'Ah! Ah! Ah!' Jake panted.

He stood up limping, as he stared at the masked men.

Despite the activation of his [Akashic Eye], Jake wasn't happy at all.

Far from that, he was tense!

His body was a mess right now, and he had no weapons to fight. He had only activated his special eye to support him.

However, that didn't make him despair. He intensely gazed at the masked men, checking for any weakness he could use to his advantage.

Yet, he couldn't find any satisfactory. The ones he noticed would require him to use his physical body to his limit, something he had already done minutes ago.

If he went past his limit again, he might die or, worst-case scenario, he might cripple his body. That was not a viable solution!

Jake had heard of cultivators crippling their bodies during battles. They become a husk of themselves and lose most of their abilities. Some of them would even be hunted by their enemies and tortured till death.

The part of cultivation is a progressive path. The moment one stops, everything will come crashing down at him like karma.

Hence, he could not take the risk of severely damaging his body.

"Hmm..?" Jake got out of his thought space as he sensed danger around him.

His [Akashic Eye] brightened up as he scouted around, 'It seems they have become rather impatient.'

*Pa!*

Immediately, a familiar bullet-shaped energy came wheezing to his current location.

He easily dodged it, but he instantly realized that it was a trap!

*Shing!*

A weapon was swung behind him. Jake could already feel the sharpness of the weapon as it came down at him, giving him no time to react.

*Shwew!*

The attack sliced Jake's location as it descended to the ground.

Due to the impact, the attack summoned dust that clouded the vicinity and blocked the view of everyone.

Opening his largemouth, the senior blew a terrifying amount of air that was sure to be able to propel a stone.

The air dispersed the dust and the senior waited expectantly to see Jake sliced in half.

"What?!" He exclaimed.

The dust had already cleared and the senior could see everything.

Due to the attack, his weapon was lodged to the ground, but there was no blood on the ground.

Instead, the area was empty of life.

Just as he was wondering where Jake was, he heard a scream!

Looking ten feet away from him, he saw his junior screaming as a pool of blood dripped from his head.

He had thought perhaps it was Jake, but Jake wasn't there. Instead, the most likely cause was that stone, stained with blood beside the junior, had done it. Yet, that begged the question, where was Jake?

No sooner, the senior received his answers as everywhere became dark, like the color of shadows, like a place without light.

"The lights!" the senior shouted.

He had dropped the light lamp when he began his fight with Jake.

The light provided from the lamp had helped both sides to see their enemies, but clearly, his opponent didn't want it anymore.

"Junior, come to me! We will watch each other back," shouted the senior in the dark.

He hoped his junior could find him through his voice as he wouldn't be speaking twice.

With his rich experience, he understood what his enemy was doing. Stalking his prey in the dark. This was the classic move of predators and assassins.

His opponent had also surrendered his environment to the dark. Clearly, he had enough confidence to fight blind.

In one glance, the senior understood Jake's motive, 'He knew he could not last, so he changed the stage. Somewhere he is more comfortable at.'

Part of the reason for this deduction was his clashes with Jake. He had analyzed Jake's fighting style and halfly understood his thought process.

His body jolted when he felt something behind him. He was about to strike the movement when he heard a small whisper, 'It is me!'

He recognized the voice. It was his junior's voice.

Smiling, he whispered back, 'Good!'

Finally feeling the sense of security behind him, He decided to get over the nonsense.

Brightening up his body with the brilliance of [Spirit Essence], he channeled it into his sword and conjured a flame.

He also made a flame ball on his hand and threw it at his front. Everything the flame ball went, it would brighten up the location.

Seeing nothing, the senior sighed, 'Goo--What?!'

He only had a millisecond to relax before he realized that, judging by the structure of tunnels, if Jake wasn't in front of him, he would be behind!

Instantly swinging his flame torched glaive behind, he was surprised to see nothing....that was until he looked down.

*Gurgle!!*

Shocked, he saw his junior kneeling with a gaping hole at his chest. The junior, still in shock, made his last expression as he looked at his chest with no heart!

*Thud!*

Following the law of life, the junior fell flat. He stopped breathing!

Furious, the senior shouted at the sight of his dead junior, "Ahhh!"

However, he was not granted time to mourn as a dagger flew at him at a break-necking speed.

*Pa!*

He parried it with his glaive, but the dagger had gotten close enough to leave a scar on his cheek.

In fright, he touched the blood on his neck, but before he could concentrate back on the fight, a small pebble-sized stone blitzed to his face and knocked him down.

.........….

Dragging his broken leg, Jake delved back into the embrace of the darkness.

A few moments ago, he had just nearly dodged the attempt on his life.

Using the dust as a cover, he injured the junior and snuffed out the light lamppost. It was easy to do that!

With his photographic memory, he was able to know the last location of everything he saw.

Afterward, he waited patiently for the masked men to group up, as even in the dark, he wasn't guaranteed total success.

He could not attack the junior alone with his physical status, so he opted for a surprise.

He predicted that the senior would try to take back control of the fight, and that would be the time to strike.

So, he waited again, and when the senior was distracted with embarrassing himself with his failed attempt at drawing him out, he acted.

He sneaked close to the junior, and went past his speed limits, at the same time breaking through to the next stage of [Sword Drawing] technique.

That was what made his attack successful, as the amount of power required to pierce the body with bare hands was currently beyond him. He could only achieve that by converting his speed to power.

However, ultimately, his body could not keep up with that. After that attack his right-hand finger and arm bones cracked, signifying that he wouldn't be using it in a while.

Jake dug his arm into the chest of the junior and brought out his heart, which was still currently in his hand.

The heart was warm and due to the physiology of cultivators, it was still beating.

Such a sight might have been disturbing to others, but to Jake, it wasn't.

He was used to gory scenes. He had developed immunity for it since the day he was hired to find something, but someone else had swallowed it.

That day was definitely annoying, Jake had to retrieve the object through some rather butcher-ry means...

...…..

Jake had thrown the junior's dagger and stones at the senior.

Despite the darkness, it was easy for him to pick out the senior. Using his sixth sense in an irregular way, he made a mental map of where danger was and wasn't, and then he threw the object at the location where the danger was.

As for the accuracy of the aim, he had fixed his trajectory based on the actual height of the senior, so there was no way he was going to miss it. Unless the senior was actually not standing straight.

Going over to finish it, Jake noticed everywhere was too silent. He was sure that he had gotten his throw right and the senior must have been knocked out.

However, the environment told him otherwise!

Decisively, Jake used the radiance of [Spirit Essence] to see what was actually going on.

'Hmm?' Jake thought as he saw something interesting.

His eyes dilated as he spotted the senior, with a bleedy face, crawl to the corpse of the junior.

He did not know what the senior was doing, however, he didn't want to take any chances. He ran to the senior, yet, it was too late.

In a swift motion, the senior brought out a bottle of liquid. He drank half of it and poured the rest into the mouth of the dead junior.

Immediately, a weird transformation began.

The senior skin became darker as it rotted every minute, his eyes became extremely black, and his nose looked like it would fall off.

His fingernails grew sharp, and saliva buttered out of his mouth.

The same transformation occurred to the dead junior, who proved not to be so dead, as he suddenly stood up from his position.

Watching this, Jake murmured, "Zombies."

He realized things were not as simple as it was...