Mystical Journey

“So that’s your Spiritual Net Imprint!?” Boss was furious and frantic, but he knew that they could no longer catch up, so he roared at Second Brother angrily.

Second Brother’s gaze was dark and cold as he shook his head.

“When it comes to head-on conflict, I’m no match for you, but when it comes to tracking someone down and killing them, that’s still my forte. Come with me!”

He reached out his hand, and there was a white sphere in the middle of his palm, a small red dot lighting up on it slowly.

“It’s not that easy to get away once you’ve been hit by my Spiritual Net Imprint!”

“Oh? You can do that?” Boss instantly turned from rage to joy.

“That way! Come!” Second Brother glanced at it, and immediately discovered Garen’s location. His body rushed out rapidly, the soles of his shoes suddenly spraying out some levitational propelling force which sent him flying into the distant sky.

Boss followed behind him closely as well.

“Where’s that punk gone?!” he said angrily. “If I get my hands on him, I’ll tear him into pieces and feed him to the dogs!”

“What’s the rush?” There was a cold cruelty in Second Brother’s eyes. “That kid is too fast, we might not be able to catch up to him even if we chase him individually, and his martial arts realm is at the Water Mirror level, so we can’t stop him in terms of technique either. All we can do is watch him slowly, and wait for him to let down his guard, then we strike together and kill him for real! We can’t give him another chance to slip away!”

“He’s just a Level Five, how dare he try to steal what’s practically already ours!” said Boss seethingly. “What are those wings on him?”

“I think they’re a sort of gene ability, he must have gotten some sort of special gene integrated into him. If he can have the speed of Second Brother-Moons like us even though he’s only Level Five, it must be no average gene!” deduced Second Brother. “I’m not fast enough, once we get that wing gene and distill it, I’m taking it!”

“If he can cultivate the Demon’s Blade, his Vitality must be way higher than others, which means he either has a gene strengthening liquid or some special training method. After we get his corpse and distill the strengthening liquid out of it, I call dibs on that.” Boss was no pushover either, and he could deduce what abilities his opponent had even though they just clashed for an instant.

“We’ll share the secret scroll, half each.”

“No problem!”

The two of them had started dividing up Garen’s things before they even caught him, which showed just how confident they were.

One after the other, the two black shadows hurriedly chased after Garen.

*******************

Whoosh!

A red thread fell from the sky, and landed heavily on a small hill on the ground.

With a large bang, Garen left a huge human-shaped crater in the ground. He crawled out of the crater with difficulty, his body covered in blood, and his lips purple. His whole body was shaking non-stop.

“Thank goodness I didn’t bring Little One and Little Two along.” He had not thought that Boss and Second Brother’s tactics would be so terrifying either, compared to the likes of March and Yiling, be it their Snowstorm Palm or the later Spiritual Net Imprint, both were particularly effective against his speed.

The Snowstorm Palm was shockingly fast, each palm shooting out like a flash of lightning. It surpassed his multiplied speed and landed directly on his back. He could not avoid it at all, and had no choice but to take it.

Thankfully, it seemed that Boss could not use it consecutively, and needed some time to catch his breath, or else Garen would not have ended up well.

And the Spiritual Net Imprint was even worse, if he did not have the Giant Blue Wolf to help him create that huge wave of momentum, he would have been in real serious trouble.

Garen looked at the Blue Wolf that darted out closely behind him. There was already a large patch of white frost on the side of the Giant Blue Wolf’s body, and the cold was so intense that even Garen could feel it in his bones.

He reached his hand out and touched the Blue Wolf’s white frost injury.

Woo…

The Giant Wolf whined a few times, its expression painful.

“If it hadn’t been modified by the Distorted Seed, making it highly resistant to cold, it probably would not have lasted long at all.” Garen shook his head. The Giant Blue Wolf was beyond repair, that cold was at least Level Twelve or more, and it was corroding away at the wolf’s internal organs as well as its life force. This cold was extremely powerful, and it seemed to be slightly domineering, chasing away all of the other traces of warmth. It even spread automatically.

No matter how strong its resistance to cold was, the Blue Wolf was still a living creature, and it required heat to move. At this rate, within ten minutes, the whole Blue Wolf would turn completely into an ice sculpture, and then the slightest touch would reduce it to shards of ice.

“It’s too bad!”

Garen let out a breath, wiping the blood from the corner of his mouth as he began to check his body.

He had also been gravely injured, but contrary to his expectations, he did not feel particularly unwell even as they flew, as though there was a force in his body that kept resisting the invading cold energy. Add that to his powerful Vitality, and he had actually managed to suppress the cold energy in his body, rendering it immobile.

“I’ll check as we go!”

Something occurred to Garen, and he used his Energy Machine Imprint to issue an order. With a wave of his hand, several black wolves instantly appeared beside him. He rode on one, and had another tow the Giant Blue Wolf, that was beginning to grow slower and slower.

The whole entourage ran into the distant forest. They could not go straight back to the camp, or else it would be bad if those two caught up.

Garen sent Little One and Little Two a message as he rode on the wolf’s back.

“I need to settle some matters outside, you two go back to Headquarters and rest. I’ll call you when I need you to do anything for me.” Garen’s voice was very calm, as though he was not hurt at all.

“Yes, Master.” On the other end, Little One also just assumed that Garen was going into seclusion for a bit, and he did not read any more into it. “Oh, right, do you need some of the food and drink I have here, Master?”

“There’s no need, I have enough here, you just have to go to Planet Naga and help Bainster handle things there. I’ll be back in about a month, and even if I don’t go back, I’ll drop you a message. If it’s anything more important than that, wait for me to get back!” said Garen.

“Understood,” replied Little One decisively.

Cutting off the connection, Garen could not help but throw up another mouthful of blood.

Sitting on the wolf’s back, he quickly turned his gaze inward, and that was when he realized that the terrifying cold energy from the Snowstorm Palm was constantly fighting against another overbearing power inside his body.

That power was actually the Willpower of the Seventh Divine Wind General that had been lying dormant in his body the whole time.

Both forces were essentially half-pure forms of energy gathered and mobilized by Willpower, they were both a branch of Willpower, but with different elements and attributes.

The Snowstorm Palm had its roots in the Scarlet Snow Technique, mobilizing and combining with a specific intense and violent energy. The resulting force was unnaturally overpowering, and had an extreme element of repulsion, forbidding any other power to stay inside its territory.

And the Seventh Divine Wind General’s Willpower was also excessively over-domineering. After all, it was Inherited-Level power, even though there was only a little remnant left, it was still more than enough to deal with the Snowstorm Palm.

The two of them faced off against each other, resulting in an extreme reaction of repulsion that seriously damaged Garen’s internal organs.

Crack…

Garen reached out his hands, and saw that they were covered with a thick layer of white frost. The power of the Snowstorm Palm had enveloped his arms, and was rapidly clashing against the power of the Divine Wind General in his torso.

Lowering his head, Garen could see that at the place where his arms joined his shoulders, the link between his torso and his arms, there were two terrifying powers, one blue and one black, engaged in a mad struggle.

The blue Snowstorm Palm power was rapidly being scattered, but the power of the Divine Wind General had also been consumed slightly.

The blue Snowstorm Palm seemed reluctant to die just like that, so it gathered into a white-blue patch at the last moment. This rushed straight at the black power of the Divine Wind General.

Hiss!!

There was a sound like that of acid corrosion.

All the veins in Garen’s body popped abruptly, and in that final instantaneous clash, his internal organs were given a giant jolt, causing them all to bleed profusely at the same time. His expression instantly turned extremely hard to look at, deathly pale without a single trace of blood.

Devour!

Garen stretched out his hand, and a blue mouth appeared on his palm. It was filled with sharp teeth, and it sprayed out many blue silk threads, biting down on the Giant Blue Wolf beside him tightly as it began to devour it.

He slowly began to hear the hiss of chewing and devouring sounds.

The many blue silk threads devoured all the parts of the Blue Wolf’s body that had yet to be overtaken by the Snowstorm Palm, and converted it into waves of healing energy to heal Garen’s internal injuries.

“It’s not enough!” Garen took out the healing medicine used for repair in the case of transplants gone awry, tossed his head back, and drank it all. This was the standard medicine issued by the sects for injuries, and its effect was relatively decent.

Only then did the internal bleeding slowly fall somewhat under control.

“I need to deal with the excess blood!”

He needed to handle the blood that had pooled up in his body, or else it would be a big problem if that blood solidified in his body as well. Normally, his body could remove it of its own accord, but it would be troublesome if there was too much of it.

“Blood Control!” The Blood Eagle’s Blood Control ability began to take effect slowly. It had a sort of force field effect, and required time to react. Compared to how he could just bulldoze over lower-level opponents regardless of number, it could not do much at all when faced with powerhouses that were significantly stronger than him.

After slowly getting rid of the excess blood, Garen took out another vial of medicine that would replenish blood quickly. The small black vial was filled to the brim, but he opened the cover and just poured it into his mouth.

“Finally, that should do it.” He heaved a fierce sigh of relief.

The scenery on each side passed by him rapidly, he was still moving at a very high speed. He did not know where he was anymore.

Ba-thump!

Suddenly, there was a sound like a heartbeat from Garen’s arms.

He was taken aback, and looked down at his arms.

There were two faint bulges on his arm, each of them the size of an egg. The surfaces glowed, as though they could explode at any time.

“This is–?!” Garen’s expression changed suddenly.

Pfft!

The two bulges exploded at the same time, spraying out a torrent of blood. The droplets of the blood had a strange power that instantly turned them into countless shards of blood ice, and these went shooting off in all directions.

Ding ding ding…

The blood shards shot Garen full of holes, and even the black wolf he was riding on gave a sob. The exploding blood ice shards had actually pierced straight through its body, and it abruptly fell to its knees in the middle of its high-speed run. With a bam, the wolf and its rider were both thrown forward, falling onto the ground hard.

“This is the second stage of the Snowstorm Palm!” Garen instantly reacted, the force behind that spray of blood ice just now was precisely the part of the Snowstorm Palm that had been better hidden.

If the Divine Wind General had not first shaved off most of the palm power in his arms, the second stage of transformation that led to the explosion would probably have triggered all of the palm power, and it would have been strong enough to completely blow him up!

It did not matter how strong his Vitality was, no wonder even Boss could not use this power consecutively!

It might seem at first glance that Garen was badly hurt by this explosion, but they were actually all only flesh wounds. He turned around and got up, releasing yet another black wolf, and riding it away at full speed. He did not dare to waste even a second.

This was his first time crossing swords with a Resonance Level Energy Machinist, and a peak-level Resonance powerhouse from the Scarlet Snow Sect at that. The power of the Scarlet Snow Sect was far more significant that what he faced back in the Blackboard Region, the Black Flood Party was only a small faction in Blackboard, whereas the Scarlet Snow Sect was a sect on one of the three main e/m planets, Planet Naga. Although it was not a big or even a medium-sized sect on Naga, and could only be considered a lesser sect, it was still powerful enough to control an entire planet in other places. With the power of the Three Great Elders and the Guardian, even on the Mother Planet, it could have taken over at least a continent.

It was incomparably stronger than the Black Flood Party.

That was why the Resonance-level powerhouses from the Scarlet Snow Sect were also infinitely more powerful than those from Black Flood.

Once he compared them like that, Garen could feel the clear distance between the two.

“The secret scroll…” Garen reached for the thing in his pocket. From that fragment of a memory just now, he had already sensed that this secret scroll had the innate ability to store energy and information.

The reason things like secret scrolls could increase one’s chance of reaching Inherited Level was because there were traces of the Inherited-level Origin Power recorded onto the scroll itself.

Once they cultivated the secret method on the secret scroll, they could rapidly absorb some of the Inherited Level’s Origin Power.

The Origin Power was something that Inherited-level powerhouses held at their very core, and it was more important to them than life itself. Everyone’s Origin was extremely limited, and it was even harder to place your Origin on an item so that it could be transferred to another. 90% of that power would be wasted, and only a wisp would actually stick.

That was why secret scrolls were only ever created when an Inherited-level powerhouse was on their deathbed, and wanted to leave a glimmer of hope for their descendants to reach the same level.

As a result, the secret scrolls were even rarer and harder to come by. And every faction treated them as a precious and crucial treasure.

The fact that a family as small as Glory’s had one, proved that one of her ancestors had been an Inherited-level powerhouse, and they had once been glorious as well.

“Those two I fought just now would surely be able to discover my identity, and the way back is not safe either. The best option would be to hide somewhere and absorb the secret scroll completely, I can only go back after destroying the body, hiding my tracks, and healing my wounds.”

Garen decided inwardly. Now that he was a Three-Hearted disciple, he was the Second Elder’s disciple in name, but in reality he had not even passed the test yet. He needed to past the mission test, and make a trip to the void battle before he could officially meet the Elder, and truly become a Three-Hearted Disciple.

And it just so happened that he needed a more powerful secret method to reach the void battle.

The contents of this secret scroll were exactly what he needed to plug the gap.

From the instant fragment of memory back then, Garen already knew that the secret scroll contained information about a secret method known as the Magic Light Fist. It was the last secret method left behind by a dying Inherited-Level powerhouse, and it was surely that powerhouse’s most powerful technique, so its strength was surely formidable.

If he could learn this secret method and then absorb a hint of that Inherited-Level Origin Power, he might be able to achieve an even stronger upgrade. As soon as Garen made the decision in his heart, he began to look for a place where he could hide and train.