Real Intentions

Ling Xu's instinct flared up the moment he heard the senior in the rear suddenly speak in such a low voice.

"Now!"

The hand that was touching the handle of the sword grabbed it with all his might as he took it out and started pouring all his qi into it.

"Gasp!"

The senior that was slowly getting closer noticed this movement as he became surprised, unable to react in time because of how fast everything happened.

Ling Xu's body started pushing to the front where the senior who was in the eight stage of Qi Refining was. He run extremely fast as his body became very light and his feet followed the direction of the wind.

The qi in his sword continued to gather, condensing into a stream of energy that slowly began to resemble a real one. Waves of qi started to appear, refracting light along the blade, giving the illusion of a stream formed from flowing water.

This was going on in an instant since the senior disciple that was in the front was occupied scanning the surroundings, searching for any sign of the ashen fire wolves near them. He let the job of handling Ling Xu to his junior brother and he wasn't preoccupied at all since his cultivation level was just in the second stage of the Qi Refining Realm.

"I believe he should be about to strike now without a problem, we have already gotten quite far from Lu Wenjie's fiancée after all." He pondered when his junior brother would strike as they didn't need to keep appearances anymore and he was becoming impatient. "This Lu Wenjie has become pretty bold, just because he thinks he has the power he gave us the condition to first get rid of this new outer disciple. At least it was something easy or else I wouldn't have tolerated it."

His face showed a bit of anger as he recalled when he saw his fiancée appearing in the gates of the sect. "If it wasn't because he brought her without our permission we would have already killed him and completed the mission. Next we would be able to go to that place without any second parties knowing."

Gasp!

He turned around after hearing his brother gasp in surprise, he was expecting to see just a corpse remaining from this disciple called Ling Xu. "Hahaha, you finally stroke him down once and for all! Why did it take you so…"

Turning around, he was greeted with a beautiful light, coming from the refraction of a lifelike stream of energy formed in a sword. It waved through the blade like water as it looked extremely real.

A sense of death rose withing him and his expression turned grim, horrified by the sword that was less than a breath away from him.

Ling Xu stroke from up to down as his sword exploded and the stream made out of his formless qi cut right into this senior disciple of his.

Boom!

The sound of the explosion travelled far away, reaching the other group they had formed of Sun Qinglan and Lu Wenjie.

"What was that?" She couldn't help but worry as she asked nervously, turning to look in the direction where the sound of the explosion came from.

"Don't worry, they should have found a strong beast. But with the strength of my senior brothers everything should be fine." He comforted her as he gave a fake smile, hiding the anger he constantly felt every time he saw her worry about another man.

"Hmph! It should be over already, now I just need to wait for them to come with the fangs from the ashen fire wolves and we will be able to go to that place before returning to the sect."

On the other side, after the explosion subsided and all the fog returned to the ground, Ling Xu's figure could be seen once again.

"Monster!" The disciple guarding the rear yelled, his voice trembling with fear as he saw the figure emerging from the fog. He had fallen to the ground, overwhelmed by the shock of the explosion caused by a junior disciple who was barely in the second stage of Qi Refining.

After a few more breaths, he could see the corpse from his senior brother which had now been divided into two. In the middle of both parts there was a huge sword mark imprinted on the ground.

It had a width of two feet and spanned several meters long, giving a terrifying impression. Even someone who was in his level, the seventh stage of Qi Refining, wouldn't be able to leave such a mark on the ground.

"This is not the level that someone in his stage should have, how high must his proficiency in his sword technique be and how much qi must he have to produce such an effect."

Not only was it impossible to have opened enough acupoints in his current stage to posses the qi required to display this technique, but the proficiency that he showed in the Flowing Stream Sword was something that he had never seen before.

"He must have hidden his cultivation level with a special technique." He thought of this as he couldn't believe anyone in the second stage of Qi Refining having enough time to master their technique to such a degree.

That wasn't the level that someone even in his current stage could reach, after all it took years for any outer disciple to reach the high stages of Qi Refining and it took even more effort to progress in their techniques. This was because the higher one advanced in their sword technique, the higher one's comprehension needed to be.

This was very different from cultivating since it only required refining qi within the body and strengthening the acupoints until they reached their limit, then they would be able to advance to the next stage. This was an accumulation that could be done within time, but when comprehending a technique, they could be trying their best to understand it for months but still could go without any progress.

The quantity of disciples that were proficient in their sword and movement techniques while being in the high stages of Qi Refining were the vast majority, but those that managed to advance even more and entered great success were only a few.

"Don't come any closer!" he shouted, trembling as Ling Xu approached. He fell into panic and cried out in horror at the sight of the junior standing before him.

Ling Xu didn't respond as he continued getting closer while being in complete silence, his eyes were very calm and looked very dark from the senior's perspective.

Crawling backward in panic, he was halted by a tree he hadn't known was there since he could only face the person he had in front. Frozen in terror, he could do nothing but meet his gaze which carried the breath of death.

Closing the distance until they were just one foot away, Ling Xu then pointed his sword at him. He didn't seem to care at all what his senior would have to say.

"Wait! Wait! I can tell you everything, please let me live!"

"Oh?" He moved his sword a bit to give him a sense of relief as he starting blurting out everything he knew. His eyes crying nonstop as he was extremely scared of death.

"Good! Good! It is like this, the mission we have chosen to do this time isn't the real purpose of leaving the sect. We only chose it so we had an excuse without giving the real motive."

"So their real purpose wasn't killing me and neither completing this mission, this is interesting." Raising an eyebrow, Ling Xu now wanted to hear what else he had to say. "Then what was your real purpose?"

"The senior brother you just killed and I once went on a mission with Lu Wenjie, that's where we met him for the first time. During that mission, we recovered the remains of a fellow disciple who was killed by a very strong beast. While going through his belongings, Lu Wenjie found a map that seemed to point to a cave."

He paused for a second, observing Ling Xu's reaction as he was hoping to get his interest. He tried to make the story as valuable as possible since he wanted to keep his life and he currently depended on this terrifying person's mood.

"This mission was just a cover to go there without drawing suspicion from the sect. We expect for there to be some kind of heaven and earth treasure inside the cave!" He said enthusiastically as he tried to make it seem as plausible as he could, since it wasn't a sure thing for the map to actually lead to a treasure.

"As for trying to kill you, it was all because Lu Wenjie insisted on it. He said he wouldn't leave the sect to search for the cave unless we got rid of you." His eyes showed great worry as he talked about the hardest part, now all that remained was to see how he would react.

"I didn't expect that their real purpose of leaving the sect was for such a thing. Now I am very eager to see this map and search for the cave!"

Regaining focus once again, he locked his eyes on the senior that was on the ground trying to dry a few tears that remained in his face.

Deciding his fate almost instantly, his wrist moved a little. The sword that had been pointing a little to the side suddenly moved and sliced his neck. It detached his head from the body making it fall to the ground.

Rolling down, it turned through the dirt in the ground before showing a face that was mixed between relief and terror. It still had the tears that he was trying to dry from his face, making him look like a real victim.

Ling Xu's eyes lingered on the man's last expression, and a dark cloud begun to stir in his mind. It took him a while to shake it off as he regained his senses. "I'll deal with the Ashen Fire Wolves firs and then regroup with them."

But before he continued on his search, he decided to take the belongings from his seniors. He first took in the spatial ring and sword from the one he had beheaded, the sword was a few meters apart from him as it was dropped from the shock he got after seeing Ling Xu cut his senior brother in half.

Then he took spatial ring from the senior in the eight stage of Qi Refining, he had to go to the left side of the body which was separated by two feet from the right side after he had cut him in half. Afterwards, he took the sword that was next to his right hand in the other half of the body.

After an hour and a half, Ling Xu had found his target as he killed a dozen of the Ashen Fire Wolves. The majority were in the third stage of Qi Refining but he also found one in the second and even two that were in the fourth. It didn't take him much effort to kill them since his body strength alone had already far surpassed their level.

With his superior body strength and recovered qi, it was just a simple matter to deal with these beasts that were three and four stages below the seniors he had killed less than two hours ago.

He took the bag Lu Wenjie had given him, crafted from the wolves' fur and resistant to the fiery energy within their fangs. Then he began extracting the fangs, noticing the glowing lines along them that radiated intense heat.

After counting the quantity he found out that he had already achieved more than half the objective since he had extracted twenty-four fangs and they only needed to get thirty.

Deciding to trust in sister Qinglan and Lu Wenjie's performance, he started returning to the agreed place.