Chapter 192: Slaughter

"Hello."

Standing before him, Wei Bufan spoke slowly.

His voice wasn't right.

Yan Jing tried to weaken the thread control around the throat, letting muscle inertia take over.

"Hello."

Wei Bufan spoke again.

That was about right.

As for the slight remaining difference...

It was normal for people to be like this after resurrecting.

With his preparations complete, Yan Jing turned and returned to the roof where Old Master Liu was engaged in a fierce battle.

Old Master Liu was fighting six people at once, not losing a single inch of ground.

With bare fists and two streams of energy, he forcefully suppressed six experts of the same tier until they could barely breathe.

Having recovered his strength, the old man was terrifying to this extent.

Beneath his sunglasses, there was no blood—not even a tear track. He clearly still had strength to spare.

Yan Jing did not rush to reveal himself, instead looking toward Feinan Temple in the distance.

There, Wei Nantian was still fiercely battling five Fourth Tier experts. Even from such a distance, the hideous wounds on his body were clearly visible. By now, many of them were near-fatal.

Especially on his chest, where a massive bloody hole exposed his ribs and beating, dark-red heart.

It was about time.

Yan Jing took out his last bottle of Mental Immunity Potion and drank it.

Immediately after, he used blink to appear right beside Old Master Liu and said calmly, "I've finished my business."

"Thanks for the help. You can pull back now."

"Alright."

The old man didn't hesitate in the slightest. He called out to Tiger and left immediately.

As far as he was concerned, there was no prior relationship between him and Yan Jing. He had only come because of Luo Sheng's instructions:

First, create a huge commotion; next, get Wei Bufan's corpse out; and finally, help this human reach the pillar of light.

Now that the task was complete, there was naturally no need to stay.

In no time at all, the two had vanished from sight.

Yan Jing looked at the six murderous figures opposite him and smiled.

Black threads surged from his eye sockets, dancing in the air and instantly forming a pitch-black barrier that enveloped everyone inside.

"You all really wanted to fight me just now, didn't you?"

Yan Jing chuckled.

"I was busy a moment ago, but we can begin now."

As his words fell, he directly unleashed his Fear Stance. Billowing thick fog instantly swept through the space within the barrier. Scarlet eyes opened, and a monstrous silhouette flickered within the mist.

Following that, cracks surfaced on his skin. Pitch-black tentacles covered in feathers stretched out from the fissures, and eyes snapped open one by one.

Then, streams of white silk appeared, wrapping around his arms. The Bi-Colored Spear swung in time with the petals drifting down from the sky.

Countless pitch-black threads swirled around him like a demon's halo.

"Are you ready?"

Yan Jing spoke with a smile, but his voice had become an amalgamation of thousands of voices. Accompanied by shrill, wretched screams, it sent a simultaneous shiver down the spines of the six people opposite him.

The temple cultivator who had initially blocked Yan Jing, in particular, couldn't help but gulp; he felt that Yan Jing's gaze had lingered on him the longest.

What was wrong with this damn human... The strength he displayed earlier plainly hadn't even reached the Third Tier, but now...

He looked even more like someone from the Inner World than they did.

After a moment of distraction, the temple cultivator looked across the way, only to realize in shock that Yan Jing had disappeared at some point.

Instantly, cold sweat soaked his back. He immediately turned to look at a female mechanical cultivator beside him, only to find her staring at his back with terrified eyes.

"..."

His eyes widened in an instant, and his breathing grew rapid.

No, impossible. How could he be so fast...

He slowly turned his head and saw Yan Jing's fractured, split face. With a hoarse voice like a monster's, the corners of his mouth stretched all the way to his ears as Yan Jing said, "Congratulations, you found me."

"!!!"

In the temple cultivator's hands, weird energy surged as he prepared to activate his Second Tier Ability, Golden Bell Cover.

But it was already too late.

"Bang!"

Along with a loud crash, Yan Jing's free hand grabbed the temple cultivator's head and ruthlessly slammed it into the ground.

The threads swirling around his body instantly plunged into the man's eyes.

Red and white splattered!

"Ahhh!!!!"

Amidst his shrill screams, before his Third Tier Ability could even activate, a loud crack rang out as his head was violently twisted a full one hundred and eighty degrees.

"First one."

Yan Jing chuckled and turned his head to look at the remaining five terrified figures.

The next second, his figure dissolved into a dark shadow and vanished from the spot once more.

The female mechanical cultivator, the first to react, instantly activated her ability. One terrifying contraption after another, resembling torture devices, flew from her hands and deployed around her to prevent Yan Jing from closing in.

Then, she reached out both hands, revealing her true form amid the surging weird energy.

Half of her face was covered in wooden springs, and the joints of her hands and feet were entirely composed of wooden cogs and axles.

A large portion of her body had long since been modified into mechanisms; even in close combat, she had the power to fight back.

She had snapped out of her fear, stepping back mentally to analyze the situation. Although the strength and speed Yan Jing had just displayed were terrifying, they still fell within the scope of the Third Tier. The only reason the temple cultivator had died so easily was because it had all been too sudden.

Furthermore, for some unknown reason, they seemed to be enveloped in an atmosphere of dread.

Thinking of this, she looked up at the petals falling from the air. Realizing the truth, she hastily shouted, "Watch out for the flowers!!!"

But it was already too late. Yan Jing's next target, an aroma cultivator unsuited for physical exertion, had already been caught. Yan Jing gripped the cultivator's neck in a vice-like hold. As the man struggled desperately, his eyes bulging completely out of their sockets, his neck was forcefully snapped.

The disheveled head rolled across the ground.

Beside them, the panicked carving cultivator threw out a carved wooden figure. It instantly transformed into a giant several meters tall, smashing down toward Yan Jing.

Meanwhile, he pulled out a carving knife and aimed it at the pitch-black barrier formed by the threads. Struggling to calm his terrified heart, he activated his Third Tier Ability.

Divine Craftsmanship.

This skill could not only carve inanimate objects, but could even finely adjust the faces and bodies of living people.

But to his shock, the sturdy carving knife struck the barrier yet failed to break through it completely...

"This is!!!"

His eyes widened drastically. The threads before him reminded him of a familiar existence in his memories.

That object... how could it be here?!!

Before he could recover from his shock, an eerie voice rang out behind him:

"You figured it out."

"Squelch!!!"

A bi-colored black and white spike pierced directly through the carving cultivator's chest.

"Impossible..."

He stared in horror at the spear jutting out of his chest, unable to believe that the wooden giant he had just thrown out had been dispatched so quickly. He tried to turn around, but skewered by the spear, he couldn't move at all. He could only muster all his strength to turn his head slightly, and then he saw the giant wooden figure tightly bound by black and white threads.

Although the wooden giant's struggles were growing more violent, looking as though it were about to break free, it was already meaningless...

The carving cultivator fell heavily to the ground, his face twisted in horror, blood pooling around him...

In less than two minutes, half of the six Third Tier experts had fallen.

It was like a horror story.

The fear of death had completely enveloped this space.

Yan Jing looked toward the mechanical cultivator in the distance, who had set up a heavily layered fortress. Under the triple blessing of his Fear Stance, Fear Bird Form, and the Power of the White Stone, the threads in his eyes poured out madly. They transformed into a black and white tide that surged directly toward the mechanical fortress.

The mechanical cultivator hurriedly released her weird energy, frantically manipulating the mechanisms around her to fend off the incoming threads.

Whenever she spotted a thread, she would immediately sever it. Just like that, under her continuous control, the contraptions around her multiplied, but the space she occupied grew increasingly cramped. The threads were like anomalous monsters out of a terrifying legend, virtually omnipresent; any gap could allow them to slip through.

To make matters worse, their numbers were overwhelming, as though they could never be completely chopped or cut away...

In the end, she didn't even have room to shift her feet.

Just as she trembled in fear, the surrounding threads finally seemed to stop.

Was... was it over...?

A flash of joy at surviving the disaster crossed her heart.

Weird energy pulsed from her fingertips, transmitting outward through the mechanisms to conduct a scan.

And then...

"Thump, thump, thump!!!"

It sounded like someone was knocking on a door.

Right before her eyes were clearly dense layers of mechanisms, but the target her weird energy probed was a "monster" holding a killing cultivator's head, tilting its head and smiling at her:

"Your turn..."

"Ahhh!!!!"

The black and white threads flooded the cramped space.

A terrified, piercing scream rang out.

...

...

Having finished off the group, Yan Jing didn't have time to gather the spoils. He immediately dispelled the barrier and looked toward Wei Nantian in the distance.

But at this sight, he was startled.

Wei Nantian was now on one knee. One of his arms was broken, with so little flesh left on it that gleaming white bone was exposed.

Although the five Fourth Tier experts opposite him had sustained varying degrees of injuries, given Wei Nantian's current state, he clearly wouldn't last much longer.

Yan Jing's eyes flickered.

His estimation had been wrong. According to his plan, after he finished dealing with things here, Wei Nantian should have still had a final burst of energy left.

This energy couldn't be too much, nor too little.

Now it seemed that such a rough calculation had ultimately been flawed.

Should he initiate the backup plan...?

Just as Yan Jing was pondering, a highly unexpected scene unfolded.

"Advisor!!!"

A monster-like roar tore from Wei Nantian's throat. He was already blind in one eye, his face covered in knife scars and severe swelling, yet he looked around frantically and bellowed at the sky, "Advisor!!!"

"Advisor, where are you!!!"

"Advisor!!!"

At this moment, like someone experiencing terminal lucidity, he roared while searching everywhere for Yan Jing.

Should he take a gamble...?

Yan Jing's thoughts spun rapidly.

Ever since entering the Inner World, he had always been accustomed to establishing multiple safeguards for everything. This sudden, unexpected situation thrust him into a dilemma.

In the span of a lightning flash, he made his decision.

"Commander Wei!!"

Yan Jing strained his voice and shouted loudly, "I'm right here!!!"

"The treasure! I've found the treasure!"

"The Young Master! The Young Master has been saved!!!"

Just as Yan Jing's words fell, in the distance, the seemingly exhausted Wei Nantian's remaining eye suddenly lit up. Immediately after, he actually stood back up, and the imposing aura around him erupted once more!

"Bufan! Oh, Bufan! Father is coming!!!"