A flash of blood-red light streaked past. The scenery around Zhao Hao hurtled backward, dissolving into blurred patches of color.
Zhao Hao felt as if he had been thrown into a spinning drum. Everything around him twisted and stretched wildly until, with a bang, he fell from midair and crashed into a bed of dead leaves.
When his vision cleared, he found himself in an unfamiliar forest dozens of miles away.
He tried to get up, but his body was as limp as a heap of mud.
"Pfft—"
He spat out a mouthful of blood. His face turned white as paper, and he gasped for breath, his heart pounding as if it might burst from his chest.
An emptiness and coldness that seemed to rise from the depths of his soul swept through his entire body.
What the Blood Escape Art drained was a cultivator's vital blood!
The sword wound in his left shoulder sent out waves of tearing pain. His whole arm had gone numb and hung limply at his side.
He lay sprawled on the ground. Even breathing tugged at the wound, making the veins bulge on his forehead.
I can't stop!
The distress jade talisman that female cultivator had crushed was a death warrant hanging over his head!
Gritting his teeth, Zhao Hao braced his remaining good hand against the ground and struggled upright, leaning against a large tree.
At once, he pushed the Qi Gazing Art and Mysterious Yin Breath Concealment Art to their limits, sealing every trace of his aura inside his body.
Safe.
There was no sign of another cultivator nearby.
With the enhanced sight granted by the Qi Gazing Art, he made out the outline of a small city on the horizon, more than ten miles away.
Its dense crowds and mingled auras made it the only place he could hide now.
He tore a strip from his robe and hastily bound his still-bleeding wound, then headed toward the city without hesitation, moving as stealthily as he could.
As he staggered toward the city, his thoughts churned.
The Golden Core elder's granddaughter whom Wu De had refined into a living corpse, and the junior sister whose heart he had just pierced with the Evil Light Art...
Wonderful. The Extreme Yin Sect had ruined the whole nest of the man's granddaughters!
Whether or not he had done it, the blame would fall on the Extreme Yin Sect in the end—and on him, the "murderer."
The expressionless, desiccated face of his master, True Person Corpse Heart, flashed through his mind.
He had exposed his cultivation at the ninth level of Qi Refining. Once that news reached the sect...
How would True Person Corpse Heart "study" a "Heavenly Spiritual Root" who had shot from mortal to the ninth level of Qi Refining in three months?
And how would that old ghost Jia Ren deal with his "perfect vessel for possession"?
Death lay ahead and behind him!
Zhao Hao shuddered. A chill sharper than the pain of his wounds shot from the soles of his feet to the crown of his head.
No matter how strong a Qi Refining cultivator was, before someone at Foundation Establishment, he was a grasshopper that could be crushed with one finger.
He was caught between two great powers, right at the eye of the storm. His only chance of survival was to use the chaos of this war before they could react and, at any cost...
Break through that threshold!
Foundation Establishment!
Only by reaching Foundation Establishment and fleeing the Northern Lands, this land of trouble, would he have a way to live!
His mind made up, Zhao Hao circled to a secluded stretch of the city wall. After making sure no one was around, a glimmer flashed across his body, and he sank silently into the ground.
Earth Escape Art!
He traveled underground, carefully avoiding occupied homes, and finally surfaced inside a room in a dilapidated courtyard without stirring a speck of dust.
He dared not make a single unnecessary move. He changed into a set of worn cloth clothes he found in his Storage Bag, then lay down on a dust-covered wooden bed and pulled a tattered, musty quilt over himself.
Pushing the Mysterious Yin Breath Concealment Art to its limit, he stilled his mind and regulated his breathing until he looked like an ordinary mortal boy fast asleep.
Night fell.
The small city sank into silence.
Just when Zhao Hao thought he might pass the night in peace, a powerful, razor-sharp will swept through the entire city like an invisible tide, making no attempt to conceal itself!
Divine sense from a Foundation Establishment cultivator!
Zhao Hao's heart skipped a beat.
He immediately stilled his mind and even stopped healing his wound. He lay on the wooden bed beneath the dusty quilt, adjusting his breathing until it grew long and even.
Now he was nothing more than an ordinary mortal who had been startled awake and was cowering under his quilt, too terrified to move.
That divine sense carried impatience and murderous intent. It swept back and forth through the city, searching every corner three times.
Each time it passed over Zhao Hao's room, he felt as though he had been stripped naked and thrown into a world of ice and snow.
Just as he thought the other party was about to give up...
Humm—!
A clear, fierce sword cry suddenly rang out from the center of the city!
The sound could pierce metal and split stone. Even from miles away, it made his eardrums ache!
Zhao Hao lay in bed, "trembling," but he could imagine the mortals in the city had fallen into chaos.
He did not release his spiritual sense to investigate out of curiosity, as other cultivators might have.
He merely reacted as an ordinary person would: his body jerked in "terror," his breathing quickened, then he forced it back down, like a commoner scared out of his wits who dared not make a sound.
Sure enough.
After the sword cry, that Foundation Establishment divine sense swept over the city again!
This time, it searched faster and more roughly, paying particular attention to places where people had reacted strangely after being startled.
When it passed over Zhao Hao, it moved straight on without pausing.
A mortal frightened half to death was not worth its attention.
The divine sense circled once more. Only after confirming that nothing else was amiss did it recede like the tide.
By the time the sky turned pale as a fish's belly, that suffocating pressure had not returned.
Zhao Hao still did not dare move.
He did not dare use his spiritual sense. Instead, he pricked up his ears and listened to the city with senses far sharper than a mortal's.
After dawn, voices gradually rose from the streets.
He heard neighbors talking in hushed tones.
"Did you hear? Something happened to the Immortal Master Mansion last night!"
"Something happened? When I got up in the middle of the night, I saw a sword beam fall from the sky with my own eyes. The Immortal Master Mansion... it was gone! Leveled to the ground!"
"Heavens! Then... the immortal master who lived there?"
"What do you think? The guards at the gate say they couldn't even find a whole bone... Tsk, how awful..."
"Shh! Keep your voice down! You dare gossip about an immortal master? Do you have a death wish?!"
The Immortal Master Mansion... was gone?
Zhao Hao lay on the bed and slowly opened his eyes. His gaze was clear.
This region was Extreme Yin Sect territory. The so-called Immortal Master Mansion in the city must have housed a disciple the sect had sent to guard it.
That sword cry last night...
It seemed a Foundation Establishment cultivator from the Heavenly Sword Sect, having searched in vain, had taken out his anger on the local Extreme Yin Sect disciple and killed him outright.
That disciple had suffered in Zhao Hao's place.
Zhao Hao's face remained expressionless, but an inexplicable sense of relief stirred in his heart.
Better you than me, fellow Daoist. Farewell, junior brother.