Questioning Heaven, Desiring the Way 38: One Arrow, One Disciple

Gu Suihan waved a hand and a longbow that was about three meters long appeared in his hand. The entire thing was black and its cold and shiny surface reflected the moonlight.

After Senior Brother Mu and the rest had finished eating their fill, they quickly sat down to continue cultivating as much as they could. All of them were hoping that they could show the others what they were truly capable of after entering the secret realm.

“What’s going on? Why do I sense the Qi inside my body disappearing?” one of them suddenly exclaimed in a terrified and panicked voice.

“Maybe it’s because your heart is too distracted. If you don’t remove distractions, you can’t cultivate.” Senior Brother Mu turned to glance at the disciple who spoke up, grabbed a small branch, and flung it at him with a frown.

“Wait, something’s wrong.” Senior Brother Mu’s expression changed dramatically. When he flung the branch out earlier, he realized that his internal Qi was a little weaker now.

His mind worked quickly and he suddenly stood up to stare at the remains of the wild boar on the ground. He said in a hateful voice, “There was poison in the meat. That was Qi Dispelling Powder.”

“What?!”

“Who added the poison?”

“Li Guang, was it you?!”

All of them immediately turned to accuse the young man who had killed and cut up the wild boar earlier, since he would have been the only one among them who could have done this.

Li Guang’s face paled when he heard the accusations and yelled back, “That’s ridiculous! I’ve been poisoned too! If I wanted to poison all of you, I would have taken the antidote first!”

“Shut up, all of you.” Senior Brother Mu was livid. He had gone further into the forest to recuperate for just one hour and something like this happened.

“Only that Nan Xingyuan didn’t eat any of the meat. She even told us to be careful because this might be a trap. Maybe she was just pretending to be kindhearted,” said Li Guang sarcastically as he glanced at the silent Nan Xingyuan.

Of course, he knew that she couldn’t possibly have done such a thing. She had remained at least a few hundred meters away from the wild boar and couldn’t possibly have infused the pig with poison without anybody noticing. If she were that capable, she could have just killed all of them. Li Guang was just trying his best to steer the attention away from himself.

As Senior Brother Mu felt his spiritual energy drain more and more, he became more and more uneasy. Who could have done such a thing? Who was behind this? Feng Ran? Li Rong? Or..could it be someone from the Nobles Clan or the Four Directions Court?

Boom!

While everyone was still panicking, a rumbling noise that resembled thunder came from the forest around them.

“Who’s there?” Senior Brother Mu had a sinister glint in his eye as an intricately carved bell with a greenish glow appeared in his hand. He had exchanged more than half his savings for this high-grade magic weapon from Mo Yuluo. This was the Yin Yang Mutual Joy Bell.

RING!

Senior Brother Mu gently shook the bell. A pink cloud of Qi flew out from it, accompanied by sounds that belonged in a bedroom as the cloud surrounded everyone.

Gu Suihan paled a little as he watched this pink cloud from afar and was glad he hadn’t just attacked them head-on. This pink cloud had an alluring and sweet color, but it was actually a Murderous Qi that was made from refining pure Yin energy from countless women. If a cultivator who didn’t have a strong enough will took a whiff of this, his internal Qi would implode and he would spiral into a world of illusions without realizing it. Once his spirit was completely exhausted from the illusions, his entire body would turn to mush.

As Senior Brother Mu continued to swing the bell, it continued to gleam gently and send out more and more Murderous Qi with each ring of the clapper. But even though this weapon was powerful, he didn’t dare to let his guard down at all. He was afraid that the other party was precisely waiting for the moment he relaxed.

“I’ll see how long you can hold out for.” Gu Suihan put his longbow down. He had merely wanted to send all of them into a bigger panic by pulling at the bowstring.

And that was exactly what happened.

Senior Brother Mu looked at the silent but clearly frantic juniors in front of him and sighed inwardly. If only these stupid juniors used their brains a little more, he lamented to himself. If the other party could take him down easily, the other party wouldn’t be using such low-level tactics to send everyone into a panic. This was actually proof that the other party wasn’t as powerful as he was. An opponent who was powerful enough would definitely have launched an attack once the poisonous powder started taking effect.

SWOOSH!

The silent crowd was instantly alarmed by that whooshing sound and their faces were filled with anger, aggression, and terror all at the same time. All of them immediately gathered whatever Qi they had and used any method they knew to dodge the attack. It didn’t matter whether the attack was aimed at them or not. Moving aside was definitely the right thing to do now.

Pfft! As if someone had pressed the pause button on them, all of them stopped trying to run at the same time and they turned to look at Li Guang, who had been sent flying ten meters away from them and was now pinned to a tree, dying with his eyes wide open in horror.

All of them gulped and felt a chill down their spines as they broke into a cold sweat.

“My fellow cultivator of the Way! You don’t have to hide and launch secret attacks like this! Tell me what you want and I will bring your message back to the Seven Kill Sect!” Senior Brother Mu began to panic a little when he saw the 1.5-meter-long arrow that had pierced Li Guang. If he weren’t poisoned by the Qi Dispelling Powder, this arrow wouldn’t have been a threat to him at all. But he was now left with less than half his dantian worth of Qi. Surviving this attacker was becoming a problem now.

SWOOSH! Another arrow tore through the air loudly, pronouncing its judgment on them as it pinned one more disciple to a tree.

This time, they saw what happened clearly. That incredulously long arrow had pierced through Senior Brother Mu’s Murderous Qi like a needle piercing a bubble and had even made it past the Steel Strength Talisman on themselves. The arrow had stabbed into that disciple’s flesh as if he was merely a fruit, sending blood and flesh flying for a good ten meters.

Crazier still, the one who got hit had died before he even got the chance to scream.

“Now, each one of you shall choose an opponent and you shall fight until only one of you is left standing. Alternatively, all of you can die here. The Seven Kill Sect? Who cares about that?”

A hoarse and sinister voice screeched at them suddenly like the voice of a vengeful spirit that had died a wrongful death, making their eardrums hurt as they shuddered in fear.

But what the voice said made them feel even more queasy inside. This person seemed to have a feud with the Seven Kill Sect. His voice was filled with disdain and hatred.

“The Seven Kill Sect disciples are united in heart and spirit, so there’s no way we’ll agree to fight one another like that!” Senior Brother Mu yelled back with gritted teeth.

“United in heart and spirit? HAHA!” The voice mocked Senior Brother Mu contemptuously before threatening them again, “If that’s the case, why don’t you guess who’s next to die?”

As the other party spoke, Senior Brother Mu shouted, “Extinguish the Fire!” The Qi he expelled immediately snuffed the fire in front of him out and he began making several hand seals.

Everyone immediately understood what Senior Brother Mu was doing, so they also put out any fires around them and hid behind a tree.

“Shadow Over the Sky!”

Wisps of gray smoke began to rise from the ground, gradually blocking the light from the moon and stars, so everything within a few hundred meters’ radius was now shrouded in a dark and opaque fog.

“Everyone, find a hiding place and get rid of the poison in your bodies! This spell will last for 15 minutes!” said Senior Brother Mu before quickly disappearing into the forest.

“What an idiot.” Gu Suihan sniggered as he watched all the fires suddenly go out and a gray shadow covered the whole place. He kept his longbow away and took out his saber instead.

He quietly came down from the tree branch he had been standing on all this time and headed straight for where Senior Brother Mu and the other disciples were without a sound, like a snake slithering among the grass to hunt its prey down.

Zhou Tuo was trembling in fear as he hid on a branch of a large tree and frantically opened his bag to look for a pill that could counter the poison in his body. But Senior Brother Mu’s Shadow Over the Sky spell had blocked out even the slightest bit of light. He hadn’t activated his Qi nor learned any sort of spell that could help him see in the dark. It was impossible to get the correct pill out.

He laughed sadly at himself as he clutched a few white jade pill bottles and didn’t know what else he could do.

Forget it, he thought. He figured that if he just kept quiet, the probability of him getting shot by their attacker when there were a dozen others with him would be quite low.

He had been really traumatized earlier. He had been right next to Li Guang when the arrow hit him, and Li Guang had been one of his best friends too. All he had heard was an ear-piercing whoosh, and the next thing he knew, his best friend had been shot by an arrow and pinned to a tree. Li Guang’s flesh and blood had sprayed all over him, frightening him so badly that he nearly peed himself.

Suddenly, a familiar voice whispered in his ear, “Why are you here? It’s very dangerous out here. Go hide over there.”

Zhou Tuo froze for a moment before realizing that this voice belonged to Senior Brother Mu. His face lit up and he was about to turn around to respond when he felt a terrible pain in his chest. As he felt his life drain out of him, he realized what just happened. “You..you’re not Senior Brother Mu.”

“Daylight Illumination,” chanted Gu Suihan quietly as he cast a spell that helped him to see in the dark. The area that was covered by Senior Brother Mu’s spell was no longer shrouded in darkness to him.

He looked at the dried-up corpse on the tree branch with a flicker in his eye.