After all, the lot of them was slowing us heavily and dragging us down. At this rate, never mind completing the mission, we were all going to die. Or at least the three would die, and the rest of us would be forced to escape.

That was a scenario I wanted to avoid, if possible. Against a sect the size and strength of Black Venom Cult, I would prefer to retain the element of surprise. I wanted to ambush them while they were off-guard, and wipe them out once and for all.

Now you probably were wondering why I was so intent on their deaths. What exactly did Black Venom Cult do to deserve such hatred and the punishment of extermination? You would think that I, being a member of Nine-Tailed Fox Sect, which itself had been on the verge of annihilation, would be more sympathetic to them.

What exactly did they do to earn such a grudge to the point where the authorities would post a request for their extermination? All they did was practice poison techniques, right? Where was the harm in that?

Honestly, I couldn"t care less if they practiced poison techniques. I had nothing against poison-type martial arts, mostly because I was immune to them. That wasn"t the real issue, however. If they merely had been practicing poison techniques by themselves and left the rest of the world alone, killing only those stupid enough to bother them, I wouldn"t have cared if they existed or not.

The problem was that the Black Venom Cult had been raiding villages and towns, such as Duchun Village, kidnapping people and victims to test their newly invented poisons on. It was almost as if they were trying to develop stronger bioweapons or more virulent plagues, engaging in a race of biological warfare and competing to see whose poisons killed the fastest, or which toxins had no antidotes or something along the lines of that.

h.e.l.l, at least three villages had been wiped out because the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds thought it would be a good idea to spread a contagious poison. The plague had spread to the entire village within a couple of days, killing every human and livestock. The Imperial Guard had to intervene and quarantine the villages, transporting the survivors to the Center for Contagious Diseases and whatever, where the most skilled healers worked round the clock to find a cure.

Fortunately, it seemed that they succeeded, so the Black Venom Cult couldn"t boast that they had developed an incurable toxin. Yet.

In any case, the f.u.c.kers ran away and escaped into the Toxic Marshes before the Imperial Guard could exact vengeance upon their sorry hides for the afflicted villagers. With how treacherous the terrain and how deadly the environment was, the Imperial Guard couldn"t simply march into Sen Lin Forest and root out the Black Venom Cult. At least not without sustaining a tremendous number of casualties. That was why they were reaching out to martial artists with familiarity in the forest, or best of all, in the Toxic Marshes, to undertake the mission.

Good thing we had Lian Rou on our side then.

"That should do it," the inner sect disciple said as she wrapped the gauzes around the trio"s wounds and stood back to admire her handiwork. "That should stave off the poison. Give it a few days, and your own bodies will be able to purge the venom. The Bog Bugs" venom are pretty weak, so they won"t kill you."

"What doesn"t kill you makes you stronger," I added in an attempt to encourage them, but inwardly I wondered if that adage was applicable to them. The trio seemed like the type of stubborn idiots who refused to learn their lessons.

Tong Xue chose to be blunt. "So what will you guys do?" he asked frankly. "Are you going to abandon the mission and return to the academy?"

"Why would we do that?" Zi Sha demanded. "We need the credits to pa.s.s. We can"t just give up halfway!"

"I thought you said you"ll definitely fail the mission?" I pointed out, not unreasonably. "What makes you think you"ll get the credits you need?"

"None of your business!" Zi Sha snapped. I felt a headache pounding at my temples. This b.a.s.t.a.r.d was really going to kill himself.

"Considering that we are on your team for this mission, it is our business," Lian Rou said firmly.

"Yeah," Tong Xue agreed.

"No one asked you to join our team," Jiu Bu Liao retorted ungratefully, completely forgetting that Lian Rou and I had just saved their lives.

"No one forced you to take this mission either," I responded evenly.

"We don"t have a choice," Yi Ding Si protested, being the most reasonable of the trio. "If we didn"t take this mission, we would have flunked out of the academy."

"Then maybe you should cooperate with us if you want to stay in the academy and get the credits you need," I suggested dryly.

"Oh, shut up! We don"t need your help!" Zi Sha yelled, rising to his feet and stomping off. "We can do this on our own!"

Just like how you did for the rest of your missions? No wonder you didn"t earn the credits you needed to pa.s.s…

"I"m sick of your arrogant and condescending att.i.tude!" Jiu Bu Liao added, incensed. Oh wow, she was completely oblivious to her own hypocrisy. "Acting as if you"re better than us because you have some experience! So what if you"ve completed a few missions and gotten all the credits you need? You were just lucky!"

This girl really couldn"t be saved…

As I shook my head, Jiu Bu Liao didn"t wait for our responses and stomped off as well, following Zi Sha.

"Are they serious?" Tong Xue questioned, his jaw hanging from shock.

"I see now why they failed all their missions so far and don"t have enough credits." Lian Rou sighed heavily and shook her head. "With an att.i.tude like that, and refusing to learn their lesson, it"s a miracle they were able to return alive from their failed missions." She then frowned. "They"re not going to survive on their own in the Toxic Marshes."

"I wouldn"t worry about them if I were you," I said bitterly. "As you pointed out, they have survived and returned alive from their failed missions so far. Maybe it won"t be any be different this time. They will probably still take the credit even if we complete the mission in their stead, though, and that"s what p.i.s.ses me off the most."

"What about you?" Tong Xue asked as he turned to Yi Ding Si, realizing that the last guy of the trio was still sticking around.

"Uh…I"ll follow you guys." Yi Ding Si glanced nervously in the direction where his erstwhile companions had disappeared to, unconsciously rubbing the gauzes that Lian Rou had bandaged around his arms. "Honestly, I think you"re more reliable than Zi Sha and Jiu Bu Liao."

Wow. I was amazed. So there was one smart guy out of this bunch. Good – unlike his name, if Yi Ding Si chose to stick with us, he might avoid a certain death after all.

"You won"t regret this," I promised. Yi Ding Si scratched his head and laughed sheepishly. For some reason, he reminded me of myself.

"We should follow those two." Lian Rou rose to her feet after packing up her first aid kit and storing it in her spatial device. "I"m worried about them. I know they"re pretty irritating, but it"s still not right to leave them on their own. We can"t just let our fellow schoolmates die."

Tong Xue and I exchanged reluctant glances, but unlike what edgelord readers thought, Lian Rou was right. No matter what, we had a responsibility to our schoolmates. We couldn"t just let them wander off on their own and leave them to die. That didn"t mean we should just let their insults go either, but I guess forcing them to abandon the mission, return to the academy and flunk out of school was enough of a punishment.

Not everything was about killing, after all. If people in reality were that petty, then murder would happen on a daily basis. And before you say it happens in a daily basis in good ol" America, let"s just say that murder is designated as a crime for a good reason, and I pray that you don"t ever experience being a murder victim over the most trivial or petty of reasons.

So the four of us quickly moved in the direction where the two of them disappeared into. However, after walking deeper for half an hour, we saw no sign of them at all. It was as if both of them had disappeared into the undergrowth.

"Where did they go?" Tong Xue asked in disbelief, looking around. "They couldn"t have gone very far. How did they just disappear?"

"Good question." I was aware, on the edge of my peripheral vision, of Song Ting Yu and her bodyguards silently trailing us. They thought they were being stealthy, but both Tong Xue and I could see their movements as plain as day. It was just too bad that we couldn"t say the same about Zi Sha and Jiu Bu Liao.

It would be highly ironic if the two of them had better stealth skills than Song Ting Yu and her supposedly professional entourage.

On the other hand, given their record, I wouldn"t be surprised if the two of them fell into a river and got washed out of the Toxic Marshes somewhere, and ended up beaching on the relatively safe lands next to a village or something. And, after picking themselves up, they would trudge back to the acadermy and reported that they failed their mission. Like they did for all their other missions so far. I wouldn"t be surprised if they decided to report the rest of the team as missing in action or killed in action, only to be humiliated when we returned to announce our accomplishment of the mission.

In that way, Yi Ding Si made the right choice to stick with us.

"According to their tracks, they went that way, but I don"t see how they could have gone so far ahead so quickly."

Lian Rou was frowning as she studied the footsteps and marks the duo left behind as they bashed through the Toxic Marshes. She peered ahead cautiously, slowly splitting apart a couple of huge ferns to get a clearer view.

Then she pulled back and shook her head. "Not here. Maybe this way then."

Us three guys obediently hung behind and followed her lead. As a native, Lian Rou"s knowledge of the Toxic Marshes was reliable, and we could trust her to guide us through its treacherous grounds. She was also putting her knowledge and experience to good use, seeking out traces of the wayward pair who had recklessly forged ahead of us.

I was beginning to get a bad feeling about all this.

Lian Rou found another track where she recognized their footsteps, and she followed it with controlled excitement, her eyes widening happily as she drank the view in. She gestured for us to stay close as she took a careful step.

Then I raised my hand to stop all of us.

"Everyone, hold your positions!" I hissed in a hushed tone. My three teammates stared at me in surprise, but wisely complied.

"What is it?" Lian Rou whispered.

"People. There"s someone ahead of us."

"The stalkers you mentioned earlier?" Yi Ding Si inquired nervously. I shook my head.

"No, not the people from earlier. A new group. And they don"t seem friendly." I could sense their qi, and there was something…sickening about their presences, an ominous aura that curdled my stomach and making me feel ill.

I wouldn"t be surprised if this group was a bunch of martial artists from the Black Venom Cult. They were probably the only other people out here in the Toxic Marshes in force.

Tong Xue nodded after a few moments of craning his head and spreading out his senses. "I detect them too. There"s quite a lot of them. Twelve…maybe thirteen."

"That"s what I counted too," I agreed. "But I could only pick up twelve of them."

"What should we do?" Lian Rou asked anxiously. "Pull back?"

I shook my head. "It doesn"t seem like they have noticed us yet," I told her carefully. "We don"t want to make any sudden movements and draw their attention to us."

"Good choice," Tong Xue praised me. "They seem to be at quite a high level. We"ve to be cautious when moving around. I suggest we wait here until they move away. They seem to be on the move anyway, so it shouldn"t take too long."

Fortunately for us, Song Ting Yu and her bodyguards were wise enough to stop and hold position as well when they noticed us coming to a halt. They tried to conceal their presences, taking cover behind trees and such, but they were still pretty visible to Tong Xue. As for me, even if I couldn"t see them, I could sense their qi signatures, which were as bright as day in a forest crawling with dark, gloomy qi presences from venomous creatures.

The four members of my group crouched down and did our best not to move. Tong Xue was right – we didn"t have to wait long. Scarcely did ten minutes pa.s.s when the new group ahead of us disappeared.

"They"re gone," I announced.

"That"s what I see too," Tong Xue confirmed when I glanced at him. Lian Rou and Yi Ding Si breathed sighs of relief, and stood up.

"Shall we proceed then?" Lian Rou asked. Then something occurred to her. "Those two…they couldn"t possibly have encountered the group from just now, could they?"

"…"

Tong Xue, Yi Ding Si and I glanced at each other silently, but we offered no response. Probably because we didn"t dare to imagine the answer.
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Lian Rou swallowed, and then pushed forward without another word. She continued to look out for the traces and tracks left behind by the duo, and we moved deeper into the Toxic Marshes. Tong Xue and I kept a look out, just in case the group appeared again, but for now it seemed we were safe.

"Oh no."

"What is it?" Tong Xue tensed at Lian Rou"s sudden outburst. She had been inspecting a patch of soil, and she looked up at us when we closed in on her.

"Their tracks stopped here."

"You mean they disappeared?" Yi Ding Si asked incredulously.

"According to their tracks, I guess you can say that. But more likely…" Lian Rou continued to scrutinize the marks and stuff left behind. Honestly, I had no idea what she was looking for, and I couldn"t tell apart a track or mark from the natural holes and gapes left behind by the foliage, but Lian Rou seemed to know what she was searching for. "…they were captured." She stopped as her fingers rested on a tree, tracing something I couldn"t see, even when I magnified the vision on my gla.s.ses. The bark looked like…bark.

"Captured?" Tong Xue echoed. "By whom?" then it hit him. "By the group from earlier?"

"Judging from the tracks left behind, yes." Lian Rou nodded as she continued tracing the patterns on the bark. "There are signs of a struggle. From what I can deduce, Zi Sha and Jiu Bu Liao were attacked, and then they were taken away."

"Ugh…" I couldn"t help but groan. Those two were a lot more trouble than they were worth. Blundering into the enemy like that…

"We got to save them!" Yi Ding Si cried.

"No s.h.i.t," Tong Xue muttered. "The question is…how? We"re outnumbered at least three to one. Two to one, if we include Zi Sha and Jiu Bu Liao, but my money is on those two being helpless and unable to fight right now."

He probably didn"t think Yi Ding Si would be of any help in combat, but at least he was tactful to refrain from mentioning that.

"We need more information on the enemy," I added heavily. Tong Xue grinned at that. It was the code that his former sect, Smart Shadow Sect, lived by before they were wiped out along with their parent sect, Divine Shadow Sect.

"That"s right." Lian Rou looked a little stricken. "We don"t even know if that group was the Black Venom Cult or not. If it turns out that we have yet another demonic sect to worry about during this mission…"

We could pit them against each other, have them weaken each other to the point where we could just swoop in and finish the both of them off at once. Kill two birds with one stone, basically.

Of course, that was on the optimistic and probably unrealistic side, so I didn"t say that. Instead, I nodded sagely.

"We"ll worry about that when the time comes," I a.s.sured her. "There"s no point worrying about it before then. For now, we should focus on tracking that group down and following them to wherever they went. Can you do that?"

Lian Rou straightened up and nodded. "Leave it to me. I can see their tracks as clear as day." She pointed in the direction I sensed the group earlier were heading toward before they disappeared. "From what I can deduce, they went that way."

"Great. Let"s go then. We"ll have to keep a careful distance, though."

"Yeah, we don"t want them to notice us sneaking up on them," Tong Xue agreed with me. "Best to stay cautious."

"I"ll keep that in mind," Lian Rou said as she stepped through the foliage and began the arduous task of tracking down the group from earlier.

*

"Hu…"

After an hour or two of careful trekking, we finally came upon what seemed to be a base camp. A crudely constructed wooden fence encircled the area, with a few wooden cottages nestled within. As we neared, we could hear cries and shrieks.

Two of them sounded very familiar. It didn"t take us long to recognize Jiu Bu Liao"s wails and Zi Sha"s groans.

Yi Ding Si turned extremely pale.

"What are they doing inside there?"

"Conducting experiments, I guess?" as I said, I had read up on the atrocities of the Black Venom Cult, and they were not pretty. As a side note, I guesed this pretty much confirmed that the people who abducted Zi Sha and Jiu Bu Liao were the Black Venom Cult, but of course that was far from conclusive. The Black Venom Cult wasn"t the only demonic sect who tortured their victims to the point of screaming in agony, after all.

We needed more concrete evidence…not that it mattered. Black Venom Sect or not, this demonic sect had to be destroyed, and their victims had to be saved.

Unfortunately, we didn"t have the manpower to do so.

"Keep your heads down," Tong Xue hissed. I had almost forgotten myself in my greed to h.o.a.rd knowledge (that was why I was known as the Adeptus Mechanicus guy, though my army comprised primarily of Imperial Knights). My face burning with embarra.s.sment, I quickly ducked down under a tree and peered from behind a twisted tangle of roots.

Making such an elementary mistake…I had no right to criticize the troublesome trio and call them idiots or failures.

To be fair, I wasn"t the only one. Yi Ding Si also flopped down immediately when he heard Tong Xue"s warning.

"Is this the Black Venom Cult?" he asked with trepidation.

"Probably. We"ll have to confirm it first, though." I reached up and adjusted my gla.s.ses, magnifying my vision. Catching sight of a sentry, I increased my magnification and brought him into focus, studying the much sharper and clearer picture that was projected into my lenses.

The uniform the sentry was wearing was a perfect replica of the uniform in the request details. Black with gray stars and a smoke-like emblem. That emblem, according to the mission briefing, belonged to Black Venom Cult.

A second member strode out, wearing the same uniform, and spoke to the sentry, who nodded and went back inside. The new member then took his place, standing guard outide the gate and clutching a spear.

Most likely they had just rotated shifts or something.

"Yup," I confirmed quietly. "They are wearing the uniforms and emblems of Black Venom Cult. They"re most likely members of Black Venom Cult." I glanced at Tong Xue. "Do you think this might be their main base?"

"Definitely." Tong Xue nodded. "They only have one base in the Toxic Marshes. I haven"t heard of any secondary encampments. They aren"t that big a sect."

Of course. Otherwise they wouldn"t be a.s.signing mere students to exterminate a whole sect by themselves. Not only that, if the sect was too big, it would make it more difficult for all the members to hide in the swamp.

Zi Sha and Jiu Bu Liao screamed again.

Yi Ding Si turned pale. "We have to save them!" he cried.

"We will," Lian Rou a.s.sured him. Then she turned to us. "We"ve to find out where Zi Sha and Jiu Bu Liao, as well as the other victims, are being held."

"In the base camp?" I hazarded a guess. Lian Rou rolled her eyes.

"Obviously. I mean which part of the base camp? And is there a route for us to sneak in, grab the victims, and get out without being detected?"

Tong Xue grimaced at his girlfriend"s naivety. "That"s not going to be possible. The four of us can"t possibly carry that many victims out of the camp without being detected. Worse case scenario, they"ll take those victims hostage and threaten us."

"Then how do we save them?" Yi Ding Si cried in panic.

"Good question." I didn"t want to say it, but we might not have a choice. "Worst case scenario, we abandon the hostages. If they really have the guts to kill the hostages, then we"ll make sure to exact revenge for them."

"Don"t let it come to that in the first place!" Lian Rou snapped. I shrugged.

"Just saying."

Of course, that was the worst case scenario that I wanted to avoid the most, and I would prefer that everyone got out alive if possible. But reality never went the way we wanted it to go. When push came to shove, I valued the lives of my teammates more than the hostages. There was no way I was going to allow Tong Xue and Lian Rou, and even Yi Ding Si die under my watch. As callous as it might sound, I prioritized my friends" lives over strangers".

As for Zi Sha and Jiu Bu Liao, they deserved what they got. Of course, if I could save them, that would be great. Otherwise I was not obligated to risk the lives of my friends to save them. I was being selfish and emotional, but I was never going to sacrifice my friends to save them. I wasn"t going to abandon them, but if the price was my friends" lives, then forget it.

Yi Ding Si was fidgeting too much, and I couldn"t win his trust if I was too blunt and callous, so I came to a compromise.

"For now, let"s just try to map out their base camp and find out where they are being held."

Saying that, I began stealthily hauling myself up a tree to try and get a bird"s eye view of the compound. Whatever happened, nothing would truly begin until I actually went out on a limb and took action.

Climbing up the tree, I caught sight of Song Ting Yu and her bodyguards again, and I suddenly had an idea on how we might best rescue the hostages…