Chapter 418 - The Great Immortal from Hell (1/2)
The sight before Xiao Chen was grisly and gruesome. Dead bodies scattered everywhere around him, most of them belonging to the acolytes or students of the Corpse Refinery Sect who had been killed. Even so, their terrible deaths were eclipsed by the hideously and grotesquely mangled and maimed remains of the students and fighters of the Orthodox Path. This could only be the work of Corpse Puppets, Xiao Chen observed, That nothing is left remaining save for some bloody bits of flesh and viscera. Still, all the signs only indicated that the invasion of the Summit of Mystics had already begun for days.
The duo shared a quick look before they surveyed the familiar surroundings of the Ridge of the Fallen Drake. The invading host had reached the Ridge, the throat of the Corpse Refinery Sect’s defenses and it was where the most decisive battle of this invasion would take place.
Just then, a series of flickering movements around them made their heads jerked. Two figures had materialized – the Black and White Supremes, Mo Ran and Bai Yu.
“YOU!” Bai Yu hissed, his eyes livid with malice as he threw his sleeves, swinging his folded fan. The sight of Su Lianyue and Xiao Chen reminded him of the vivid humiliation he endured at their hands several months before.
Mo Ran instead hardly uttered. He lunged at Xiao Chen without a word like a dark shadow. But with his powers now in the Nirvana Realm, Xiao Chen, with his heightened spiritual senses, could clearly see Mo Ran’s swift movements.
Xiao Chen needed only to throw out his left arm and deliver a slap so powerful that it hit Mo Ran in his chest, sending him crashing into two large trees dozens of yards away, snapping the poor trees into halves.
A copious flow of froth and blood escaped Mo Ran with a painful wail as he staggered from the heap of broken and splintered wood. Shocked, Bai Yu could not quite believe his eyes. He was not looking when he felt a blow coming at him. With a loud bang, he was also sent flying, crashing into Mo Ran. It was Su Lianyue who had struck the blow.
“YOU… IMPOSSIBLE!” Bai Yu stammered with intense repudiation. He could never fathom how far behind he was from the strength of the man and woman before him when they were still a match barely three months before.
A flash of cold fury burned in Su Lianyue’s eyes. With the invasion now underway, there was no longer any need to fear Ye Wuxin. She channeled her True Energy and raised her hand, preparing to execute the defeated Supremes.
“Run!” Mo Ran spat viciously with what strength still remaining of him. With a tug on the scruff of Bai Yu’s neck, he pulled his comrade away and they turned into two blinding rays of light, one black and the other white, that escaped out of sight.
Two loud bangs ensued, barely missing them. What was left were only two long streaking gashes on the ground, smoldering with steam.
Xiao Chen looked into the distance. The two rays of light slowly turning into mere dots. “Let them go,” he said, “Let us press forward.” “Well look at that, Master Xiao,” Su Lianyue snickered coyly, “They were once equal to us in power. Yet now, they are routed like dogs fleeing with their tails between their legs.”
Xiao Chen said nothing, merely walking ahead. For seven to eight miles they walked through the shaded grove of the Summit of Mystics. The summer heat was blazing swelteringly in the July sky but the walk through the umbraged path looked no more cheery with the corpses and carrions left strewn around. The assault had extended deep into the Summit although the forces of the Corpse Refinery Sect had managed to rally a counter attack to push the invaders back. The fight must have been intense and gritting with so many losses of lives and nothing was not yet known about what happened to the rest of the External arm of the Sect.
They went on for another few miles when the din of battle finally reached their ears. From afar, Xiao Chen could see magical artifacts and swords at work, wheezing overhead the raging battle with their magic and powers at full display. Magical bolts streaked and exploded in myriads of colors that would have mesmerized a child if not for the bloody and lurid fight taking place below. With a look exchanged, they suppressed their auras and picked up their pace.
They slipped into the cover of a thick jungle and perched on a tall branch, looking down on the wide-open field. The fight was still on with combatants from both sides doling out death and destruction with tremendous alacrity. Bodies, mangled and maimed, lied everywhere with the surrounding buildings reduced to their blackened foundations, seething with fumes.
Lead by a band of Elders of the Nirvana Realm, the remaining forces of the Corpse Refinery – many of them students and acolytes of the Nascent Soul and Core Forming Realms – controlled their Corpse Puppets to repel their enemies. Tendrils of foul evil Qi swirled lazily around the rotting flesh of the century-old mannequins as they fought. Even in the daylight, their obsidian eyes looked like a deep, bottomless abyss of death and despair as they struck down one enemy after another with deadly efficacy that no ordinary mages of the Orthodox Path stood any chance.
However, the invaders have no lack of firepower themselves; mages of the Nirvana or even the Apotheosis Realm were locked in fierce battles against mighty Corpse Puppets that wielded several centuries worth of Malicious Grudge. They had managed to blitz through the walls of the Ridge but were faced with the relentless reprisals of the defenders when the Sect had unleashed more of their Corpse Puppets and the battle was now in a stalemate.
No one had expected that the Corpse Refinery Sect had reserved so great a fighting force that despite being besieged for days, the defenses of the Ridge of the Fallen Drake endured. Even as the hour grew darker for the Sect and its might slowly exhausting, the Sect was far from yielding; the ones now mounting the defenses were only low-tiered Elders such as Elder Long. None of the members of the high echelons has yet appeared, not even the High Chieftain Ye Wuxin himself.
A jet of light shot across the sky suddenly and it fell to the center of the battlefield like a comet before it disappeared, leaving on a bearded old man, clothed in robes of earthen-yellow, standing in its wake. His rosy cheeks would have made him look more alive than the rest if not for the two Corpse Puppets, still slick with blood, standing beside him like silent sentinels. These were Blood Corpses, mindless killing machines more powerful than mere century-old Corpse Puppets.
“LORD ELDER!” The acolytes of the Sect boomed in unison, their voices loud and raspy with respect and confidence. Even Elder Long sounded meek before this newcomer.
Xiao Chen took a deep breath. He could feel how powerful this man was. At least of the Apotheosis Realm, he guessed, Are there still more mages like him in this Sect? But Su Lianyue’s voice interrupted his thoughts. “That’s the Great Immortal from Hell. One of the highest-ranking Elders of the Corpse Refinery Sect. His seniority dwarfs even Ye Wuxin himself.”
The name filled Xiao Chen with silence. He had heard it before, the name of Great Immortal from Hell. Then he remembered. Zi Mo had disguised himself as him once! It was when Xiao Chen was escorted to Tianyuan City by two Envoys of the Immortals’ League on a Flying-cloud Stone! But it had never occurred to Xiao Chen until today that the Great Immortal from Hell really existed.