Chapter 542 Battle at the mountain range
The Carp Retribution Society quickly grew from the support it received, every time it righted a wrong, by meting out justice or giving a fair shake and opportunity for the rejected. Its numbers mushroomed, and it blew up when they joined the Dark Helminth Ghost Sect, they even managed to use their good repute they had to subvert the image of the Dark Helminth Ghost Sect to the public, they touted them as righteous guards who held onto their oaths even after their liege had died. The embodiment of what true loyalty was.
The Dark Helminth Ghost Sect was able to operate smoothly and even grow its numbers thanks to the abilities of the Carp Retribution Society to sway public opinion. However, while the Society was outwardly known as a beacon of society, the Order knew their true face, they were harbingers of death who sold their skills for the highest bidders while also satisfying their lust for power and murder.
Countless sects, clans, and organizations had fallen by their hands. While the public thought they did it on behalf of a victim, they did it because an important client had made the request and when they acted, they obliterated everyone. If it was a sect, every man, woman, and child associated with it, whether they had cultivation or not, would be destroyed, and then they would fabricate the story and lay blame on the leaders of said organizations by saying they were the ones who laid waste to their own members despite the Carp Retribution Society leaving them a path to life.
At the speed they were growing, the Order judged them to be following the same trajectory of the Crimson Wave, thus when the opportunity presented itself, they reacted swiftly and thoroughly as they rooted every member out. They were more thorough with the Carp Retribution Society than they were with the Dark Helminth Ghost Sect, which earned them no small amount of hate from the public.
Even with the organization completely destroyed, the seeds it planted still exist to date, and who knew how long till those embers flamed up and Carp Retribution Society was revived from the dead.
As for the remaining two organizations i.e. the Sanguine Blade Sect and the Black Skulls Pilgrimage Sect, the former was sold out by a captured senior member of the Dark Helminth Ghost Sect, while the latter were combat fanatics who fought to the last member, the cultivation art they practiced had a binding oath that made it impossible for them to run from a battle, no matter how unfavorable it was to them.
With those three, destroyed, only four subsidiary organizations were left. The Order has tried to root them out over the years, however, these four knew how to hide in the shadows well, and it remained true even when the Dark Helminth Ghost Sect was at the peak of its power. They were also the reason the sect has been able to subsist even after the majority of its power force was decimated.
It was still a mystery how the sect despite being on its dying legs was still able to keep the four organizations in line, but the investigations showed the four subsidiary organizations were still in contact with the Dark Helminth Ghost Sect and the prior relation was still maintained and now in Deer Mountain Range, one of those subsidiary organizations made an appearance.
The royal family immediately calling the Deer Mountain Branch for help was perfectly understandable despite them having palace realm cultivators, the Blue Flame Soul Crow Syndicate was known to have destroyed a number of rank 3 organizations over the years, and some even slightly more powerful than the Deer Mountain Kingdom. So the wariness of the royal family was understandable and this was without even putting the dangerous locations around Deer Mountain Kingdom into account.
"Branch Chief Lai Wan on receiving the report, met with the king to confirm the details, after which he relayed the findings to the Special Inquisitors as per protocol on these matters.
After that, because it was unknown how long the members of the Blue Flame Soul Crow Syndicate would be around or what they were up to, the Branch Chief agreed to cooperate with the king and his party, to root them out.
They investigated from where they were last seen and eventually managed to follow their trails to one of the unexplored mountain ranges within the Kingdom.
Once there, the Branch Chief detected a massive miasma array being inlaid on the better parts of the mountain range, and it seemed to be trying to connect to something.
Because of the urgency the royal guards, a few of the princes, and Branch Chief Lai Wan and his team all charged in.
Once inside they engaged in a battle with a few members of the Blue Flame Soul Crow Syndicate as they made their way up where they found what the Branch chief assumed to be two of their deacons, taking out a treasure bone and wisdom pearl of an obsidian serpent that had been inhabiting the mountain.
Said serpent was thought to have just reached the palace stage and was just about to die, however, before its death, it let out a shrill cry and that was when things went wrong because two more obsidian serpents appeared and one of them seemed to be in its evolutionary stages of morphing into a flood dragon.
The two serpents seemed to have had a relationship with the butchered serpent, because the moment they saw its lifeless body, they went berserk and attacked the deacons, the Branch Chief, his team, and the princes and royal guards. Every human present became the subject of their fury.
Of the dead inquisitors, one was swallowed by one of the serpents while the other was killed by one of the deacons as he was trying to escape. As for Branch Chief Lai Wan, Hao Da, and the rest, they got swallowed in that chaotic mess, which ended in the death of three of the four princes who went with them and all of their guards who sacrificed themselves to buy enough time for the Branch Chief, Hao Da, the surviving inquisitor and prince to make their escape to the branch grounds.
They managed to make it, but they got poisoned and injured heavily by the obsidian serpent that was mutating. Its poison was toxic enough to damage their souls and almost corrode their dantian, as it contaminated their qi and every part of their body.
They were lucky that the anchoring treasure of their branch had detoxification properties but even then it only kept it at bay long enough for them to report their status and be saved..."
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