To speak of any movement technique swift as a ghost was entirely the result of Big Bucktooth's utter terror and wild imagination.
Fan Yi's half-baked Tread-Sky Step produced a resounding *thud* with every single step.
There was no help for it; while the cultivators in novels practiced true qi that emphasized lightness and floating, what he practiced was Dark Force, which was essentially brute force breaking all laws. This was precisely why Fan Yi still had to climb trees using both his hands and feet.
Could he leap up to the treetops if he wanted to? Of course he could, but the commotion would undoubtedly be enormous.
In terms of martial power, this world was certainly not inferior to any martial arts novel by Grandmaster Jin Yong, but one lacked the sheer versatility of those settings.
Look at Qiu Qianchi—she survived in a cave for over a decade simply relying on a jujube tree; Xiao Feng pierced his own heart, yet Xuzhu and Duan Yu managed to keep him hanging on purely with true qi.
Try practicing internal force instead; no matter how you looked at it, true qi was always the ultimate universal solvent.
*Wishing to practice true qi +3*
Fan Yi's still youthful face was tainted with a heavy murderous intent.
"Where are the children?" Fan Yi walked straight up to Big Bucktooth, dispensing with all idle talk as he pointed his scabbard right between Big Bucktooth's brows.
"As I expected!" Bitterness flooded Big Bucktooth's heart. The moment he set foot on this path, he knew there was no turning back. "Half a mile to the northwest, there is a cave. My boss Lei Laohu, along with the other brothers and the children, are all there."
With that, Big Bucktooth closed his eyes.
"Hmph!" Fan Yi pressed the tip of his scabbard firmly against Big Bucktooth's forehead. Big Bucktooth knew that in the next second, the Dark Force would turn his brain to mush.
"..."
"..."
Two or three seconds passed, and Big Bucktooth was astonished to find that he was still alive. He opened his eyes in bewilderment, only to see that this Dark Force Grandmaster—who turned out to be mere fifteen or sixteen years old—had a slightly flushed face and was staring fixedly at him. The two of them found themselves locked in a mutual staring contest.
"What is your boss's cultivation level?"
"Mingjin!"
"What is an Immortal Master?"
"Half a month ago, Lei Laohu wasn't the boss yet, but later on, word has it he received guidance from an Immortal Master, which gave him divine strength and bizarre arts."
"Bizarre arts?" The two engaged in a rapid-fire exchange of questions and answers.
"You didn't know? For the past few years, there have been rumors of Qi Refiners haunting the area. The various miraculous methods they employ are what people call bizarre arts. Lei Laohu has a vertical eye tattooed on his forehead that can shoot out a yellow beam of light; anyone it hits will instantly pass out."
"Mm, which way is the northwest?"
"This way."
Huh? Big Bucktooth turned his head and gave Fan Yi a somewhat dazed look, feeling as though some very strange question had somehow slipped into the mix.
"Urgh!" Darkness suddenly descended before his eyes, and he collapsed limply to the ground.
Looking down at the bandit, who could still be considered somewhat remorseful, Fan Yi said with an indifferent gaze, "You know too much."
Fan Yi thudded away, executing his Tread-Sky Step as he sprinted in the northwest direction.
His pace was somewhat hurried.
Mm, purely to rescue people quickly.
Carp Mountain, Hidden Dragon Cave. Fan Yi once again climbed up a large tree using both his hands and feet. Fan Yi swore he would eventually invent a technique specifically for tree-climbing.
As for how he knew he had found the right cave, one had simply to mention how arrogant Lei Laohu was: he had actually erected a stone tablet right outside his cave with the words "Hidden Dragon Cave" clearly engraved upon it.
Crouching with his waist bent as he hid in the tree, Fan Yi was actually wary of the bizarre arts Big Bucktooth had mentioned.
In truth, even if Lei Laohu could fire *pew-pew-pew* random shots, Fan Yi wouldn't be afraid. But who knew if that stuff had auto-targeting?
A fatal strike!
This was the small goal Fan Yi had set for himself.
As time drifted on, evening fell. The blood-red setting sun stained a small patch of the sky, and a bright moon was already faintly visible amidst the wispy, grayish-white clouds.
Inside the cave, that same corpse-like lackey was holding a lantern.
If earlier he had merely lacked the vibrant vitality characteristic of living creatures, right now his pale, withered face didn't even retain a shred of life force. His eyes didn't blink once, his pupils dilated just like a dead man's.
Lei Laohu repeatedly compared the blueprint with the diagrams drawn on the ground. Around this massive, eerie formation, five new deep pits had been added to the previous ones.
"It should be right. It's done!" Lei Laohu wore a sinister grin as he took the lantern, pulled off the bamboo pole of the lantern, and viciously thrust it backward right into the neck of the lackey beside him!
Dark red, viscous, and foul-smelling blood flowed from the hollow bamboo lantern pole and drained directly into the formation diagram.
Gradually, the newly drawn formation lines—aside from the five large pits—became soaked with blood, turning as baleful and evil as the rest of the array.
"All right, now all that's missing is a child to offer as a sacrifice to the Immortal Master. I wonder what the Immortal Master will bestow upon me this time." Lei Laohu grew secretly excited.
He used to be just a minor leader in a bandit gang, but then he accidentally ran into a strange individual who bestowed upon him a sacrificial formation.
With his own eyes, he had witnessed that Immortal Master surrounded by three hunchaged, emaciated, pitch-black, semi-transparent fiends with green faces and tusks. Those creatures had ruthlessly slaughtered an entire squad of government soldiers and devoured every last one of them!
After returning to the stronghold, and after three days of internal struggle, he finally followed the formation diagram and set it up once!
That time, he only dared to use the blood of pigs and cattle for the array. As a result, the vertical eye pattern at the center of the formation shot out a stream of black smoke, forming a hooded figure whose entire face was obscured by black mist—it was none other than the Immortal Master who had given him the formation.
The Immortal Master gave him a foul-smelling medicinal pill, telling him that since he used pigs and cattle as sacrifices, he would be granted the strength of a pig and an ox. However, the next time, he had to fill the five large pits with the blood of five human beings, and greater rewards would be bestowed upon him.
Lei Laohu swallowed the pill on the spot, his body instantly turning burning hot and wracked with agonizing pain. Wisps of black qi surged from the formation into his body, and then he passed out.
Consequently, he missed hearing the sarcastic chuckle the Immortal Master let out as he vanished.
When Lei Laohu woke up, he had stepped straight into the Mingjin realm because his strength had become so overwhelming that the presence of internal force within his body was unmistakable.
From then on, Lei Laohu tasted the sweetness of power, yet he still didn't dare to be too ostentatious—after all, his boss was also at Mingjin!
One night, as he and several brothers were drinking on the mountain, drinking deeper and deeper, the urge to kill and offer sacrifices suddenly and inexplicably welled up uncontrollably in his heart.
That night, all six of his good brothers died by his hands. Possessed like a madman, he dipped his fingers into his brothers' fresh blood and manually completed the formation diagram on the ground!
Then, after the Immortal Master uttered the words "Not bad, next time use the blood of five or six-year-old boys for the sacrifice," Lei Laohu felt a sharp pain in his head and passed out once again.
When he woke up, a vertical eye pattern had appeared on his forehead. Relying on this divine light, which could captivate souls and turn people into puppets, he managed to defeat his former boss, slaughter the bandits who refused to submit, and become the new leader.