Chapter 444: Becoming a Menace

Over several days, Kai established what would be his new "hunting grounds" for the next period. If he went too far south, the forests gave way to a delta that appeared to be prime farmland, and to the west there were increasing numbers of Verdant Sect outposts defending their innermost barriers, then to the north the forests devolved into a swamp. The wedge in between those regions was still a massive forest region occupied by various villages.

The delta seemed to be a major source of food for the Southern Rivers, so it was well-defended. Kai could easily have pierced those defenses and caused havoc, but as far as he could tell the peasants there were just farmers, not really involved with cultivators or sects. If he started killing them he gained nothing, and they might cooperate even more with his enemies. Even if he was willing to do that, cultivators didn't seem very inclined to protect the citizens under them.

Instead, as soon as he'd come to grips with the territory, he waited for a suitable search party of cultivators. Finally he found them: a group led by an Earth Soul, patrolling the border between the forests and farmland.

Taking them all out as they passed would have been easy, but instead Kai launched a single Manticore's Quill to took out one of the weaker cultivators in the lead. The others began to shout, turning around on their flying swords to face him. He walked out from the tree canopy slower then necessary, letting them get a good look at him.

"It's the barbarian!"

"The one who killed the young master!"

"Junior sister, flee before he gets you!"

"Take him down! Take vengeance!"

"If we bring his head, we'll be rewarded!"

Kai snorted at their excessive ambition. When the first qi attacks flew his way he dodged around them easily, flickering between all the projectiles to close with the group. Instead of killing, he grabbed one of the cultivators by the front of his robes and tossed him into another, sending them both to the ground in an undignified sprawl.

Another flew down at him, striking him in the chest with a palm strike. It felt like nothing, compared to the palms he took from Zae Zin Nim in training, so Kai merely headbutted the man into the ground. He then leapt up to pull a flying sword out from underneath another cultivator. How long were they going to try to fight him?

"He's too powerful!"

"How can a mere Nascent Foundation...?"

"Use the Rivertree formation!"

"No, call the inner disciples!"

Finally one of them raised her combat medallion, channeling enough qi to report his attack. Kai waited until she had fully made contact and reported his appearance, then he stopped playing around.

The combination of Void Gaze and Banchlain's Aura paralyzed the group in an instant, some of them dying on their feet with great spurts of blood. Only the Earth Soul and a few of the tougher Nascent Foundation cultivators survived, merely coughing up blood, and they all took a Manticore's Quill to the chest a moment later.

So in a second, the attack squad was wiped out. After so long trying to fight opponents invisibly without being reported, it felt strange to do the opposite.

Since he was playing a barbarian instead of a monster, Kai went around and looted the bodies. He left the flying swords where they lay, since he already had a jumble of them in his spatial ring, but collected everything else. Mostly pills, qi or medicinal, but there were a few scrolls giving strange orders to convene with others, or attack groups in the forest.

Since Kai's primary purpose was just to attract attention, he decided that he might as well investigate further. Cragrila had said that there were strange battles taking place further south, so they could use more information about just what was happening. In his travel so far, he'd seen a few conflicts, but nothing that stuck out to him as unusual for cultivators.

Within a few days, Kai agreed with her that something was deeply wrong. He found villages emptied of all life, yet not stripped bare or demolished. If not for the blood and occasional charred bones, he might have thought that the inhabitants had moved away, or that some sort of plague had consumed them entirely. After further investigation, he spotted a group of cultivators throwing all the bodies into a flying ship to be carried west toward the barrier.

Each village seemed to have a few local cultivators, but they were no match for groups supported by the Verdant River sect, so there was no real battle. As far as he could tell, these were peasants associated with smaller sects or clans, no one who could possibly be a threat to any sect associated with the Masterful Crown clan. So why slaughter them like this?

One of his first thoughts was that they might want the land or the villages: completely wipe out the current inhabitants and replace them with their own peasants. Most people on Cloudspire looked similar to Kai, but he knew they had their own ethnic groups and internecine conflicts. Yet even though the cultivators left the infrastructure intact, they didn't seem particularly interested in occupying it either, just took some food or wine and abandoned the rest.

There was another straightforward possibility: they needed the bodies themselves. In theory human bodies could be used to fertilize soil, but it didn't seem like a very efficient method. Unless this was what the Loam of the Gods required to grow? No, at this pace they'd have depopulated the whole region after just a generation or two. It was possible that all these corpses were required for their new immortality elixirs, since the method was allegedly a new one and Zae Zin Nim thought they must require extreme measures.

Eventually he discovered that there was one group that seemed better able to resist the Verdant River sect. He hadn't figured out their name yet, but they had groups of cultivators who wore bright red command medallions. For the most part they used hit and run tactics, not daring to attack the larger sect directly.

Scouting further, Kai discovered another piece of the puzzle: a completely devastated sect headquarters in the forest. The gates had the same symbol as the medallions, a red tree within a flame. There were still a few surviving peasants, and from them Kai gathered that the sect had been attacked by Verdant River cultivators based on some flimsy pretext. Most of the villages had been wiped out, but other sect cultivators survived, doing their best to fight back.

They seemed to be named the Redtree sect and Kai wasn't sure whether they were enemies, allies, or neither. As far as he could tell, they didn't have any particular goals except vengeance. Of course, from what he could tell, they didn't have a chance against the more powerful sect, but they could still be useful to him.

Because the plan was still in the earliest stages, Kai decided not to get directly involved. Instead he explored the areas where the Redtree sect lurked, figuring out the shape of the conflict. When an extermination squad flew from the Verdant River sect, strong enough to wipe them out, Kai eliminated them first, just to give the Redtree group a chance.

More squads came from the Verdant River sect with every passing day, now specifically trying to hunt him down. Kai resisted the impulse to attack too many of them, especially since the stronger cultivators could reach his location surprisingly quickly with their higher flight skills. It would take forever to kill the whole sect one attack squadron at a time, so his goal was simply to pull their attention from the others.

If any of the young masters came out, though, he would definitely kill them. Perhaps they knew it, because none of them dared try to hunt him.

A week after his first attack, he finally saw a group that prompted him to leave hiding. It wasn't because the group was particularly strong, but because he recognized one of the cultivators.

What was his name... Hul Ping? The ragged young man with the magic dagger who had been about to throw his life away attacking the young masters. Had the brat actually decided to turn on him? The young cultivator seemed to be leading the group, so it was possible.

This time Kai didn't hold back: he unleashed a hail of Manticore Quills, killing off the majority of the attack squad in the first instant before they could send a warning. He intentionally didn't strike Hul Ping, since he wanted to interrogate him. Maybe it would be useless, and he was just turning on him for his own benefit, but Kai had saved his life once before and didn't want to end it that quickly.

Hul Ping immediately dropped to his knees and pressed his forehead into the ground. That was normal behavior for cultivators, but what he said next actually surprised Kai.

"I knew I'd find you if I went south. Please, spare me and listen to what I have to say."