Chapter 257: Assassination

Nie Tian overheard the two men’s conversation via one of his Heaven Eyes.

The two of them were constantly glancing around as they marched carefully, two thousand meters away, as if they were afraid that they would run into Ma Jiu and his subordinates.

“What a coincidence! It’s them.” Nie Tian found out that they were the men he had met outside his cultivation room at the Blood Skull’s headquarters a few days ago.

Back then, they had entered the establishment and paid for a cultivation room while Nie Tian was being confronted by Cai Yue and Shi Qing after stepping out of his cultivation room.

The two early Heaven stage cultivators had examined Nie Tian with strange looks in their eyes, as if they had cooked up some evil plans.

Although Nie Tian was surprised by their appearance in this area, he didn’t put much thought into it.

What he truly paid attention to was their conversation.

“The Dark Moon has surrounded Pei Qiqi?! Cai Yuan exposed himself and also became a target?” Nie Tian frowned and picked up his pace as he moved towards the two.

Moments later, he showed up in front of them, blocking their path.

“How do you know that Ma Jiu from the Dark Moon is attacking Pei Qiqi? Where were they last seen? Also, how did Cai Yuan get exposed and become a target?” The moment they met, Nie Tian shot a series of questions that he was rather eager to ask.

“It’s you?!” Both men’s eyes lit up as they discovered that the young man who had showed up out of nowhere was actually the rich kid they had seen at the Blood Skull’s headquarters.

The two of them exchanged a glance as they ignored Nie Tian’s questions and started laughing broadly.

From the way they reacted to seeing Nie Tian, it was as if a warm pie had just fallen out of the heavens and landed in their hands.

Nie Tian was no stranger to the looks in their eyes.

The brothers Qiu Shan and Qiu Shi had the same looks in their eyes when they had met early on, and now their corpses were rotting somewhere in the mountain range after Nie Tian had killed them without breaking a sweat.

“There are always people who seek death!” Nie Tian shook his head and smiled as he reached out with one hand to channel the tainted spiritual Qi of Heaven and Earth.

HUFF! HUFF! HUFF!

The rich spiritual Qi in the vicinity gathered madly towards his hand as he cast the secret spell.

Only seconds later, a gray, misty spiritual energy ball formed within his palm.

He discovered that the time he just spent to form the spiritual energy ball was much shorter than the time he had spent during his previous battle to help Cai Yuan.

Breaking through into the Heaven stage had indeed enhanced his battle prowess to a great extent. The transcendence of his spiritual sea had greatly sped up the process of channeling spiritual Qi.

Originally, he had always needed to spend a substantial amount of time to form spiritual energy balls, which he had considered to be a major disadvantage of this technique.

However, since the process had now been significantly accelerated, he deemed that that disadvantage had been made up for to a great extent.

Within the gray spiritual energy ball, numerous impurities that were originally from the outer domains immediately began to conflict with each other after being constrained in such a small space.

Even Nie Tian, the spell-caster, couldn’t use his psychic awareness to calm the violent movement within the spiritual energy ball.

He had a feeling that if he didn’t release the energy ball in a few moments, it would explode within his palm.

“Go!” With a thought, Nie Tian commanded the gray spiritual energy ball to shoot towards one of the men.

The man was still smiling as he said, “We’re quite lucky to run into such a fat lamb in the Void Illusion Mountain Range.

“I wonder where this kid got the courage to come here alone.”

BANG!

The gray spiritual energy ball exploded by itself when it was five meters away from the man.

As it did, countless tiny light dots of gray, green, purple, and black colors rained down from midair, filling a large area.

The moment the condensed impurities made contact with the man’s protective light shield, it shattered.

In the next moment, the multicolored lights covered his entire body, and as a result, he shrunk and collapsed from his standing position like a deflated balloon.

Blood flowed out of his withered corpse and painted the stone ground red.

The man’s sudden death greatly shocked the other one. At a loss for words, the man stared at Nie Tian for a while before snapping back to reality and saying, “Have you broken into the Heaven stage?

Instead of answering his question, Nie Tian asked, “Can you answer my earlier questions now?”

The man said, with a tough expression on his face, “Do you think you can get away with this even if you’ve entered the Heaven stage? No individuals who aren’t members of the Blood Skull, the Dark Moon, or the Wild Fire can beat us in the Void Illusion Mountain Range! Don’t you imagine that you can get out of the Void Illusion Mountain Range alive after killing one of us!” With those words, the man turned around and sped off.

From the look of it, he had friends in the vicinity.

“This is so tiring… Why can’t people listen?” Nie Tian’s eyebrows knitted together.

SHEW!

Although they were both at the early Heaven stage, thanks to his superior physique and spiritual sea, Nie Tian’s speed was much faster than his opponent’s.

It only took Nie Tian about ten seconds to catch up to the man.

Since it would still require time and stillness to form spiritual energy balls, he gave up the idea.

Rather, he raised his clenched fist and stimulated anger in his heart while he summoned one fifth of his spiritual power, along with small portions of his flame power, wood power, star power, flesh power, and psychic power.

BANG!!!

He bombarded the man’s back with enough momentum to shatter mountains.

Upon impact, the man’s protective light shield cracked, along with his body!

The man, who was running for his life, actually exploded into pieces after being hit by Nie Tian’s fist strike.

Nie Tian came to a stop after watching the man die an extremely miserable death, even more so than his friend, who had been killed by Nie Tian’s spiritual energy ball.

“Wow, I can actually kill a fleeing man with merely one fifth of my strength.” Nie Tian smiled broadly as he stepped over and looted his opponents’ bracelets of holding. Without even checking what was inside, he once again unleashed his Heaven Eyes and searched for Pei Qiqi and Cai Yuan.

The seven Heaven Eyes gradually fanned out in the sky like seven invisible lanterns.

It wasn’t long before one of them detected two early Heaven stage Qi warriors in Dark Moon garments. The two of them were crouching as they laid spirit stones on the ground, as if they were setting up spell formations to defend against something.

After that, his other Heaven Eyes spotted more Dark Moon members.

A few moments later, one of his Heaven Eyes finally discovered Pei Qiqi and Cai Yuan, who were running in the middle of a mountain valley.

Numerous spatial rifts were roaming about and interweaving with each other over their heads, glittering with bright light.

Pei Qiqi and Cai Yuan were shifting positions and fighting three Greater Heaven stage Dark Moon members where the spatial rifts were the most active.

Among them, the man with only one good eye was none other than Ma Jiu, the Dark Moon’s section leader in the Void Illusion Mountain Range. At that moment, he was calling out to his subordinates, who had formed a blockade around them.

The seven Heaven Eyes quietly floated about, reflecting every detail within a one and a half kilometer radius in Nie Tian’s mind.

Nie Tian rapidly obtained a thorough understanding of the situation.

He could see that three Dark Moon members, including Ma Jiu, were chasing after Pei Qiqi and Cai Yuan, but they seemed to be preserving their strength and moving carefully.

Even though the three of them were at the Greater Heaven stage, the spatial rifts that were slithering above and around Pei Qiqi stopped them from getting near.

Apparently, it was those spatial rifts that had had kept Ma Jiu and his men from approaching Pei Qiqi and Cai Yuan.

As a master of spatial magics, Pei Qiqi was constantly shifting her position between numerous spatial rifts, but they never left the area.

After all, she and Cai Yuan were both at the late Heaven stage. Once they lost the protection of the spatial rifts, they wouldn’t stand a chance against Ma Jiu and his men.

More than twenty Heaven stage Qi warriors from the Dark Moon were scattered around the perimeter of the mountain valley.

They were there to surround and stop Cai Yuan and Pei Qiqi from leaving the valley.

Even though they weren’t strong enough to kill Cai Yuan and Pei Qiqi, they were able to block their path of escape and keep them from heading towards vast open areas where the spatial rifts were more active.

Their goal was to wear out and kill Pei Qiqi and Cai Yuan in the valley.

Through his seven Heaven Eyes, Nie Tian obtained a thorough grasp of the situation. He pondered for a moment before making up his mind.

The valley was rather vast, and so was the blockade the Dark Moon had set up.

As long as he acted with caution, he could avoid being spotted by Ma Jiu and the other two with him while he took down their men in the blockade one by one.

It wasn’t long before he found a suitable target and closed in on him following his Heaven Eyes.

An early Heaven stage Dark Moon member was squatting on the ground, building a simple spell formation with spirit stones of various attributes. He intended to use it to create a defensive wall, so that Pei Qiqi and Cai Yuan wouldn’t be able to breakthrough their blockade so easily. As he did, he looked forward to check the distant, spatial rift-filled area from time to time.

WHOOSH!

Nie Tian suddenly charged out from behind a huge rock.

The chaotic magnetic field immediately enveloped the man, causing him to lose control of his limbs.

CRUNCH!

Just as he was about to shout out to his friends, Nie Tian snapped his neck.

Nie Tian bent down and put away the spirit stones the man had used to set up his spell formation before he vanished from that location.

Like a ghost, he moved around the perimeter of the mountain valley.

He used his Heaven Eyes to lock down scattered early Heaven stage Dark Moon members and hid behind the rocks that could be seen everywhere as he furtively approached them. Then, he found opportunities to swoop in and kill them.

While Ma Jiu and two of his best men were still chasing after Pei Qiqi and Cai Yuan in the belly of the mountain valley, Nie Tian had already assassinated nine early Heaven stage Dark Moon members with that method.

After killing them without breaking a sweat, Nie Tian decided to target the middle Heaven stage ones.