Sovereign of the Three Realms

In the end, Jiang Chen had his own principles. He wouldn’t have antagonized these people if they hadn’t laid hands on him. After all, they had put quite some effort into their schemes, but unfortunately, those plans couldn’t entrap one of Jiang Chen’s strength. Sadly, this group was sly, slippery, and deeply selfish. They’d actually banded together to act against him! There was no way he would show them mercy.

He waved his hand and the petals of the ice lotus opened up, swallowing the struggling fellows whole.

Jiang Chen didn’t feel the slightest ripple of emotion as he watched this scene expressionlessly. The world of martial dao was just as cruel as this. If he was soft hearted and let them off, they would undoubtedly raise even more trouble when they left and returned to the sect.

He’d never liked to create trouble for and hobble himself with restraints of his own making. Mu Gaoqi was still speechless, trying to make sense of the near unbelievable turn of events.

Jiang Chen’s strength and presence gave him a formless pressure. He knew that it would be beneficial to himself when he invited Jiang Chen, but he hadn’t thought that everyone else would end up dead at this point.

“Gaoqi, do you think I should’ve let them go?” Jiang Chen suddenly smiled and asked.

Mu Gaoqi stammered, not knowing how to respond. He was weak by nature, and had made it to this step in his cultivation purely by using pills. He’d never experienced any tempering from cruel bloodshed. Therefore, he didn’t have a strong grasp of the law of the jungle.

“Gaoqi, if you don’t have this kind of mental preparation, you should refrain from adventuring outside that often in the future. This kind of experience isn’t suitable for you.” Jiang Chen sighed lightly and looked ahead. “Let’s go.” He’d already arrived at the rock curtain by the time his words had rung in My Gaoqi’s ears. He stood above the the herb, only plucking it after careful consideration and coming to the conclusion that nothing was untoward.

Meanwhile, Jiang Chen’s words rang like the morning bell, causing great waves of emotion in Mu Gaoqi’s heart. When he thought back to everything that had happened on this expedition, he had to admit that he was still too naive. He’d thought that everyone would treat him fairly after he’d offered up the pills and would work together with him in exploring the spring. Reality had proven otherwise, and nothing had proceeded as he’d thought. If he hadn’t invited Jiang Chen, then at best, he would’ve been blocked outside the cavern, or even worse, slaughtered if he’d insisted in coming in.

Feng Wanjian had blocked him from entering, and those from the Great Cathedral had agreed. The Walkabout Sect had long since laid in wait after entering and attacked them all from the shadows. If it hadn’t been for Jiang Chen pulling him back, Mu Gaoqi surely would’ve been the first to fall given his cultivation level. When they arrived at the lava region, Yue Pan of the Great Cathedral had schemed against them. If it wasn’t for Jiang Chen, Mu Gaoqi wouldn’t have made it past the lava region at all. If he’d lacked even the slightest iota of luck, he would’ve fallen into the lava and fed to the lava monsters. And now in the karst cave, would he have had a better fate than Lin Feng or Feng Wanjian if not for Jiang Chen? Obviously not!

Mu Gaoqi instantly understood something when his thoughts traveled here.

“The jianghu 1 is vicious, the jianghu is savage! The senior executives of the sect always conveyed this to us in the sect, but I was too naive. I always felt that because my pill potential was extraordinary, others will always kiss up to me and fawn over me. Who would’ve thought that the ugliness of humanity would be revealed in its entirety during the search for the spring? I likely would’ve died four times over had it not been for Brother Jiang Chen.”

No words were as convincing as reality. Mu Gaoqi thoroughly laid down the burdens in his heart after this spontaneous enlightenment and called out, “Brother Jiang Chen, wait for me!”

There was only the two of them left now that all the others were dead. Mu Gaoqi hadn’t been here before either, so they could only slowly explore their way forward. It was a good thing that he had a wood constitution, so he could more or less sense the spring. The two of them made slow progress forward based on these clues.

This ancient cavern was as if a bottomless pit from the legends. The further in they went, the more Jiang Chen could feel that this cavern must have had uncommon purpose in ancient times. The further down they went, the more sensitive Jiang Chen and Mu Gaoqi’s perceptions became.

“We should be almost there!!” Mu Gaoqi was a bit excited and spoke enthusiastically.

Jiang Chen reached out a hand and made a gesture to be quiet. “Gaoqi, speak with your consciousness. If a strong entity lives within this heavenly land, you’ll wake it with your yelling.”

Mu Gaoqi blushed deeply, feeling that he’d completely lost face for himself. He was still too untested after all, and wasn’t able to keep his cool in the face of such a tiny matter.

“Brother Jiang Chen, do you sense any danger?” Mu Gaoqi asked with his consciousness.

Jiang Chen himself didn’t know either if he was being paranoid. The ones who’d entered the cave were all dead, but there was a sense of danger ringing from his intuition that said danger was still present.

“Caution is the parent of safety. Gaoqi, the closer we get to our destination, the more dangerous things become.” Jiang Chen slowed down and extended his consciousness to observe all the flora and fauna around him. The two of them passed through an endless, back corridor to be suddenly greeted with a patch of green light.

“We should be here.” The scene opened up to them after they rounded the bend. There was a naturally formed lake in this underground world that seemed like an emerald embedded in this boundless night. The surface was as calm and smooth like a mirror, the waters a pure jade-green and emitting a dense mist of abundant spirit qi, lulling onlookers.

“Brother Jiang Chen, we’re rich, we’re really rich!” Mu Gaoqi still couldn’t hold himself in and began shouting excitedly.

Jiang Chen’s heart stirred as he suddenly felt a trace of danger, but looked around and saw nothing. He perked up his ears to hear water dripping down from the rock curtain and come to rest at their feet.

He raised his head for a look, and suddenly saw two drops start to descend. Jiang Chen’s God’s Eye suddenly contracted and magnified this falling water drop, seeing the dense runes that were appearing within it.

“This is bad!” Jiang Chen immediately reacted—this was an attack that had transmuted the attacker’s consciousness into liquid! That seemingly minuscule droplet contained immense, devastating and destructive power. This attack was absolutely beyond the range of the origin realm!

When Jiang Chen had time to respond, the two water drops had already enlarged. They suddenly became a waterfall crashing down from the nine heavens as a frightening water curtain instantly enclosed the two.

Two enormous bubbles had imprisoned Jiang Chen and Mu Gaoqi after a short while. The water curtain seemed thing, but it encompassed the strongest power found beneath the heavens. No matter how Jiang Chen and Mu Gaoqi rammed it, they were unable to pierce the bubble.

Jiang Chen had yet to run into anything like this since he’d set foot in the world. When he saw that there was no effect on the bubble after ramming it twice, he decided to stop his actions. He called upon his fire attribute arts and sent the Skyblaze Supernova Point sizzling towards the water curtain.

The result was still the same. Complete non-response, as if it’d sunk like a boulder into the seas.

The Supernova Point was currently Jiang Chen’s strongest single target attack. It only caused the runes in the water to flare when it hit the water curtain, but harm the curtain at all.

Mu Gaoqi was punching and kicking over on his side, but that too proved futile. The most frightening thing was that Jiang Chen kept sending messages to Mu Gaoqi, but the latter didn’t respond at all. It seemed that the water curtain could block all communication and make it so that Jiang Chen was unable to contact the outside world.

“Hmph! Two mere origin realm rats want to break through my Rune of Heavenly Water?” A figure suddenly flashed out of the shadows in the walls.

This person was stooped and a little hunchbacked, but even so, he was still very tall and bulky. He held a wooden cane in his hand, his vicious eyes sending out faint light like a hungry wolf’s. He took several leisurely spins around Jiang Chen and Mu Gaoqi.

Jiang Chen was surprised to see that this man wore the same clothes as the two Walkabout Sect disciples.

“This person is an expert from the Walkabout Sect?” Jiang Chen was astonished. Those two had invited such an expert as this one? But if this was the case, why did the two disciples have to bend to ally with Xu Gang and Yue Pan? Something wasn’t quite making sense here.

The hunchbacked expert murmured to himself. “Only these two rats have come squirreling over, so this means that the others are dead? These two look to be from the Regal Pill Palace? This isn’t right, according to my speculations, it should either be the two from the Great Cathedral making it this far, or the two useless disciples from my Walkabout Sect. Why is it the two from the Regal Pill Palace?”

However, he didn’t seem to care very much about this question after thinking about it for a while. “Hmph, it’s easy enough to kill the rats from the Regal Pill Palace. If I wasn’t worried for the scent of blood disturbing the strong being here, I would’ve killed both of you with a blow a long time ago.”

The hunchback walked to Mu Gaoqi and stomped on the water curtain, cursing loudly, “Particularly you idiot! Screaming and yelling as if afraid that the entity here wouldn’t detect you? What an absolute f*cking idiot!”

The two of them couldn’t communicate with the outside world, but they could absolutely hear the hunchback’s words. Mu Gaoqi was beside himself with regret, feeling that he’d dragged down Jiang Chen again.

It was rather Jiang Chen who sat down cross-legged, oblivious to the outside world when he realized after a few times that he was unable to break through the water curtain.

The hunchback expert was indeed an elder in the Walkabout Sect and had happened to hear some of the two disciples’ conversation before they set out. He’d surreptitiously followed them after learning of the spring with the wood energy, and used his strength to bypass the two to reach the spring first. However, when he arrived, he discovered that there was a warning line drawn around outside the spring, a line left behind by a strong entity.

The strength of this entity was such even a second level sage realm as he felt a bit stressed. Therefore, he’d been brainstorming on how to bypass this entity, or at the very least not awaken it.

This was when Jiang Chen and Mu Gaoqi had arrived, with the latter’s holler angering the hunchback so that he’d used his arts to imprison the new arrivals.

It wasn’t that he didn’t kill people, but that he was worried the killing intent and bloody scent would disturb the entity if he did so. Even so, Mu Gaoqi’s previous shout still set him a bit on edge. He became lost in thought as he looked at that line.

1. The great world, the scene that cultivators interact in.