Hey... should we run too

“Stop standing around! Get over here and repair the formation!” someone shouted, breaking the oppressive silence.

In an instant, more than a dozen people joined forces, restoring the crumbling formation to roughly seventy or eighty percent of its original strength.

But who could have expected the Blood Corpse King to use the same trick again?

Carrying enough terrifying weight to crush a mountain, it slammed heavily into the curtain of light.

“Crack—!”

A sharp sound rang out.

The formation’s curtain of light, which dozens of experts had only just repaired through their combined efforts, instantly filled with spiderweb-like cracks. This time, there was no possibility of repairing it.

Then, as expected, the formation could no longer withstand the burden and shattered with a thunderous boom.

“Pfft—!”

In that instant, every cultivator maintaining the formation suffered a devastating backlash. They all spat out mouthfuls of blood, their faces turning as pale as paper.

The nauseating stench of blood surged in without obstruction, sweeping over them like a flood breaking through a dam.

“It’s over…”

That was the only thought left in most people’s minds.

Despair spread through everyone’s hearts like a plague.

Elder Han’s legs went weak, and he collapsed onto the ground. The face that had once been arrogant and overbearing was now deathly pale.

His lips trembled as he stared at the ten-zhang-tall blood corpse slowly emerging from the blood mist. The light in his eyes gradually faded.

That was a monster at the peak of the mid-stage Void Refinement realm!

Forget that they were all injured now—even at their full strength, all of them combined would not be enough to withstand a single slap from it.

Su Ji stood where he was, studying the blood corpse with great interest.

Tsk.

The craftsmanship was a little rough.

Its left and right legs were clearly different models. Why was it limping when it walked? Wouldn’t anyone with obsessive-compulsive disorder drop dead on the spot after seeing that?

“P-Predecessor…”

Wang Ping came crawling over to Su Ji, his voice trembling like a sieve.

“W-We should run too, shouldn’t we?”

Su Ji glanced at him.

“Run?”

“Where exactly do you plan to run?”

At some point, the surging blood mist had completely surrounded the reef. Densely packed monsters poked their heads out from within it, pairs of eyes burning with ghostly fire as they greedily watched the trapped “food.”

“Roar—!!”

The blood corpse threw its head back and let out a furious roar. With a vicious swing of its chain, the bronze giant coffin once again hurtled toward the densest cluster of people, tearing through the air with a deafening whistle.

“Spread out!”

Elder Mo Yun of the Flowing Cloud Sect was the first to react. He shouted sharply and retreated at full speed.

The other cultivators also came to their senses and scattered like frightened birds and beasts.

Boom!

The giant coffin crashed to the ground, and the entire reef shook violently. The impact smashed a bottomless pit into the earth. Several unlucky cultivators standing nearby were blasted into clouds of blood before they even had time to scream.

“Beast! I’ll fight you to the death!”

Seeing that escape was impossible, Elder Han instead flew into a rage.

With a roar, frigid energy erupted from his body. He transformed into a streak of icy-blue light and charged directly at the blood corpse.

“Profound Ice Spikes!”

Countless ice spikes condensed from extremely cold spiritual energy shot toward the blood corpse in a vast, overwhelming barrage.

However…

The blood corpse merely raised an arm at its leisure. That arm, pieced together from countless chunks of corpses, blocked every attack head-on.

Clang, clang, clang!

The ice spikes struck its body as though they had hit the hardest darksteel. They shattered one after another without leaving even a white mark.

“H-How is this possible?!”

Elder Han’s eyes nearly bulged from their sockets.

His Profound Ice Spikes could easily pierce the protective spiritual energy of cultivators in the same realm. Yet they could not even break through this monster’s defenses?

The blood corpse seemed to have been angered by the tickle-like attack.

The two ghost flames in its empty eye sockets suddenly flared.

It opened its bloody maw, and an aura of blood-sha fiend energy, dense to the extreme, blasted out like a cannonball.

Elder Han’s expression changed drastically. It was too late to dodge, so he hurriedly raised several ice shields before him.

But the seemingly indestructible ice shields melted and were pierced through in an instant before the blood-sha energy, as fragile as paper.

“Ah—!”

Elder Han let out a miserable shriek as his entire body was blasted backward. A hole had been punched straight through his chest, leaving his flesh mangled and exposing even his writhing internal organs.

He struggled a few times before falling completely silent.

A powerful expert who had reached the threshold of the Void Refinement realm had just… died?

The cultivators in the camp were plunged into utter despair.

Even Elder Han had been killed in a single exchange. If they charged forward, how would that be any different from throwing themselves onto a chopping block?

Elder Mo Yun’s expression had also become extremely grim.

The hand gripping his sword bulged with veins, yet he still did not dare step forward.

Reason told him that charging in meant certain death.

But with the blood corpse slowly approaching before his eyes, how could he simply sit there and wait to die?

It was in this deathly silence that a cold female voice suddenly rang out from every direction, clearly reaching the ears of every person present.

“What a bunch of useless trash.”

“Can’t you make a little more noise?”

That voice!

It was the demoness on the altar!

Elder Mo Yun abruptly raised his head. His eyes were bloodshot as he roared, “You lunatic! What exactly are you trying to do?!”

“What am I trying to do?”

The voice gave a light laugh, filled with lofty contempt.

“Can’t you tell?”

“I’m fishing.”

“Only…”

“You…”

“are the bait I’ve scattered.”

“The fish I’m waiting for is worth far more than you.”

“I wonder which fellow cultivator will be foolish enough to meddle in my business?”

As her voice faded, the blood corpse seemed to have received some kind of command and stopped advancing.

It merely stood there, coldly watching the trembling “fish bait” with its eyes of burning ghost fire.

It did not kill them.

But neither did it allow them to leave.

It simply kept them dangling.

From beginning to end, their desperate struggles had been nothing but a ridiculous performance in her eyes.

They had never been her true target!

Even Su Ji found himself reluctant to say anything.

Judging from all the clues and logic…

Su Ji felt that she was trying to slay an “immortal.”

A battle of this level was honestly beyond his capabilities.

“Predecessor…” Wang Ping’s face looked even worse than if he were crying. “W-What does that demoness mean by ‘the big fish’?”

“Exactly what it sounds like.”

Su Ji spread his hands. “It means we’re hostages now. The kidnappers are waiting for our family to bring the ransom. Only, this kidnapper is picky—they’ll accept nothing less than an ‘immortal’-level ransom.”

Wang Ping: “…”

He understood.

And then he felt even more desperate.

An immortal?

Would an existence from the legends really come to the aid of a bunch of insignificant shrimp like them?