Chapter 1230: Initial Contact with the Meng Clan!
“It’s not me!” cried an alarmed voice from within the red mist. This was indeed the same person who had appeared a month before. At that time, the Daoist priest had ended up taking Meng Hao away, and therefore, this young man had managed to avoid meeting a calamity.
Upon this second meeting, the red mist immediately attempted to flee at top speed. However, Meng Hao waved his finger, unleashing the Eighth Demon Sealing Hex. The mist immediately lurched to a stop, and Meng Hao advanced, waving his arm, which caused the entire patch of mist to be blasted away.
Revealed inside was a young man in a red robe. Face flickering, he performed a double-handed incantation gesture and then pointed at Meng Hao. Meng Hao’s blood immediately began to flow backward, and his cultivation base rotated in reverse. He stopped in place, his face bright red.
Killing intent flickered in the eyes of the young man who, instead of fleeing, turned and lifted both hands into the air. Even as he closed in on Meng Hao, an old man materialized from thin air nearby, his face grim and also filled with killing intent.
This man was obviously the younger man’s Dao Protector.
Both attacked with thunderous speed, and yet, as they neared, Meng Hao merely smiled. That smile caused the old Dao Protector’s heart to feel as if it had been struck by lightning.
Before he could even react, Meng Hao shot forward, unleashing one, two, three fists onto him!
A boom could be heard as the man’s body exploded into fragments, and he was completely destroyed, without even being given a chance to scream!
It was an instant fatality!
The red-robed young man’s eyes widened, and he instantly began to back up. But Meng Hao was already upon him, and began to unleash the same punch he had released onto the old man.
“You can’t kill me! My father is the Blood Seal Sect’s Sect–”
Before the young man could finish speak, Meng Hao’s fist landed. A boom rang out, and the young man’s body trembled. Then he looked down at himself and saw a huge, gaping hole in his chest. The terrifying explosive power continued to flood out through his body, which then began to crack and fall apart. Moments later, he was completely dead, even his soul.
“Well why didn’t you speak up earlier…?” Meng Hao said, frowning with the realization that he probably shouldn’t have killed his person. If his father was somebody important, he surely could have ransomed him for a hefty price.
Unfortunately, the young man hadn’t spoken up quickly enough.
“I originally only had one enemy, which was the Blacksoul Society. But with so many cultivators trying to chase me down and kill me, well… let’s just see who’s the last one standing!” He flicked the blood off of his hand, and turned, eyes flickering with killing intent as he vanished.
Two days later, the hunt for Meng Hao was still going on in the Heavengod Alliance’s territory. Suddenly, he ran into a squad of about a hundred cultivators. Unfortunately for them, they had no Dao Realm expert to lead them, and therefore, after about ten breaths of time passed, they were completely wiped out.
Another day passed. In another location, he ran into three hundred cultivators. They were similarly wiped out!
The Heavengod Alliance was furious, and countless cultivators were mobilized to try to chase down Meng Hao. However, any time they were able to pinpoint his location, he was simply too fast, and by the time a Dao Realm expert arrived on the scene, he would be long gone.
On the sixth day, a group comprised entirely of Heavengod Society disciples ran into him, and was completely wiped out.
That completely enraged the cultivators of the Heavengod Alliance. However, on the seventh day, something happened which caused the number of cultivators who were pursuing Meng Hao to suddenly drop by a significant number. Even the highest ranking members of the Heavengod Alliance itself were shocked!
Meng Hao killed a Dao Realm cultivator!!
That person might only have been a 1-Essence Dao Realm cultivator, but he was in that most mighty of Realms, the type of person who could be a true Patriarch. He suddenly appeared when Meng Hao was in the middle of wiping out a group of Heavengod Alliance cultivators. Meng Hao immediately stopped attacking his current target and shot toward the Dao Realm expert. They then engaged in a fierce battle in the starry sky. Although it first seemed as if it would be a protracted fight, Meng Hao killed him after only an hour!
That completely shook everyone who was chasing him, and brought them back to their senses after the intoxicating thought of the prize for catching him. In fact, many sects even issued orders to their disciples to stop going after Meng Hao and return to the sect.
That battle clearly revealed that Meng Hao’s cultivation base had been restored, and furthermore, showed that his extermination of the Blacksoul Society had not been a fluke. Nor had he used some special method to make it happen. It wasn’t something that could only happen once… he truly possessed that level of power!
The slaughtering was instantly reduced. And yet, there were still people chasing him. The main difference was that Immortal Realm cultivators no longer joined in, and the weakest people were in the great circle of the Ancient Realm. The main strength came in the form of Dao Realm cultivators!
In the entire Heavengod Alliance, there were only a few dozen Dao Realm cultivators, about thirty percent of which were now participating in the search!
However, because of the deadly way Meng Hao was fighting back against his pursuers, the Heavengod Alliance was no longer chasing him merely because of what had happened with the Blacksoul Society. Apparently, an undispellable enmity now existed between them!
In this, Meng Hao could not be blamed; the responsibility fell squarely on the shoulders of the Heavengod Alliance.
Soon, the actual instances of death grew increasingly infrequent. It wasn’t until three days later that several Dao Realm experts caught up with Meng Hao at the same time. After an intense battle was fought, Meng Hao was forced to flee.
Five days later, two more Dao Realm cultivators caught up with him. The battle was incredible, and both Dao Realm cultivators were heavily injured. However, so was Meng Hao, who was again forced to flee.
Currently, Meng Hao was staggering along somewhere near the border of the Heavengod Alliance. Blood oozed out of his mouth, and yet, his eyes shone with cold light. He looked like a lone wolf.
His injuries were serious, and his Eternal stratum was hard at work. It had been less than a month, and he had been in numerous intense fights, the most recent of which had all been fights with the Dao Realm.
1-Essence or 2-Essences were one thing, but if they teamed up, things got difficult. That was not even to mention what happened when a Dao Lord appeared. After all, Meng Hao wasn’t even in the Dao Realm himself….
“There must be something on me that they can sense, but what? They’re constantly locking onto my position. Ever since I left Planet Luo River, they’ve been tracking me down so quickly!” Meng Hao’s eyes flickered with killing intent. Suddenly, he stopped in place and looked up ahead at something that had just appeared out in the inky blackness of the void. Brightly glowing rifts!
Rifts, in between which floated dust and rubble…
There weren’t many of them, only a total of 33, and they formed together into a very peculiar shape that resembled the vicious face of a ghost, floating there in the starry sky. For some reason, Meng Hao got the feeling that the ghost face was looking at him.
He even caught wind of what sounded like endless screams echoing out from tombs. His face fell, and he began to back up. As he did, he couldn’t help but notice that the area encompassed by the ghost face… was expanding.
It was now larger than when he had first seen it, by about thirty percent.
“An Arcane Pocket Realm?” he thought, studying the ghost face. For some reason, looking at the ghost face filled him with a sense of intangible danger. He quickly pulled out the map jade slip from the Righteous Noble Sect, and examined it carefully. Unfortunately, there was no information whatsoever about anything special in this area.
“Something’s off….” he thought, frowning. After looking again at the rapidly expanding ghost face, and then back at the map jade slip, his brow furrowed deeper.
The map was very detailed, and was a rare item that only conclave disciples of the Righteous Noble Sect would have access to. There were even many asteroids marked on the map.
According to the map, Meng Hao’s current location should have had seven asteroids which formed together in a small bazaar.
Right now though, there were no seven asteroids to be seen, and the bazaar which had existed on them was also gone.
As Meng Hao studied the situation, his scalp began to grow numb.
“Did they get swallowed up…?” he thought, looking over at the 33 glowing rifts, and the dust and rubble floating there. He could well imagine that, previously, there really had been seven asteroids and the bazaar, and naturally some cultivators would have been present too.
However, these 33 glowing rifts had suddenly appeared and then swallowed up and destroyed everything in the area… this line of thinking caused Meng Hao’s face to fall. Furthermore, the sensation of danger he felt grew even stronger; there was even an aura of death that gradually became quite apparent.
“The Eighth Mountain and Sea is full of one grave after another. Could this also be some sort of gravesite?!”
Without any hesitation, he backed up. This place seemed far too dangerous, so he decided to simply turn and leave.
The following moment, though, before he had flown very far, he looked out into the starry sky and caught sight of a merchant ship heading in his direction.
Just when he caught sight of it, the ship suddenly stopped in place.
A complicated expression appeared on Meng Hao’s face as he noticed the magical symbols on the side of the ship, which formed together into the character Meng 孟. “The Meng Clan….”
This was his first time seeing anyone from the Meng Clan in the Eighth Mountain and Sea. He had never imagined that it would be under these circumstances. Looking away, he made to leave again, when suddenly, a bright shield of light appeared around the ship, apparently a defensive spell formation. Simultaneously, several figures flew out from the ship to stare at Meng Hao.
One of them was a young man, handsome although someone pallid. He looked weak, as if from excessive drinking. He wore fine silks, and had a jade lip in his hand. As soon as he caught sight of Meng Hao, his face lit up, and he crushed the jade slip.
Meng Hao scanned the ship with divine sense and found that the highest cultivation bases among their number were two experts in the great circle of the Ancient Realm.
One of them stood next to the young Meng Clan cultivator, and the other flanked another young man, who was extremely skinny but had a cold gleam in his eyes.
Meng Hao could kill all of these people very easily, even if they did have a defensive spell formation in place.
When he saw the young man crush the jade slip, Meng Hao sighed. Then he turned, transforming into a beam of bright light that began to shoot off into the distance.
But then, the young man cried out, “Meng Hao, don’t even dream about leaving! Get out there and stop him, all of you! I already notified the Senior members of the Heavengod Alliance, and they’ll be here any moment. Stall Meng Hao!”
In response to the young man’s words, a dozen or so cultivators flew out from the ship. They all looked very nervous, and yet even more nervous than they, were the two cultivators in the great circle of the Ancient Realm. When they heard the young man’s words, their faces fell.
“Shut your mouth!!” one of the old men roared.
“Moron!” said the cold, skinny young man off to the side, his expression flickering with scorn.