Now he wondered why they looked guarded when he met them yesterday. It was their secret place near the Core Formation herbs.
The disciples changed their original direction and came near a tree. They didn’t stop and moved behind it, inside the bushes. There was a hidden cave that went underground.
They moved inside it and heard the sound of flowing water; it was an underground river.
The visibility was poor here, but it wasn’t at a level where it would give problems to a cultivator.
They moved inside slowly. Finally, they came around the river. It wasn’t wide and could be crossed with a single jump. There were some spirit herbs on the other side of the riverbank.
And it was like a cave going even deeper on the other side. The spirit herbs weren’t even matured, but there were definitely some Core Formation spirit herbs that might reach maturity in just a week.
There might be some mature herbs inside the cave. They all got happy to see that and crossed the river.
Jiang Hao had entered the underground too, and when he saw them crossing the river, he heard the voice of Yin Ni.
"You can relax, there is no exit on the opposite side, and there is a peak Grade 3 snake beast deep inside that cave too."
Jiang Hao relaxed himself and walked at a normal pace. Even if he got discovered now, it wouldn’t matter.
These disciples were dead if they entered too deep, and if they decided to run, they would die by his own hands. There was one point, though—he didn’t want them to die at the hands of a spirit beast.
He didn’t know how it would feel to kill a human. Well, in his opinion, it wouldn’t be too different from killing a beast, not to mention that in his opinion, beasts were far more trustworthy than humans.
As he came closer to the river, he heard their voices.
"This is amazing, there are really a lot of these Grade 3 spirit herbs here. All we have to do is wait for at least a week or two, and we will get more than 20 Grade 3 herbs."
One of the women couldn’t help but exclaim.
"There might be more in the cave. Let’s go and check it out," said the other woman.
"Wait for a second. This much amount of Grade 3 spirit herbs, and there is no spirit beast here? Is it really possible that this was hidden so well that even a spirit beast didn’t find out about it? I doubt that. There might be a Grade 3 beast deep inside that cave," said the Mid Stage disciple who also seemed to be the leader of this group.
Others stopped their enthusiasm after hearing this. It would really be dangerous if they found even a Mid Stage Grade 3 spirit beast, much less a beast higher in grade than a Mid Stage.
"Should we scout it first?"
Before he could finish, they heard a thumping sound. It came from the riverbank.
They all looked towards the river, and a man was standing there with a white mask.
They became stunned. Did he follow them from the city? After all, there were many cultivators who heard their exchange.
But if he did follow them from the city, then why were they not able to find him? They were paying special attention to this, always alert if someone was following them or not.
The Mid Stage disciple asked immediately. He knew that this person was at the peak of the Qi Refinement realm, but it was hard to believe that. They were moving at the speed of Core Formation realm cultivators; a Qi Refinement cultivator wouldn’t be able to follow them.
There was another possibility—that this guy was already inside this place—but this was also not believable. A Qi Refinement cultivator coming this deep into the forest was almost impossible.
They weren’t attacked because low-grade beasts were afraid of them, but what about this guy? Unless he wasn’t a Qi Refinement cultivator, his presence here was impossible.
That only meant one thing: his technique wasn’t good enough to discern this person’s real cultivation realm, and this wasn’t really a good situation for them.
Jiang Hao didn’t say anything; he wasn’t here to talk with them anyway. He moved with his top speed and reached the closest person immediately.
Before the others could even get shocked at his speed, they saw the face of their companion getting caught in the claws of this mysterious man.
Instead of crushing the face, Jiang Hao activated his Primal Essence skill. Immediately, the face he was holding got refined into the purest form of qi; even the blood qi was refined into pure, normal spirit qi.
Seeing that pure qi, he hesitated for a moment but didn’t absorb it. No matter what, he was still a human. Even though he wasn’t eating them directly, it wasn’t much different either.
The qi was also a minuscule amount as this guy wasn’t a body cultivator.
He let the qi disperse and looked at the other disciples, who were terrified seeing what had happened right now.
Even their leader, who was in the Mid Stage of the Core Formation realm, was trembling, much less them.
When Jiang Hao moved, they were able to see that he had the realm of Early Stage Core Formation. Even then, they weren’t sure, as it was far stronger than any Early Stage Core Formation cultivators they had seen.
"Se... senior, we arrived here by mistake. If we knew that this place belonged to you, we wouldn’t be here. Please forgive our intrusion. We haven’t taken anything. We will lea—"
Before the leader could even finish his sentence, Jiang Hao arrived in front of him and put his hand on his chest.
"Sen—" That was all he was able to say while trembling before his whole chest got refined.
A hole appeared in the leader’s body, with his heart and lungs turned into pure spirit qi before dispersing into nature.
The others, who were just about to ask for forgiveness just like him, stopped.
The other Mid Stage Core Formation realm disciple even started running into the depths of the cave.
Jiang Hao didn’t chase him but used a Nihility Sphere and threw it at him. His physical strength was even more than that of Grade 3 beasts; his throws were quite strong.
Even if the disciple wasn’t running and had seen it coming, he wouldn’t have been able to dodge it. The Nihility Sphere landed on the back of his head.
In an instant, a black sphere formed from the point of contact, and everything inside that black sphere got converted into pure spirit qi. Jiang Hao had a feeling that the Nihility Sphere even had higher refinement strength than his Primal Essence skill.
Well, it might be true because if he used the Nihility Sphere on a spirit herb, he definitely wouldn’t be getting a refined spirit herb, but directly the spirit qi.
The others felt a chill run down their backs. The previous deaths were already terrifying for them, but this one was even more so. Nothing was left to prove that someone had existed there just moments ago.
One of the women fell to her knees and begged.
"Senior, I will become your slave. I am willing to sign a Blood Contract, senio—"
Another Nihility Sphere landed on the position she was at, erasing her existence from this world.
Only two were left, and both were trembling in fear in their places without moving a single step.
Jiang Hao didn’t feel any repulsion from killing these disciples. In fact, if not for the fact that he had to stay in the city for the auction, he would have killed them in the city itself. It would have sent a clear message to the Blazing Valley Sect that someone was targeting them.
Killing them here might raise some questions, but it wouldn’t be much, as no one would come in search of their remains in the Dark Forest. They might link it to someone having killed them because of the location of the spirit herbs, but it wouldn’t point in the direction that someone was targeting Blazing Valley exclusively.
Well, it wouldn’t matter though; it wouldn’t be the first time he would be doing it anyway.
He walked slowly and reached his next target, the last woman of the group.
She looked at him with pleading eyes, but Jiang Hao didn’t care. If the situation were reversed, she would have killed him mercilessly. They were quite eager to bring one of the people from that group because they wanted to kill and toy with them.
None of them opposed that idea; in fact, everyone laughed at the suggestions of their leader.
You only understand someone’s situation better when karma hits you with the same problem.
Jiang Hao came close and put his hands on her head. He couldn’t help but look below as he had smelled something; she had peed.
Instead of fighting back, she was so scared that she had lost control of her bladder.
He shook his head internally and activated his Primal Essence skill. In the blink of an eye, her head was gone.
The last man knew that nothing would work, so he looked at him and cursed.
"You monster, you will die a horrendous death, just like us. You are just bullying us juniors while being a senior. The heavens will definitely avenge us."
Jiang Hao didn’t kill him and listened to what he had to say.
He saw that even though this guy was babbling, he had peed in his pants too.
"You say the heavens will judge me?"
This was the first time Jiang Hao had spoken.
This made the disciple go quiet in shock because this voice was too young to be a senior’s.
"Maybe it was the heavens that judged you too? Do you agree?"
When the disciple heard Jiang Hao, he became stunned.
Before he could think of anything, a Nihility Sphere reached him.
"Well, whatever, your agreement doesn’t matter to me anyway."