Liu Xing breathed rapidly, adrenaline still coursing through his body. In hindsight, what he had just done, while impressive, was quite stupid. Instead of running, he had chosen to fight the attack head-on. If his subconscious—the part that moved his body on instinct—had miscalculated slightly, the attack would have landed directly on him. There was a chance that his attack would have weakened it even if it had landed, but still, while he might not have died, he would have sustained injuries, and considering he still had three enemies left, a severe injury would mean death.

Looking left and right, he used all of his senses to detect enemies nearby. The ground below him was cracked, the trees, boulders, and everything around him either blown away or destroyed, leaving an empty wasteland. While his third eye had been destroyed, there was no way for them to launch a sneak attack, though he needed to be careful of that girl using another illusion technique.

With all senses alert, he waited as he recuperated his body, which was already working to regenerate his burst veins. The wind dragon attack had given them time to regroup, and Liu Xing reckoned that they would attempt some kind of strategy or another joint technique to attack him. He decided that when they began their attack, he needed to use everything he had to separate them again. The girl had her arm severed again, so she was still his primary target.

Liu Xing's breathing began to calm down and his body became alert. However, after a full minute of standing, there was no further attack. As time passed, his mind began to panic. Were they trying to recover their qi? If so, it was a mistake for him to just wait for them to attack. He jumped into the air, summoned his shield, and looked around, feeling the qi around him. He needed to attack them first, but as he tried to sense everything around him but found nothing, a suspicion began to form in his mind, and after two full minutes without any further confrontation, Liu Xing began to laugh a little.

"They ran away."

That thought had actually occurred to him several times. He had thought that half of the dragon vein was worth fighting over, so they must be hiding or preparing some kind of traps, but to think that they had truly run away was almost funny.

After a moment of laughter, Liu Xing inhaled and exhaled deeply again, trying to regain his composure. The three inner disciples were indeed running away, but there was still a presence that he could feel.

With his Lightning Cloak active, he kicked his shield and maneuvered through the air. In a moment, he arrived right in front of Luo Ji, who was still lying on the ground.

He looked down at Luo Ji, who was no longer charred like charcoal, but still had severe burns all over his body and a face that resembled burnt and scorched earth. He must have been in a lot of pain, but when Liu Xing landed, Luo Ji calmly opened his eyes.

"Now, what do I do with you?" Liu Xing said.

Instinctively, he summoned his gun and aimed it at his downed enemy. Memories of Luo Ji smiling like a devil while punching his face again and again resurfaced in his mind, making his stomach churn, as if boiling water was ready to burst. If he killed Luo Ji right now, all of the injustice he had experienced would be repaid in full. Moreover, if he killed Luo Ji with his gun, he would gain a lot of qi that he could use to cultivate. While it wouldn't suddenly allow him to breakthrough to have three cores, it would help him advance faster, yet he hesitated.

As he grinded his teeth, he wondered why Luo Ji had suddenly changed. If he was still a vicious bully, he would not hesitate to kill him, like he hadn't hesitated to try to kill those three inner disciples. Yet, regardless of his feelings, Luo Ji had changed. Instead of that cruel bully, he was a depressed man with clouded eyes and a soft voice. Killing the current Luo Ji felt like killing a different person than the past Luo Ji. This fact twisted and churned his stomach.

"Would you kill me, Liu Xing?" Luo Ji said.

His voice was trembling, which made Liu Xing purse his lips. "Do you want to die, Senior?"

Luo Ji's eyes clouded over even more, and Liu Xing knew that meant yes, that Luo Ji wanted to die. A fact that infuriated him even more. His worst bully lies there with a disfigured face, wanting to die, and Liu Xing standing here with the power to kill him. What the hell had happened to Luo Ji? What kind of situation or perhaps person had successfully turned this vicious bully into a depressed person who wanted to die? But then, Luo Ji's eyes brightened a little. "I don't want to die. I have things to do."

Liu Xing's eyes narrowed. "What kind of things?"

"You will laugh at me if I tell you," Luo Ji said, his disfigured face grimaced. "I want to become an Immortal."

"Everyone and their mother wants to become an Immortal. That's not something unique to you."

His finger became slightly lighter on the trigger. He could pull it, yet he knew that Luo Ji was not finished talking.

"Yes, but becoming an Immortal is just a means to an end. You should know that the number of mortals in this world far outnumbers us cultivators. But it's not just a few hundred or a few thousand fold, it's millions, maybe even more. But even though they are numerous, their lives are precarious. We cultivators disregard them as things below us."

"Where do you want to take this conversation?" Liu Xing said.

He didn't know if the number of mortals was exaggerated or not, but it still made sense. After all, the sheer size of this world was hard to comprehend.

Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

"They are weak," Luo Ji continued. "Our sect is actually the most generous to mortals. Sometimes, we get missions to save a mortal village from a spirit beast. They still need to pay, but it's so cheap that it might as well be free. The outside is not like that. There are many, many mortals who die because they cannot pay cultivators to deal with spirit beasts. Even worse, sometimes cultivators kill them for minor offenses or even on a whim, as if they are mere bugs. There is no justice system to protect them. And so, I want to become an Immortal. I want to protect them."

His finger felt heavy again. As Luo Ji spoke, his eyes shone brightly, as if he truly believed what he was saying. A part of Liu Xing was actually skeptical about Luo Ji's goal. After all, in order to realize the world he envisioned, Luo Ji would have to overhaul the entire world, and there was no easy way to do that. He would have to convince all the cultivators in the world to see mortals the way he did. The most idealistic way was to use words to make people understand that mortals are not beneath them, but the most realistic way was to become the strongest person in the world, to make the world his own, and to dictate everything. That felt foolish. Luo Ji would need to spill so much blood along the way, yet, in the end, it wasn't a bad dream.

After a moment of hesitation, Liu Xing decided to lower his gun. Upon seeing his action, Luo Ji's eyes widened slightly.

"You decided not to kill me?" Luo Ji said, then with a trembling voice, he continued, "D-do you forgive me?"

"What you did to me in the past will forever be etched in my mind, Luo Ji. I will never forget what you did to me, nor forgive you. You're the person that I hate most in the world. I hope you die with agonizing pain."

Liu Xing's eyes were cold. And indeed, those words came from his heart. He could see that Luo Ji had changed, and see that he wholeheartedly wanted to achieve that dream. But even if he was a changed man, he was still Luo Ji, and his past could not be erased.

"Never show your face in front of me again, Luo Ji," Liu Xing turned his body. "Next time, I will not let you go."

Liu Xing took a step, reactivated his Lightning Cloak, and jumped high into the sky. In the air, he summoned his shield and kicked it, causing him to fly horizontally like a fighter jet, leaving a booming sound in his wake. He kicked his shield relentlessly, accelerating faster and faster. In his mind, the disfigured face of Luo Ji and the cruel Luo Ji overlapped, and frustration bubbled in his stomach once again.

In less than ten minutes, he reached the top of a mountain of snow that was only a few meters wide. He landed violently, causing the peak to shake and the snow to fall around him. When he noticed this, he felt a sense of worry that he might cause an avalanche. After all, although he was quite high on the mountaintop, there was a chance that there might be people around, and if they were mortal, they would be in a dangerous situation. Fortunately, although some of the snow around him slid, there was no avalanche, so he sat down on the top of the mountain and exhaled deeply.

This mountain was quite high, and so he could see the expanse of greenery as well as Mystic Moon City quite far away from here. There were several white clouds floating nearby. But, to the side, there was a dark cloud that was moving steadily toward him, as if trying to consume the mountain.

Upon seeing this dark cloud, he thought about the three inner disciples who had run away from him. He had no intention of going after them, but there were only two destinations for them: either they would return to the sect, or they would return to the capital of the Twelve Sun Empire. He wondered what they would do in the future. Since Liu Xing had defeated them badly, there was a chance that they would resent him and plan revenge, but there was also a chance that they would realize that messing with him was not a good idea. If they wanted revenge, he wanted to surprise them by becoming even stronger, but if they wanted to avoid him from now on, he had no problem with that either. The most annoying possibility was if they decided to seek revenge by pulling in their backing—either their families or even their master. Still, once he became an inner disciple, he too would have backing, and the situation wouldn't be too bad.

He nodded, observing the large dark cloud that began to dominate the sky, and the thought of Luo Ji came back to his mind. Frustration twisted his stomach. But, he inhaled deeply, trying to rein in his emotions. He had made a decision. He had spared Luo Ji, and he needed to stand by this decision. He sincerely hoped Luo Ji died with agonizing pain, but he was not the one who would inflict it. After all, he could not deny that Luo Ji had changed, and while foolish, his dream was admirable, since it actually aligned with his own values in some ways.

Liu Xing inhaled and exhaled deeply, trying to let go of this frustration. To do this, he decided to cultivate for a while. There was a small amount of qi left in his Ethereal Pearl, so he absorbed it.

As he cultivated, his breathing became more stable and his heart began to feel calm. There was still a small amount of frustration raging deep in his heart, but he fought it off by deciding that he would just forget about Luo Ji. As long as his grudge against him was still alive, he would just think of Luo Ji as dead in his mind.

As a cold wind blew in, the warmth of the sun disappeared, and rain began to pour down around him. He decided to enjoy the rain washing over him, imagining that this rain would also cleanse his heart.

"Alright," Liu Xing nodded while still closing his eyes. "Luo Ji is dead. I decided that the person I beat is not Luo Ji, but another guy with the name," he paused for a moment. "Wang Miau. Yes, Wang Miau." He nodded.

By replacing his name, he could associate that disfigured face with a new person—one who would get the benefit of the doubt. He didn't know if this way of coping was healthy or not, but since his heart began to calm, he intended to just move on with it.

He decided to cultivate a bit more. His mind became clearer and clearer, and when he felt he had calmed considerably, he opened his eyes.

He expected to see a view of a mountain in the middle of calming rain, yet, when he opened his eyes, he saw two glowing blue eyes right in front of his face, like two blue fires that hovered in the air. Liu Xing instantly became wide awake, his body and mind frozen, not understanding what he was seeing.

Then, a soft laugh came from those eyes, one that felt friendly, and then a feminine voice said, "Oh, your scared face is so hilarious. You should see your face!"

Liu Xing's heart started beating like crazy. In front of him, the two glowing eyes began to retreat, and the silhouette of a person began to materialize and float in the air. His mind began to consider the implications of her appearance, and he began to panic. There was no way that this was an ordinary person. Liu Xing was a Core Splitting cultivator, and while he was cultivating, there was no way he could have missed this person coming towards him. The only explanation he could come up with was that this person either had a technique that could suppress her entire presence, a treasure that could hide her presence perfectly or a cultivation much stronger than his own and therefore absolute control over her own qi, or all three together.

"Who are you?" Liu Xing asked with a steady voice, trying to hide his panic.

"No one important, just a girl that loves the spot you're currently sitting on," she said.

She snapped her fingers, and then the falling rain, the rolling dark cloud, the howling wind, suddenly just vanished. Not destroyed or displaced, but vanished, as if from the start, all of this had been an illusion.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.