novelapdf Chapter 285 Becoming a Kept Man
Chapter 285 Becoming a Kept Man
"Junior brother, it seems your reputation in the sect is really not good. People all think of you as a good-for-nothing who lives off women."
Yu Jianhuan swayed her slender waist and moved closer to Mo Chengyue's side, her captivating phoenix eyes filled with a playful smile as she deliberately pressed her delicate body a little closer.
"Senior Sister Yu is joking. I am just an insignificant, invisible person. I have only survived until now thanks to the protection of all the senior sisters and brothers."
Mo Chengyue immediately put on a humble and submissive look, but in his heart he was secretly complaining that these idiots who were in such a hurry to get their lunchboxes didn't understand what strategic concealment was.
"Your hypocritical act makes me want to punch you. You didn't even blink an eye in front of those rogue cultivators just now."
Jin Qiaoqiao snorted coldly, her eerie golden vertical pupils filled with disdain, but she still stood firmly to Mo Chengyue's left, blocking the view from the outside.
"Senior sisters, no matter what others think, you must not show any signs of being overly enthusiastic or bored."
Mo Chengyue lowered his voice and solemnly instructed the women behind their backs, knowing all too well how terrifying the group hostility brought about by this survivor bias could be.
"We need to pretend we've suffered a serious internal injury, preferably the kind of weakness where we're about to vomit blood, so as not to provoke these mad dogs who are on the verge of collapse."
Qin Wanzhuang frowned slightly, her fingers tightening around the Lieyang Sword, showing her strong resistance to this shameful act.
"Qingquan Peak has always acted with integrity and uprightness. Now that we have survived by stepping over the corpses of our enemies, why should we put on that ugly act of groveling and begging?"
"This is called self-preservation. Look at the eyes around us that seem to want to devour us alive. It's not a good idea to provoke public anger."
Mo Chengyue sighed helplessly and simply reached out and tugged at Qin Wanzhuang's sleeve, forcibly lowering her tall figure a little.
Elder Li's steps grew heavier and heavier. With each line of characters crossed out on the jade slip, his breathing became more labored, as if it were not a jade slip but an ancient divine mountain pressing down on his back.
Seeing Elder Li's dejected expression, Mo Chengyue immediately suppressed the slight sense of relief he felt after surviving the ordeal and adjusted his breathing to a solemn state in sync with the somber atmosphere.
"You absolutely mustn't laugh out loud at a time like this, or you'll be devoured alive by these gamblers who've lost everything."
He silently warned himself, while quietly taking a step back, making the team's defensive formation even more compact.
After a full incense stick's time, the long and agonizing verification finally came to an end, and the air on the deck seemed to freeze.
Elder Li staggered to Sect Master Jiang Wei, his Adam's apple bobbing violently a few times before he knelt down under Jiang Wei's murderous gaze.
"Reporting to the Sect Master, I have verified the auras of all the disciples who boarded the ship, and the list matches up perfectly."
Elder Li announced loudly in a hoarse voice that sounded almost like he was splitting his teeth, each word like a bloody shard of ice squeezed out from between his teeth.
"Of the 3,872 inner sect elites and true disciples who accompanied our sect into the ruins seven years ago, only 157 have been confirmed to have survived and boarded the ship."
This shocking data struck like a thunderbolt across the deck of the airship, making everyone's eardrums buzz.
"One hundred and fifty-seven people? How could there be so few? One hundred and thirty people went in from Tiantai Peak, and now I'm the only one left?"
One of the disciples, whose body was wrapped in bandages, completely broke down in tears, kneeling on the deck and wailing, frantically pounding his fists on the hard ground.
"Of the thousands who entered the battle, less than two hundred survived, and more than half of them were crippled by the monsters whose foundations were severed and whose Dao hearts collapsed. This was clearly suicide."
Another elder clutched his chest and staggered back, his face as pale as paper. He almost spat a mouthful of blood onto Jiang Weihua's magnificent purple-gold robe.
The entire place fell into a deathly silence. The images of the meat grinder in the ruins, where good and evil slaughtered each other and flesh flew everywhere, resurfaced in the minds of all the surviving disciples.
The fear of their souls being torn apart by an unknown killing formation at any moment caused their bodies to tremble violently uncontrollably.
Su Qingying's fingers, gripping the Jade Spirit Sword, turned slightly white, and a layer of lingering fear clouded her usually cold face. She couldn't help but take a deep breath of the blood-stained air.
"If it weren't for the protection of this guy's Small Sumeru Vajra Array along the way, we would have perished when we encountered that group of lunatics from the Haoran Sword Sect."
She whispered almost inaudibly, her gaze involuntarily falling on the seemingly timid figure in front of her, a complex warmth welling up in her heart.
Lin Miaoyin hugged the pipa in her arms tightly, still feeling lingering fear. Recalling the righteous cultivators in the Core Formation stage whose golden cores were eaten alive by the demon elites, her heart was still pounding wildly.
"I consider this a life I owe this petty thief. He's a responsible man when it comes to matters of principle. It's best to avoid causing him trouble in the future."
Just as the Hehuan Sect members were stunned by the appalling data, even more out-of-control commotion came from other demonic warships outside the flying boat's protective shield.
On the left side, on the enormous, deathly white bone ship of the Xuan Yin Sect, the captain who was originally preparing to retrieve the elite corpse refiners roared angrily in mid-air.
"A bunch of good-for-nothings! You've even lost the thousand-year-old silver-armored corpse that my Xuan Yin Sect lent you. How dare you come back alive to see me?"
The emaciated elder crushed several soul-summoning banners from a distance, and the bone boat immediately erupted with the mournful screams of millions of vengeful ghosts.
"Of the thousand core ghost cultivators that the sect has painstakingly trained, less than fifty have escaped, and even the Holy Son is nowhere to be found. It is a great disgrace."
The Xuan Yin Sect elder trembled with rage, and the eerie ghostly aura froze the surrounding seawater into black ice, sending chills down one's spine.
On the right side, on the Blood River Sect's massive warship, which looked as if it were submerged in a pool of blood, the situation was even more dire.
The elder leading the team, a late-stage Core Formation cultivator, was furious. He pointed at the few dozen defeated soldiers who had returned from the deck and cursed them, his spittle almost splattering onto the disciples' faces.
"Our Blood River Sect cultivates the Dao through killing. You bunch of cowards have been scared out of your wits by those hypocrites of the righteous path, and have completely disgraced the sect."
The burly elder unleashed his terrifying killing intent without reservation, and a blood-red storm, as solid as a physical object, slammed into the defensive formation of the Hehuan Sect's flying boat.
The array's light barrier emitted a series of muffled buzzing sounds as it struggled to bear the strain, causing the heavily injured disciples on the Hehuan Sect's deck to flee in terror, fearing they would be caught in the crossfire.
The divine senses of the high-ranking members of various demonic sects collided and intersected recklessly in the sky, and the violent energy fluctuations filled the sky above this sea area with fine lightning.
"Jiang Wei, you old ghost, your Hehuan Sect is almost wiped out, isn't it? What happened this time that caused such a complete loss?"
On the most domineering black behemoth of the Heavenly Demon Sect, an aged and menacing voice rang out; it was the Great Elder of the Heavenly Demon Sect.
"We're all in the same boat. It seems that this opening of the ruins has encountered a once-in-a-millennium law disorder, and no one can escape unscathed."
Jiang Wei responded to the question from the sky with a cold expression, but his hands behind his back had already clenched into fists, his knuckles turning white, showing his extreme anger.
A despairing consensus gradually took shape in the minds of all the high-ranking members: this relic was not a trial for the disciples to hone their skills at all.
This was a pure slaughterhouse, an indiscriminate extermination of the remnants of ancient immortals and demons against the ants of later generations.
Of the tens of thousands of geniuses gathered by the six sects of the Demonic Path, less than half a percent survived to stand here alive; it could be said that less than one in ten remained.
This is the most devastating loss in the cultivation world in nearly a thousand years, and a loss of foundation that no major sect can afford. Even the air is filled with an inescapable cloud of sorrow and despair.
The backbone of the younger generation has suffered an irreversible and precipitous extinction, leaving both the righteous and demonic paths facing a century-long period of generational transition.
"The lineage of the major peaks has been cut in half today. Whether this blood debt is attributed to the demons or the righteous path, someone must pay for it."