Chapter 598: Shadowy Pursuit [V6C128 – Sorrow of a Silent Parting]

Qianye fell to the ground with a plop. However, he had no time to pay attention to the pain at his back as he flashed behind a different tree with a flip of his body. His figure had just disappeared when yet another bullet chased after him and struck the tree, producing a meter-wide hole therein. A giant tree that would take several men to wrap their arms around was almost pierced through.

The firepower of this shot caused Qianye to shiver. It was quite fortunate that his reactions were fast enough—the situation would’ve been dire if he were struck directly.

Qianye rolled backward under the cover of the giant tree and switched locations a couple more times before stopping to observe his injuries. The firepower behind this shot was so powerful that even Young Dragon had been pierced through, producing a bowl-sized opening where it had struck.

If it were still Iron Wall on his body, the shot might’ve injured his heart already. Qianye felt his back burning as though several red-hot nails were piercing into him. Apparently, there was black titanium in this bullet, and the amount was also quite significant.

Qianye gritted his teeth as he broke several syringes and poured the contents onto the wound. At the same time, he injected four stimulants into his neck where the medicinal effects would appear the fastest. After doing all that, Qianye listened to the dark race’s movements briefly and tossed out several origin grenades. Two of them were hurled toward where the sneak attack had come from, while the remainder made for the rest of the dark race squad.

The violent explosions sent the dark race warriors into chaos, and a woodland spider was even blasted into the air. Those trying to evade and those attempting to pursue crashed into one another, resulting in a scene of utter confusion.

An explosion also occurred in the direction of the assailant, but there wasn’t even a trace of that person at that location. Instead, a figure appeared on another side of the battlefield. That person lowered his sniper rifle with an unsightly expression and uttered, “Crap!”

The grenade explosions hadn’t reached him in the slightest, but his vision was now full of blood energy, flames, and flowing origin power—everything was in chaos. Meanwhile, Qianye’s silhouette and aura had long since vanished.

He leapt up and flitted across the purple substance at unimaginable speeds. In the blink of an eye, he had circled around the disorderly squad to arrive at Qianye’s location. However, all he could see now was a field of hazy mist without a single living being. It was at this time that he suddenly noticed a familiar shadow flash past the corner of his eye.

He turned back abruptly only to see the silhouette traverse the chaotic battlefield and vanish into the distance. All the while, the surrounding dark race soldiers remained oblivious to his presence.

He instinctively recognized this shadow as the target of his assassination and took aim at lightning speed. However, he could no longer see anything in his scoped vision. Only a faint trail of origin power remained, and even that was dispersing rapidly amidst the chaotic environment.

He didn’t fire blindly, opting instead to relax his trigger finger and slowly lower the gun. Under a hood behind the scope was a countenance no less handsome than that of a vampire. This was precisely the demonkin count whom Qianye had met briefly on the battlefield.

“You won’t escape.” Eden looked down at the rifle in his hand. It was a firearm crafted in pure demonkin fashion—odd yet beautiful, sinister yet elegant. There were exquisite arrays carved onto the two-meter-long rifle, and some of its components were already priceless in terms of materials, let alone the rifle itself.

Eden’s expression was somewhat odd as he glanced at his beloved gun. “Even this can’t kill you? Just who are you?”

The grade-seven rifle in Eden’s hand was called “Carol of Shadows”, a weapon that could be considered famous in the Dark Abyss. This gun’s history could be traced back a thousand years. Every time a change of owners had taken place, a demonkin grandmaster would perform adjustments on the weapon according to the talents of the new owner. In terms of firepower, it was well above Zhao Jundu’s Blue Firmament.

Eden was able to fully control its might only after becoming a mighty count. That direct hit just now should’ve killed any human champion below rank fourteen on the spot, but not only had the other party survived, he even had the power to counterattack and run away. This kind of defensive power was even greater than Eden himself.

The demonkin collected his thoughts and raised his right hand. Several hazy figures appeared around him in the blink of an eye.

“Chase him down and kill him.” Eden’s command was clear. Those figures bowed and stepped back into the omnipresent shadows of the Misty Wood.

Eden didn’t follow them. Instead, he proceeded to observe the surroundings little by little, not letting even the most minute of details escape his eyes. He soon arrived at an empty spot where Qianye had spat out the mouthful of blood.

The purple substance on the ground was squirming fiercely. Eden had witnessed such a scene many times, and couldn’t be clearer about the corrosive and devouring characteristics of the substance. Blood that had landed on it would be swallowed clean in the span of a few breaths, and the billowing of the substance meant that the blood contained an abundance of origin power. On the one hand, it proved how powerful Qianye was, while on the other, it went to show that he had been badly injured.

Eden observed briefly and was just about to leave when a sudden notion occurred to him—his steps came to a halt and his eyes widened as they returned to the squirming purple substance.

Instead of weakening, the billowing of the substance grew increasingly violent. In the end, the rolling waves expanded to several meters in radius. There was little chance Qianye would’ve sprayed blood over such a wide area, even if he was badly injured. The intensity was the greatest at the center, but the substance gradually fell instead of rising up, almost revealing the soil beneath.

The ground substance wasn’t devouring the blood. On the contrary, it was being corroded.

Eden was immediately alarmed. The Evernight faction, especially the demonkin clans, had long since studied the Misty Wood. There were only a handful of reasons this phenomenon could occur, and the most likely scenario was that Qianye’s blood contained substances with even greater corrosive properties than the purple substance.

It was because Eden understood the principle that he found it hard to believe what was happening. The Dark Abyss where Eden grew up specialized in corrosive and poisonous energy, and he himself was an outstanding young member of the clan. Even so, his own corrosive energy was inferior to that of the purple substance. How then had a human achieved this?

There was another possibility—the quality of origin power in Qianye’s blood was so high that the purple ground substance couldn’t devour it, and all it could do was neutralize it on the spot. In this scenario, the large scope of billowing ground substance signified that several dozen times the amount was being exhausted to eliminate Qianye’s blood.

Wouldn’t that mean this fellow was a genius of the generation?

An eerie flame flickered through Eden’s eyes. This was all the more reason not to let the other party escape, but he wasn’t in such a rush to hunt Qianye down just yet. He paced about for a brief moment and shouted, “Men!”

A faint shadow appeared nearby and bowed. “I await your command.”

“I remember this is the Li family’s warzone, right? Find a way to contact that person and tell him to kill the fellow from just now. Tell him that, as long as he does this job well, the things he desire won’t be a problem.”

The figure bowed respectfully and faded away into the mist.

Eden looked up at the sky and sighed. “Dying to one’s own people is no fitting end for a warrior. So… you’d better die obediently under my blade.”

Dozens of kilometers away, Qianye was running at full speed, changing his forward route from time to time. Hazy silhouettes kept appearing around Qianye which attacked his vitals with grey beams of light. These shadows almost seemed to appear out of thin air with no set pattern. Their attacks were as quick as they were ruthless, forcing even Qianye into a miserable state as he was struck from time to time.

A shadow appeared once more at Qianye’s backside, and the grey light in its hand stabbed at Qianye’s wound. This attack was extremely crafty and ruthless. Qianye didn’t have the time to evade and merely used his vampiric blade to press the powerful attack downward, causing it to land on his waist.

The grey light’s true form was revealed as a dagger of unremarkable design. But the blade actually cut open Young Dragon and left a wound on Qianye’s body. Although the injury to his skin was merely the length of a finger, it went to show that the other party had the strength to harm him.

These eerie shadows were actually able to keep up with Qianye at his full speed. It was true that the latter had been injured, but these shadows couldn’t be underestimated, either.

After a brief moment of running, a cold gleam appeared in Qianye’s eyes as he came to an abrupt halt.

The four shadows reacted instantly and stopped at the same time, quickly forming an encirclement around him. However, the extreme inertia also brought their figures out of concealment.

“Four, huh?” Qianye scanned the scene with eyes like lightning. He had already formed a general idea.

The four silhouettes pounced at him without the slightest hesitation, their daggers all aimed at Qianye’s vitals. The latter brought East Peak into his grasp with a backhand motion and unleashed a loud roar. With both hands on the blade, he brandished it like a mountain peak and launched three consecutive strikes.

Sweeping Calm!

To be precise, his attack could only cover three directions. However, the four shadows couldn’t move a single inch after East Peak appeared—it was as though a mountain were bearing down upon them.

Three shadowy figures were cut into six parts where the three strikes landed. Having escaped a direct blow, the fourth silhouette finally managed to throw himself at Qianye, its dagger aimed at Qianye’s back. However, the latter made no attempt to evade and allowed the blade to connect. The dagger was extremely sharp and managed to pierce through Young Dragon once more. Additionally, this blow had come straight for him at full force. The tip of the blade sunk into his flesh, and eventually, half the blade, too.

But Young Dragon was a heavy armor made for Bai Longjia himself and thus possessed fairly powerful defenses. At this point, the shadow found that he no longer had the strength to push the blade in—neither could he pull it back out.

Qianye grabbed ahold of the figure with his left hand and dragged it into his embrace. At the same time, he grabbed East Peak with his right hand and placed the edge upon the shadow’s neck. Then, a light press of the blade sent its head flying away. Qianye also kicked the body away to prevent any final counterattacks.

The battle began quickly and ended just as fast. In the blink of an eye, the four shadows had become corpses at Qianye’s feet.

Qianye wasn’t feeling too great, either. He momentarily gasped for breath before removing the blade in his back, sending a stream of black blood gushing out from the wound. Qianye made no attempt to stop the blood immediately. He merely watched until the grey fluid had flowed out completely and the blood had turned red. Only then did he close the wound and stop the flow of blood.

At this time, the hazy corpses were gradually becoming clearer. Qianye was surprised because this situation wasn’t common even among the dark races. No matter how strong an expert was, they would lose their concealment abilities upon death, thus revealing their original forms.

These eerie figures had been cut down by Sweeping Calm or beheaded, yet their energy was taking so long to disperse. Apparently, their strength wasn’t mediocre at all.

Qianye crouched down to inspect them and, as expected, found some remnant demonic origin power. This proved that these shadows were all demonkin. There weren’t any insignias on them, but judging from the coordinated attack just now, they were very likely from the same clan.

These eerie shadows were clearly trained as hidden killers and shared great teamwork be it in terms of tracking or assassination. Qianye had to pay a steep price in order to kill all of them in one go. His origin power was on the verge of exhaustion. At the moment, he had no more hidden aces to play except the Shot of Inception, and his newly obtained Young Dragon was already half-destroyed.

The real powerful expert hadn’t caught up to him just yet, but he probably wasn’t too far off.

Qianye didn’t have much time to think before the ground substance beneath his feet began to tremble. He cried out in his mind as he suddenly recalled a problem—the giant trees in the vicinity were all trembling, and the treetops were bulging up. It would seem the creatures inside would break out any second.