Chapter 50: Another Layer of Shadow (1/2)

Now that it was clear what had happened, the outraged Tong Hao sped off in the direction in which the Ghost sect disciple had fled.

“Dammit! There’s only one of him, yet he dared to act so brazenly! Let’s chase him down and kill him to avenge Huang Ye!”

It seemed the two trial takers standing next to him had been close with Huang Ye. Filled with grief, they followed along after Tong Hao.

“Don’t chase him!” An Ying cried. “Get back here, all of you!”

Tong Hao turned around, and for the first time, talked back to An Ying. “Why? Huang Ye was just cut down right in front of us. Are we really going to sit back and do nothing?!”

“You won’t be able to catch up,” Pan Tao interjected. “The Ghost sect disciples are experts in escaping and hiding. They can travel like ghosts. Even if An Ying and I were to chase after him, we wouldn’t be able catch him, let alone you guys.”

Frustrated, An Ying said “First things first. Let’s give Huang Ye a proper burial.”

Only by disguising himself with the robes of the Grayvale sect did the Ghost sect disciple successfully deceive them all.

If it weren’t for Nie Tian, who had memorized the faces of everyone from the Grayvale sect, and thus immediately attacked the murderous imposter, two people would have been killed instead of just one.

As the leader, An Ying’s failure to notice something peculiar about the situation directly led to Huang Ye’s death, hence she blamed herself.

“Listen to her,” Pan Tao urged Tong Hao and the other two. “Focus on burying Huang Ye, not on rushing off carelessly. You don’t know the Ghost sect well enough. If you were to chase after him and get separated from us, I fear that…”

Apparently, he didn’t want Tong Hao and the other two to follow Huang Ye into death.

Nie Tian, face grim but calm, looked off in the direction the Ghost sect disciple had appeared from. “The people from the Grayvale sect were probably killed over there,” he said, “where that young man came from.”

“I suppose so,” replied Pan Tao. “He was wearing the Grayvale sect’s robes.”

“How about we go take a look?” Nie Tian proposed.

Pan Tao’s expression flickered, and then he nodded. Looking at An Ying, he said, “Nie Tian and I will go take a look. Whatever we find, we’ll head back soon. There probably aren’t any more disciples from the Ghost sect in the vicinity. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have attacked us alone.”

An Ying pondered the situation for a moment before saying, “Alright. But be careful!”

“Okay, we won’t go too far,” Pan Tao promised.

After that, both of them left the group and headed in the direction that the Ghost sect disciple had come from.

Immediately after they left, Jiang Miao said, “Nie Tian… is actually quite nice. At first we all thought he didn’t care about anything but eating, but he managed to detect the smallest anomalies when the crucial moment arrived. Without him, we probably would have been killed back when we encountered the Lurker Lizard.”

Then she looked over at Guo Qi. “And he just saved Guo Qi’s life.”

Guo Qi bowed his head in embarrassment and said, “It was my bad. I wronged him.”

“Nie Tian…” An Ying muttered and nodded. “His perception is indeed better than all of ours. This is undeniable. If it weren’t for his warning, that Ghost sect disciple could have killed one or two more of us.”

“It seems it was the right decision to not give him to the Grayvale sect,” said Jiang Miao. “He has truly helped us.”

The rest of them all had a shameful look on their faces. It appeared only then did they have a fair opinion of Nie Tian.

Even as they discussed Nie Tian, he was carefully searching the area where the Ghost sect disciple had come from.

Because the Ghost sect disciple deliberately created the false impression that he had been blood-soaked from a fierce battle, his wild charge toward An Ying’s group left a lot of fresh blood on the ground.

By tracking that blood, Nie Tian and Pan Tao effortlessly found the place where the battle had taken place.

The battlefield was in a snowy valley, about five hundred meters away from the location of the rest of the group. Within that valley lay two trial takers from the Grayvale sect, who had clearly died tragic deaths.

One of them was a young woman around fourteen or fifteen years old, who was completely naked.

As soon as Pan Tao laid eyes on the scene, his face turned very grim and cold. “She must have been raped by that Ghost sect disciple before she was killed.”

A dour gleam could be seen in Nie Tian’s eyes as he averted his gaze. “These guys from the Ghost sect all deserve to die!”

“Their thumbs have also been chopped off. It’s clearly the Ghost sect people’s doing.” Pan Tao sighed and went forward, digging out a pit in the ice and burying the two corpses.