Seeing Zhu Ren Again

"I'll help you!"

Hearing his voice, the three turned their heads at once.

"Lu Feng!"

A flash of wild joy crossed Zhu Lin's and Luo Fang's eyes.

Liu Yong gritted his teeth and said nothing, but his grip on his sword grew noticeably steadier.

"Good timing! Four against four, that should take some of the pressure-"

Before Zhu Lin could finish, Lu Feng's saber had already slashed out.

With the perfection-level Gale Saber Art, the saber's flash was so fast its path was nearly invisible, leaving only a silvery-white arc in the air.

The tier-two wolf demon was lunging at Luo Fang with its bloody maw wide open when it heard something amiss in the wind behind it and whipped its head around.

The instant it turned, its head slid from its neck.

[Ding! Successfully killed a tier-two wolf demon. Demon Points obtained: 10,000;]

The cavern fell silent for a moment.

The rest of Zhu Lin's sentence caught in her throat, and her pupils contracted sharply.

"This... how is this possible?!"

That was a tier-two wolf demon. Even after the three of them had joined forces and fought it for so long, they had only barely held on.

They had only managed to kill the rabbit demon earlier by catching it off guard.

And Lu Feng had needed just one slash.

Lu Feng was somewhat surprised too.

The wolf demon's defenses were far weaker than he had expected.

On second thought, he understood. After battling the three of them for so long, the wolf demon had already exhausted most of its Nei Jin and stamina. It had also paid him no heed at all and had not even taken a defensive stance.

Lu Feng did not stop moving. With a turn of Carefree Steps, he slipped behind another tier-two demonic beast.

His hand rose and his saber fell.

[Ding! Successfully killed a tier-two pig demon. Demon Points obtained: 10,000]

Another flash. Another slash.

[Ding! Successfully killed a tier-two snake demon. Demon Points obtained: 10,000]

One final slash.

[Ding! Successfully killed a tier-two tiger demon. Demon Points obtained: 10,000]

From beginning to end, it had taken only a few breaths. All four tier-two demon kings were dead.

The cavern fell utterly silent.

Liu Yong stood where he was, sword in hand. His lips moved, but he could not get a single word out.

Zhu Lin and Luo Fang exchanged a glance. Each saw shock in the other's eyes, followed by relief, then something complicated that neither could put into words.

"Lu Feng, I never expected you to be so formidable."

"Thank you."

The three spoke over one another, all smiling at having survived the ordeal.

Lu Feng, however, did not smile.

He stood beside the tier-two wolf demon's corpse, head lowered, his gaze fixed on the ground.

Zhu Lin noticed something was wrong and stepped forward. "What is it?"

"Look closely."

Zhu Lin followed his gaze. The wolf demon's corpse was shriveling at a visible rate.

Its fur and skin sagged loosely, and its flesh and blood seemed to be drawn out by something from within.

Blood poured from the wound and flowed along the ground, then-seeped into the cracks between the stones and vanished.

It was not clotting or evaporating. It was being sucked away.

Zhu Lin's expression changed instantly.

She hurried over to the other corpses and examined them one by one.

"This... what's going on?"

For the first time, Liu Yong's voice held a trace of unease.

"The other demonic beasts I killed earlier were the same."

"I suspect someone is using a formation to absorb the blood. Senior Sister Zhou has already gone out to check whether there are any traces of a formation aboveground."

The three fell silent for a moment.

Liu Yong suddenly stepped forward with his saber. His hand rose and his blade fell, cutting off the heads of the five tier-two demonic beasts one by one and placing them in his storage bag.

His movements were clean and efficient, with none of the exhaustion he had shown while fighting the four demons earlier.

Zhu Lin could not hold back. "Liu Yong! At a time like this, you're still-"

"Lu Feng killed these demonic beasts!"

"Naturally, they count as his." Liu Yong tied up the storage bag and stood, his tone stiff but frank.

"But someone has to collect the demon heads. We fought for a good while too, so we did our share."

Zhu Lin opened her mouth, wanting to say something, but in the end she only shook her head and said no more.

Lu Feng paid no attention to what Liu Yong was doing and asked, "Have you seen Zhu Ren?"

"Zhu Ren?"

Zhu Lin came back to herself, thought carefully, and shook her head.

"No. After we entered the branching passage, we wandered around the caves until these demonic beasts surrounded us. We've been fighting them ever since. We didn't see a trace of him the whole time."

Lu Feng nodded slowly.

Sure enough. Ever since they had entered that stone door, Zhu Ren had vanished without a trace.

He had built this underground cave, laid out the branching passages, and brought the demonic beasts in.

Since he had gone this far, there was an eight or nine in ten chance that he was involved with the formation.

Just then, the ground trembled.

At first it was faint, as though something heavy had landed in the distance.

Then the tremors grew stronger and stronger. The stone slabs beneath their feet began to jump, and loose stones pattered down from the cavern ceiling.

With several cracks, fissures spread upward from the base of the wall at the rear of the cavern, swiftly crawling across the entire stone surface.

A blood-red light shone from deep within the cracks.

"There's something behind the wall!"

Luo Fang was the first to react, drawing her saber and holding it before her.

All of them turned toward the wall, which was about to crumble. Before they could do anything, it collapsed with a thunderous crash.

The dust cleared.

Behind the wall was a secret chamber, much smaller than the cavern outside.

An octagonal stone platform stood in the center of the chamber, with a palm-sized Bagua disc resting on it.

The Bagua disc was pitch-black from end to end, and the runes on its surface were emitting an eerie, bloody light.

The entire chamber was shrouded in that bloody light, and even the air seemed to grow thicker.

Behind the Bagua disc, a man sat cross-legged.

He wore a crimson robe, had a goatee, and had a refined face.

It was Zhu Ren.

His eyes were closed, and his hands rested folded in his lap. A pale red mist surrounded him, constantly pouring from the Bagua disc and entering his mouth and nose.

"Zhu Ren!" Luo Fang's gaze turned cold, and she gripped her saber, about to step forward.

Lu Feng stopped her.

"Wait."

Luo Fang looked at him in confusion, but remembering the strength Lu Feng had just displayed, she stopped.

"Look at his cultivation presence." Lu Feng's voice grew grave.

The cultivation presence around Zhu Ren was rising at a visible rate.

Mid Nei Jin, Late Nei Jin-it did not stop until it had settled firmly at Nei Jin Perfection.

The pale red mist gradually receded, all of it drawn into his body.

Zhu Ren slowly opened his eyes.

A faint glimmer of dark red showed deep in his pupils.

"Zhu Ren was only at Early Nei Jin before." Liu Yong's hand tightened slightly around his sword.

"He actually forced his way up to Nei Jin Perfection with the blood of these demonic beasts... what kind of sinister technique is this?"

Zhu Ren did not look at Liu Yong. His gaze passed over the others and settled on Lu Feng.

He looked at him for a moment.

"I didn't expect it." He seemed like a different person from the gentle, refined sect leader he had been in the main hall.

"This old man misjudged you. Of everyone here, the strongest is actually you."

Zhu Ren slowly stood, his crimson robe stirring without wind.

"However, I must thank you as well."

The corners of his mouth curved into the faintest smile.

"If you had not killed all those tier-two demonic beasts, their essence blood would never have flowed into the formation. Without that essence blood, my cultivation could not have risen so quickly."

As his words fell, the air in the cavern abruptly grew colder.