by Gore, A. P.
What should he do to raise the Li clan’s defense exponentially in a short period?
While pondering his future plans, he started drinking the soup. It was tasty as usual. He should find this chef and reward him.
Hot soup entered his mouth and burned his throat as it descended to his stomach. Suddenly he felt a strange reaction from his body, and his head felt light. The room began to spin.
System: Unknown particle detected in host’s blood stream. 80% chance of poisoning.
Chapter 6
Revenge
System: Unknown particle detected in the host’s bloodstream. 80% chance of poisoning. Analyzing substance structure.
Li Wei’s stomach felt like he’d swallowed a hot ball of lava and it would explode anytime. His mouth grew parched, and his lips became agitated.
Pushing his fingers into his mouth, he tried to vomit the soup he’d just eaten, but nothing came out. This was bad. The poison had stuck inside his stomach, and it wasn’t coming out.
“Damn you, Li Tang!” Wei roared in pain. A prickling sensation arose like a thousand needles jabbing the inside of his meridians. In a breath’s time, it became severe, and he grew dizzy.
The small room around him swirled, and blackness crept in. Other than the servants’ bickering outside, his body became devoid of every other sense. Soon the voices turned distant, and he felt as if he were losing everything that mattered.
A premonition struck him. If he fainted, he wouldn’t survive.
He couldn’t pass out.
Pulling the last bits of his consciousness together, he spread his divine sense inside his body to observe the dire situation. A black substance had entered his body and corroded layers of his stomach meridian. If he did nothing, it would penetrate deeper, and then only death would free him from this poison.
Fortunately, a mass of his blood was attacking the poison, but the poison was too tyrannical. So far, his blood hadn’t regained a single inch of area it had lost.
System: Analysis completed. Matching with memory data. 96% chance of Traceless Corroding Poison. Possible solution: Antidote made up from the Ten Head Silver Serpent’s bile . . .
The system provided a long list of possible solutions for this poison.
Traceless Corroding Poison. It was a tyrannical high-tier Bronze Grade poison that could kill any cultivator below the Bone Baptization Realm. If he didn’t have an antidote, he had no chance of surviving. It was just a Bronze Grade poison, and Wei knew at least ten different antidotes for it, but he had none.
In that last moment of his life, he wondered if he did right by saving the Li clan from calamity, or if he’d simply brought a calamity upon himself. This was an inside job. He knew Li Tang had done it. His last sentence kept running through Wei’s mind.
Would he die before killing his enemy?
No way.
“Break!” Shouting, he circulated Blood Essence Body and madly absorbed essence energy from his surroundings. After reaching the body Foundation Realm, his cultivation speed had doubled, and he could absorb energy much faster than before. Right now he only had his blood to fight his battle.
Blood above all.
The sentence from the Blood Essence Body Cultivation Art kept running through his mind, and he decided to bet everything on it. He even tapped into the Primordial Blood Palace and readied himself to use it if required. But strangely, it remained silent. Was something wrong with it?
Essence energy poured inside his Yangming of stomach and produced new blood that rushed through the hundreds of small connecting meridians. It automatically dashed toward the old blood that was fighting with the poison.
Briefly, his blood vitality surged, and it seemed to overpower the poison, but it faded away quickly, and the black poison once more gained the upper hand.
The pain coming from his stomach intensified, and Wei nearly lost it. Even cultivating Blood Essence Body became difficult, but he couldn’t give up. His blood was his only option. If he couldn’t continue replenishing it, he might not be able to contain the poison in his stomach.
But no matter what he did, his blood kept losing, and his blood volume decreased drop by drop. On the brink of passing out, he thought of something. If his blood could fight the poison, what would happen if he used his blood pearls?
“Burn for me.” Pushing blood pearls toward his stomach, he burned them as soon as they went near the black substance.
Vitality burst out of his blood pearls and overtook his normal blood. In a breath’s time, his pale blood regained its color and rushed forward with newfound energy. Like a phoenix raising from the ashes, it madly dashed at the black poison and pushed it a few inches back.
The black poison seemed to shrink a little, and Wei found a ray of hope in the darkness that covered his whole mind. This was the way out, but he couldn’t push the poison toward his digestive tracks. It might leave hidden residue there. He had to push it toward his mouth.
Burning five more blood pearls, he pushed the poison toward his throat and then vomited it out into the white ceramic bowl in a stream of dark gray liquid. As soon as the poison moved out of his stomach, he regained his senses and the pain subsided.
A foul odor filled his small room. It was so intense that a couple of servants standing outside passed out when they inhaled it.
It was indeed Traceless Corroding Poison. And he’d been fool enough to praise the chef for his soup’s flavor.
From the corner of his eye, he spotted two servants watching him with wide eyes. Fear flashed through their pupils when Wei looked in their eyes. Instinctively, they turned and tried to run.
Wei jumped to his feet and dashed forward, sending a palm strike at a running servant’s back. His palm traveled gracelessly, and when it hit the servant’s back, the servant exploded into pieces. Blood rained around the dead body, and seeing that, another servant stumbled and fell.
Wei smirked, and without giving the servant a chance, he smashed the servant’s head with a palm strike. Without looking back, he charged forward toward the kitchen.
“Li Wei, why did you kill our servants? Are you trying to rebel?” A familiar, sinister voice echoed in his ears, and Wei stopped and turned to face Li Tang, standing below a nearby tree, staring at him. His right palm was wrapped in bandages, but his left arm held a naked sword, reflecting the moonlight. “Today, I will eradicate you, demon, from the Li clan forever.”
Wei smirked. “Come on. I was looking forward to killing you. Today you’ll meet your maker.” He circulated his Blood Essence Body to the fullest and readied himself like a tiger waiting to leap at its prey. It was time to take revenge.
Chapter 7
Hell Cicada Challenge
The sun shone brightly, like a sphere of hellfire, but a gentle breeze made its way through the woods and encircled Li Wei. It brushed against his face but failed to relieve his muscles of the tension that had built after killing those servants.
It wasn’t over yet, and he felt an urge to kill more.
His blood rushed toward both of his hands, ready to burn blood pearls anytime. He was practically ready to kill Li Tang, who stood a few feet away, holding a naked sword in his left hand.
“Brat, you’ll die here today,” Li Tang roared, his eyes enraged.
Wei smirked. It seemed that all enemies thought alike. Since his adventure in the forbidden tunnels in the Ancient Ruins, he’d had this thought at back of his mind, to kill Li Tang. Leaving an eyesore behind wasn’t his style. In his previous life, he was a benevolent fool, letting his enemies live as a show of mercy.
No more.
Li Tang had to die.
Li Tang charged forward with his sword extended in front of him, sending dust flying off the rough gravel path. Tiny stones, smaller than a hair’s width, swirled around his right arm inside the bandage. It was leaking a tiny amount of fire qi. It was well hidden, and invisible to normal eyes, but how could Wei miss it? If he guessed correctly, Li Tang’s right arm was already mended w
ith some herb or pill, and he wanted to use it to sneak attack. Any other cultivator might be fooled, but not Wei. With his divine sense spread around him, he noticed everything in a two-hundred-foot radius, be it the tiny fire leaking from Li Tang’s right arm, the dust particles flying in the air behind his charge, or a pair of birds making love on a lone tree branch.
Li Tang was too naïve. He would have to live for two hundred years to outwit Wei.
Pushing his leather shoes on the gravel path, Wei gathered momentum. With one thought, he could leap and attack Li Tang’s right arm. That’s where the real danger lay. After all, he couldn’t underestimate Li Tang’s layer five cultivation in the qi Foundation Realm. Last time, when Wei broke Li Tang’s fingers, he’d caught Li Tang with a surprise attack, but that wouldn’t repeat. This time, if Wei wanted to kill Li Tang once and for all, he would have to burn at least twenty blood pearls and hit with exponential force.
When Li Tang reached within a thirty feet radius of him, Wei planned to leap in the air and hit Li Tang’s chest with all his might. He wanted to first injure Li Tang and then feed him the same poison that he’d fed Wei.
However, Li Tang halted when a bell sounded from the clan’s main habitation area. It was an emergency signal, calling everyone who had reached the Foundation Realm to head for the clan hall or be labeled a traitor and kicked out of the clan.
Li Tang sent him a piercing look. “Brat, I’ll see what’s going on, and then I’ll come back to kill you.” He vanished into the woods.
Wei frowned and looked in the direction the signal bell had sounded from. It seemed to come from the main gate of the clan compound. Who the fuck was targeting the Li clan this time?
Was it the Du clan again?
Damn, he hadn’t recovered his cultivation at all, and another calamity was upon them. What the fuck should he do now? With his layer two body Foundation Realm cultivation, he should be able to beat anyone below layer six of the qi Foundation Realm if he sneak-attacked, but beyond that, he was no match.
If he’d had fifteen more days, he might have had some chance of fighting against the Du clan. But right now, he would be swept aside like a leaf in a sea.
Hesitation flashed through his eyes, but Wei ran toward the main gate. If it came to it, he will see what he could do. Right now, knowing the issue was important.
When he reached the clan’s main hall, he spotted the Du clan’s patriarch, Du Tenjua, sitting in a corner chair next to the city lord, Dan Kuang. A golden ring with a lord symbol on his right hand signified his status as city lord. Du Tenjua had a long mark on his face that went from his chin to his left eye, and he had the eyes of a fox, cunning and sly eyes. He wore a bright yellow martial robe, and a long sword hung at his waist.
Wei scanned Du Tenjua’s cultivation with his divine sense. He was layer four Bone Baptization Realm, about to break through to layer five. The patriarch didn’t even realize someone was prying into his secrets. The sword that hung to his waist was a martial artifact and had a Power Enhancement Array carved on it. It was a sloppy array, and Wei bet Du Tenjua couldn’t even use forty percent of the actual strength of the array.
It was a faulty array. The fifth power point was broken, and it would leak thirty percent of the wielder’s qi through it.
Compared to Du Tenjua, City Lord Dan Kuang was well dressed. He was appointed by the North Province lord and had layer six Bone Baptization Realm cultivation. In a small city like Old Martial City, he was unrivaled and held the strongest authority. He wore a green robe and had a long gray beard accompanying his similarly colored eyes. He gave off a calm disposition and held a warm smile on his face.
But he was the most fierce between the two of them. The city lord wore a vest underneath his green robe that could easily take a peak Bone Baptization Realm cultivator’s full-strength strike. It was an okayish Silver Grade artifact. In fact, Wei had seen many of these. Every major cultivator in the empire’s army got one.
A mere city lord shouldn’t have one. Dan Kuang must be someone special in the State of Zin.
Wei knew these two men because he had killed them in his previous life, taking revenge for the Li clan. It was a one-sided massacre that he hadn’t enjoyed.
But he wouldn’t mind doing it again. Since reincarnating, his thought pattern had changed. The things he’d felt were below his bottom line didn’t seem that way anymore. He’d always used to give his enemies leeway, but no more. Old Wei might have scolded the servants that were spying on him, but today he’d just kill them without flinching.
Sighing inwardly, he walked forward and stood behind his grandfather, observing the overall situation. Other than Dan Kuang, everyone seemed tense. Especially the Li clan elders. Many of them wore a forced smile, but they couldn’t hide the fear flashing in their eyes.
Leaving them to themselves, Wei scanned Du Tenjua. When their eyes met, old man Du Tenjua didn’t even try to hide the killing intent leaking from his eyes.
Wei looked around and rechecked, but Du Tenjua stared at Wei like he had stolen his daughter or something. Had he offended Du Tenjua somehow? Other than killing Du Tenjua in his previous life, Wei had no relationship with Du Tenjua whatsoever.
Then what was wrong with the old man? If he wanted to glare at someone, he could glare at Wei’s grandfather. Why glare at a junior? On top of that, Du Tenjua tried to put a formless pressure on Wei.
Of course, Wei didn’t even budge his eyes. “Senior, do you have a problem with me? Why are you eyeing me like a fat sheep to be butchered?” Wei asked plainly. “Or do you have some other hobbies?” he asked, crossing his arms in front of his chest and looking away.
“You, you! What nonsense are you blurting out?” Du Tenjua’s aged voice echoed in the clan hall. “Li Shua, is your Li clan so depraved that any junior can speak nonsense? If you can’t discipline him, let me do that for you. It’s been a long time since I had time to discipline a junior. This old one will do it for free.”
“Li Wei, what are you doing here?” Li Tang opened his foul mouth, and a bunch of shit fell out. Or, at least it smelled like shit. Whenever that bastard opened his mouth, something weird happened. But he was like a cockroach, even escaping the calamity named Du Su.
Wei pinched his nose and waved his hand in front of his face as he glared at Li Tang.
Li Tang’s entire face went red, anger simmering in his eyes.
“Du Tenjua, this is Li clan territory,” Grandfather Shua replied with a stern look, “and what I, the Li clan’s patriarch, do is none of your concern,”
Du Tenjua let a low-key smile cover his ugly face. “I hope you can keep your pride in the Hell Cicada Challenge I’m issuing to the Li clan.”
Wei’s eyes narrowed. He had heard about this Hell Cicada Challenge. It was a common thing in the State of Zin. In fact, all major empires in the Mortal Realm followed these Mortal Challenge rules. They were set up by the Blood Emperor three thousand years ago. History recorded that he’d ruled the entire Mortal Realm, but one day he vanished, never to return. Although his empire had descended into chaos and broke into the hundreds of small pieces that formed today’s world, the rules prevailed. One of them was the Hell Cicada Challenge.
Grandfather Shua shifted in his chair anxiously. “Du Tenjua, you clearly know the Li clan’s situation, and yet you’re issuing a Hell Cicada Challenge? How ruthless.” He then turned to Dan Kuang. “City Lord, you can’t be agreeing to this. Are you?”
“Patriarch Shua.” Dan Kuang stroked his beard. “I don’t want to see Old Martial City descend into chaos, but I’m unable to do anything. Your clan has faced no Hell Cicada Challenge in the last twenty years, so you can’t decline it. Tomorrow, come with all Li clan members to Tigun Martial Ground. The bet this time is the Du and Li clans’ Old Martial City territory, and I’ll oversee the match for fair results.”
Wei realized what was going on. This was a trap, and Dan Kuang had a hand in it. “Senior Dan, do you think my Li clan is a pushover?” Wei spurted thos
e words out, and everyone stared at him with strange eyes.
Chapter 8
Dan Kuang’s plan
Silence spread through the Li clan’s clan hall, so much so that you could’ve heard a pin drop. Everyone choked in response to Li Wei’s words, and Dan Kuang felt like someone had dropped a ball of fiery flame inside his ears. Rage flashed through his eyes as he stared at the chubby youth standing behind Patriarch Li Shua’s chair.
How could the brat dare to defy him? Was he tired of living?
“Patriarch Shua, you’re too kind with juniors.” He kept his face calm, but he wanted to tear that brat’s eyes out and teach him a lesson. How dare that brat talk back to him, Dan Kuang, a city lord and martial officer in the army.
“Wei’er, what nonsense are you spouting?” Li Shua frowned before turning his attention back to Dan Kuang. He didn’t seem to take Dan Kuang’s words seriously.
Li Tang, eldest son of patriarch Shua spoke up. “Father, let me punish this bastard. He’s constantly inviting trouble to our Li clan.”
It seemed that Li Tang had a grudge against Li Wei, and he was trying to eliminate him using Dan Kuang’s blade. How dare he? And why would Dan Kuang let him do as he liked? In fact, Dan Kuang wanted to kill Li Wei himself, so he wouldn’t let Li Tang take advantage of the situation.
“Junior Tang, don’t worry. I, Dan Kuang, do not take offense from mere juniors. Just forget it and begin your preparations.” Dan Kuang’s lips curled in a smile. “After all, your clan will face a major uphill battle tomorrow.” So what, the kid survived today. He would soon die.
Li Wei again opened his mouth and spurted some more nonsense. “Senior Dan, I’m not finished.”