Cultivation System: Elder Edition

Chapter 399

Grudges (VI)

"P-Please... please don't kill me!" What was his name again? Yun Qi couldn't quite recall. By now, most of their faces and names had blurred together into a slurry of expressions that began with arrogance and always, always, ended with terror and pleading. "I, I didn't know--I, I will give you anything! Spirit Stones? Artifacts? Manuals? I--I have some connections with Sect Master! I--I could get you a seat as an Honorary Elder!"

The man looked to be in his sixties, with fading gray hair on top and a rather well-kept beard. Well, it was well-kept before the two engaged in a fight. Now, he looked like a senile old man clinging to the last breath of life, his flamboyant robes tattered and torn, both arms ripped clean from his body, stumps still bleeding.

All he recalled of the man was that he was an Elder from the Lunar Sword Sect; he'd been tracking him for months now, having learned of his whereabouts in Silvercrest City, originally. And finally, after being so careful for long, he'd slipped up, likely feeling that enough time had passed... or perhaps too tired of not having indulged in pleasures for so long.

They were currently in a deep canyon, about a hundred miles or so from the man's sect, and though he desperately tried to send signals even while fighting, none got through. It seemed as though he believed at least one did, however, as he had been desperate to stall for time for a while now.

"You're my sixth," Yun Qi said, wiping the blood from his blade. "And with each new head I sever, I wonder... just how did any of you manage to survive for as long as you did? By now, I'm fairly certain that the entire ploy wasn't even the Holy Land's doing. That you, too, were simply... pawns. Terrifying, indeed, but liberating."

"P-please, just don't kill me; I'll do anything..." he whimpered on, but it was pointless.

"Kill yourself, then."

"H-huh?"

"If you don't want me to kill you," Yun Qi said, "Kill yourself. One final honorable act of life. Go out on your own terms."

"Y-y-you beast! Do you think you will be safe?! Hah! Fine! Kill me, you cockroach! I dare you! See if your life isn't rife with misery for the rest of it!"

"..." Yun Qi sighed, looking up beyond the steep walls of the canyon and at the rather clear, blue sky. It was just one region over, yet the weather here was surprisingly... mild. Though mornings and nights were somewhat chilly, the days were perfectly pleasant. "There are three more left who were in a loop," he said. "Elder Lone Star of the Heavenly Star Sect; Elder Jadesword of the Jade Meridian Sect; and Elder Zemin of the Soul Sanctuary. I wonder, will they, too, bawl their eyes out like children and beg in the end? Or will they have a spine to hold their backs straight?"

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"I--" He swung the sword and cut off the head, disinterested in hearing the man talk any longer.

The body, as well as the head, turned to ashes and scattered in the faint breeze immediately after, leaving no trace behind. He knew that the moment he killed the man, his sect was alerted, so he speedily bolted away, careful not to leave any of himself behind to be tracked.

He headed further east, toward the Verdant Woods. The vast expanse of the land here was truly empty--save for the Lunar Sword Sect, there wasn't another settlement in over a thousand-mile radius, with the closest being the distant Moon City. Though he hadn't been there, he did hear rumblings of something monumental occurring not too long ago. And, even if curious, he couldn't quite backtrack as he had to figure out how to get to his next target: Elder Jadesword.

He was the oldest and likely the shrewdest of the bunch. Even before Yun Qi started executing Elders of the Holy Lands, the man had rarely made a public appearance in over a thousand years. He would occasionally supervise the entry exams for the Sect's new disciples, but outside of that, he was akin to a ghost.

Now that another Elder had died, it was unlikely that he would ever leave the sect; even if they couldn't figure out who was killing them all, there was a good chance that the set of Elders had cooperated numerous times before and had picked up on the fact that they were being selectively hunted.

He slowed down once he left the canyon, emerging onto a vast, dry plain. There was nothing around him for dozens of miles save for a few dips and rises of the hills and the occasional patch of trees that struggled to endure.

Verdant Woods was about two days away at his regular pace, though he turned unhurried. No matter how quickly he got there, it wouldn't change much; he still needed a plan, a foolproof plan, on how to bait the Elder out. Even if he somehow did manage to prepare a proper bait, it was unlikely that the man would come out alone.

As such, before it had a chance to transpire, Yun Qi knew he had to become even stronger--he had to break into the Sovereign Realm, no matter what.

He was already just shy of the peak of the Demigod Realm, suspecting he'd get there in the coming few months, but the issue was that he simply did not know how to break through any further. His old martial methods were woefully inadequate, to say the least, and somehow finding one that did contain such information was... well, it wasn't something that could be planned for.

No matter how hard he thought about it, short of chancing upon some ancient inheritance, which wasn't much of a plan, he only had one choice: to join one of the Holy Lands. They were the only ones with methods that allowed reaching higher echelons of realms, and though he loathed the thought... there was no other way.

It would also be a relatively decent opportunity to see his enemy within; one day, he had plans of obliterating the entire system of sects as it currently existed, and seeing firsthand what he was up against was not merely 'good' but more so mandatory.

He sensed movement about fifty miles north of him but ignored it; they did dispatch somebody rather quickly, but they were also not that strong--merely at the peak of the Inner World Realm. 𝑓𝑟𝑒𝘦𝓌𝑒𝑏𝑛𝑜𝘷𝑒𝘭.𝒸𝘰𝑚

Yun Qi was going to ignore them and let them be, but it seemed as though they had no such plans; not two minutes later, a young-seeming woman floated about a hundred yards away from him, clad in mystical, twilight-shaded colors, her expression frosty and full of killing intent. Her fingers held the handle of her sword rather tightly, though she hadn't drawn it yet.

"Fellow Daoist," she said. "Mind if we talk for a little while?"