"d.a.m.n!" Xue Wei heard the voice as clearly as everyone else, and he knew that they had been noticed. 

"What to do now?" the priestess asked, for once slightly unsettled about what was happening around her. But Xue Wei just glanced at her and snickered. "Now, we start fis.h.i.+ng for people," he said with a grin on his face.

"Fis.h.i.+ng for people?" the priestess was surprised. She had no idea what Xue Wei meant, but it did not sound pleasant. 

"They will not leave us alone, so our best option is to find somewhere where we can put up an ambush and deal with them," Tianyi voiced his agreement. "We can easily deal with the village’s remnant experts! What we need to do is split them up. I have not killed anyone for quite some years; it is about time for me to let loose again!"

"You killed my mother," the priestess said in a low voice, startling Xue Wei and Hei Gou. Tianyi snorted in response, replying, "I never wanted to kill your mother. If you say I killed her, then is it not also accurate to say that you killed her?"

"I did," the priestess agreed, her voice filled with agony. Xue Wei frowned. Was there something he had not understood about this situation? Hei Gou was also similarly puzzled and confused, but they both realized that now was not the time to question their past. 

Although Tianyi made it sound as if it was easy, the fact was that the 'remnant experts' of the village amounted to at least a couple hundreds. 

Albeit true that the majority of them were Earth Warriors and simple to kill, they had the advantage of numbers.

If they disregarded everything and threw themselves at Xue Wei and Hei Gou, the two of them would stand no chance of surviving. 

They had entered the fog, and were now trying their best to get through it. It was the same as the last time Xue Wei and Hei Gou had entered it. Their sense of time felt diluted again, but unlike before, they did not care about their destination. As long as it was far away from the village, they would be satisfied.

The priestess, Hei Gou, and Xue Wei were attached to one another with a rope they had bound across their waists so that they would not separate from one another. When they finally made it out of the fog, they were once more greeted by the familiar red light that was ever present in the Vermilion Forest during the day, as the sun shone through the dense red tree crowns above them.

From the light, they could see that it was now midday, which in other words meant that they had walked a whole day and a half through the world of fog. 

Suddenly a rustling appeared in front of them, and an unknown expert who had yet to discover them walked in their direction.

"Hide!" Xue Wei shouted with a compressed voice. The rest of his team hid behind the towering and thick logs of the trees. 

"Let’s a.s.sess the situation first," Xue Wei continued to speak with a compressed voice. He knew that this person could not hear him, but his comrades could. 

At this point, Xue Wei's biggest worry was the priestess. She had hidden as requested, but he was worried that she would feel pity for the villagers she had lived with for so many years and jump out to warn him.

However, his worries were proven wrong, and the man continued walking through the area without being interrupted. 

Xue Wei noticed that there was no one else but him in the vicinity. The expert was a relatively young man. He was an Earth Warrior of the eight layer, and his eyes were always on alert. 

Suddenly, they lit up, and he bent down to look at the footprints he had found on the forest floor. 

Noticing these, he quickly saw that they scattered. This made his glowing eyes turn severe, and after the seriousness turned frightened. He glanced at the trees and stood up before he started backing up. It was clear he had noticed them.

He then started fiddling with a warning light he held in his hands, but before he had the chance to do anything, Xue Wei stepped out from his hiding spot and launched his attack.

Mind Infestation!

The young man struggled for a short while before he was incapable of fighting back, and then he turned limp, staggering to the ground before his eyes dimmed and all life left his body. 

"Hurry, stand next to him," Tianyi ordered. Xue Wei did as he was told, and then he felt a strange power enter both his and Tianyi's sword-body. 

"You benefit too," the sword pointed out. "Because of our contract, you will benefit every time I consume a soul," he explained. "You might become even more wicked than me, getting addicted to this boost in your own soul," he snickered.

Xue Wei shook his head. Although his spiritual power was increasing from consuming souls, he would never kill innocents for that purpose alone. 

"But I will soon be able to make a soul body," Tianyi said casually. This confused Xue Wei. What was a soul body? He knew he had to ask, but now was not the time.

"Let us move to the next place," Xue Wei ordered. He did not want the corpse to be found, so he covered it under a thicket with branches and leaves. 

At least the man died through spiritual means and not blunt force, so the cleanup was effortless and straightforward. 

Once the scene had been cleaned up, the group started moving around in the forest. Xue Wei's spiritual power was spread to the limits to find targets for them, and they would strike rapidly after locating an expert. 

Currently, the experts were walking one by one in the forest. All of them held warning lights in their hands, but none of them had the time to light it before collapsing without any sign of life.

At the start, the priestess had seemed uncomfortable with the killing. Her face was pale and her lips trembling, but over time she became desensitized to it. 

Although she had been uncomfortable at the start, she had not said anything. Her eagerness to find freedom was so immense that she would sacrifice the entire village for her sake. 

After walking around the forest for around three or four hours, killing all along the way, they suddenly saw a bright light explode above the forest, not far away from them.

"Were we too bad at hiding our tracks?" Xue Wei guessed. He knew it would happen at some point, but he had hoped that it would happen later rather than sooner. 

"I a.s.sume that they will not walk alone from now on," Xue Wei a.s.sumed. "But as to how big their groups will be, it is uncertain. We cannot just escape the forest, as their determination to retrieve the priestess and Tianyi is so strong that we have no choice than to take down anyone who gets in our way."

"So far, we have killed only seventeen people. Although seventeen people sounds like a lot, it really is not much relative to the couple hundred they have."

The others showed approval. Hei Gou was tired of being chased, and Xue Wei was equally tired of it. So if they wanted to take a breather in the middle of the Vermilion Forest Kingdom, they had to get rid of these people who were chasing them. 

The group did not start aimlessly wandering the forest again. Instead, they inched closer to the place where the warning light had been lit, and here they observed what was happening. 

One hundred and thirty-seven people were standing together around a body that had been dragged out from the bushes. 

"He has not shed any blood, but he is dead. It’s the same method used on those experts from our village when they went mad. All of them ended up dying eventually without wounds."

"It seems that it really has some power that the rest of us had never known about before."

"It is truly cunning! It must have been planning this for a long time!"

"I don't understand why our priestess would be so blind as to side with it. She should not forget the sacrifices she had to make for the sake of keeping it sealed!"

"All of you quiet down!" Qing Li stepped up and called out. The clamoring experts quieted down. Qing Li was indeed a very renowned figure in the village.

"I am sure that it is the two strangers who have given it its new power. There must be something special in their souls. Also, I do not doubt that they were the ones who convinced and seduced the priestess to leave with them," he said in a voice filled with certainty. 

"Do not forget that everything began happening when they showed up! If the priestess truly wished to escape earlier, she could have just unsealed the sword and let it deal with us all! Although it is weak, I expect it to have some secrets that can be used to kill us all!"

"The only reason it has not done so was because our village sealed it! Now it is free, so we are all at risk, but we cannot give up just because of this!"

"We should split into larger groups of ten each," he continued. "If we are fewer, we are easy pickings, but if all of us are together, then the sword can unleash some frightening ability to get us all down in one go." 

"I don't believe it is capable of doing so multiple times, so it is safest to go in groups of ten!"

Qing Li was compelling as he spoke, and every other member of the group believed him. 

They quickly split up into groups and started walking through the forest once more. Two groups pa.s.sed right past Xue Wei and his group, without noticing that they were there.

Xue Wei and the others waited until everything turned completely silent once more before they started discussing what to do. "Ten men a group is truly a troublesome amount for us," he agreed. 

"Each group has seven Earth Warriors and three Sky Warriors. I should be able to deal with all the Earth Warriors now that I have the support of Tianyi, but can you deal with three Sky Warriors at once Gou?"

Hei Gou pondered for some time and then nodded his head. "My physical strength has stepped into the ranks of the Heavenly Warrior, so I should be able to deal with three Sky Warriors at once. Our biggest problem is if they release a warning light. That’s our only limiter."

"It is true that I can deal with them if they were gathered in one place, but the price I have to pay for it is rather high," Tianyi added. Xue Wei frowned. "Why did you not say so before?" he asked. "They were all clumped up just now... we could have wiped them clean. If they light a warning flare, it will become a tide-like battle with new opponents appearing from every direction, streaming in like water to the sea." 

"I really don't want to use that method unless it is our last resort," Tianyi returned. "I almost have enough soul power to be able to create a soul body. If I use my energy, I will become dormant. When that happens, I will also be incapable of helping out any more. I will be a simple normal sword until my soul gathers enough Soul Power again."

Xue Wei considered it for some time, but then he understood that that was indeed quite a drawback. 

"Okay, first let us try and see if we can deal with one group. If we can deal with one group, then the rest should be somewhat doable," he said decisively and smiled. 

"Miss priestess, stay away and be safe," he ordered her. She nodded her head. "My name is Jiang Fengmian," she said in a low, wispy voice. "I am named after my mother, who was named Lin Fengmian." 

"I don’t like having this name because I had to kill her with my own two hands, but I think I need to face my crimes and accept my own destiny. Come back soon, and I will explain why the village is so obsessed with sealing the sword."