Meanwhile, Lang Ya finally stopped beneath a sheer cliff. He dropped to his knees and forcibly stemmed the blood flowing from the stumps of his arms. Even so, he could feel a sweet, metallic taste rising in his throat again and again.
Long Xiaoyao had severed both his hands, but that was nothing to him; he didn't need them to use his Spirit Skills. But that black aura... even now, plenty of it remained in his body, constantly leaving tiny wounds within him.
"Cough... Ha, in the end... I survived after all." Lang Ya looked at the spot by his waist that had glowed green earlier. He gave a slight shudder, and several shattered pieces of green jade fell to the ground.
"As expected of a piece of the sect master's Hundred Thousand Year Soul Bone... Even a Limit Douluo couldn't keep me here... Cough, cough..."
The shattered green jade pieces were fragments of a Hundred Thousand Year spinal bone, passed down through generations of the Body Sect. Its power was to use the absorber as an anchor and split off countless fragments. No matter how far away they were, the bearer of any fragment could be sensed, and the bearer could be returned to the anchor's location at the cost of permanently destroying the fragment.
This was the life-saving treasure carried by every Body Sect disciple who ventured out into the world, but it could only be used once.
Lang Ya limped toward the sheer cliff before him. Just as he was about to crash headfirst into it, the hard rock rippled like the surface of water, beginning at the point where it touched him, and absorbed him.
On the other side of the ripples lay a completely different scene:
Looking up, he saw countless buildings clinging to the mountainside. Blue-gray stone and dark brown timber were the main materials used to build them. They had no gilded decorations, only sturdy lines and sharp corners, as if they had grown naturally from the mountain itself, exuding a wild, untamed strength.
Before Lang Ya stood a mountain gate carved from Millennium Profound Iron Stone. Beside it rose a massive stone stele, on which three bold, powerful characters had been carved in vivid red: "Body Sect."
Lang Ya's vision was growing hazy, but just then, he saw a tall man standing at the entrance, coldly watching him.
The man wore a simple dark green robe, but even through its loose folds, one could sense his rugged, well-developed muscles.
Most striking of all, the man's face seemed utterly at odds with his body. Though tall and powerfully built, he showed not the slightest trace of age. His skin was as smooth as that of a baby not yet a month old.
The man silently stared at Lang Ya with emotionless, dark green eyes, as if waiting for him to speak first.
"Lang Ya... pays his respects to the vice sect master..." Lang Ya forced himself to kneel once more. The man's identity was now clear:
The current vice sect master of the Body Sect, and the brother of its current sect master, Du Bisou—Du Busi!
"I want to know who gave you the nerve to show your face in the Body Sect again." Du Busi slowly walked up to Lang Ya and crouched down, fixing him with a piercing stare.
Ever since his elder brother, Du Bisou, told him that Lang Ya had gone to cause trouble at Spirit Soul Academy, Du Busi had been waiting at the Body Sect's entrance.
If Lang Ya had any sense left and chosen to leave, Du Busi could have let him go for the sake of their past ties as fellow disciples. But since he had chosen to set foot on Body Sect soil again, the rules of the Body Sect would have to be followed.
"Using students from Spirit Soul Academy as hostages... When has our Body Sect ever needed such despicable, vicious methods to recruit people?" Du Busi kicked Lang Ya in the chest. Lang Ya flew backward and slammed into the rock, smashing a deep hole into it.
Du Busi had held back with that blow. Though Lang Ya was embedded in the rock with every bone in his chest broken, none of his internal organs had been harmed, and he still had the strength to speak.
"Vice sect master... why... why don't even you understand me..." Lang Ya raised his head and spoke, one word at a time:
"I did all this for the sect... Can't you see... what the Body Sect has become..."
"What has it become... Hahaha, what it's become? Is that any of your concern?"
Du Busi walked up to Lang Ya, grabbed him by the collar, and lifted his face toward his own.
"Even if the Body Sect were to be utterly destroyed, it would never need to recruit disciples by methods like yours. All you've done is bring shame upon the honored spirits of generations of Body Sect masters!"
"And besides... what did you say when you first faced that child? That the sect master gave you the idea?" As Du Busi said this, his gaze grew even more vicious.
"At the start, you even tried to pin the blame on my elder brother. Is that how you claim to care about the Body Sect?"
"Elder brother... Hahaha, that old bastard Du Bisou is no sect master! If he hadn't been so indecisive, the Body Sect wouldn't have ended up like this!" Lang Ya's voice turned vicious. He raised one severed hand and pointed toward the sect master's hall.
"The sect master was killed by that Old Black Dragon and the Old White Dragon working together, and you two brothers did nothing but stand by. You even bowed down before the power of Spirit Hall... You'd rather keep cowering here than fight your way back... Yes, the Body Sect reveres the strong, but that's no excuse for your weakness!"
"I should have succeeded... A peerless genius with a Body Martial Soul, and the futures of dozens of people from Spirit Hall... Using them to settle the debt they owed the Body Sect—what did I do wrong!"
Lang Ya roared in resentment, but he failed to notice the strange flicker in Du Busi's eyes when he heard the words "the sect master."
"What happened back then... was never as simple as you think."
"Not as simple as I think? Hahaha... Fine... If it wasn't because you revered the strong... then was it because you two brothers conspired with Spirit Hall to seize power, and joined hands to murder the sect master?" Lang Ya laughed more and more maniacally, until he had nearly lost his mind.
"That man was right. You, Du Busi, and Du Bisou... You really are a pair of cowardly, conniving brothers... What right do you have to criticize me!"
In an instant, Lang Ya began chanting an incomprehensibly strange incantation. All the Soul Power in his body gathered at his forehead, and the markings there suddenly lit up with an eerie red-black glow.
But the very next moment, Lang Ya abruptly spat out a mouthful of blood. Du Busi had torn out his tongue with his bare hands.
"Ha... Cough, cough..."
"Lang Ya, my brother and I thought you'd acted on impulse... But now it seems you should be ready to die."
Du Busi spoke coldly as he looked at Lang Ya, then placed one hand on his head. A moment later, all that remained in the hole was a headless corpse.
Du Busi used his Soul Power to block the splattering blood. He had thought Lang Ya was merely a former sect master's follower, driven mad by obsession... He hadn't expected that others were involved in this matter too.
"The incantation he was chanting... was clearly the same one the former sect master chanted back then."
"Those people... there are still some of them left in this world."
"I have to tell my elder brother at once..."