Chapter 402 Rescue
Chu Xun beheld the tall imposing peaks around them. There was only one way ahead and that was a little narrow path that wound by the edges of the ravine.
The snaking little trail appeared to be the only path that led to the present hideout of the Broken Souls Cult and there could be sentries lurking unseen.
“Go down this little trail and flush out any sentries hiding unseen. Just go in openly; no need to hide yourselves,” instructed Chu Xun.
“Yes, sir,” said Long Yi and he led his men down the trail.
Chu Xun lifted a hand and smote hard on the peacock’s head, firing a blast of energy that rendered the animal unconscious. There it would remain for the next few hours.
He circled back up the edge of the ravine where he found a tall and strong tree that hung over the cliffs and he clambered up its branches.
With a purplish glow on his feet, he began to scale up the tree.
Meanwhile, Long Yi encountered a sentry post of the Cult manned by several acolytes of the Grandmaster Realm.
With only two shots using his bow, Long Yi made short work of the five men.
Long Er (literally, Dragon the Second) aimed his bow at a huge protruding boulder and fired. The rock exploded and the four men hiding behind it screamed with terror as they fell into the abyss.
More arrows arced down from the sky like rainbow, raining death on any sentries that still survived the first onslaught.
One of those managed to let loose an ear-splitting blare using his whistle and the noise reverberated loudly, splitting the silence.
It did not take long for the Broken Souls Cult to discover they were under attack and they quickly organized their defense.
But Long Yi and his men were unstoppable as they trampled past whatever the Cultists could hurl at them.
Meanwhile, Chu Xun had climbed two-thirds of the tree, reaching the same height as the crest of Silent Hill.
With as much strength as he could muster, he jumped, propelling himself into the air for almost a thousand meters before descending on the crest of Silent Hill like a swooping hawk.
The towering height of the trees had served well for Chu Xun to springboard himself through the air.
Chu Xun looked around and found a vast sprawl of manmade structures stretching off far and wide. He spied at the entrance of the settlement sat a huge boulder almost several dozen meters tall that was inscribed with the glyphs that said: The Broken Souls Cult.
Chu Xun’s face writhed grotesquely as his facial muscles squirmed and stretched slowly, changing his appearance into that of an ordinary youth. He took out a jet-black robe and put it on before keeping his aura restrained and raced towards the settlement.
In just seconds, Chu Xun reached a spot not far away from the Cult’s new hideout and hid behind another boulder.
Scores of men filed out the entrance, looking like Cultists rushing to hold back Long Yi and his squad.
Chu Xun found an opportunity and bolted as quickly as he could into the hideout.
“Hurry, hurry, hurry! Stop them! Kill them all!” a voice cried amidst the din.
“They’re too powerful! They’re halfway there!”
“Worthless trash! Throw something at them! Rocks, logs; whatever you can find! Cast them into the abyss!”
Huge rocks thousands of kilograms heavy and logs so thick that it needed many to ring their arms around its trucks rumbled down the slopes of Silent Hill. The entire mountain range rocked and trembled as the debris came crashing down on Long Yi and the Silver Dragon Guards.
Long Yi and his men blasted the rolling rocks and falling logs into pieces with their bows and magic.
With too much debris hurtling their way, Long Yi had his men all keep to the walls of the cliffs, dodge however they could, and fire their bows only if they couldn’t.
In the meantime, Chu Xun successfully infiltrated the hideout and he swiftly scanned the whole hideout with his Divine Sense.
It did not take long for him to find the place where Wu Busi was kept under lock and key.
The hideout was in such pandemonium that literally every acolyte was rushing outside to help with the defense.
“Who is it?! Who dares invade the Broken Souls Cult?!” boomed an elderly Eighth-grade Human King with terrifying strength.
“Presbyter Lin, the enemy’s made up of ten men and they’re just too powerful for us to handle!”
“I’m going to take a look,” said Presbyter Lin, rushing out the gates. He came near the edge and peered.
From his perch, he observed how easily Long Shi and his companions were dealing with the hails of rocks and logs, and he turned grim and grave.
“Send word to every Presbyter and householder who are still in solitary training. The enemy is formidable,” said Presbyter Lin somberly. He paused a moment and said instead, “No, wait. I’ll go myself.”
Chu Xun took advantage of the chaos to find the place where Wu Busi was locked up. His gaze turned cold. Before him, he found a flat yard with several holes in the ground no larger than the opening of a well. Hanging over each pit was a winch with iron chains as thick as a child’s arm coiled up.
“Who goes there!” barked one of the Human Kings guarding the prison when he saw Chu Xun.
Chu Xun ignored them and as he walked past one of the pits, he spied the reflection of light bouncing off the surface of the water below. It was an underground cistern.
As it turned out, the space below was a water-filled cistern almost a hundred square meters wide. A man was kept there, suspended in the air by the iron hooks that were run through his shoulder blades and connected by heavy chains that stretched up to the coils wound around the winch on top. The man was hanging with his lower half in the water and his head hung on his shoulders as if unconscious.
No matter how powerful a warrior could be, having one’s shoulder blades so chained in such a manner would render him helpless. He could no longer summon his Internal Breath, like any ordinary man ripe for the plucking.
“How dare you ignore me! Answer me!” shouted the Human King who demanded Chu Xun to identify himself.
Bang!
Chu Xun’s hand came up and blasted him into a mist of blood.
That terrified the rest of the guards and they drew their weapons, glaring venomously at Chu Xun.
“Who on earth are you!?” cried one of them, even though his voice broke with fear.
Whoever this intruder was, he had just easily blasted a Third-grade Human King into bits!
Chu Xun panned his gaze to the man and fired another blast of purplish energy, defeating his protective aura so easily and turned him into another mist of blood. Even the weapon he wielded was shattered into pieces due to the impact.
“INVASION!”
Realizing something was one, one of the guards screamed for help, raising the alarm.
But before his voice reached far, shimmering walls of light rose up suddenly, keeping his voice inside the barrier of the enchantment.
“Release them all,” Chu Xun said coldly.
“Y-y-you... You’re not a member of the Cult!?”
“Impudence!”
Chu Xun reached out a hand in the man’s direction and clenched his fist fiercely. The Human King who was speaking instantly burst into a sickening eruption of blood and viscera that some splattered on the faces of his comrades, striking panic into them.
“I won’t repeat again,” hissed Chu Xun.
Six low-tiered Human King guards and Chu Xun had easily dispatched with three of them in mere seconds. The remaining guards were on the verge of fainting with fear but they managed to do as they were told and quickly unlocked the grate that barred the hole and worked the winch.
The iron chains rattled as they raised up, pulling the captive out of his watery gaol.
The first captive was a middle-aged man now nothing more than a bag of bones. His face looked sallow and weak and so was his aura. Pulling him up must have caused more damage to the wounds on his shoulder blades so that more black-clotted blood appeared as he groaned with pain even in his unconsciousness.
Chu Xun examined his condition. He was in a very bad state. The long hours of torture and his inability to summon his magic to heal himself had caused a great deal of damage to his meridian channels and his internal organs. That he was still breathing was already a miracle of its own.
Chu Xun snapped the iron hooks apart with his powers and used his magic to extract the essences of several magical herbs and shrubs and applied them to the man’s wounds and injected spurts of Hong Meng Immortal Qi into him.
By the time he finished, the guards had freed a second captive: an elderly old man. He looked slightly in better shape than the first, but nowhere near healthy too.
Chu Xun snapped the iron hooks off him too and helped to heal him.
Then a third captive was freed. Chu Xun swiveled around and when he saw who it was, he immediately saw red.
It was a young man in his teens. His eyes were tightly shut and his lips completely purple. His breathing was so weak that he looked very close to dying.
Boom!
Chu Xun immediately blasted the Human King who pulled the youth up, leaving nothing at all remaining.
Chu Xun quickly administered healing procedures on the young man, using the best magical herbs he could find and supplying as much of his Hong Meng Immortal Qi to help keep the youth alive.
Fortunately, the healing effect of the Hong Meng Immortal Qi was extraordinary. With a large number of spiritual herbs and spiritual herbs, the young man’s life could be saved.
Chu Xun’s entire self radiated rage as scarlet-red veins built up in his eyes, indicating his extreme hatred and anger.
He knew this young man. This was Wu Busi’s son, the very same whom he had encountered when he last traveled up Wujin Mountain and he saved his life then.
He did not expect that the Cult had not only taken Wu Busi but even his son too!
Meanwhile, Wu Busi was brought up. He had fainted, his entire body utterly scarred and lacerated from the heinous tortures he had been enduring all this while.
Hurriedly, Chu Xun did all he could to save him.
More people were freed. Two among them were already dead and their lower half had already begun rotting in the water.
But so long as they still drew breath, Chu Xun did all he could to make sure they stay alive.
But as he worked to keep the captives alive, the fury in Chu Xun’s heart grew the more he worked, and anyone standing beside could practically feel the murderous rancor radiating off him.
He placed magical seals on the powers of the last two remaining Human King guards and returned the same favor they gave to the captives: he viciously ran two iron hooks through their shoulder blades, snapped apart the chains before casting them down into the watery dungeons below.
The hefty iron hooks weighed almost a hundred kilograms and once in the water, the two guards could not keep themselves above the water especially with their powers stripped. Being in the water made them lose more blood and it did not take long before their strengths were utterly sapped and they plunged into the water and drowned.
Unfazed by their deaths, Chu Xun watched from atop with cold, frosty eyes. He cast an enchantment and made full sure that it was impregnable and left Wu Busi and the others inside first. Their wounds would need time before they could travel again.
Meanwhile, Presbyter Lin had finished sending word to every other presbyter in seclusion and came finally to Li Kun, the Chief of their infernal order.
“Have you find out who it is!?” hissed Li Kun sinisterly, his eyes utterly bloodshot and cold as if threatening to devour the elderly presbyter whole.
“We still know nothing about them until now, except that they’re all very powerful. They are all Eighth- or Ninth-grade Human Kings and nothing our acolytes did could stop them,” said Presbyter Lin.
What?! Eighth- or Ninth-grade Human Kings?! Gasped the others with shock.
“Could it be the Devil?” whispered one of the presbyters.
Presbyter Lin shook his head. “I’d have recognized him from the start. No. I’d say the Devil is not within their number.”
“Just as long as it isn’t the Devil,” groaned another presbyter.
“Why? Are you that afraid of him?” Li Kun glowered disapprovingly.
The man jumped, shivering with fear, and uttered hastily, “No, sir! The Devil is nothing but worthless scum! In fact, he could have not come any quicker! I’ve been waiting for the chance to kill him and avenge our fallen comrades!”
Li Kun’s eyes practically blazed with anger. But he smirked viciously, “Whoever dares to come here, let them come. They would be made to stay here. Forever.”
“Chief, if I may speak freely?” asked Presbyter Lin respectfully.
“Speak,” said Li Kun.
“If I may, I would like you to leave now, Chief.”
Li Kun’s blood-red eyes held Presbyter Lin in a deadly stare, “What do you mean?”
“There is a Ninth-grade Human King among the ten-man-strong squad now mowing down our defenses, Chief. I only think it’s prudent that you evacuate now.”
“Are you worried that I might be no match for him?” Li Kun’s glare softened somewhat upon the realization that Presbyter Lin was genuinely concerned for his wellbeing.
Presbyter Lin gave no other remark. It was exactly as Li Kun had said. The chief of the Broken Souls Cult was also a Ninth-grade Human King and he might not prevail in a battle against another similarly-strengthen warrior.
“Rest easy,” Li Kun’s eyes flared with malice as he sneered wickedly, “So long as he’s still behind, that step I can still defeat him.”
Everyone in the room, including Presbyter Lin, stared at Li Kun with amazement.
“Could it be!? Could it be that you’ve ascended to the Human-Immortal Stage, Chief?!” gasped an overjoyed Presbyter Lin.
Li Kun shook his head. His eyes flashed a hungry gleam of red. “Ascending into the Human Immortal Realm is easily said than done. But I am certain that no one below that stage can hurt me.”
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