Ken managed to dodge the spear but didn't have the time to completely avoid the staff, and it hit his shoulder.
'My left shoulder blade is fractured.'
He thought to himself as he repositioned himself in front of the two enemies. He knew he was risking getting hit when he performed the slash, but he wanted to kill his enemies quickly.
He'd have a hard time defeating 5 disciples of a top sect fast enough to help his allies, and Miles' win wasn't assured even with the new help; the girls were too weak.
'Cloud Running.'
Ken ran toward the two men, dodging every attack skillfully. He slipped through the thrusts of the spear and the swings of the staff like a slippery eel.
'Snake Thrust.'
Ken found an opening a few seconds later and took down the staff user, paying back for the pulses of pain he was having in his shoulder. Now it was a one-on-one battle against a weakened cultivator, and Ken only needed one attack to kill the man.
'Damn!'
Ethan thought in panic when he saw the 10 men were completely useless. They were killed by a single man whom he didn't even know existed until a minute ago, and their slight advantage from earlier was gone.
Now Diana was distracting Grace with her arrows while Jane tried to cleave her in half with her greatsword repeatedly, making it hard on her to keep pressuring Miles. The women from the Four Seasons Sect had to focus on taking down Miles first or else they'd leave an opening for him.
Their support was enough to stop Miles from accumulating any more wounds, and a stalemate was created.
Ken popped out a healing pill and let the others fight. He already divulged a lot of information about himself to secure their win, and he wasn't feeling comfortable about it.
He simply watched the ongoing fight, ready to intervene if necessary. As time passed, Jane's talisman consumption was reduced, and the two female enemies were now accumulating small wounds.
The poison entered their blood system and ran in their veins. It was causing them pain, slowing down their heart rate, and jamming the stream of blood in their limbs.
Not only Grace and Beatrix were affected; Ethan was having trouble defending against the monk's attacks despite their large gap in cultivation base, and his partner's attacks were not enough to shake Henry's defenses anymore.
"Guys, run! We can't win!"
Ethan shouted desperately. They were fighting for nearly 6 minutes now, and if the worst scenario happened, it meant that the formations would be reactivated soon. Even if it was the best scenario and they still had 4 minutes left, the poison would be their doom by then.
At his shout, the two men and two women lunged toward the exit, trying to get outside. To their horror, they suddenly felt a strong pressure holding them back.
'It can't be! It's not 6 minutes yet, and are we really that unlucky that the Formation Suppressing Scroll's effect expired right before we left?'
Grace, a formation master herself, thought inwardly in despair. Before they could leave, they were barraged with attacks, injuring the four of them grievously.
"You used poison. This isn't righteous, it's evil methods!"
Ethan said while breathing heavily on the ground. His two arms were crushed, and his chest caved in when he tried defending one of Henry's palms under the combined suppression of the formations and the poison.
"And you tried to gang up on 5 cultivators with a ratio of 4 to 1, not to mention your stages were higher than ours. Sounds evil to me."
Ken mocked the man while the latter coughed blood and spat it on the ground. His friends' situations weren't any better; Grace lost an arm and Fire Qi was burning her lungs from the inside, Beatrix lost her lower body to Jane's greatsword, and Jackie had an arrow in his heart.
"Why the effect of the Formation Suppressing Scroll ended so early?"
'You can't expect it to last long while suppressing over 20 fourth-rank formations, you know?'
The scroll's weakness was that it suppressed all the formations in the surrounding, so it also worked on the concealing formations, the suppressing formation, the revealing formations, and on every other formation in the cave.
Without explaining to the dying man, Ken waved his sword and slashed the four, killing them all.
"All right. Take their rings, take your new puppies, and let's go."
Ken left the looting work to his 4 goons and worked on removing all the formations he drew in the cave. Activating all those formations for two weeks cost a small fortune. The costs were around 2500 Qi Stones per hour, making it nearly a million Qi Stones overall.
Luckily, the prey was rich enough to pay for the costs, and Ken didn't even ask the others to participate in the funding.
"Here, Little Brother Ken, this one is yours. There were 3 males and 2 females, so we each took one fitting for our gender."
Diana handed Ken a small wolf pup, trying to shove it into Ken's embrace.
"Huh, no thanks, I'm good. You can keep this one to mate with yours."
"That won't do. A pet will bring some warmth into your life. Your dull expression will make all the girls smitten with you disappointed if they hang out with you."
She insisted on leaving the pup under Ken's care until conceded with a sigh and took the pup into his embrace.
The little wolves could already keep their eyes open by now and even move freely. With his pills' help, they didn't need to eat half-ingested meat and were perfectly fine.
His pills diet refined their bloodline and body every day, and he estimated that 2 months later they'd be ready to consume second-grade pills, taking the next step in their evolution. Unfortunately, most of them won't get the chance since he was the only one making those pills.
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