"Sword wounds. This wasn't the work of demonic beasts!" Gu Yi got straight to the point. "Someone is killing the disciples here."
"How could that be? Only Foundation Establishment and Golden Core cultivators can get in." Jiang Lingzhou rubbed his nose.
"We shouldn't linger here. Let's leave first!" Xie Wenyun said gravely.
With that, the three nodded and quickly left.
They walked for a while without encountering a single other disciple or demonic beast. The woods were unnaturally quiet.
Just then, Jiang Lingzhou suddenly said, "Senior Sister Ye, look!"
The three looked in the direction Jiang Lingzhou pointed. In a deep pit over there, twenty-odd corpses lay strewn in all directions.
Judging by their clothes, they were actually the people who had surrounded Gu Yi earlier.
Gu Yi quickly scanned the bodies in the pit. All had sword wounds. "Zhao Chen isn't here. He's at the early Golden Core stage, a little stronger than the other disciples. He might still be alive! Let's look over there."
"Casualties on this scale don't look like infighting between disciples, no matter how you look at it. Instead, it looks like..." Xie Wenyun said, following Gu Yi.
"A hunt!" Gu Yi's brows knitted tightly. "And we're the prey..."
The more Gu Yi thought about it, the more he felt He Yan must be behind this. He had known He Yan couldn't possibly behave himself. After honoring the peace treaty for four years, could he no longer hold back?
The elite disciples of every sect, righteous and demonic alike, were all inside this secret realm. If they were wiped out in one fell swoop, all the major sects would suffer a devastating blow.
No wonder he had insisted on holding this Hunt. So this was what he had been waiting for.
"What do we do now?" Jiang Lingzhou asked, also realizing the gravity of the situation.
"At least twenty or thirty people died in that pit. That means a large number of people are taking part in hunting us."
"With our current strength, the three of us will probably have a hard time surviving," Xie Wenyun said. "For now, we should hide carefully and find a chance to contact the other surviving disciples, so they can't pick us off one by one."
"You mean we hide?" Jiang Lingzhou asked, raising his eyebrows.
"The enemy is hidden while we're out in the open. Senior Brother is right. We can't let them catch us." Gu Yi had barely finished speaking when he heard a jumble of footsteps.
The three immediately darted up into the trees and concealed themselves.
They saw a dozen or so black-clad men chasing two disciples.
Every one of those dozen or so black-clad men was at the peak of Golden Core. Jiang Lingzhou was about to go down to help when Gu Yi caught hold of him.
He shook his head at Jiang Lingzhou. Only after the group had passed did he speak. "The three of us can't beat them. Going down there would only get us killed."
"But those two disciples..." Jiang Lingzhou glanced at Xie Wenyun, whose brows were tightly furrowed as well.
He knew Gu Yi was right. Of the three of them, only two were at Golden Core, while their junior sister was at Foundation Establishment. Even if they went down, they could only buy a little time at most.
"Don't worry. Those two will be fine." Gu Yi's lips curved.
The next moment, screams rang out from the direction the black-clad men had chased them. Gu Yi and the other two jumped down from the trees and quietly followed.
One of the pair was swinging a massive sword with tremendous force. In the blink of an eye, he had beaten those dozen or so men into utter disarray, sending them screaming.
"Junior Sister! This..." Xie Wenyun almost thought his eyes were deceiving him.
His cultivation was clearly at Golden Core, yet that power looked considerably greater than even a Nascent Soul cultivator's.
Watching the man's fluid mastery of the massive sword, Gu Yi's mouth twitched almost imperceptibly. Because he's the male lead...
Although Mu Yang belonged to no sect, he was a descendant of the Sword Immortal Mu Xuanyuan... His family's secret technique could temporarily raise his cultivation by an entire stage.
To him, these lackeys were practically handing themselves over to be slaughtered.
"It's that guy and Yezi!" Jiang Lingzhou exclaimed.
Gu Yi nodded. He had already recognized the pair when he saw them fleeing earlier. Although they had covered their faces, who carried a massive sword on his back in broad daylight...?
The person beside the massive sword kept looking back every few steps, clearly having nothing to fear... Who else could it be but Yezi, who followed Mu Yang around?
"What do we do now? Go with them or hide?" Jiang Lingzhou asked.
"We'll hide on our own," Gu Yi blurted out.
Are you kidding? Following the male and female leads around? Do I have a death wish?
They were the protagonists, so they were bound to go through the plot. Whatever the plot was, Gu Yi wanted no part in going through it with them.
He hadn't forgotten how the original owner of his body had died: killed by the male lead.
Although a series of coincidences had brought him into contact with them before, Gu Yi had deliberately avoided them ever since learning who they were.
Though Xie Wenyun and Jiang Lingzhou didn't know the specific reason, they asked no further questions when they heard how firmly Gu Yi spoke.
After the pair had left safely, Gu Yi and the other two found another place to hide.
The three found an extremely well-hidden tree hollow. Xie Wenyun set up a barrier at its entrance and covered it with vegetation.
Rather than wandering and running around outside until those black-clad men killed them, hiding was the best choice.
The three hid in the tree hollow for two days. Every day, they saw black-clad men coming and going, searching for surviving disciples who were alone.
From their conversations, Mu Yang and Yezi had found some sect disciples and gathered them in one place, roughly thirty-odd people in all. With Mu Yang's high cultivation and those disciples banding together, the men couldn't kill them anytime soon.
Almost everyone else had been killed by them.
What Gu Yi heard left him terrified. There had seemingly been over a hundred people when they entered, and now fewer than half remained.
He Yan had gone far too far this time. Was he trying to kill off the next generation of all these sects?
"Have you counted everyone? Aside from the three Brother Chu said he'd deal with personally, we seem to be missing another three."
Hidden inside the tree hollow, Gu Yi and the other two hardly dared breathe as they quietly listened to the voices outside.
"Brother Chu is handling them personally? Did the sect master send him?" one of the black-clad men asked in confusion.
Another black-clad man lowered his voice to answer. "I heard Brother Chu has a grudge against those brats from the Qingling Sword Sect!"
"Never mind. Brother Chu is the strongest among us. Killing a few Golden Core cultivators won't be a problem for him. He's not like Chen San'er, who took a dozen or so men to hunt down that brat with the huge sword, only for them all to get killed. Not one came back alive."
At this, Gu Yi's heart tightened, and his brows creased slightly. When he heard the name "Qingling Sword Sect," his expression instantly grew grave.
The Qingling Sword Sect... Could they mean Lin Yuan and the others? Gu Yi wondered to himself. Aren't those three with Mu Yang?
And an enemy with a grudge had targeted them, too.
"Senior Sister Ye... How much longer are we staying here? Do we really not need to meet up with Yezi and the others?" After two stifling days in this cramped tree hollow, Jiang Lingzhou had long since had enough.
Luckily, Gu Yi was also in the tree hollow, giving him a beautiful face to admire. Otherwise, he would have run out long ago.
Gu Yi's thoughts were still immersed in the conversation between the black-clad men just now.
"Brother Chu and the others sent a voice transmission. They said those three brats from the Qingling Sword Sect are all injured. Two have already escaped, but for some reason, the remaining one's power suddenly surged. He wants us to go help," one of the black-clad men said.
Another black-clad man replied, "All right! Let's hurry over and take a look!" With that, they quickly vanished into the darkness.
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