Chapter 131: The Path to Long-Awaited Freedom (Book I Final)

Summoning every ounce of his strength to plant his feet steadily on the ground, An raised his right arm high, condensing his Qi into a massive black spear.

Not far off, lying on the ground, staring wide-eyed as his legs continued melting, black mass dripping down and taking pieces of his flesh with it, the bandana cultivator suddenly sensed something and abruptly stopped screaming, lifting his head toward An. "N-no! No! NO!!"

"A-activation! HA!!"

Suddenly a talisman stuck itself to An's body, right against his torn-open chest, and hearing Captain Scar's hoarse voice, understanding he had no time to tear the talisman off himself, he threw the spear without aiming at all, trying to avoid the backlash.

The instant he released the spear, the talisman flared up, and a massive amount of Qi appeared out of nowhere around it.

SWISH!!

An shot backward like a torpedo, punching through everything in his path, boulders, tree trunks, with his own back.

Slamming into the wall of the formation's barrier surrounding the battlefield, he passed straight through it without any trouble, still picking up more and more speed.

At tremendous speed, he disappeared into the dense forest, leaving nothing behind but the sound of tearing air and hoarse screams.

….

With real effort, turning toward the bandana cultivator, still screaming, Captain Scar used his Qi to pull out several talismans and, activating them, attached them directly to himself.

Standing slowly, through the pain, he pulled out some pills and swallowed them.

Letting out a deep breath at the excess from the pills, for which there wasn't enough room left inside his body, he limped, with great difficulty, over to the bandana cultivator.

"Ah! A-AAH!"

"Calm down!! Get a hold of yourself, damn it!!" Dropping down beside him, he attached several dozen talismans to the spots where the cultivator's legs were still slowly rotting away.

Struggling to get them to stick, since the rot and blood kept making the talismans slide off, the captain finally activated them, and the black mass immediately stopped consuming any more flesh, instead simply falling to the ground.

The bandana cultivator dropped his head to the ground at once, feeling relief, though he kept whimpering.

Shoving several pills into his mouth, the captain started examining his wounds. "You need to calm down! Use the pills! Focus, and take your mind back under your own control!"

….

The moment the pills dissolved, the bandana cultivator calmed down and finally managed to pull himself together.

Lying on his back, he was afraid to lift his head, out of shame over losing, but even more out of shame over his own hysterical behavior.

Sitting down beside him, "Ouch! Ouch!" Captain Scar began applying healing ointment to his punctured shoulder, trying to restore function to at least one of his arms, doing all of it with his Qi. "None of this went the way... we planned. GhAH! Damn it!!"

Turning his head toward him, the bandana cultivator couldn't hold back. "The way we planned?!! The way we-!!" Turning his head away at once to calm himself, he continued. "What even was that?! What kind of vile spawn wearing human skin was that?! What WAS that?!"

Listening to him repeat the same thing over and over, the panic in his voice growing with every repetition, the captain let out a deep breath. "That doesn't matter anymore... Right now we need to survive. Just survive."

Feeling sensation returning to one of his arms, the captain pulled a black metal box out of his ring, channeled Qi into it, and tossed it onto the ground.

"Wh-what are you doing?!" Lying nearby, the cultivator, still with a lost look in his eyes, kept glancing back and forth between his own legs and Captain Scar. "What is that black mass? I've never seen anything like it... how could-"

Catching, out of the corner of his eye, the cultivator reaching a hand toward the black mass on the ground beneath him, the captain cried out. "Don't touch it! Young Master Ridegold! Don't touch it! For fuck's sake!!"

Freezing in place, the young master looked at him. "I-I've never heard of a technique producing a effect like this... H-how can a cultivator who's only just broken through to Foundation Establishment realm do something like this? And why is he even at Foundation Establishment at all- Ugh!!" Bracing his hands against the ground, he dragged himself away, off to a spot where none of the black mass had spread.

Crack!

The captain was just about to say something when he heard sounds coming from the metal box on the ground.

Suddenly it opened on its own, and a wooden doll, smaller than a finger, flew out of it.

Landing on the ground, the doll began growing larger, until it reached the size of an ordinary person.

C-crack! Crack!

Every limb started moving, as if testing the condition of all its joints.

"Well then, how did it go?" The moment it stopped shifting in place, a young woman's voice came from the doll.

Captain Scar tilted his head in a gesture of respect. "My apologies for this disgraceful greeting, Miss Mili!"

And through the doll, Mi Mili finally got a look at the state the captain was in. All his clothes were torn and soaked in blood, a massive, ravaged hole in his shoulder, and a bruised, blue arm hanging limp, twisted in several places.

Turning and looking around, she saw chaos. The whole ground churned up and gleaming from the intense heat, every bush, tree, even the rocks torn to shreds. And most of all, blood everywhere.

"Sheo?" She suddenly noticed, beside the captain, the bandana cultivator, who'd calmed down somewhat and was carefully applying ointment to his legs, to what remained of them.

Turning back to the captain: "Wh-what happened here?!" Even her voice climbed several pitches higher.

The captain lowered his head, shame washing over him. "We underestimated him... We made a mistake, and now that mistake... Ha-ah..." Letting out a deep breath, he suddenly fell silent.

Watching him in silence, Mi Mili couldn't hold back. "Tell me everything in detail, from beginning to end, what happened here."

The captain nodded and laid out everything, start to finish, without leaving out a single detail.

Listening to him, Mi Mili turned and walked over to the black mass that had once been part of the bandana cultivator.

Crouching beside it, she stuck a finger straight into the sludge, and instantly her whole hand dissolved, right before her eyes. "This is bad... I need to tell my father about this!"

"Miss Mili, do you understand what this is?" The captain, watching her closely, couldn't help but ask.

Standing and walking back to him, Mi Mili nodded. "If I'm not mistaken, this is one of the aspects of Qi… If the books I read are accurate, this is the Rot aspect, and it's dependent on..."

"Dependent on?" The captain didn't quite follow what she meant.

"It's an aspect of a Great Dao… only a cultivator with a Great Dao can gain an aspect like this..." Turning back to the black mass once more, she continued, her voice heavy. "In the books I read on things like this, it was mentioned a few times... if I'm not mistaken, and this really is the Rot aspect, then we're in serious trouble!"

Still confused, Captain Scar was about to ask another question, but Mi Mili beat him to it.

"Death... Dependent on the Great Dao of Death!" She began examining the marks left on the ground throughout the battle.

Hearing her words, the captain lost the ability to speak for a moment.

Gathering his thoughts, he lowered his head and said, almost in a whisper. "That can't be the Dao of Death. Only those beings existing outside the borders of-"

"Exactly! Which is why I need to tell my father about this as fast as possible!" Pressing her wooden palm a few times, she opened it, and two small spheres flew out.

Closing her eyes, she whispered something, and both spheres began emitting a strange, metallic screech.

Instantly, out of the wreckage, the now-cooled body of Sister Thirst rose into the air, along with a black ring smeared with blood, and the partially intact hand of An, a ring still on one of its unbroken fingers.

Saying something else, everything was pulled toward her, and reaching out a hand, she took the torn hand in her grip and removed the ring from it.

Turning back to the captain: "Here! Help my third cousin Sheo and get back to me as fast as possible!" Tossing him the ring, she walked toward the black metal box lying on the ground. "I'll contact the family in the meantime and tell them everything. We can't afford to waste time!"

Thud!

The wooden doll fell to the ground and began shrinking back down to the size of a finger.

Taking the ring that had once belonged to An in his hand, he clenched it into a fist and turned to the bandana cultivator. "Looks like we got ourselves into something we really shouldn't have..."

The bandana cultivator, still tending to his wounds, only nodded heavily.

….

"Ha-a... Kha! Kha! Ha..." Lying inside a massive crater, the one that had finally stopped his flight after several hours, all because of the enormous amount of Qi packed inside the talisman, which had kept accelerating like an engine, carrying him further and further. He greedily drew in Qi from his surroundings, trying to patch up his battered body as fast as possible.

Suddenly feeling discomfort in the lower part of his chest, An remembered the beast pouch.

Through the pain, punching a hole through his newly grown skin, he pulled out the pouch and threw it onto the ground.

Woosh!

The moment it touched the ground, the pouch sprang open at once, and Baldi shot out, eyes wide with fear.

"Cluck! Bawk?" Looking around, Baldi spotted the state An was in and quickly ran over to him, starting to push at him with his own head.

An smiled, even though it looked rather terrifying without part of his lower jaw. "D-don't w-worry... I'll... I'll be f-fine. Khm!"

Listening to his rough, grating voice, Baldi looked over An's whole body.

No arm, a newly lost leg, the other still hanging on by nothing but torn skin. His whole body slashed open, broken bones and tree branches he'd collided with sticking out everywhere. Yet, his face had already grown most of its new skin back.

His entire body looked like a checkerboard. New skin covering the holes stood out in color at first, but within a few seconds blended back to match the tone of his old skin.

Sitting down almost right up against him, Baldi started making sounds from deep in his throat.

An lifted his one good arm and stroked Baldi's head, then, resting his own head on the ground, suddenly burst out laughing. "Ha... Ha! Hahaha!!"

Baldi watched him with a puzzled look, trying to figure out what An could possibly find funny about this situation.

"Ha! I-I... I! I'm finally f-free! Kgh! Kha!" The pain from laughing set off a coughing fit. "I kept wondering if the plan would work... if I'd m-manage- Kgh! If I'd manage to escape... Haha! Kh-!"

Turning his head toward the dense forest, where a tunnel of broken branches and even whole trees marked the path he'd flown in from, he smirked. 'Th-that method, honestly... turned out to be way too dangerous...'

Looking up, where storm clouds had started gathering in the blue sky. "You know, Baldi... if I still had a digestive system... I probably would've shat myself more than once during that fight..."

Replaying the battle in his head, he felt himself starting to shake slightly, adrenaline surging through his body just from the thought of it, some subconscious part of him afraid of it happening again.

But at that moment, in the cloud-covered sky above.

CRACK! BOOM!

A massive bolt of lightning ripped across the entire sky, and heavy raindrops immediately began to pelt down.

Baldi pressed himself closer to An at once, trying to hide from both the thunder and the rain.

Feeling a raindrop land on his skin, all his adrenaline, every negative thought, drained away instantly.

Raising his one good arm to the sky and opening his hand, An felt the drops running down it. "In all these years I've been here... this is my first rain. Real rain." Suddenly smiling, he closed his eyes. "Finally, freedom... By the way, where am I, anyway?"