The sight before Xiao Chen was grisly and gruesome. Dead bodies scattered everywhere around him, most of them belonging to the acolytes or students of the Corpse Refinery Sect who had been killed. Even so, their terrible deaths were eclipsed by the hideously and grotesquely mangled and maimed remains of the students and fighters of the Orthodox Path. This could only be the work of Corpse Puppets, Xiao Chen observed, That nothing is left remaining save for some bloody bits of flesh and viscera. Still, all the signs only indicated that the invasion of the Summit of Mystics had already begun for days.
The duo shared a quick look before they surveyed the familiar surroundings of the Ridge of the Fallen Drake. The invading host had reached the Ridge, the throat of the Corpse Refinery Sect’s defenses and it was where the most decisive battle of this invasion would take place.
Just then, a series of flickering movements around them made their heads jerked. Two figures had materialized – the Black and White Supremes, Mo Ran and Bai Yu.
“YOU!” Bai Yu hissed, his eyes livid with malice as he threw his sleeves, swinging his folded fan. The sight of Su Lianyue and Xiao Chen reminded him of the vivid humiliation he endured at their hands several months before.
Mo Ran instead hardly uttered. He lunged at Xiao Chen without a word like a dark shadow. But with his powers now in the Nirvana Realm, Xiao Chen, with his heightened spiritual senses, could clearly see Mo Ran’s swift movements.
Xiao Chen needed only to throw out his left arm and deliver a slap so powerful that it hit Mo Ran in his chest, sending him crashing into two large trees dozens of yards away, snapping the poor trees into halves.
A copious flow of froth and blood escaped Mo Ran with a painful wail as he staggered from the heap of broken and splintered wood. Shocked, Bai Yu could not quite believe his eyes. He was not looking when he felt a blow coming at him. With a loud bang, he was also sent flying, crashing into Mo Ran. It was Su Lianyue who had struck the blow.
“YOU… IMPOSSIBLE!” Bai Yu stammered with intense repudiation. He could never fathom how far behind he was from the strength of the man and woman before him when they were still a match barely three months before.
A flash of cold fury burned in Su Lianyue’s eyes. With the invasion now underway, there was no longer any need to fear Ye Wuxin. She channeled her True Energy and raised her hand, preparing to execute the defeated Supremes.
“Run!” Mo Ran spat viciously with what strength still remaining of him. With a tug on the scruff of Bai Yu’s neck, he pulled his comrade away and they turned into two blinding rays of light, one black and the other white, that escaped out of sight.
Two loud bangs ensued, barely missing them. What was left were only two long streaking gashes on the ground, smoldering with steam.
Xiao Chen looked into the distance. The two rays of light slowly turning into mere dots. “Let them go,” he said, “Let us press forward.” “Well look at that, Master Xiao,” Su Lianyue snickered coyly, “They were once equal to us in power. Yet now, they are routed like dogs fleeing with their tails between their legs.”
Xiao Chen said nothing, merely walking ahead. For seven to eight miles they walked through the shaded grove of the Summit of Mystics. The summer heat was blazing swelteringly in the July sky but the walk through the umbraged path looked no more cheery with the corpses and carrions left strewn around. The assault had extended deep into the Summit although the forces of the Corpse Refinery Sect had managed to rally a counter attack to push the invaders back. The fight must have been intense and gritting with so many losses of lives and nothing was not yet known about what happened to the rest of the External arm of the Sect.
They went on for another few miles when the din of battle finally reached their ears. From afar, Xiao Chen could see magical artifacts and swords at work, wheezing overhead the raging battle with their magic and powers at full display. Magical bolts streaked and exploded in myriads of colors that would have mesmerized a child if not for the bloody and lurid fight taking place below. With a look exchanged, they suppressed their auras and picked up their pace.
They slipped into the cover of a thick jungle and perched on a tall branch, looking down on the wide-open field. The fight was still on with combatants from both sides doling out death and destruction with tremendous alacrity. Bodies, mangled and maimed, lied everywhere with the surrounding buildings reduced to their blackened foundations, seething with fumes.
Lead by a band of Elders of the Nirvana Realm, the remaining forces of the Corpse Refinery – many of them students and acolytes of the Nascent Soul and Core Forming Realms – controlled their Corpse Puppets to repel their enemies. Tendrils of foul evil Qi swirled lazily around the rotting flesh of the century-old mannequins as they fought. Even in the daylight, their obsidian eyes looked like a deep, bottomless abyss of death and despair as they struck down one enemy after another with deadly efficacy that no ordinary mages of the Orthodox Path stood any chance.
However, the invaders have no lack of firepower themselves; mages of the Nirvana or even the Apotheosis Realm were locked in fierce battles against mighty Corpse Puppets that wielded several centuries worth of Malicious Grudge. They had managed to blitz through the walls of the Ridge but were faced with the relentless reprisals of the defenders when the Sect had unleashed more of their Corpse Puppets and the battle was now in a stalemate.
No one had expected that the Corpse Refinery Sect had reserved so great a fighting force that despite being besieged for days, the defenses of the Ridge of the Fallen Drake endured. Even as the hour grew darker for the Sect and its might slowly exhausting, the Sect was far from yielding; the ones now mounting the defenses were only low-tiered Elders such as Elder Long. None of the members of the high echelons has yet appeared, not even the High Chieftain Ye Wuxin himself.
A jet of light shot across the sky suddenly and it fell to the center of the battlefield like a comet before it disappeared, leaving on a bearded old man, clothed in robes of earthen-yellow, standing in its wake. His rosy cheeks would have made him look more alive than the rest if not for the two Corpse Puppets, still slick with blood, standing beside him like silent sentinels. These were Blood Corpses, mindless killing machines more powerful than mere century-old Corpse Puppets.
“LORD ELDER!” The acolytes of the Sect boomed in unison, their voices loud and raspy with respect and confidence. Even Elder Long sounded meek before this newcomer.
Xiao Chen took a deep breath. He could feel how powerful this man was. At least of the Apotheosis Realm, he guessed, Are there still more mages like him in this Sect? But Su Lianyue’s voice interrupted his thoughts. “That’s the Great Immortal from Hell. One of the highest-ranking Elders of the Corpse Refinery Sect. His seniority dwarfs even Ye Wuxin himself.”
The name filled Xiao Chen with silence. He had heard it before, the name of Great Immortal from Hell. Then he remembered. Zi Mo had disguised himself as him once! It was when Xiao Chen was escorted to Tianyuan City by two Envoys of the Immortals’ League on a Flying-cloud Stone! But it had never occurred to Xiao Chen until today that the Great Immortal from Hell really existed.
The fighting stopped momentarily with the appearance of the Great Immortal and everyone retreated back to lines of the Elders belonging to their own faction. An uneasy silence hung between the invaders and the defenders as they eyed each other warily. On one side, the Elders, chieftains, and leaders of the Orthodox Path stood menacingly and on the other, the members of the Sect stood defiantly behind a column of Corpse Puppet that held up the defensive line.
Xiao Chen looked to the invaders and saw a good many faces he knew; First Elder Guyang of the League, Perfected Immortal Fengxi of the Xianyong Sect, a handful of Elders of the Pavilion of Swords, Perfected Immortal Feng Lan of the Divine Mist Sect, the Elixir Saint Situ Bei, Qi Heng of the Order of the Divine Fire, Elders Zi Mo and Qingfeng of the Jade Qing Sect as well as Perfected Immortal Yanluo, Li Muxue’s mentor, and Su Yue, the fourth daughter of Clan Su.
Among them, Xiao Chen also saw Xiaoyue, Yu Yifeng, Zuoqiu Yang, Su Zimu and many more of the Orthodox Path’s rising talents including a great many faces that Xiao Chen never recognized.
A vile peal of cackle resounded from within the ranks of the invaders. “Old Great Immortal! For so many years we have not heard any word about you! I thought you had gone to Hell for real!”
The Great Immortal turned and spied the speaker, a strange old man in garbs of purple. “I see. Xiaoyao Zi of the Jade Qing Seven. The Corpse Refinery Sect has no quarrel with the Jade Qing Sect. Why are you here attacking us?”
He turned to the rest and bellowed, “For thousands of years, we of the Sect have never interfered with the affairs of the Orthodox Path. What is the reason for this aggression?”
“You can rest trying to play dumb, Great Immortal! Do you think none of us are aware of the heinous practices you adopt here? Release the girls you have taken now!”
Angry murmurs and cries rose from the ranks of the invaders. It was evident that news of the Sect’s abductions of girls born on the seventh day of the seventh month every year had spread across the lands like a blazing bushfire.
A whiskered old man broke out from the crowd of the Orthodox Path. Having cultivated powers of the Apotheosis Realm, he was the de facto leader of this invasion, Perfected Immortal Feng Lan of the Divine Mist Sect. “Much evil and foul things you have wrought, all of you of the Corpse Refinery Sect,” he declared, “For millennia, countless lives have been lost by your hand and we are now here to put a stop to all this!”
Desperately and distastefully, the mages of the Orthodox Path tried to justify their attacks when they were only trying to decimate the Corpse Refinery Sect before it could unleash its Divine Corpse. For all their claims of upholding peace and justice, these mages were only here to ensure that the Divine Corpse would never be awakened lest their authority and standing suffered.
“So this is where the parley breaks down,” The Great Immortal mused aloud coldly, raising an arm. He threw it forward, conjuring several jets of black fumes that streaked down from the sky and more Corpse Puppets appeared in a puff of dark brimstone, each of them emanating strongly with evil Qi and startling the invaders.
With eyes flashing with anger, the Great Immortal growled, “I will say this one last time: Go back from whence you came and we’ll speak no more of this! Or else, we’ll fight to the death! Legions of Corpse Puppets we have at our disposal and I daresay your supply of fresh talents is definitely finite! Consider this if you value your lives.”
Hundreds of Corpse Puppet stood erect with rancor in their eyes and their disheveled hairs swaying in the night breeze, obscuring their faces. Many of them were still glistening with fresh blood as if they had just been freshly flayed as dark, foul aura creped out of every gash and cuts of their skins like foul creatures that were trying to slink out of a bottomless abyss. Even under the lively radiance of the sun, the sight of these mindless killing instruments looked no less harrowing than the night.
There were at least a few millennia’s worths of Malicious Grudge between the Corpse Puppets here. Enough to give Zimo and the others a good run for their money. Silence lingered between both sides across the corpse-strewn field like a tauted arrow ready to be set loose.
“CHARGE!” A voice blared like a war trumpet, “KILL THEM ALL! WE’LL KILL THESE FOUL THINGS!” The tinderbox blew and both sides charged at each other, swinging their weapons and the battle was on again. The members of the Corpse Refinery Sect willed their Corpse Puppets to meet their foes. Indestructible human mannequins with insurmountable strength that could tear a human into halves with their bare hands. They ripped, they tore, and they shredded with brutal tenacity that all color was gone from the faces of the lesser mages who encountered them.
Not even powerful mages like Xiaoyue found it easy to deal with century-old Corpse Puppets; the two that she had just defeated had exhausted much of her strength and she could have sworn that the diamond-hard hides of these abominations almost dented her Autumn Water.
Armed with his spear, Zuoqiu Yang could have easily punctured the defenses of any mage of the Nascent Soul Realm. But none of his attacks managed to cripple these Corpse Puppets. With every thrust of his silver-tipped spear, his veins threatened to pop and burst. Yet still, his enemies advanced, forcing Zuoqiu Yang to be on the defensive instead.
Despair began gnawing on the ranks of the invaders as everyone began to feel the strength of the Corpse Puppets growing. Even Zi Mo was locked in an intense battle against the Puppet he was facing off against and he was nowhere near to destroying it, least of all Yu Yifeng and the rest of the junior mages who could barely hold their ground against the indomitable strength of these monsters.
Deep in the woods a couple of leagues away, Xiao Chen and Su Lianyue were still watching the battle unfold. The siege of the Ridge of the Fallen Drake seemed more like a failure than an uphill climb and the destruction of the Corpse Refinery Sect seemed more distant by the second.
For almost a quarter of an hour, almost thirty-four Corpse Puppets have been destroyed, although not without the cost of many mages of the Orthodox Path. The Great Immortal surveyed his losses through gritted teeth and he motioned for the Corpse Puppets to retreat to the defensive lines at once. “Is this what you want, all of you!” He roared across the carnage to the regrouping invaders who were visibly relieved for the brief respite, “As we fight, the remaining leagues of evil watches in glee, waiting to reap the harvests we sow!”
Xiao Chen felt a shudder. Is it true? Members of the other three evil orders are also watching this fight from the shadows?