"We"re going to break through those five?" Tong Xue asked rhetorically, but I knew him well enough to be sure that he had already thought of the same strategy as me. "Sounds like our best chance."

"Yeah."

We both did a complete 180 and immediately dashed toward the five approaching martial artists, using our Jin or shadow footwork. The five Black Venom Cultists were almost caught by surprise when we burst into their sight, our swords and dagger lashing out to cleave through them. The first two couldn"t react in time and went down immediately.

Tong Xue had slit the throat of the one leading from the left, while I had decapitated the one leading from the right.

In just a few seconds, we had evened the odds from five against two to three against two. An enemy that outnumbered us 2.5 to 1 now only had a 1.5 to 1 advantage, having suffered a forty percent casualties.

This was a great performance by any standard.

The surviving trio immediately fell back, drawing their poisoned weapons as they faced us cautiously.

"These are no ordinary kids!" one of them hissed as he held his short sword in front of him, the blade dripping with venom. "Be careful!"

"Don"t underestimate them!" the second Black Venom Cultist added. A bit too late for that now, wasn"t it?

"You take the one on the left, I take the two on the right," I suggested to Tong Xue, even as the trio charged at us, brandishing their lethal weapons. "Be careful! Don"t get cut by any of their weapons! They"re poisoned!"

I might sound like I was stating the obvious, but Tong Xue nodded patiently. "You be careful," he told me.

Honestly, I was more worried about Tong Xue than myself. Unlike me, Tong Xue didn"t possess any immunity to poison like I did, but he didn"t know that. He acceded to my proposal because he knew what we were good at. I was more of a frontline warrior than he was, possessing more powerful, offensive techniques whereas Tong Xue specialized at stealth, a.s.sa.s.sination and subterfuge. As well as collecting intelligence and information. He was not meant for direct combat, and hence he recognized that I was better at fighting head-on than he was.

So he conceded that I should take on two opponents while he dealt with one.

However, we also had to rely on speed. Behind us, the Heavenly Venom King was closing in. The moment he arrived, the both of us were doomed. As such, we had to finish this quickly, and then run away.

I left the guy in the left to Tong Xue and charged right at the other two. The both of them jumped back in surprise by the ferocity of my attack, the guy to my right ducking under my Azure Lotus Sword and the cultist to my left parrying my Shadow Fox.

I tightened my grip on Shadow Fox and unleashed a swift Shadow Dragon Meteor Strike, which overwhelmed the guy with black qi and left him bloodied. Coughing, the injured Black Venom Cultist toppled over, but before I could finish him off, his comrade dove in to take a slice of me.

Even though I had immunity to poison, I wasn"t going to let him hit me. I wanted to keep that knowledge secure for as long as possible. That could be my hidden trump card, in the extremely likely event that I fought Sha Chen.

Yeah, these guys were just the appetizers, or the small fries. There was a reason why I didn"t even bother to find out their names. They were just minor side characters doomed to be cannon fodder. The prelude to the main event.

Unfortunately, reality didn"t work that way. Just a minor slip up, a single moment of carelessness and I would succ.u.mb to the deadly attacks of these so-called small fries. I knew many readers would be complaining about fillers and wanting to go straight to the main fight, but these dudes had no idea what a "filler" was. They were just using the word carelessly to label whatever they thought was uninteresting, to call the chapters they didn"t want to read "fillers".

But that wasn"t a filler. They weren"t the writers. So what gave them the right to decide which chapters were relevant or not irrelevant? Ever since the advent of fillers in Naruto, where the anime had to create original content that was exclusive to television and never in the manga, these people had been referring to whatever they didn"t like as "filler", wanting to go straight to the so-called "real" content of the story. Many of them labeled background chapters, or chapters that provided material on the world or world-building, or information on the story as "fillers" just because all they wanted to read were action or romance or whatever.

That wasn"t filler. Okay, some of those chapters might be horrendous info dumps and poorly written, but there was a huge difference between info dump and filler.

In any case, reality was always like this. Of course I wanted to jump straight into the battle against the Dark Sage Sha Chen…actually, I didn"t. I would love to avoid a confrontation with him, if possible. But obviously, being the leader of the Black Venom Cult, he had subordinates. And to get to him – the so-called final boss – we had to defeat his lackeys first.

Otherwise we would never reach that stage.

Anyway, there was a possibility that I could avoid fighting Sha Chen altogether. As long as we broke out of this cordon and smash these guys, we could keep running. As powerful as Sha Chen was, he couldn"t possibly be fast enough to pursue us, otherwise he would have caught Song Ting Yu long ago. Of course, it was possible that Song Ting Yu"s bodyguards gave their lives so that their mistress could escape, but I doubted that. They were all poisoned by the Black Venom Toxin, according to Song Ting Yu, so it was meaningless to let her escape alone.

Whatever the case, I could only gamble on this.

Parrying the strike from the fallen guy"s scythe, I twisted around and kicked him in the jaw. The guy grunted through gritted teeth, blood spraying from between his mouth. Ducking under his desperate swing with his poisoned scythe, I tried to finish him off, but his comrade dove at me, forcing me to parry his short sword.

Despite being bloodied by my Shadow Dragon Meteor Strike, he was still pretty active, slashing ferociously despite the blood flying off his body. With a bellow, he thrust his poisoned sword at me, but I whirled away to avoid it, and then brought my arm down on his elbow, breaking it. The guy shrieked in pain, and I cut his neck.

Or tried to, but was forced to pull back when his partner"s scythe came flashing toward my head. There was a screech and a shower of sparks as I tried to knock his curved blade away, only for him to bring it slashing down on me.

"!"

I quickly stepped to the side to avoid getting carved in half, and then lashed out with Shadow Fox. The other guy blocked it for his comrade, and the latter pressed on with his attack.
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Tightening my grip on Azure Lotus Sword, I swung it and unleashed a Yuan Yin Frost Strike that covered the entire area in ice. Both my enemies fell back, their bodies partially encased in ice, but they forcibly freed themselves by using their qi to shatter the ice.

Even so, they had to expend quite a bit of qi to do so.

"…!"

"Br…!"

The both of them realized that something was amiss. Every movement they took was sluggish, and their feet were getting stuck to the ground, frozen solid by crystals of ice. Their breath were misting before them.

"This is…?!"

It was Absolute Zero, but I didn"t tell them that. Instead, I seized the chance to attack them now that they were immobilized. Stomping forward, I swung both my swords, crisscrossing my blades to sever their necks.

"Don"t underestimate us!"

"Don"t get too carried away!"

The both of them yelled at the same time, and they unleashed their venomous qi in a single corrosive burst, melting the ice away with acidic poison. My Heavenly Flow and Earthly Steps had somewhat detected the peculiar flow of their qi and I had withdrawn just in time to avoid the worst effects of their blast.

"Kuh!"

Shielding my face from their venomous qi, I retreated a few steps.

"Hah!" the first one sneered. "You cannot defeat us!"

"Poison is the most efficient way of killing any living thing!" the second one declared somewhat triumphantly.

"You"ve to actually get the poison in my system for it to do anything," I reminded them.

"We know that!" the first guy yelled.

"Just stand still and let us poison you!" the second one hollered.

I raised an eyebrow at that. Was the second guy serious? Did he think I would just stand still and let them hit me because he asked me to? In a rude fashion, no less. The guy had to be delusional if he thought he was ent.i.tled an easy kill just because he used poison.

Then again, I had met many gamers who behaved in such ent.i.tled fashion. They thought they were ent.i.tled free wins because they paid to win (pretty ironic, especialy when you saw the contradiction in that statement), or because they were playing a particular race/cla.s.s/whatever or using a specific sure-win strategy/tactic/build order.

None of them realized that reality was a lot more complex than netlisting or copying build orders from the Internet. The meta was always changing. Your opponent was going to do his best to win too. He wasn"t going to just let you build an army and roll over him. Like, what was the point of playing if he just lets you win?

Similarly, I was doing my best to live, to survive this battle. What was the point of fighting if I was going to let them kill me? What was the point of being born into this world and existing as a living thing if I just stood still and let other people kill me so easily? I was always going to do my best to survive, and if winning a fight allowed me to live, then I was going to desperately struggle to the very end. At the very least I understood my opponents desired the same thing, which was why I never asked them to just roll over and die.

Yet almost every single idiot I faced was insisting that I should just die, as if they were ent.i.tled free wins. Was this the prevalent att.i.tude in xianxia settings or something? It kind of reminded me of all those arrogant young masters who thought they were ent.i.tled to respect because they had a bit of talent and was born in a powerful family. And for some reason, as Lin Feng in Peerless Martial G.o.d pointed out, the antagonists or relatives/parents of these arrogant young masters always insisted that the protagonists just "accept their fate" and let their sons kill them. Like, what the h.e.l.l, man?

Anyway, this wasn"t the time to be spouting such nonsense. I reversed the grip on both my swords and cleaved at the enemies. The two of them retreated, covering each other"s withdrawal almost flawlessly. The first guy slashed at me with his scythe so that his comrade could back away safely, and then he retreated under the cover of the second guy. Even though their movements were slowed down by my Absolute Zero, their teamwork was compensating for their weaknesses.

Well, as I said, they were always going to do their best to win and survive. I can"t begrudge them.

I was aware that I wasn"t ent.i.tled an easy kill. Unfortunately, I had no choice but to end this fast. Otherwise the Dark Sage Sha Chen would appear any time now and destroy both me and Tong Xue with just a flick of his hand.

Okay, that was probably way too exaggerated, but I did not relish the prospect of tackling that guy. I was having trouble with his subordinates, so how was I going to measure up against the big boss himself?

Time to kick it up a notch.

Revolving Nine-Tailed Frost Fox Formula, I boosted my Absolute Zero temporarily, causing the entire place to be covered in ice. Both my opponents froze, quite literally, as their bodies were entombed in huge blocks of ice.

They were far from dead, however. I could sense them desperately gathering their qi within their bodies and breaking the ice from inside out.

I couldn"t afford to let them break out and recover. Focusing on the guy with the scythe, for his weapon was more annoying, I rammed Shadow Sword into the ice where his neck was, severing it from his body. At the same time, his qi flushed out, melting the ice and freeing him.

Unfortunately for him, it was too late. His head toppled off his body, which teetered for a moment before falling over like a puppet whose strings were cut.

"YOU b.a.s.t.a.r.d!"

The other guy had also broken free of the ice at around the same time, and he slashed at me with his short sword. I easily parried it with my Azure Lotus Sword. Whirling about, I kicked the scythe up and hacked it with Shadow Sword.

Being a spirit weapon, the scythe didn"t break under the impact, but the remaining guy was caught off guard by my unorthodox movement. Even so, his reflexes saved his life, and he ducked to the side. But I succeeded in slicing his collarbone with the scythe.

"Ugh!"

The Black Venom Cultist hissed in pain and staggered back. He yanked the scythe out of his shoulder and tossed it away, seething.

I watched him for a few seconds, but he didn"t seem bothered. Instead, he grinned.

"What, you think we"ll be affected by our own poisons? No, we"ve developed a resistance against our own venoms! It was indeed a smart move to use our own weapons and poisons against us, but it"s just too bad…we antic.i.p.ated that, so we developed a countermeasure! I mean, what kind of poison user will die from his own poison?"

"Oh…so you don"t use antidotes." I was a little disappointed. That would have solved a lot of problems. If I could get an antidote, we could use it immediately on Yi Ding Si and Song Ting Yu, without waiting for Lian Rou to concoct it from the samples we gathered.

"Of course not! We don"t need antidotes!" the Black Venom Cultist guffawed. "What better way to fight against poison than to saturate your own body with so much venom that you generate your own antibodies and immunity against it? Furthermore, it also ensures that our victims will never be able to cure themselves of our poisons that easily!"

That made sense. The Black Venom Cult existed only to kill, not to save lives. There was no point developing an antidote, especially when they developed a resistance to their own poisons. It was very clever, actually.

"Does that include the Black Venom Toxin?" I asked, just in case.

"Hah! You even know about the Black Venom Toxin?" the Black Venom Cultist scoffed. "Of course! There is no exception to our poisons, even the deadliest ones!"

"Well…there is no reason to keep you alive then."

I unleashed a particularly powerful Yuan Yin Frost Strike that washed over him and froze part of his body, but he expended his qi to break himself out of the ice again. Staggering from the numbing blow, he snarled at me.

"You think we need your permission to live?"

"No, that"s not what I meant…"

"Hah! All you Martial Arts Alliance people are the same! You kill, ma.s.sacre and commit genocides, taking so many lives…yet when when we use poison, you condemn us as evil!" the Black Venom Cultist spat venomously. "Tell me, what"s the difference between killing someone with a sword, and killing someone with poison? The end result is still the same, isn"t it?! They"re both murder, aren"t they?! So why are we evil and the Alliance not?"

"The Alliance is evil, actually…" I began, but the Black Venom Cultist wasn"t paying any attention to me.

"You"re all hypocrites! The f.u.c.king Martial Arts Alliance is full of hypocrites! They make use of us to fight against demonic sects, and once we"ve fulfilled our purposes, they get scared of our poison techniques, they condemned us as dishonorable and demonic, and they cast us out. No, they didn"t just cast us out. They tried to kill us! Tell me, what"s the difference between us and the f.u.c.king Martial Arts Alliance? You"re just a bunch of b.l.o.o.d.y hypocrites preaching about false honor while stabbing people in the back!"

"I don"t care about the Martial Arts Alliance," I replied coldly. "You attacked my friends, poisoned them. You kidnapped innocent people. That"s all the reason I need to kill you. I don"t care if you used poison or a blade – the moment you raised your blades against my friends, the moment you abducted uninvolved people to conduct inhuman experiments on them, I"ll fight you to save them, or to avenge them. That"s all."

"Ha ha ha ha!" the Black Venom Cultist roared with laughter. "We, raise our blades against you? You"re the one who attacked us first! You"re the one who came to our base and a.s.saulted us! You slaughtered my fellow sect members in our home ground! No doubt you were dispatched by the Martial Arts Alliance to do so! And you dare to act so high and mighty?! You dare to take the higher moral ground?!"

"It seems that you"re misunderstanding something." I sighed. "I don"t care about the Alliance. I"m not a member of the Alliance. The Martial Arts Alliance is actually my enemy." I narrowed my eyes as a chilling killing intent emanated from my body, causing the Black Venom Cultist to shudder. "The only reason why I partic.i.p.ated in the attack is because of what you did. I don"t care if you use poison techniques or not. But the moment you started kidnapping civilians, the moment you started abducting non-combatants and innocent villagers to conduct your experiments on them, to murder them ruthlessly for the sake of developing your own poisons and whatnot, you made me an enemy. I don"t profess to be a hero or someone honorable, but these people have their own lives and families. And as a martial artist, I have taken the responsibility of defending them from the likes of villains like you."

There was no longer any point to wasting my breath. Using Jin, I dashed forward and stabbed him. He managed to avoid the thrust from my Azure Lotus Sword, but without his comrade to cover him, he ended up being impaled by Shadow Fox. With a vicious swing of my sword, I cleaved him apart with a Shadow Dragon Meteor Strike.

Shaking my black sword to splash the blood away, I turned in the direction of Tong Xue. He had just finished his battle too, sliding his dagger into the back of his opponent while the guy was flailing around ineffectually with his poisoned sword. Tong Xue twisted his dagger, severed the guy"s spinal cord, and then stepped back to allow the guy to fall. He finished the guy off by stomping his face, crushing his skull under his foot, and then rejoined me.

"That should do it," he said. I nodded and glanced in the direction of the Dark Sage.

"We"ve better go. Now."

"Too late."

"!!!"

Both Tong Xue and I jumped away as an old man in a cloak descended in the middle of the swamp, causing a tremendous splash.

"I"ve finally caught up to you brats."

Grinning, the Dark Sage Sha Chen spread out his hands in a terrifying manner before advancing toward us.