Chapter 124 – Familiar Faces

“Ghostly Shadow Seven Stars, Travel Through a Different Space!”

Since Gu Suihan’s attack failed to break through the protective wall with one strike and he was now surrounded by these icy hurricanes, he unleashed his sword qi like a rushing river, smashing aside the wind and snow all around him. He used this technique to pass through the space in front of him, walking right through the hurricanes as though he were an invisible person. He became one with his sword, its gleam measuring a few hundred meters as he spun out of the icy zone.

“Die!” Gu Suihan took a leap forward, stepping on air as though it were flat ground. He brought his sword down on his attacker at the same time, drawing a long arc in the sky.

“Icy Aurora Mirror!” yelled the attacker as he made several hand seals. Frosty qi suddenly gathered to form a thick mirror of ice in front of him. He rushed backwards, shooting dozens of talismans out of his sleeve, sending them flying toward Gu Suihan as they flickered brightly.

“Armor of Bloody Fiendish Qi, Clothing of Violent Qi!” Gu Suihan wasn’t taking any chances. He gathered his spiritual energy and a sudden surge of murderous qi filled the sky, dyeing it a faint bloody red color. It then fell back on his body to become a red robe and black armor. The miserable howls of vengeful ghosts and the angry wails of ferocious spirits echoed loudly. Their tragic cries sounded terrifying.

“How much bad karma has this fellow accumulated through the people he’s killed?!” This was the first time such a wary and frightened expression appeared on Li Xiaoyao’s face. The murderous qi coming out of Gu Suihan’s body was so thick and solid that it seemed almost real and almost created a weather phenomenon.

This young man was a mass murderer. A wicked tyrant.

A complete lunatic.

“Ghostly Shadow Seven Stars, Follow Like a Shadow!” Gu Suihan ignored the fact that the glow of murderous qi around him was shattering. Instead of retreating, he continued moving forward with his sword in hand. The thick layer of murderous qi stuck onto the sword and dyed it blackish-red.

He suddenly disappeared in the blink of an eye before reappearing from a shadow in the ground, thrusting his sword out from below.

“Nine Fiends of Soul Breaking – Sword of Soul Massacring!”

A black gas swirled eerily around the tip of his sword, accompanied by the roars of demons and deities, which made everyone’s hearts tremble and their scalps feel numb.

“Ice World, Heavenly Destruction!” The attacker stopped in his tracks for a moment, then retreated in a frenzy as he absorbed all the coldness around him to create a bluish illusion behind him that stood at nearly 300 meters in height.

The illusion howled as it raised its arms and brought its mighty fists down.

“Inches Away – Ends of the World!” There was a fierce glint in Gu Suihan’s eyes as he forced himself to turn. He dodged the attack from the illusion and thrust his sword toward it. Sword qi surged from the sword along with black gas. Fiendish qi burst forth from the blade and shattered the other party’s icy shield as if it were made from mere bamboo. After he had blasted everything in the way aside, he continued to hack his way toward his attacker’s lower body.

“How dare you!” yelled his attacker furiously. Gu Suihan instinctively thrust his palm out to give up this good chance of killing his attacker and moved backward instead. He raised his arms like a roc and was lifted into the air. The technique he had just executed enabled him to move 300 meters backward in a second.

Zhang Yan, Li Xiaoyao, and the rest saw that the attacker, who was a disciple from the Seven Kill Sect, wanted to continue fighting Gu Suihan. They seized this chance to quickly stand in the gap between the two and stop the fighting. “Hoho! The legacy of the secret realm is just in front of us. You can settle your own private feuds later on. The most urgent matter at hand is this legacy.”

“Which of my fellow cultivators have a secret key as well? Please step forward,” said Wan Xin in a sweet and melodious voice as she walked closer to the rock.

“I have one.” Li Xiaoyao stepped forward and revealed the pretty little orange gemstone in his hand.

“I have one too.” Wan Xin revealed the one she had.

“Me too.” A stocky, earnest-faced young man who looked like he came from a family of farmers stepped out from the group of War Demon Sect disciples and held out a yellow gemstone. He was Zou Kai, the top senior of the War Demon Sect. He was dressed very simply and looked harmless, but he was actually very aggressive, vicious, and willing to kill anytime.

At the same time, the cultivator from the Seven Kill Sect who fought with Gu Suihan earlier took out a secret key that gleamed with a purple glow. But he kept glowering at Gu Suihan, as though he couldn’t wait to tear Gu Suihan apart.

In no time, every person with a key had come forward and showed that they really had one.

There were supposed to be nine keys, but there were only eight of them now.

“Didn’t you say these things are able to sense each other?” Gu Suihan turned to look at Li Xiaoyao.

“That’s right.” Li Xiaoyao nodded confidently.

“In that case…”

“We’re right here.” A voice came from the crowd. Everyone turned to look and saw that it was a group of cultivators who weren’t wearing the same thing. Everyone exchanged puzzled glances. Since they didn’t come from any of the sects, it meant that they were cultivators who didn’t belong to one.

When Gu Suihan saw who it was, he raised an eyebrow, his eyes flickering as a wicked smile spread across his lips. “So it’s them.”

The others next to him looked at him curiously, while Wan Xin asked directly, “Who are they?”

“Wandering cultivators. I happened to run into them once,” lied Gu Suihan without batting an eye.

“Wandering cultivators? You mean there are other entrances into this secret realm?” said Wan Xin in a suspicious voice. Everyone now turned to look at Zhang Yan.

Zhang Yan rubbed his nose and laughed bitterly. “The Ethereal Court discovered this secret realm by chance, then we used a space anchoring spell to forcibly fix the location of the secret realm. Theoretically speaking, going in from there isn’t the proper entrance. The secret key those wandering cultivators are holding onto should be the key to activating the proper entrance.”

“If that’s the case, does that mean once we get the legacy, we can leave by the proper entrance?” Li Xiaoyao’s eyes lit up as a possibility struck him.

“So what if we can get out of here ahead of time? Did you think you’d be able to escape the disciplinary actions of the sect?” said Wan Xin a little sadly even as she scoffed.

“It’s very simple. Get all those disciples over there to fight each other right now and say that only the survivors get to leave the secret realm,” said Gu Suihan flippantly as he glanced at the hundreds of others without a secret key.

The craziest part was that the rest merely exchanged glances and looked like they might actually agree to this idea. Only the cultivator from the Seven Kill Sect had a nasty expression on his face as he glared straight at Gu Suihan. The rest had a flicker in their eyes and it was hard to say what they were thinking about.

Meanwhile, the group of four that had arrived with the last key was actually Xi Ran, Zhou Xing, Wang Mingzhi, and the maid whom Gu Suihan had completely forgotten about from before – Taohua.

“Not bad, not bad. You’re at Foundation Establishment now. I don’t know how you mustered the courage to cultivate in such wayward forms of cultivation,” said Gu Suihan with a snort after he scanned Taohua with his spiritual sense and looked at her with a mocking smile, “but you don’t have much time, so you’d better start praying now.”

Taohua was now as pretty as her name suggested, as she had blossomed into a gorgeous peach flower. She had a thin layer of chiffon around her revealing clothing. Her top was cropped, which exposed her fair and smooth snatched waist, while the slit in her long skirt reached up to her thighs. One could see a little inner thigh as she walked, which made many of them wish they could just push the skirt aside to see more of the scenery inside.

“Young master!” Taohua’s immediate reaction upon seeing Gu Suihan was to shiver and bow her head in fear.

Gu Suihan ignored her after that. Regardless of the reason why he had chosen to part ways with her back then, it meant that she was no longer of any value to him and there was no need to take her back. He turned to smile faintly at Xi Ran. “The secret key is that little thing in your hand, I suppose.”

“Mister Gu, it’s been quite a while and you look even more handsome now,” said Xi Ran as he laughed hollowly before quickly pulling out a gray round ball since the rest were glaring impatiently at him.

There were now runes glowing on the ball, which turned the original gray surface into a polished gold color. The dazzling glow filled the sky along with the glow from the other eight keys.

Everyone felt the secret keys in their hands shoot a beam of light out as they flew up to surround the gray ball, then vibrated and resonated loudly before flying straight into the slots in the large rock meant for them.

Craaack! It was as though they had triggered a catch of sorts. Several curved lines slowly appeared on the previously smooth rock, swirling around the nine keys to form a strange and complicated formation.

“That’s a trap mechanism technique of using a formation to prevent the door from opening without the correct number of keys. This person is a real expert in left path techniques,” murmured Gu Suihan with a tinge of true admiration in his voice.

What were left path techniques? Left path techniques referred to formations, weapon refining, pill refining, puppeteering, trap mechanics, and other such items and skills that came from outside the body.

Gu Suihan knew a lot of things, but it was mostly just touch and go. He didn’t care for going deeper into any of such things, since it took up an unnecessarily large amount of time and effort to gain very little. He wasn’t dumb and didn’t see why he should torture himself over something like that.

“Maybe we don’t even need the disciples to just fight each other on the spot. This secret realm might still manage to kill a lot of people,” said Gu Suihan all of a sudden. His nonchalant expression had become rather solemn now.

Wan Xin and the rest wanted to ask him more questions about this statement, but when they thought about how they were all here to get that legacy, they not only decided against asking but also glared nastily at Gu Suihan for trying to scare them.

“If you don’t want to listen to the old man around here, then you’ll just die, that’s all.” Gu Suihan couldn’t be bothered with them. He watched the bronze door slowly open, but instead of rushing in at the first chance he got, he took several steps back and stood next to the rock instead, beaming from ear to ear as he watched the sect disciples trip over each other to get through the door first like they were afraid that the legacy would be snatched away if they were just that bit too slow.

The outside of the door looked perfectly normal, but it was surrounded by plenty of hidden trap mechanisms. Gu Suihan didn’t know how to avoid these traps, but he had plenty of patience to wait and watch these impatient fellows rush in and get themselves killed so that he could understand more about these traps.