Questioning Heaven, Desiring the Way - Chapter 125
Chapter 125 – They Shoot Arrows
Zhang Yan looked around him and was about to also dash through the doorway when he noticed Gu Suihan standing by the side, watching everyone pass by as if he had all the time in the world. His heart wavered a little and he put his foot back down before quietly inching toward where Gu Suihan was.
Gui Suihan noticed what Zhang Yan was doing, but it didn’t bother him and he simply smiled at Zhang Yan.
“She’s gone in.” Zhang Yan couldn’t help but point at the disappearing back view of Wan Xin, who had leaped into the door without hesitation. He kept his eye on Gu Suihan, as though he hoped to understand something from those mysterious eyes.
“Did they think a place that contains a legacy would be so easy to enter?” Gu Suihan chuckled. “Think about it. This cultivator was at Divine Soul. To put it bluntly, this cultivator has been wandering the Earth, and killing others was a piece of cake. Why would someone like him bother to leave a domain in this lousy place and put in the effort to make his legacy sound like the most mysterious thing in the world?”
“The Ethereal Court keeps records of past speculations on the identity of this powerful cultivator made by some of my seniors. Their final conclusion on the matter is that this place could have been his hometown and he had some attachment to it, so he decided to leave it in this place in order to bless his descendants,” said Zhang Yan quietly as he laughed hollowly.
Gu Suihan snorted at this. Attachment to his hometown? What bullshit was that? Everyone knew what sort of personality a cultivator had. The Way was void of emotion, and that was what cultivators pursued. Someone at Divine Soul would have cut off any ties to the world and its desires. Only an idiot would believe such a reason.
Of course, there were cultivators who had lots of lovers, and there were those who were into dual cultivation. There were also those who were too devoted to the love of their life to cut these connections. There were plenty of such cultivators.
But they were all failures. There were no exceptions. Their emotional ties had made them hesitant and indecisive. They were all useless pieces of trash who allowed such things to trip them up, burden them or cause them unnecessary worry.
As far as Gu Suihan knew, there were no cultivators that had managed to reach the Immortal stage while still maintaining such ties. After all, cultivators who were too emotional would have died long before.
At the same time, Gu Suihan knew that the Way was nothing more than a bunch of rules. Rules were non-living things, so it was only natural for them to have no emotions, which explained why the Way didn’t have any emotions either. As for the things that were a position higher than the rules, he didn’t know anything about those things. But those were things he pursued as well.
Gu Suihan didn’t say anything in response, but that look of disdain and absolute contempt said everything.
“You don’t believe it?” Zhang Yan looked at Gu Suihan in surprise.
“Is that important?” Gu Suihan smiled and pointed at the bronze door as he said calmly, “Time to watch a good show.”
“A good show?”
Zhang Yan turned to look, only to see dozens of cultivators come running out as quickly as they had dashed in earlier.
The sounds of howling and screaming came from behind the door even as many disciples came running back out with blood all over their bodies and a look of horror on their faces, as though they were being chased by some wild animal. They were extremely panicky as they ran for their lives, not caring about how awful they looked.
Zhang Yan turned to stare at Gu Suihan with an extremely grim look in his eye. His heart trembled and a crazy idea suddenly popped up in his mind. “How did you know this would happen? Could it be…”
“It’s very simple. There are only nine keys, so why doesn’t the door limit the number of people going in? If there’s no limit, then why bother having these secret keys?” Gu Suihan tried to pull the crescent-shaped key he had obtained off himself, only to find that this key seemed to take him as its owner and refused to budge, so he gave up trying.
Zhang Yan noticed what Gu Suihan was doing and pulled his secret key out as well. He held it up and felt like there was something different about the gem in his hand, but when he looked at it more carefully, it looked the same as before.
“It’s a blood sacrifice!” Li Xiaoyao had his sword raised as he ran out at the speed of light, appearing in front of Gu Suihan in the blink of an eye with a pale and unconscious Shuang’er in his arms.
“Tsk, tsk,” Gu Suihan clicked his tongue as he looked at Li Xiaoyao like he knew this was going to happen all along. Li Xiaoyao’s clothing and sword were covered entirely in blood.
A few moments later, Wan Xin, Zou Kai, and the rest came dashing out of the door as well. Their hair was a mess and their clothing was torn. They had clearly suffered from pretty severe injuries after going in.
“There’s a formation at the entrance. We didn’t notice and stumbled into it.” Zou Kai plucked off random torn pieces of flesh from his body and noticed that Zhang Yan was holding onto his key, so he unleashed a beam of spiritual energy to retrieve his own key.
“It’s not just a formation. There are trap mechanisms as well.” Wan Xin’s small face was pale and she looked so haggard from the earlier ordeal. She pulled her key out as well and stared strangely at Gu Suihan and Zhang Yan, who were the only relaxed ones with clean clothes among them.
“The formation eye is beneath the ground!” yelled someone from the Vast Sky Sect as he stared at the needle of the special compass he had been using to find out where the formation eye was.
“There’s something underground!” Gu Suihan flew nearly a kilometer up into the air like a whirlwind without hesitation. He stared grimly at the flat surface of the ground below as a reddish glow covered his eyes.
ROAR! A roaring sound suddenly burst from beneath the ground but sounded muffled as it came through the thick layer of soil.
“Everyone, into the air!”
There was a good reason why these people were the top seniors of their sects. In times of crisis, they always remembered to look out for their fellow juniors. Everyone instantly flew off the ground.
“Hey fellow cultivator, let me borrow your life for a bit.”
Gu Suihan moved like a ghost as he drew his sword and a wave of sword qi that measured more than ten meters wide burst forth from the blade, giving off an ear-piercing swoosh as it cut through the air and landed heavily on the ground. At the same time, he suddenly turned and grabbed the nearest panicked Vast Sky Sect disciple next to him very calmly, gripped him firmly, and smashed the poor disciple into the large trench that his sword qi had created.
“Why, you!” Zhou Haoqi, the top senior of the Vast Sky Sect flew into a rage. He instantly sprayed a stream of righteous qi at Gu Suihan, its cloudy white color resembling a guillotine coming for Gu Suihan’s neck.
“Look down there, you idiot,” spat Gu Suihan disdainfully as he turned his feet the other way and dodged Zhou Haoqi’s angry attack.
“What’s that?!”
Everyone looked down and exclaimed in horror. They felt a shiver down their spines and really wanted to run for their lives now.
Ferocious beasts, magical beasts, puppets, terracotta soldiers, jiangshis, ghosts – a random assortment of dead things gave off such a thick layer of miasma that it surged right out from the trench that Gu Suihan had created, filling the air and blocking the sun.
As the miasma continued to billow out of the trench, it also made the slit in the ground wider and wider. Just a few moments later, the ground was covered in a dark layer of nasty creatures.
“I don’t care about this stupid legacy anymore!” shouted a cultivator in horror. His insides were churning as he flew higher into the sky and looked ready to leave anytime.
Woosh!
“What the hell? These things shoot arrows?!” Gu Suihan was shocked as he watched the stiffened terracotta soldiers and puppets raise their bows and shot arrows from them. In an instant, the sky was filled with a rain of arrows coming from the ground.
“Fuck!” Gu Suihan pulled out a few hundred talismans from his storage ring and activated all of them at the same time to form a colorful shield of runes to block him from the arrows.
“Inches Away – Ends of the World!” yelled Gu Suihan as he forced his spiritual energy to move at an unnaturally rapid speed around his body. As it passed through all his veins and meridians, it caused a wind to stir up beneath his feet that shot him straight toward the bronze door.
Despite how suddenly everything had happened, he had noticed that those dead creatures seemed very wary of the bronze door and were afraid to even get too close to it. That gave Gu Suihan his only escape route.
“Follow him!” Zhang Yan and the rest exchanged glances and quickly dashed toward the bronze door after Gu Suihan. To them, Gu Suihan was someone who did everything with great caution. He would not do anything he had insufficient confidence in and definitely would not do anything that might cause his demise.
They had no idea why Gu Suihan had flown in such a hurry toward the bronze door, but they had noticed the problem with the dead creatures that were all over the ground, so they were now fighting tooth and nail to get to the bronze door.
Doong! Doong! Doong! The rain of arrows flew into the protective layer that Gu Suihan had created earlier. But even though that was a forcefield made from a few hundred talismans, the arrows shattered right through it in an instant.
“Blazing Blood Secret Technique – One Step into the Sky!”
Gu Suihan cursed inwardly as he felt his protective layer weaken. He made another hand seal, which caused his clothes to rip as blood burst out from his pores, creating a mist around him as he flew straight into the bronze door.
“Damn it!” Wan Xin and the rest felt their lips twitch when they saw how Gu Suihan had seemingly made a move in desperation. It didn’t take them long to realize why he had done that and their faces paled as well. There was no time to worry about being consumed by a sudden change in their technique as they hurriedly switched to a different one which would help them to move even more quickly than before as they hurriedly followed behind Gu Suihan into the bronze door.