"Where are they?!" Zong Jun shouted, and then controlling himself, he quickly issued some commands to the archers that had been in hiding near him

"Quickly go and follow the Shu bastard and his son, don't let them escape! I will go take care of this old bag of bones that thinks he is invincible, then follow you."

The bushes rumbled, four men and two women with bows in their hands their waists appeared and quickly rushed past the cart, evading the old expert that was standing ground against all the other men.

After issuing the command, Zong Jun calmed down, moved closer to the battle that was raging in front of him, and asked,

"Who are you? Why are you protecting that pair?"

"I am just a traveler, we happened to meet, and as they say, a friend on the road, a friend for life." Answered the old man, even while talking he was evading all the attacks of the ten people that tried to use this opportunity to land a hit.

"Well traveler, then this is your last day then, I hope you enjoyed your friendship bullshit." said Zong Jun while holding his double ax overhead. As he did so, an enormous, almost tangible aura emerged from Zong Jun when he chopped down at the air, and the next moment, a projection of an ax appeared above and behind the old man.

He seemingly had sensed something, but it was already too late. Before he could even turn around, the ax descended and a grievous slash extended from his left collarbone and reached his waist. The old expert fell to the ground, with no signs of life.

Zong Jun thought while throwing a glance over the battlefield.

Afterward, he looked at the men that were still standing and said in a commanding manner

"Check on the injured, store all our corpses into a Holding Pouch, then erase any tracks that are not natural for wildings and move to the meeting spot."

After saying this he wanted to follow the archers, after all, the main targets were those who escaped. But before leaving he abruptly turned around and said

"And retrieve the corpse of that old bastard, we will find who the demons he was."

Finishing this line, he activated a moving technique and quickly disappeared from the battle scene, following the tracking marks the archers left for him.

***

Some minutes later, Zong Jun reached the last tracking mark left by the archers of his group. He was already several miles north from the ambush, standing in the middle of a small valley covered in short trees, one of the widest points of the pass. He started looking around, searching for the archers or a mark indicating a change of direction that he could have missed.

After a full minute of searching, Zong Jun had an angry expression on his face, after all, this easy task already cost him about ten men because of some unknown old man, and now the archers stopped marking their path with no apparent reason. He proceeded to spread his consciousness and tried to find the archers or the escapees, but when his senses encompassed a mile, the maximum that he could use at his cultivation level, his body slightly trembled, as in surprise.

Half a mile or so from where he was standing, at the end of the area he sensed, there was a strand of residual qi, and the one who used a technique, was like him, an advanced Soul stage cultivator! Rushing into that direction, he found the eight archers' bodies on the ground with no signs of life, their expressions blank, with no signs of fighting, and one could even say they looked like sleeping if not for a small bleeding slash on their necks.

"For the demons... What happened here?" He muttered while cautiously looking around, but failing to see anything, he tried to sense the surrounding region, only to find that there were neither clues nor tracks of his targets, or the advanced Soul stage cultivator that should have been the one who killed his men.

Thinking so, the man quickly proceeded to gather the bodies of the fallen, and after circling a mile from the area returned to the boundary road. There, he hid his armor and weapon into a Holding Pouch, before starting walking towards the south.

When passing through the ambush site, he saw that everything was done, teeth were seen on each of the bodies, and his people already departed. So, they should be reaching the meeting point right now, he thought, then he tried to organize what happened during this mission, which looked so easy when Master asked him to take care of it.

Shamefully the only thing he was sure of was that his targets were helped by some expert at his level, and an old man in beginner Soul stage fought them at the ambush spot. He also could determine that the injury or the cultivation that the older Shu had, was also a lie. After all, he could not have evaded a pursuit of eight mid-stage Spirit cultivators having similar cultivation, especially when injured. Yet for several miles, he did so, and with a son that hadn't even started cultivating yet.

Hopefully, the bodies of the archers that he stored in a Holding Pouch, and the old man that he killed previously could be used by Master's men to find some clues and serve as the proof that he didn't fail voluntarily.

After Zong Jun left, a silhouette seemingly formed of light floated down from the sky, and after waiting for some minutes moved towards the bodies of the young men that were killed at the start of the battle.

It floated and stopped near each body as if looking at them. Right after the eighth one, the silhouette that previously looked like a human suddenly grew two tentacles from where the hands should be, and with them touched every corpse, after some time, the tentacles retreated and disappeared as if all this was an illusion.

Some decision was reached, and the light silhouette started nearing the youngest looking one, a teen not older than 14.

He was thin, very tall reaching almost 6 feet, with a thin face with big eyes, and sharp eyebrows. One could say that he was handsome. Although his clothes and half of his body was bathed in blood, one could discern that the hands were groomed, the nails were cut and his black hair was combed as if he was a rich family young master and not a servant of the pair that was traveling in that simple cart.

There was a very deep slash wound on his chest, his ribcage was slashed apart and a part of the blade destroyed the heart.

The silhouette approached the body, sat down cross-legged in the air two feet above the corpse, and started making hand seals, qi started gathering in quantities visible to the eyes and after a series of seals, like if it was a spell set, different changes happened;

First seal set, the silhouette started releasing some kind of white misty substance.

Second seal set, this misty substance started entering the body through all its orifices.

Third seal set, all of the misty substance was absorbed into the body, then visibly to the eyes, bones started reconnecting, flesh regrowing and the wound covering in a scab mass.

Fourth seal set, the silhouette, and the body started glowing with multicolored radiance.

Fifth seal set, the silhouette floated down and seemed to merge with the body.

After the silhouette entered the body, the glowing stopped, and the qi that gathered at the start dissipated.

An hour later, the almost fully healed corpse, suddenly blinked and exhaled murky air. Then it started breathing quickly as if it hadn't breathed in a very long time.

Then it tried to get up, but failed to stand and dropped down on its butt, after a minute, it repeated the attempt, and failed again. Normally, this would anger or disappoint a person, but the face of the corpse that just somehow revived radiated such happiness, that it was brightening the air around itself.

The now alive teen opened its mouth and amidst a mix of coughs and laughter said, as if proclaiming to the universe

"I succeeded... Four Forests wait for me, the rightful ruler will return." after saying this, the young man mustered enough strength and managed to stand up.

With wobbling steps, and on the verge of falling several times, he slowly left the road and reached the shrubs where some of the ambushers were hidden before. After passing through, he found a small, around four feet area of low green grass. This small clearing was not visible from the road and with a tree growing in one of the corners it had a very nice atmosphere.

He slowly reached the tree, and using it as support, sat down cross-legged with his back reclined on the trunk.

"I need to get used to this body, absorb some of the memories of it before they dissipate, calm my mind and take note of what I have managed to retain after I escaped from the Blue Planet, the long travel using mirrored astral currents and my dive into the astral stream to evade the boundary." After muttering this words, as if making a list of things to do, the teen closed his eyes and started breathing in a strange rhythm, after some minutes the breathing returned to normal and his eyes opened, but there was no lucidity in them - as if he entered some kind of trance.