Chapter 116: Too Many Tangled Webs

"But how could Master be here? That makes no sense!" Han Kai's voice rose as he looked at Wu Xin.

Letting out a deep breath, fully understanding her friend's reaction, Wu Xin started scrolling through the footage on the sphere again. "That's not even the main thing I wanted to show you. Something, hm... that even I can't explain."

Reaching the moment where he disposed the demonic disciples in an instant, all four of them froze in shock.

"How can Master An be at Foundation Establishment realm? If I remember right, he was supposed to-" Silent Adrian was the first to react, turning to Han Kai with a baffled expression.

"Master only broke through to Foundation Establishment after ten years in the Upper World... This shouldn't be possible, his body was damaged by some elder's conspiracy..." Wearing the same baffled look as Adrian, he turned to Wu Xin, waiting for some kind of explanation from her.

"Sister Wu, what's going on? How can a deviation this severe even happen? Miss never mentioned anything like this!" Saim Isabelle, understanding nothing of what was happening, waited for answers from Wu Xin too.

Feeling the weight of every gaze fixed on her, Wu Xin just sighed and silently kept scrubbing the footage forward.

"How is this possible? Miss Ru Meng? She's dead?!" Adrian suddenly shouted, nearly ripping the sphere out of her hands before catching himself in time.

The others just stood there, staring silently at the frozen frame. None of them knew what to say, especially Han Kai.

What he'd just seen shook him harder than anyone else. Of everyone present, he'd known Ru Meng and An best of all. Watching one simply stand by and do nothing while the other died hit Han Kai especially hard.

"Now you understand what I meant. Ha..." Rubbing her forehead, Wu Xin let out a deep breath. "I was in shock myself when I found out... And besides, have you noticed how many events just don't line up anymore?" She suddenly looked up at the sky, frowning slightly.

"You're saying the changes happening around us are because of us?" Isabelle, hearing this, managed to partially collect herself and pulled her eyes away from the sphere to look up at her.

Gen Lo and Adrian both fixed their eyes on her too, except Han Kai, who kept staring at the frozen frame on the sphere, trying to find some logical explanation for what he was seeing.

"That's what I thought too, at first. But after the answers Mo Fan gave me... I've come to the conclusion that every change, directly or indirectly, traces back to Master An." At the end of her explanation, she looked over at Han Kai, still staring blankly at the sphere, his frown deepening the longer he sank into thought.

"What exactly do you mean? Besides the fact that he watched Miss Ru Meng die... which, honestly, still doesn't fit together in my head at all." Scratching his head in frustration at not being able to make sense of any of it, Adrian asked the question, trying to hurry her along, to get her to share everything she knew as fast as possible.

"As you all know, Master An suffered constant mistreatment because of his origins... Before, well, you all know what happened to him. Through a few crossings of paths with Mo Fan's group, Master An blended into it easily and became an inseparable part of it, almost the moment they arrived at the sect." Starting to recall and recount what she herself had once heard, she looked over all four of them.

They all nodded silently, fully agreeing with her.

"But now, something strange has happened. From what I managed to ask Mo Fan, without him noticing, I learned that Master An's behavior has changed drastically... He's become, hm… it's honestly hard to even say what he's become... it's like someone swapped him out for someone else." Looking at the two figures frozen in the sphere, she let a flicker of suppressed panic show in her eyes, uncertainty about what to do next.

"So what do we do now? Our mission, we were supposed to deliver the recipe to Master An, so he could refine that pill for Mo Fan as fast as possible... So he could finish forming his two dantians before breaking through to Golden Core. So, what are we supposed to do now? If we can forget about Master An helping with the pill... then who?" Isabelle, having calmed down and pulled herself together, asked the question weighing on all of them, not just her.

Letting out a heavy sigh, Wu Xin said, with clear distaste in her voice, "The Ridegold family. Specifically, their head alchemist... That's the only way." Her face twisted slightly as she said the family name.

Everyone around her frowned too, hearing that name.

"Hm, Ridegold Mili should be near Mo Fan right now, shouldn't she? Maybe... should we, you know?" Silent Adrian suddenly glanced around and made a slashing gesture across his throat.

"No. As much as that would be the right call, we need her now." Isabelle answered first, shaking her head firmly.

"Sister Saim's right. We can use her, beat her at her own game. Don't forget, we've got the advantage. We know every one of her moves, step by step." Wu Xin nodded, a faint smirk crossing her face.

Suddenly she looked at Han Kai, who was still deep in thought, completely ignoring all of them. "Brother Han, how are you holding up?"

Hearing her, he suddenly lifted his head and pulled a small teardrop-shaped glass vial from his pocket, gripping it tight in his hand. "Forgive me, but I need to confirm something." Turning, he started walking out of the barrier.

Adrian moved to grab his arm, but Isabelle stopped him first.

"Are you sure this is the right call? You saw it yourself, he's changed, it's not safe, given his cultivation level." Wu Xin tried to stop him, to talk him out of it. Every time she looked into Han Kai's eyes, it weighed on her.

"Something's not right here. I need to understand what happened. He's still my Master, after all, and I know him better than anyone." Without stopping, he stepped through the barrier, pulled an artifact from his ring, jumped onto it, and shot up into the sky.

"Um, Sister Wu, are you sure we should've let him go?" Tapping a finger against his chin, Gen Lo watched the black speck in the sky grow smaller and smaller, until it dissolved completely into the horizon.

"We can't hold him here by force. Besides, he's right. Out of all of us, he knows Master An better than anyone, and maybe, just maybe, he can convince him to help us... Let's just hope we still have that chance." Pulling her gaze away from the sky, she turned back toward Mo Fan, already wearing a look of displeasure. "Let's go. We've still got a lot of work ahead of us."

Tucking the artifact and the sphere back into her ring, Wu Xin suddenly felt something. "Wait! N-no! No! No!" Quickly pulling a necklace from an inner pocket of her robes, she found the stone on it cracked.

"Hm? What happened this time?" Behind her, Adrian heard her cries and asked, irritated.

"S-she... her soul! She's dead! Someone found my Senior Sister and destroyed her soul!" Clutching the necklace in her fist, she closed her eyes and started muttering something under her breath.

"Hey-" Adrian took a step forward and opened his mouth again, but felt someone grab his arm. Turning, he found Isabelle holding him back, shaking her head firmly.

"Senior Sister Siu Mio... what happened to you?!" She opened her eyes; her attempt to link the two stones together had failed, which told her, beyond doubt, that her Senior Sister's soul really had been erased.

….

'That was the last one.' Drawing in every fragment of soul above yet another shredded disciple's body, An suddenly looked in the direction of the center of the central ring. 'Hm? Familiar energy.'

Pushing off the ground and rising into the sky, he headed toward the source of that Qi.

.

.

Reaching an open clearing, he found more than thirty bodies scattered across the ground.

'They were killed very recently, clearly by his hand... Judging by their robes, these are disciples of the demonic Free Night Sect, the ones who favor fist and sword fighting... Oh? Two of them were at Foundation Establishment? Damn…'

Landing on the ground, he started walking toward two bodies lying side by side. As he walked, he drew in fragments of empty soul from the other bodies, absorbing them, not forgetting the Death Qi either.

Standing right over them, he thought, 'Hm, a young woman and a man, they look really similar. Were they brother and sister?' Stepping over a body sliced clean in half, he headed into the dense forest, remembering to draw in their soul fragments as well.

Moving carefully through the forest, he spotted a campfire in the distance, and in front of it, leaning his back against a huge boulder, a cultivator dressing a wound on his stomach.

Suddenly the cultivator sprang up and, looking straight toward An, shouted, "I know you're there! Come out! Or you'll regret it!", grabbing for the sword lying beside the boulder at the same time.

'His spirit sense only reaches a hundred meters out... Eh? Wait, is that a lot, or not?' An suddenly realized he didn't even know what the standard spirit-sense radius was supposed to be for a cultivator who'd just broken through to Foundation Establishment.

"Relax... I come in peace." Stepping out of the forest's shadow, An kept walking slowly toward the campfire.

"Hm? It's you." Recognizing him immediately, the cultivator relaxed slightly and sat back down, though he still kept his guard up.

Watching An approach, he tracked him with a puzzled expression.

"Forget already? I can sense Qi better than you can, so I already knew it was you. Besides, spirit sense works on the same principle." Pulling a bottle of wine from his ring, An thought for a moment and looked at the cultivator. "You got a cup or a mug?"

The cultivator frowned slightly, but pulled out a mug without hesitation, one that could hold at least two liters.

Seeing the size of it, An raised an eyebrow and, snapping his fingers, sent the mug flying out of the cultivator's hand and over to himself.

Filling it to the brim, he sent the vessel flying back.

Cradling the mug, the cultivator sniffed it and studied the wine closely.

"Aged with Red Plum and Shinmano fruit... has a physical recovery effect, and a partial restoration effect for mental reserves too, though not a very strong one yet. As for a name... eh, let's just call it Bibimo wine." Taking a few sips himself, An sat down on a fallen log by the fire, pulled out a small cup, filled it, and sent it into the beast pouch hanging at his belt.

Watching his every move closely, the cultivator finally took his first sip, and his eyelids fluttered. Without hesitation, he took another sip, then drained nearly half the mug.

Suddenly catching himself, he forced himself to stop before draining the whole thing. Turning to An, he asked, "Why are you here?"

"I felt bursts of Qi coming from this direction. Realizing it was a fight between Foundation Establishment cultivators, I figured I'd come take a look. You know, see how cultivators at this realm fight... Pick up some experience, for the future." Taking a sip, An suddenly turned his head back.

Just as the cultivator was about to say something, An's behavior threw him off, and he looked in the same direction. "What is it?"

"On my way here, I felt someone tailing me. At first, I figured it was a coincidence, but after changing direction a few times, whoever's following me stuck right with me every time." An turned back and, seeing the faintly alarmed look on the cultivator's face, smirked and shook his head.

"How many are there?" The cultivator frowned, eyes locked on the treeline.

"Don't work yourself up, I didn't lead them here on purpose to use you as cover. Heh!" Smiling slightly, An snapped his fingers, and the fire flared up brighter. "It's just one, and he's barely at peak Qi Condensation... so you've got nothing to worry about. Of course, if he's the heir to some massive clan or family that's loaded him up with a thousand talismans and artifacts... then we're both in for a rough time. Especially you."

Hearing this, the cultivator sat with mixed feelings churning through him. After a moment's thought, he took a small sip and went back to wrapping the cloth bandage around his stomach, already coated in salve underneath.

Watching him, An realized just how lucky he was to have such fast regeneration, pulling him back from the brink every single time.

Otherwise, if he'd had to rely on treatment like this every time, there was a real chance he wouldn't have survived to see today.

Crack! Crack!

Suddenly, behind them, came the sound of dry, long-dead branches snapping underfoot.

The cultivator paused for a moment, stopping mid-bandage, but a second later turned his head back toward the fire and went right back to treating himself.

"Good evening! Would you mind if I joined your fire?" Stepping out of the forest, a short, thin young man looked over both of them, and after studying them for a while, managed to recognize them both.