, but human remains were mixed among them too!

"This is a disaster..."

Zhang Long crouched and rummaged through the muddy swamp of blood and flesh, pulling out a scrap of Zhao Wei's clothes. His square face went deathly pale.

"There's some over here too. It should be Meng Qingshan's..."

"Fang Tianliu's broken sword!"

"There's also a damaged talisman from Mao Ba."

"A scrap of Wu Dao's clothes."

"Damn, even Yingsha, a Cocoon-Breaking Realm fighter, is dead!"

The three searched the area.

They found more belongings left behind by the others, and their hearts filled with shock and fear.

It was hard to imagine.

What kind of brutal slaughter had taken place here last night?

One Cocoon-Breaking Realm fighter.

Five experts at the peak of Divine Strength.

All had fallen!

That was right.

In Zhang Long and the others' eyes, Mao Ba and Wu Dao were dead too, since they had also left behind "remains."

"Over here!"

Suddenly, Li Hu let out a strange cry from the distance, as though he had encountered something horrifying.

The other two hurried over.

Deep in the forest, trees had toppled and the earth and rocks had been blasted apart, leaving a huge swath of destruction. It looked as though two Ancient Ferocious Beasts had fought here last night.

At the far end of the battlefield.

A deformed monster's body lay motionless on the ground. Its upper half was gone, its spiritual nature had vanished, and its remains had turned into pus and rotting flesh.

Nearby lay several stinking fragments of its upper body.

It seemed...

It had been killed in a single blow!

Its upper half had been blasted apart, killing it on the spot!

Who had such strength?

Zhang Long and the others were horrified. Their first thought was that someone had been lying in wait, letting the mantis stalk the cicada while the oriole waited behind.

And...

That oriole's strength had already surpassed the Foundation Establishment Realm!

"Cough, cough. Don't guess. It was probably that bastard Wu Dao."

As the three stood in shock and uncertainty,

a weak voice came from the shadows.

"Who?!"

The three men's expressions changed, and they shouted in alarm.

But when they saw the figure emerging from behind a tree, their faces froze.

If they hadn't sensed that the newcomer was truly alive, they would have thought they were seeing a corpse rise from the dead.

"Daoist Mao Ba, what happened to you...?"

The three stared at Mao Ba as he emerged from behind a huge tree that would have taken several people to encircle. Their expressions were strange.

Because...

Mao Ba's appearance was far too bizarre. His head was tilted ninety degrees onto his left shoulder, and he looked at them with crossed eyes, like a ghost.

"Alas, my skills are lacking. Please forgive the sight."

Mao Ba shifted his head so he no longer had to look at them cross-eyed, his face full of bitter self-mockery.

After fleeing in the latter half of the night,

he had been on the brink of death.

Had he not brought enough backup measures with him this time, he might have lain forever in some nameless wilderness.

Yet even after paying a tremendous price to purge the Demon Smoke the Flesh Tai Sui had left in his body,

he had still been left with a lasting injury—

his neck was crooked.

For a long time to come, until he broke through to the Dao Fire Realm (Cocoon Breaking) and reshaped his body, he would have to look at people cross-eyed.

The reason he had risked returning to the battlefield

was that after recovering, he had tried to drive the Green Crane again and discovered it had completely lost its target.

There was only one explanation for this—

the Flesh Tai Sui was dead!

When Mao Ba learned this, he had been stunned, ashamed, and overwhelmed by complicated feelings.

He had thought Yun Tianliu and the others had survived against all odds and killed the Flesh Tai Sui.

And he, Mao Ba,

had called himself a righteous member of an Immortal Sect, devoted to slaying demons and upholding justice after coming down the mountain, yet had abandoned Yun Tianliu and fled like a coward!

To escape the torment of his conscience,

he had returned to the forest, hoping to do whatever he could to make amends.

As for sharing in the spoils,

he hadn't even considered it.

Who could have known...

"Alas, such is fate."

Mao Ba sighed mournfully. One wrong step, and then another. The turns life took were all too surreal.

"Daoist, why do you say Wu Dao did it?"

Seeing Mao Ba's sorrowful expression, Zhang Long and the others knew Zhao Wei and the rest really had perished.

But what they couldn't understand was this:

Wu Dao was only at the Divine Strength Realm. How could he have been strong enough to be that oriole?

"Look around you and you'll understand. I've never met anyone with a heart as cruel as his."

Mao Ba's expression darkened. He pointed to a row of tooth marks where someone had bitten into the ground, along with a few scattered fragments of human tongues.

And around them,

if they looked closely, they could also find scraps of Wu Dao's clothes and pieces of his body. They could even see half a face that had been torn away.

That appearance—

who else could it have been but Wu Dao?

They were all quick-witted men.

Given these clues, how could they fail to understand the brutality of the final battle last night?

Wu Dao really was at the Divine Strength Realm.

But he had hidden his true strength far too well.

No one knew what methods he had used, but after paying an unbearably high price, he had killed the Flesh Tai Sui. Then, dragging his dying body along, he had taken the spoils.

Seeing everyone fall silent, Mao Ba ground his teeth and continued, "When I left, the Flesh Tai Sui had already been driven to the end of its rope. There was no way it could still have caused this much destruction.

Do you know what that means?

That fiend watched the Flesh Tai Sui kill them with his own eyes. Then, after the Flesh Tai Sui had eaten its fill and fattened itself up, he made his move!"

"That... Surely not..."

Zhang Long and the others were so startled that the hair on their bodies stood on end. Though they didn't consider themselves good men by any stretch,

what Mao Ba described

was still too horrifying for them.

How was that any different from eating people outright?

No matter how chaotic the world became, no matter how dark people's hearts grew, devouring one's own kind was something people did only when they had reached the end of their rope and had nowhere left to turn.

It was true that evil creatures could help people grow stronger, but cultivators could simply avert their eyes and ignore that fact when they went demon-slaying.

Wu Dao was nothing like that.

He had watched a monster eat people with his own eyes, then eaten the monster himself. He was no different from a beast. No ordinary person could get past that.

But...

Zhang Long and the others couldn't help looking again at the tooth marks on the ground and the fragments of tongue. Just looking at them made them feel a sharp, searing pain.

Wu Dao clearly wasn't normal!

That

could explain why he was so ruthless.

Someone who could be that cruel to himself would naturally stop at nothing against others.

They couldn't even imagine

what kind of inhuman revenge they would suffer if they made an enemy of someone like Wu Dao. Just thinking about it made them feel cold from head to toe.