Chapter 239 - Returning With the Enemy

The red-haired man, who was in all likelihood the ‘Fragment of Blood’, and may or may not be the true core of the Primordial Devil, saw Yaan’s pained, twisted expression. His sadistic grin widened. He opened his mouth, planning to continue hurting this hated enemy of his by using words alone.

However, the moment he opened his mouth, he paused.

“Stop.” The Primordial Sage by his side spoke to prevent him from going any further. She had been visible to the red-haired man all along, but of course, only he was able to see and hear her.

The red-haired giant did not look at her, but he closed his mouth and listened to her words calmly. As he listened, he kept his gaze locked onto Yaan, hoping that he would be able to make him feel more uncomfortable, if only by a little bit.

“Say no more, or else you will send his mind into chaos. This is of no benefit to anyone. He is not ready to face the full truth.”

“Fine.” The red-haired man communicated with her by simply thinking, knowing that she could easily read his thoughts in his current state. “I suppose that I have taunted him enough. It’s time to get on with things, or else all of this will have been a waste of time.”

Just as the red-haired man was about to speak, Yaan suddenly looked up at him with a calm expression, and asked something that nobody present, aside from the Primordial Sage herself, could have predicted.

“Is the Primordial Sage here right now?”

After a period of silence, the red-haired man asked:

“What? Why would the Primordial Sage be here? That girl is always hiding, watching this and that. Who knows what she’s doing.”

Yaan shook his head.

“She’s the most likely person behind the manipulation of my fate. I know very little about the Primordial Sage, which is suspicious in and of itself, since I at least know something about the other three primordial demons…but since she is the primordial demon of the Sage Plane, the plane inhabited by beings of pure consciousness, she must be incredibly intelligent. She should also have a strong connection to the Primordial Devil. It should be her.”

“Oh? And what makes you think that I am not capable of manipulating you all on my own?” The towering giant leaned down towards Yaan, smiling with a smile filled with endless malice.

“Because you’re too impatient to plan something like this.” Yaan replied calmly.

There were other reasons, but Yaan saw no need to say anything else. His impatience, his prideful and straight forwards nature, made it impossible for this red-haired giant to be the mastermind behind this scheme.

The red-haired man’s killing intent swept out, but unlike before, Yaan remained calm, staring back into his eyes, refusing to even react. He had an indifferent look in his gaze, as if he simply didn’t care about this situation.

He refused to give this bastard the reaction he desired.

“If you’re going to kill me, then kill me. If you were telling the truth earlier, then stop wasting time and give me your full assistance, help me to survive my calamity and tribulation.”

In the end, the red-haired man realised that he could no longer intimidate Yaan like before.

Well, to begin with, it was difficult to intimidate someone who had a terrifying, probably fatal trial to face in three years, with no current way to overcome it.

“Fine then. I also want to see you succeed in your immortal ascension. I meant what I said before…I will kill you only after you reach the same limit as I, the limit that neither of us can surpass until we kill the other.”

Yaan raised an eyebrow, but he didn’t say anything right now. Besides, he could already guess what that limit might be.

It should by the peak of the Immortal Step; the Dao Immortal realm!

The Primordial Devil was previously a divinity, but was divinity something easy to attain? Clearly, the red-haired giant was powerful, but unless he had been restraining himself when they first met, Yaan felt certain that he had not yet entered the Divine Step. It seemed that, in order for either of them to take that last step, they would need to kill the other…

If he was telling the truth, that is. Yaan would not believe this man so easily. After all, they were irreconcilable enemies, enemies like no others that existed in this world, the sort of enemies that Yaan did not yet fully understand.

“Hmm?” The red-haired giant looked around and frowned. He finally realised that some ants had slowly began to approach them. They were still a few miles away and did not dare approach any closer due to the terrifying wave of killing intent which they felt spread out just now, but they still irritated him.

“Let’s make some space.” The red-haired man spoke casually. He waved his hand unhurriedly, manifesting a single droplet of blood from his body, which suddenly detonated above his head.

BOOM!

A shockwave of crimson spread out at an unbelievable speed. Instantly, the wave of red power destroyed the lands, the corpses, and the lives of the approaching warriors within a radius of ten miles.

Within the next few seconds, its might did not decline, but accelerated. The bloody wave spread out even further, growing larger and more ferocious by the second.

One hundred miles…

One thousand miles…

Ten thousand miles…

And finally, after destroying everything and slaughtering all life within a radius of fifty thousand miles, the power died down.

A single, casual move…

This…this was the strength of a Dao Immortal? With a casual move, they could devastate a region measuring one hundred thousand miles across?

Yaan could only laugh and shake his head. Honestly, when he first saw the destruction caused by that Rank 9 beast in the Kingdom of Reptil, he found it incomprehensible that one beast could create so much damage just by crashing into the land…but now, he understood.

The gap between each immortal realm was vast, far, far greater than any of the realm differences at the Foundation Step.

It made Yaan wonder about the divinities…just how strong were they, exactly?

“Right then, now that we have some space, let’s begin-”

“One moment.” Yaan interrupted, ignoring the giant of a man’s glare. “I’d like to return to the Bloody Totem Province first. That place has been my home for longer than anywhere else, I will feel most at ease there.”

It was true that he would feel most at ease there, but only because of the starry transportation formation which encompassed the entire sky. Well, it was likely that the person watching him already knew that, so he doubted-

“Fine, whatever, it’s not far.”

Unexpectedly, his request was allowed.

With those few words, the giant immediately grabbed Yaan in his hand, and then…he started running.

Only, each step he took caused grievous destruction to the land below. Each step he took crossed a distance that Yaan could not even estimate. He was unable to see how fast they were travelling, but it was so fast that he couldn’t even see the surroundings as they moved, everything became a blur.

Less than an hour later, they arrived.

Yaan felt speechless.

How far did he just run? It was over four million miles!

This speed was…well, over four million miles per hour. This was a bit ridiculous, no?

‘I see...’ Yaan finally understood the difference in speed between the different realms of immortals.

7-Star Immortals could travel tens of thousands of miles in an hour. 8-Star Immortals could travel hundreds of thousands of miles. 9-Star Immortals could travel millions of miles!

And this was when taking into account the suppression of the Blood Plane, which placed increasingly heavy restrictions upon stronger cultivators and their extreme travel speeds!

Yaan didn’t even bother asking the Fragment of Blood to create less chaos after reaching the Kingdom of Lunar Song, since that would probably backfire, and the violent giant might even decide to murder everyone in the entire kingdom, just to further aggravate him.

They arrived at Yaan’s old temple, the temple located in the centre of the original Bloody Totem Province. Now that they had finally stopped moving, Yaan noticed that his temple had been kept exactly as it was. He quickly looked around, but unfortunately, he could not see Ga Shu.

Well, perhaps this was for the best. It was quite likely that the Fragment of Blood would kill Ga Shu immediately, just to mess with him.

Aside from the few heavy craters created by the red-haired man’s footsteps as he walked through this forest without a care, everything was as it had always been.

Nobody was here…aside from one person.

“Ah…S-S-Senior…Red…” The Bloody Totem Tribe Leader, who visited this place whenever she could, hoping that one day, she would find Yaan here, could not keep her cool in the face of the red-haired man…in front of the current Blood Plane Lord.

He was a 9-Star Immortal, and one of the most powerful 9-Star Immortals at that! How could she, a mere Peak 5-Star warrior, possibly keep her cool when confronting such a being so unexpectedly?!

She could only stare upwards with a dumbfounded expression. Her mind went blank, she was unable to comprehend how a living being could be so huge.

Well, he was 10,000 feet tall after all, a fact that irritated the red-haired man to no end. He knew just how grand the Primordial Devil’s body had been before his reincarnation. He knew that right now…he was not even qualified to call himself an ant.

10,000 feet tall?

The current him was not even as large as one droplet of blood possessed by the old Primordial Devil!

The red-haired man glanced at the woman who had frozen in shock when facing him, then raised his hand, intending to swat her away like a fly.

Yaan pretended to ignore this action which was clearly intending to take her life, instead turning to the Bloody Totem Tribe Leader, as if he hadn’t noticed the malevolent being behind him, and said:

“Clear out the entire original Bloody Totem Province. Move all tribes to form an encirclement around the perimeter of the province. I want nobody to come within 100,000 miles of this place. When the immortals ask you what is going on, tell them that they would be wise to wait until they hear from the War Flower Empire.”

“Y-Yes!” She hastily bowed towards Yaan, then bowed with even more reverence towards the terrifying red-haired giant. “I apologise for interrupting, lord!”

With that, she no longer lingered in this place, flying away at her fastest possible speed.

Yaan glanced back at the red-haired man. As he expected, this person no longer intended to kill her. She was merely an annoying ant in his eyes, but if this ant could keep the other ants away from him, that would be more convenient.

“So you realised that the Kingdom of Reptil’s disaster was caused by me.” He glanced down at Yaan as he spoke.

“At this point, it’s fairly obvious. I also assume that you have already informed the War Flower Emperor to not interrupt us for the following three years?” Yaan replied. As he spoke, he ensured that no trace of emotion made it into his tone.

“Naturally. But, if that little ant can do as you said, it will be less effort on my part.”

Yaan remained expressionless, but he sighed in his mind.

Yaan had killed. He had killed wantonly, eventually disregarding life itself. The killing of a living person, with hopes and dreams, turned into the killing of many people, people he did not think much about, which eventually became the wide-scale slaughter of so many people, that their deaths became a mere number.

But this red-haired savage…to him, killing was not anything. The killing of the weak, was simply the removal of some pests. He killed like he was swatting flies…he did not even consider the number, because to him, killing was just like walking.

In fact, he probably killed thousands, if not tens of thousands, just along their journey back to this place from the Kingdom of Reptil.

He did not care about the lives of others, because he considered himself so far beyond them that he disdained from even thinking about them for a single moment.

The two of them had both killed, neither would restrain themselves from killing huge numbers of people, but…they were very different when it came to their outlook on life.