The Immortal Emperor Returns

Chapter 329 No Escaping the Price of Sin!

Inside the council hall of the Brotherhood, the leader Tong Li was fidgety with apprehension.

Every single presbyter whom he had dispatched into Xiacheng had lost contact and they were all unreachable.

A foreboding dread began swelling inside him.

“Has anything bad happened, perhaps?” he murmured.

A palpable pall of menace and gloom hung over the high council of the Brotherhood in the hall.

“Rest assured that Presbyter Chai will succeed, Leader! It’s only hunting down some ordinary women. But since they’re scattered all around the city, it’s finding them that takes so much time,” said one of the presbyters encouragingly.

Tong Li nodded quietly, fervently hoping it to be true.

But every single soul in the council hall knew full well that it was just empty talk. One could expect the men to be able to answer phone calls when they were tasked with only the trivial job of mopping up defenseless girls.

Finally, one of them stood up, no longer able to rein in his anxiety. “Leader, I say we prepare for the worst and hope for the best. We need a plan, just in case.”

Those words made every presbyter present shuddered.

It was disheartening to hear such words, although they knew better than to doubt its veracity.

Tong Li fell silent, contemplating until he said, “Gather the students and acolytes and dispatch some lookouts. We need to hear about anything that happens within five kilometers.”

Several of the members got up and trotted off to carry out the order.

Tong Li fell into another silent deliberation. He was nowhere near at ease. Finally, he decided to have someone prepare their secret passageway so that an evacuation could be immediately initiated at any sign of trouble.

“What of the students, Leader?” another presbyter asked hesitantly.

Tong Li’s face turned as hard as stone. “Get our elites together. As for the rest of them, we’ll leave them to Fate.”

Everyone shuddered at that; Tong Li was expecting the very worst.

Another one of them left the hall to gather every elite student he could find.

The atmosphere in the hall turned gloomier than gloom as the eyes of every single man, restrained and fearful, flickered uncertainly with unknown thoughts swirling in their minds.

Tong Li left a few more instructions before he slipped away himself.

Treasures and resources were the most important aspects of an organization’s strength. The key to the Brotherhood’s vault and its location had always been a secret known only to the high leader of the Brotherhood.

With the anomalies everywhere resulting in the sporadic appearance of ancient ruins, Storage Rings were no longer a rare sight in the domain of the Martial Tao world.

Tong Li stuffed three Storage Rings fully with as many treasures and resources of the Brotherhood he could carry and wore them on his fingers.

Then he returned to the council hall to rejoin his fellow members to await more news, although he never stopped trying to get ahold of Chai Yi.

Boom!

A huge explosion came from outside so suddenly that it scared everyone out of their wits.

“What’s going on?!” yelled an irritated Tong Li angrily.

The doors to the hall swung open and an acolyte tottered in, looking visibly distressed.

“Leader, Presbyters, we have an intruder!”

That shocked the high council so greatly that everyone literally jumped from their chairs.

“Who’s the intruder?! Is it the Devil?!” demanded Tong Li urgently.

The acolyte shook his head; he did not know the Devil.

“Go. Let’s have a look,” said Tong Li. But he stopped suddenly and turned around, “Take the elite students into the secret passage. Escape at once if it’s really the Devil himself.”

With the rest of the presbyters with him, Tong Li walked out of the council hall.

Boom!

Another explosion came, with tongues of flames rending the blue sheet of the sky as buildings and structures tumbled and collapsed and waves of dirt swept everywhere like a sandstorm.

The gigantic silhouette of a hand came slamming down from the air, pummeling the earth with such merciless ferocity that more structures crumbled and the ground split, not miscounting more than a dozen acolytes who were blasted to bits and pieces.

A thick and ancient aura engulfed the entirety of the stronghold’s compound and a monstrous monolith came crashing from the sky, its sheer pressure rocking and splitting the earth even more. Shrill cries and howls of agony could be heard from every corner as more acolytes of the Brotherhood died by the score.

More flames shot into the air. A fiery bird – a phoenix – could be seen swooping around everywhere, swathing the stronghold with a fiery inferno while laying waste to every inch of the ground it could find. Structures that remained from the earlier onslaught were now razed into dust, and so did the remaining acolytes who were roasted alive.

Next came a hailstorm of purple energy bolts, falling down from the sky and meting out death and despair as more acolytes, students, and members of the Brotherhood were ripped and torn into tiny pieces.

The air reeked thickly with the nauseating stench of blood.

Chu Xun, with his hair flailing and thrashing wildly and his clothes snapping furiously in the firestorm, walked undeterred and unopposed, leaving no man alive in his wake.

Stepping through the fire unscathed and walking through the waves of dust and sand unhindered, tens of thousands of Reincarnation Lines trailed after him, swaying to the fearsome aura of blood lust that emanated from him like a true Devil from the Underworld.

“Who are you?!” Tong Li gasped. Watching his students and members died one by one filled him with unimaginable horror.

Chu Xun’s bloodshot eyes shot a cold glare at the leader of the Brotherhood of Seven Stars while releasing another burst of aura permeated with callous brutality and the thirst for carnage.

“I’ve warned you all, Brotherhood of the Seven Stars. Harm my sisters, and I will leave none of you alive.”

Tong Li and his men felt as if a dagger had run their hearts. “The Devil. He has come. He has really come.”

“Such carnage and savagery you’ve wreaked, Devil. Aren’t you afraid of retribution?!” retorted Tong Li with the last bit of defiance he could muster.

Without any doubt, Chai Yi and his men must all be dead by now.

“Retribution?” Chu Xun’s eyes flashed with a hunger for more blood, and with a glare so piercing like a long, sharp spear, he hissed coldly, “If there really is one, then let it come.”

There shall be no forgiveness to anyone who dared to harm those that he loved. He would gladly kill them all and shoulder the burden himself.

“DIE!”

Chu Xun lunged, unleashing another bloodbath.

Puff!

In the blink of an eye, a Fifth-grade Human King was rent to shreds by the Reincarnation Lines.

No Human King below the rank of Seventh-grade could possibly endure a hit from Chu Xun.

Eyes deadened and bloodshot, utterly devoid of emotions, Chu Xun killed and slaughtered with zero compassion. Bodies fell lifelessly to the ground and heads rolled putridly on the ground with blood splattering everywhere.

Puff!

Another head was lopped off, flying for several meters in the air with a fountain of blood spraying.

Bang!

Maimed limbs and slivers of flesh plopped morbidly to the ground as another presbyter was blasted into shreds.

Crack!

Chu Xun seized the arm of another presbyter and ripped both arms off the man’s torso before delivering another blow that exploded his head.

With every ten steps, he butchered one man, all the while with not a single drop of blood staining his clothes.

Within half an hour, he had massacred every presbyter of the Brotherhood, leaving none alive as he promised.

Tong Li’s heart raced so quickly that he thought it was going to burst. Despite his fair share of killing people in the past, the Devil’s barbarity horrified him so greatly that he could only quiver with fear, petrified beyond reaction.

Then he spun around. He needed to run. He would bide for a chance in the future for revenge.

But he overestimated his speed.

All it took was just the moment of a breath, and Chu Xun was upon him, firing an energy beam that blasted his entire left arm away.

Tong Li cried with pain; the pain and excruciation had all but rendered him, a Seventh-grade Human King, as helpless as a lamb for slaughter.

The three Storage Rings floated in the air when the arm was blasted into a puff of red mist and Chu Xun swiped them into his grasp.

Tong Li let loose a bestial howl like a madman and he charged at Chu Xun with reckless abandon, mustering every bit of his Internal Breath.

Boom!

He dove into an enormous sandstorm thrashing relentlessly, only to be flung back out with blood pouring from his mouth.

Chu Xun chased after him, emerging from the waves of dust and sand to plant a fist into his chest. His hand drove right through his torso, crushing his rib cage and punching a gaping hole right out Tong Li’s back with a series of shrill, grotesque sounds of bones cracking.

But Tong Li was still alive; such was the incredible endurance of Seventh-grade Human Kings.

“Your reckoning will come, Chu the Devil,” Tong Li spat a mouthful of bloodied froth.

Regarding his foe like a vermin, the Devil lifted his foot and squashed his enemy’s brains.

The Brotherhood of Seven Stars mused Chu Xun quietly. They might not be as strong as the Broken Souls Cult or Sifang Sword Sect, but I expected them to have more members than this.

He released his Divine Sense and scanned everywhere, then a smirk broke upon his face and he vanished.

“Hurry up.”

Inside the secret passageway, a presbyter of the Brotherhood urged the surviving students and acolytes to make haste.

The group of remnants consisted of seventy elite students – all of them talented prodigies – and two presbyters of the Brotherhood.

They were final embers of the Brotherhood of Seven Stars.

They had entered the secret passage when Chu Xun arrived.

But with the secret passage underground, Chu Xun did not know where it would lead to.

With a cold and ruthless expression, he caved in the entrance of the secret passage with a punch.

Next, he filled the sky with a torrent of energy bolts, and the fist-like missiles hailed savagely into the ground.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

The mountains shook and the earth cracked at the unwavering battering until the former began to sink and topple. Deep inside the secret passage, an enormous boulder came crashing down.

Muffled and horrific screams rang unmistakably from below the ground.

But that did little to stop Chu Xun. Again and again, he swung his fists, firing more and more force to fully level the mountain, and the collapsed terrain that formerly was the secret passage, a long snaking python of dirt, stretched far into the distance.

Chu Xun continued his assault, opening a 500-meter-long trench that wound in the desolate open ground he laid waste to until he finally stopped when the cries and howls were no more.

The final remnants of the Brotherhood – all seventy elite students and two presbyters – were utterly buried alive.

No one would dispute how brutal Chu Xun was.

He zipped into the air quickly and conjured the Nine Heavens Burning Formation, watching its thousands or more flaming dragons reduced the entirety of the Brotherhood’s stronghold into heaps of smoldering ruins with the entire crest of the mountain it perched on utterly flattened.

Satisfied that his work was done at last, Chu Xun turned and left.

Not long after his departure, many curious people of the Martial Tao World came for a look. The sight of the collapsed mountain and the utter destruction left them all shocked and awed.

The Brotherhood of the Seven Stars now utterly destroyed, vanishing slowly into the sand of Time. But everyone would remember it, for its destruction would forever become a lasting paragon to whomever who dare anger the Devil.

Pictures of the ruins were taken and uploaded onto the Martial Tao Forum.

In an instant, the entire Forum boiled with uproar.

“Offend Hades, but never the Devil himself.”

“It was as terrifying as one might expect of the Devil. He decimated the Brotherhood of Seven Stars! It was scary indeed.”

“The Devil had warned them before, but the Brotherhood ignored him and this spelled their disaster.”

“The Devil’s just too brutal. He did not mean “leave no one alive”, but meant “leave nothing intact”. He left nothing there at all.”

The Forum simmered with never-ending discussions, every one of them centered upon the Massacre of the Brotherhood of Seven Stars.

At the Xia Family residence, Xia Boyan and Xia Miaoyu were browsing through the Forum themselves.

When they learned of what happened to the Brotherhood, in their petrified stupor, both father and daughter could barely react too.

“Bunch of fools. As if the name of “the Devil” is one to be taken lightly. One does not earn such a moniker without his hands drenched with blood and his steps paved with the bones of his foes. As I said, the Brotherhood brought this upon themselves,” observed Xia Boyan.

Xia Miaoyu gave a cursory glance at her father. “Why am I feeling that you are somehow pleased by the outcome?”

“Am I?” Xia Boyan responded with a wry smile, “Well, nothing escapes your notice, eh? Anyway, you’re right. Think. The Brotherhood did not grow in power without reason and I’m sure it’s because of some support given to it by some other organization. I had long intended to uproot them whole before their position could threaten us. Well, at least I didn’t expect this...”

“You mean you didn’t expect that they would court death and offend the Devil himself, who appeared at the right time to help you solve your biggest problem,” quipped a witty Xia Miaoyu.

“Indeed. That is why Chu Xun the Devil is a harbinger of good fortune to us of sorts,” Xia Boyan chuckled cheerily.

Xiao Miaoyu scowled at her father’s scheming antics, “The Devil has a great many enemies, Father. Don’t you think it’s not safe for us to be too close to him?”

“Be that as it may, but look at what happened. The Broken Souls Cult, the Sifang Sword Sect, and so forth. These were all-powerful organizations in their own right. Yet now, they flee at the merest sight of him like a pack of routed dogs, forsaking even the lands that their forebears have entrusted to them.”

“Well, I guess you’re right there,” conceded Xia Miaoyu. She nodded and said, “No matter how strong his foes were, they always seem to fall short while the Devil remains triumphant and glorious as ever.”

“With the anomalies happening that has ushered in the age of warriors, this has become an era ruled only by strength,” remarked Xia Boyan thoughtfully.

“He looks barely thirty,” commented a curious Xia Miaoyu. “Yet his powers are so great, so devastating. I wonder how. I fail to see any logical way a man of his age could attain such might, not even if he begins training from his mother’s womb.”

“Rumor has it that Chu Xun chanced upon tomes and grimoires containing magical cultivation disciplines beyond compare as well as teachings for enchantments. That became the source of his strength,” said Xia Boyan.

“Rumors, Father. Rumors that can only be as reliable as they go. Even if it’s true that he found grimoires about enchantments and magical disciplines, it takes time for him to train and study everything. And the path of a warrior is not an undertaking that succeeds through sheer time and effort alone; one needs great intelligence, outstanding talent, fortuitous opportunities as well as a great fortune. No one can achieve what he is today without any one of these conditions.”