Awakened: The Spirit King!

The steeds of the two young men marched ahead. They went out of the city and into the rough paths infested with bandits, leaving the bright land behind and entering roads with no street lamps.

Above them was the moon that hung in the sky like a hook, and torturing their ears were mournful cries of crows that had made the roads between the two cities their home.

In order to stop listening to their caw-caw and jack-jack shit talk, the two brothers utilized the help of noise-canceling talismans.

They stepped on a narrow path covered with snow. It was a shortcut, transversing which would allow the two brothers to reach their destination in less than an hour. To the sides of this road were snow-covered trees vacant of any sign of life, and a little further were mountains big and small.

Just as they reached the center of the dark and deserted road, Xie Ye's ears perked up. His five senses were better than humans since birth, as he was not a mere mortal. He picked up the noise of something cutting through the air while his young master didn't even realize it. The noise got louder and louder, meaning whatever it was, it was coming towards them.

He raised his head and revealed eyes devoid of any light.

As if someone had dipped the darkest of ink in them, they were entirely black.

In their darkness appeared the image of a sharp arrow traveling through the air and heading for Xie Yang's heart.

"Cheap tricks." Xie Ye waved his hand, and an instant later, a bolt of black lightning burst out of his sleeve and crashed head-on with the arrow that came out of a snowy thicket.

The collision between the two resulted in the arrow turning to dust and the black lightning dissipating.

"What?!" He, who sneaked attacked them, exclaimed in shock. His shock died down, and he remarked, "Lucky bastard, you're the first one to notice and counter that. The travelers who took this path before you all died facing it and ended up in hell."

Killing strangers wasn't something to boast about, but the voice of the man was full of pride, and after it sounded out from the cold darkness and reached Xie Yang and Xie Ye, many men charged their way out of the thickets, and some came out of the thick layers of snow on the ground and surrounded them. This place was so cold that a man would freeze to death without using spiritual energy to keep their body warm.

These people obviously were roadside bandits who had gained some success in cultivation and started committing evil acts.

The two brothers stopped their horses from running wild.

Xie Yang was alert when they suddenly appeared, but as he stared at them, his expression eased.

They were cultivators, and there were dozens of them, but except for the leader holding a spiritual weapon shaped like a bow, the rest were below level 10 and not a threat to him or his stepbrother.

"Young master, don't worry about these bandits. Leave them to me. I will take care of them all." Xie Ye was confident that he could talk them all out after he used a technique to determine their cultivation level.

"How unlucky must one be to go out of the house to make a living, only to land in such an adverse situation." Xie Yang sighed for the sake of the bandits.

While pointing his spiritual bow at them, the bandit leader came closer to them.

"If you obediently hand it all over to us, we will let you go without any harm. You won't fare any worse than losing your wealth. But if you don't, my boys will make a meal out of you!"

Xie Yang saw Xie Ye's eyes twitching after hearing the roadside bandit's words, and he smiled arrogantly before raising his chin high with unrivaled shamelessness and saying, "You don't get it, do you? The one in trouble isn't us but you lots."

Right there and then, a guy spat on the floor.

His heart was full of disdain for Xie Yang.

"What can a pretty face and his single dog do against the eighteen of us? Nothing! We outnumber you by more than a dozen! Two hands can't win against four. Four hands can't do shit against 36."

"Don't bullshit anymore and hand everything of value to us. Our patience is limited. If we run out of it, you will not see another sunrise."

The bandits barked at them like mad dogs.

If only they knew that Xie Ye had used a casual move to turn to dust the spiritual bow of their lord monkey that was capable of assassinating even a level 20 cultivator, they would have long tucked their tails between their legs and made a run for it.

However, it was already too late as Xie Ye was going to explode and go on a rampage!

"You're the ones who are going to end up with broken bones when we finish dealing with you."

Xie Yang added fuel to the fire with a smile.

His words caused A vein to jump on Black Monkey's face.

"Boys, group up and take care of these bastards!"

Several of the bandits surrounding their steeds lunged at them. Most of them brought their swords down towards Xie Ye, and some dared make Xie Yang the target of their strikes.

Someone pointing their weapons at his young master was a big no-no for Xie Ye.

A thin line appeared between his eyebrows.

A few nearby trees shuddered and snapped as the ruthless and murderous desires inside him exploded, and the manifestation of his killing intent blasted out of his body in the shape of huge red waves, each of which flowed towards the attackers with a momentum that could crumble mountains and turn the tides of a sea.

Even before the appearance of Xie Ye's killing intent, the trees have crumbled apart, so after it manifested in the real world, how could mere low-level cultivators remain standing and full of vigor?

The outcome was just as Xie Yang expected.

The killing intent blasted them all into the air.

Snow, shards of ice, pieces of cold wooden branches, and people cascaded down the air in a chaotic mess.

The lucky ones fell on the ground and only lost most of their lifespan and grew old in the blink of an eye, while the unlucky ones fell on icy cold thickets, having their limbs, abdomen, chest, and forehead pierced by bone-chilling this and that, and dying a painful death.

Black Monkey's eyes widened in horror when he saw how Xie Ye defeated all his men with one effortless move.

He raised his head and looked at Xie Ye, as did many other men.

They saw his eyes so red that they looked like blood.

There was no mercy in those red eyes.

They held indifference and a massive desire to commit a massacre.

What a scene it was; a bloodthirsty man was sitting on a brown horse with a flaming red tail. Beside him was a black as night horse on which sat a young man with confidence. Around the two steeds were men with expressions of horror and fear on their faces as if they were not looking at a stiff-faced man in his twenties but the depth of the abyss.

Snow fell from the sky, and blood spurted out of the men impaled on sharp branches as the crows left their homes in fear and sang a mournful song while flying through the sky.

'These eyes can not belong to a human! They are too demonic!'

'What bad luck!'

'I must escape, or my soul will be for this demon taking.'

Black Monkey didn't give a damn about his underlings and ran and used the natural terrain as his cover and let the snow cover his track.

However, even after running for a couple of minutes, he failed to escape the murderous intent of Xie Ye.

An enormous amount of killing intent slammed into Black Monkey, blasting him a hundred meters away and entrenching him into a mountain's wall.

Xie Ye gave him no time to react at all as he proceeded by pressing his killing intent down on him.

His killing intent ate away at Black Monkey's lifespan while putting such immense pressure on his mortal flesh that he started bleeding from all his seven orifices.

His vision turned blurry, and his mind dazed.

Reflected in his eyes was Xie Ye sitting on his steed, which was a thousand meters away!

Xie Ye was killing him from so, so afar!

They have never seen such a thing!

Black Monkey, too has never experienced overwhelming power.

A huge, fifty meter wide crack appeared in the mountain at the center of which was Black Monkey, whose body exploded into a mess of unspeakable shit the next moment.

The blood that rose after his body exploded painted the air a dim crimson for only a moment, for the cold snow cascading down the sky cleared it.

It has already started snowing.