The 3,000-meter-wide pit was filled with what appeared to be 10,000 people!!
It was actually a pit of foul, necrotic water, within which could be seen so many corpses that 10,000 was probably too small of a number to describe them. Some of the corpses were completely decomposed. Others were only partially decomposed, and there were some… living people!!
The clothing visible was not the clothing of Wildlanders. Bai Xiaochun could immediately tell… that these were Heavenspan cultivators!!
They were skinny and emaciated, their expressions listless, as though they lacked souls. Black strands of smoke wriggled and writhed beneath their skin, constantly extracting their life force…. Obviously, these were cultivators who had been captured and then viciously soulsearched!
Because of the force of the soulsearch, their souls had been destroyed, leaving behind only their physical bodies. After undergoing some special treatment, they were then thrown into this pit and sealed up, whereupon their life force was slowly extracted!
After they were sucked away into nothing more than dried up corpses, however, their agony was not yet over. The foul liquid that resulted would be filtered and turned into the primary medicinal ingredient that the Chen Clan used to refine life force!
Although the Wildlanders who saw the pit were shocked, they were not as deeply affected as Bai Xiaochun. He was not a Wildlander; he was an ordinary cultivator from the Heavenspan River region, and therefore, he immediately began to tremble and sink into a very grim mood. After a moment passed, he even closed his eyes, worried that he might not be able to control his emotions.
After a long moment passed, he opened his eyes and sighed. The war between the Wildlands and the Heavenspan River region was not something that he could change. After all, the conflict he had solved between the Spirit and Blood Stream Sects had been between two forces that were fundamentally on the same side.
Without saying a word, he clenched his hand into a fist. Drawing upon his cultivation base and the full power of his fleshly body, he then unleashed a fist strike onto the pit.
Everything trembled as a massive force slammed into the corpses in the pit, instantly transforming them into flying ash.
As for the people who were technically alive, for all intents and purposes, they were already dead. Only their physical bodies lived on. For them, Bai Xiaochun’s fist strike was actually something of a release….
Although he couldn’t be sure, he thought that some of those living bodies actually smiled in the moment before they faded away into nothing….
Expression grim, he flicked his sleeve and coldly said, “Arrest all members of the Chen Clan and send them to the Grand Asylum!”
The corpse troopers immediately went to work, and the Chen Clan cultivators did nothing to resist.
Bai Xiaochun was in a very grim mood. Although he had collected a lot of wealth from the Li and Chen Clans, he didn’t feel very much like he had exacted personal revenge, mostly because of the matter of the huge pit.
He stood there for a long moment, wrapped up in his thoughts. Then he sighed, and turned and left with his corpse troopers.
There was nothing he could do to change the overall situation. Furthermore, he knew that if he did anything to reveal his true identity, he might end up just like the people in that pit. After all, he wasn't in the River-Defying Sect right now. He was in the Wildlands, in Arch-Emperor City….
Now that he had handled the Li and Chen Clans, it was in his role as the inspections commissioner that he went to the imperial palace to see the Grand Heavenmaster… and provide an official debriefing.
Along the way, he struggled with his bad mood, and kept thinking about that pit. When he arrived at the palace, he took a deep breath and pushed all of his gloomy thoughts into the bottom of his heart.
“I need to focus on my flame conjuring. Once I make that cultivation base breakthrough, I can leave this place….” At the moment, he really missed home.
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Chapter
769: I Dare You To Try That Again, Heavenly Duke Chen
When Bai Xiaochun arrived outside of Heavenmaster Hall in the imperial palace, he immediately noticed that it was not devoid of people like it had been in the past. There were several dozen cultivators present who had come to offer formal greetings to the Grand Heavenmaster.
One of them was Chen Haosong, along with the old man who Bai Xiaochun had seen with him earlier. Those two were heavenly dukes, and there were three other heavenly dukes present. Although Bai Xiaochun didn’t recognize them, he could tell from their auras that they were devas. [1]
The rest of the people present were all heavenly marquises. Four of them Bai Xiaochun recognized as people from the group of nine who had besieged him.
All of them had unsightly expressions on their faces as they waited for the Grand Heavenmaster to summon them for their audience. As soon as Bai Xiaochun arrived, all of their gazes came to rest on him.
“Bai Hao!!” many of them growled through gritted teeth.
Chen Haosong’s eyes glittered especially coldly, and he clearly desired to kill Bai Xiaochun. After all, he was close to the Heavenly Marquis Li, and at the moment, it was unclear whether the man was alive or dead!
All of the nobility and aristocracy in Arch-Emperor City had been shaken by the fact that two heavenly marquises had been arrested by the Grand Heavenmaster. After inquiries were made, and it became clear that Bai Xiaochun was behind it all, their hatred for him grew, although they didn’t dare to do anything about it directly.
When the gazes of five devas, and a whole group of half-devas, all came to rest on Bai Xiaochun, it made it feel as if countless mountains were weighing down on top of him.
The coldness of the gazes caused Bai Xiaochun’s mood to sink even lower, and at the same time, he started to get nervous.
“I can't believe how badly these people want to kill me! They don’t dare look at the Grand Heavenmaster this way, but they have no qualms when it comes to me. They’re clearly bullying me because they have superior cultivation bases!” Heart shivering with fear, he looked back at the group.
It was at this point that Chen Haosong spoke.
“How dare you hoodwink the Grand Heavenmaster, Bai Hao! If you have proof that Heavenly Marquises Li and Chen are traitors, then hand it over immediately for me to see!” His words were accompanied by an explosive killing intent, and a dangerously incisive gaze that made it clear that he would cut Bai Xiaochun down in cold blood if he could.
Bai Xiaochun’s expression flickered as he struggled to deal with the pressure crushing down onto him. The energy rolling off of Chen Haosong was like a mountain slamming into him. Ears ringing, he took a few steps back, his face turning pale in the process, and even his cultivation base teetering unstably.
All of a sudden, an intense sensation of deadly crisis rose up inside of him, causing his heart to tremble. However, that was also when a glint of hatred appeared in his eyes as he thought back to the tragic scene of that pit filled with 10,000 corpses. Instead of trying to stabilize his cultivation base, he actually bit his tongue as he staggered backward, and then sent the resulting blood spraying out of his mouth.