The Immortal Emperor Returns

Chapter 247 Terror

Swoosh!

A squalid breeze of foul air poured from inside the cave, rolling up the foul aura wafting lazily around in waves.

Reverently, the cultists remained kneeling with their heads on the ground. Their hoods obscured their face and everyone could not see their faces, although one could almost make out the excitement and thrill in their voice.

Everyone else was shaking as well, but not because of excitement so much as because of fear.

The presence that flooded out the cave entrance was so morbidly terrifying that even Human Kings could not help feeling their hairs stand, never mind other warriors with far more inferior strengths.

Chu Xun peered solemnly in silence, projecting his spiritual senses in hopes of finding what lurked inside and the images of what transpired inside appeared in his mind.

The walls of the cave bore the hallmarks of ancient, forgotten, but ornate furnishing—they were stones hewn and carved by the hands of men. Chu Xun willed his Divine Sense to probe deeper, hoping to explore for another hundred meters when he felt his astral projection being bounced back—something inside stopping him from getting further. A gossamer wall of light that obstructed his attempt to investigate what skulked inside.

Chu Xun decided to withdraw his Divine Sense. Yet before he could, his expression changed suddenly. A gash opened on the center of the barrier of light, and an outrageously huge skeletal hand stretched out, a behemoth-like hand that has neither flesh nor blood!

The sight of it appalled Chu Xun and he hurriedly withdrew his astral projection.

The foul aura outside rolled more violently as if in a storm, and the giant skeletal hand shot out the gaping mouth of the cave.

Everyone was stunned by the sight of it.

The big hand raised up, blotting out the Sun, and came down without any warning, and with the force of a mountain, he squashed to death several Grandmasters, bespattering the ground with blood before the huge skeletal hand absorbed them.

Swish!

The big bony hands clawed up again, whisking up putrid winds that reeked of blood and flesh, and it bore down again on the mob.

Puff! Puff...!

More blood and squashed flesh splashed everywhere. No warriors below the rank of Grandmaster could ever hope to survive such a blow. A Human King was caught in the blast, and had lost half his shoulder.

The fact that even a Human King nearly died from the strike made it all the more horrible. From the colossal skeletal hand a strange, invisible force made their blood boil, as if it was about to be drawn out from their very bodies.

Bang!

With another slap that rocked the mountain to its very foundations that the ground split opened, more blood spattered as another dozen warriors were killed.

The gigantic hand absorbed the blood like a sponge, its white bones slowly grew shinier and its destructive aura increasingly intense.

What in the world was this abysmally grotesque monstrosity? The very same thought flashed through the minds of every terrified face trembling and contorting with panic at the sight of the skeletal hand.

“I... I... After so long, I’m getting out... Ming Ji Zi... Just you wait... you useless wretch... I’ll devour you when I get out...” a ghastly voice boomed sluggishly at first, although it spoke more smoothly in the end.

“The sons of Clan Wu hereby welcome the Elder Ancestor’s return!” the hooded cultists declared loudly again.

“You are all my descendants?” the voice resounded with a palpable chill as its aura, like a probing tendril, scanned every member of the Broken Souls Cult kneeling quietly, making them tremble obsequiously.

“You look nothing more than crossbred curs... Has Clan Wu fallen so low...”

“Pray to stay your anger, Lord Elder Ancestor. For centuries we’ve toiled and recovering you has been our sole purpose until today. The world is now gripped by troubles and that affords us numerous opportunities to reclaim our former glory and with you leading us, Lord Elder Ancestor, that is no longer a phantasmal dream,” said one of the hooded cultists.

“You can count on that,” the disembodied voice boomed again, no longer feeble or sluggish. If anything, it rumbled with the confidence of a brimming storm instead, “I swear on my powers as an Immortal: I shall make sure Clan Wu reign supreme once more.”

Immortal?! Was he a Human Immortal?

There was hardly anyone who could not resist trembling upon hearing those words. Who out of everyone here could possibly be able to fight this monster as equals if he was a Human Immortal?! Who could survive a bout against him!?

Chu Xun had been quiet all this while. He has been projecting his Divine Sense around, scouring everywhere for the weakness of the magical formation. The magical barriers and fields here were all constructed using Taoist elements, but every magical field had its weakness, called the Eye of Formation. Destroy the Eye, and so falls the magical formation.

“Retreat, all of you! Give me some time to destroy the seal and undo the magic of the formation!”

Swish!

The gigantic white hand swung upwards again, billowing the stench of blood and foul aura rolling over it, only to come back down with another slam on the ground and more blood rained around.

Stricken by fear, the dread of dying blazed through the mob of warriors, causing a cacophonic furor of screams and sobs.

They could not resist even more, let alone resist as they watched with utter helplessness and despair at the big white hand rising and falling like a scythe slicing through stalks of wheat and their lives were gone.

With all the blood it consumed, the skeletal hand began to shine with a scarlet hue amidst its clear white luster while its deathly aura grew stronger and stronger.

Chu Xun jerked his head upwards and gazed at the peak. There, he saw a piece of rock shaped like a tiger majestically looking up at the sky. That must be it, he mused, the Eye of the magical formation.

And he bolted, racing like an arrow up the slopes towards the peak.

“My Lord Elder Ancestor, stop that man! He intends to break the enchantment holding up this area!” one of the hooded men shouted. It took them hundreds of years after they had found a maven learned in the arcane skills of magical barriers and fields to seek out how to operate the enchantment that erected magical barriers around the area, and yet Chu Xun was able to do the same in just a few minutes.

Swish!

Winds raged over the inclination leading upwards, kicking up dust and gravel and that told Chu Xun that the gigantic white hand was coming for him.

Whoosh!

With a burst of speed, Chu Xun entered Mach 2.5, causing the air to erupt with anger behind him in the form of a sonic boom.

Boom!

That sudden spurt allowed him to evade the gigantic hand cleanly as it clawed in vain at him, catching only soil and grasses.

An infuriated bellow rumbled from inside the cave, and the giant hand came again for Chu Xun, this time with him fully within its reach.

With another couple of hundred meters to reach the top and no time to think, Chu Xun punched into the air, hurling a purplish magical bolt shooting at his quarry, while he withdrew quickly with the speed of a lightning bolt.

Boom! Boom!

Two huge explosions ensued, jolting the entire mountain and the cave twice. The first of them came from the destruction of the tiger-shaped rock by Chu Xun, causing the rock to break into almost half. The second came from the gigantic fist pummeling the ground, missing Chu Xun squarely, although its strength was enough to make the mountain cower and tremble.

With his purpose accomplished, Chu Xun raced back down the mountain with hardly so much as a look backwards.

But only a part of the wall of black light disappeared. With only half of the tiger-shaped rock damaged, the Eye was not completely destroyed and much of the magical barriers still stood with only a small part of it crumbled.

“THERE’S THE WAY OUT!” screamed a voice, “RUN!”

But the opening was but only three meters wide and five meters tall. Hundreds and thousands of warriors swarmed towards the opening, wrestling amongst themselves to get the first crack at leaving safely.

That culminated into another bloody fracas. Just so that they could escape, some began cutting down anyone in their way with hardly an iota of hesitation.

Puff!

Blood shot into the sky like a geyser from the severed neck of a man cut down by a Ninth-Grade Grandmaster.

Puff! Puff...!

Lifeless corpses flew everywhere in all directions. A Human King was on the rampage, killing other warriors with his bare hands and throwing them out of his way.

Chu Xun’s eyes burned with cold fury. Weaving magical hand seals, he raised a fist to strike.

“Wh-What is this you’re doing, Chu the Devil?!” yelped the Human King when Chu Xun subdued him.

“You weren’t at the front, helping to deter the enemy, yet here you are, killing innocents only to escape yourself. People like you don’t deserve to live.”

Chu Xun delivered his execution, and with a thud and a deluge of purple light, the Human King coughed up mouthfuls of blood, gravely injured.

Hardly perturbed, Chu Xun sent forth another blast.

Boom!

With that, he obliterated half of the Human King’s body.

Chu Xun was about to fully dispose of the body when he felt a chill sweeping up his spine and he leaped away as quickly as he could.

Boom!

More blood drizzled around several meters high, and broken corpses, dismembered with their limbs either mangled or maimed, scattered everywhere in a sickeningly gruesome scene of blood and gore.

Chu Xun might have escaped unscathed, but the same could not be said for the warriors behind him who had died by the giant skeletal hand.

Boiling with anger, Chu Xun made more hands seals.

The Demon-slain Finger! Shaking the Sky by the Fourth Finger.

The air screamed with the thickening aura of Acheronian and ancient aspect, and a huge stone column forged by magic materialized.

The gargantuan skeletal hand grabbed at the stone column. With another deafening boom and a forceful tremor, the stone pillar had been crushed to bits.

Chu Xun opened his eyes. Dregs of his Immortal Qi from the explosion shrouded his vision like a pale veil of mist and he could not quite get over the shock. Whatever this monstrosity was, it was very, very powerful—even beyond his ability to defeat.

He performed another set of hand seals, and the air cried with the screech of a Phoenix.

The Eternal Phoenix Scripture!

A magical silhouette, shaped in the formed of a fiery phoenix, danced in the upper strata of the skies. Bathed in holy flames that could devour anything, the bird stretched its wings that spanned more than ten meters and swooped down with an aura of rancorous destruction.

Blood-red mists swam around the white skeletal hand. It mustered its powers, warping the very fabric of Time and Space, as it rose to meet the fiery phoenix head on.

Boom!

Their encounter filled the entire vista with a fiery inferno that stretched high into the skies and the shock that culminated from their meeting caused a terrible shock wave that rippled everywhere.

The phoenix was gone, but the big, skeletal fist survived the bout.

Incensed, Chu Xun’s eyes flared with a purple glow that was too frightening for anyone to behold.

He raised an arm and swung his hand, writing into the air. The air around him curdled with a murderous aura that emanated from his very person and when he was done writing, a “Sha” rune floated in midair, growing larger quickly.

The Formula of Kill technique of the Hong Meng Scripture disciplines!

Undaunted, the skeletal fist came down without a shred of hesitation, seizing the “Sha” rune into its grasp.

Boom!

The “Sha” rune erupted in a huge burst of flames so powerful that the air shuddered. The white giant hand opened its scorched-black palm, but was otherwise unharmed.

An angry uproar boomed from inside the cave, surging out with the dense odor of putrefaction and blood. The skeletal hand swung, stirring the winds, in an attempt to swat down Chu Xun.

Chu Xun darted backward with Mach 2-speed, flitting around like a lightning bolt with unbelievable speed.

The giant white skeletal hand missed its mark and created a large crater in the ground before it began moving towards other quarries, as if it had realized how it would never be able to catch up to Chu Xun.

Puff! Puff...!

More blood was spilled as scores of warriors died more after another, and the foul, gagging fetor of blood became so strong that one could have wondered if Purgatory had manifested on Earth suddenly.

“Help! Immortal Chu, please!”

Dying warriors cried desperately to him for help. Chu Xun appeared to be the only one who could mount any form of resistance towards the white skeletal hand; everyone else would only be dead meat in an instant.

Not even First-Grade Human Kings—none of them could ever hope to be able to resist the giant hand’s might.

Chu Xun, livid almost to the point of madness, could only watch in vain as the hand raised up against to strike down at another group of warriors. With a frustrated snarl, thousands of Reincarnation Lines appeared and coiled around the gigantic hand, tugging at it tightly and preventing it from coming down.

“RUN!” Chu Xun yelled. The Reincarnation Lines could never hold for long.

This compelled the warriors to rush towards the gash in the wall of light in a frenzied swarm.

Crack! Crack!

The Reincarnation Lines were snapping.

More ice formed in Chu Xun’s eyes. He conjured more Reincarnation Lines that tangled around the big skeletal hand, determined to not let it go.

“You impudent ant... How dare you try to stop me!” the voice resounded from inside the cave.

Chu Xun did not answer, save only to conjure more Reincarnation Lines to replace those that broke and before long, the entire hand was wrapped up tightly like an embalmed corpse.

“Misplaced confidence. Do you really think that measly strength of yours is enough to stop me?”

As the voice thundered across the mountainside, the large skeletal hand shone with a scarlet red glow and all the Reincarnation Lines that wrapped around burst and snapped, and finally vanished.

The Reincarnation Lines were all conjured using Chu Xun’s magic and their destruction caused a toll on him. Just as they were all destroyed, Chu Xun grunted with pain and his face went pallidly pale.

By then, more than two thirds of the warriors had fled.

Chu Xun flipped a hand, his palm facing upwards and golden light flooded around him. A golden staff several meters long materialized in his grasp.

Swoosh!

He flourished his staff around, readied himself and lunged, swinging it down as hard as he could on the skeletal hand.

Clank!

A ring of steel on steel resounded. Chu Xun’s staff smote on the skeletal hand’s little finger, and to his amazement and joy, he struck a large hole on the last digit, sending splinters of bone flying everywhere.

The staff was actually a part of the Ancestral Dragon’s tailbone that Chu Xun found and he had been using it as a staff. As the bone of the most hallowed Ancestral Dragon, it was the mightiest of all bones in the world.

Clank!

Chu Xun swung his staff back around and slammed it down again with all his weight behind it, and a large crack split open on the little finger.

With his hopes renewed, Chu Xun was confident he could smash off the ten-meter-long digit off the hand. He just needed a few more tries.

From inside the cave, came the incessant bellows of anger from the monster inside and its gigantic hand came at him again, this time in a sweeping sideswipe.

Chu Xun lifted his staff and swung it down hard at the incoming hand.

Only, the monstrous hand raised up suddenly, passing over the top of Chu Xun’s head and evading his attack, slapping tens of hapless warriors to death and absorbing their blood. In a visible rate, the crack on its little finger began to heal.

It came as a relief to Chu Xun that most of the warriors had escaped. The gigantic hand came back again, like a predator in search of more prey, and none could be found.

“YOU RUINED MY PLANS, YOU WRETCHED ANT! YOU WILL PAY! I WILL ENJOY TORTURING YOU!”

The monster hand bore down on Chu Xun.

Scoffing derisively, Chu Xun smote at the skeletal hand with his golden staff.

Clank!

More bits of splintered bones flew and another crack opened.

Only, that barely stopped the monstrous hand’s overwhelming momentum. Gasping with shock, Chu Xun immediately held up his golden staff upright.

Thud!

The gargantuan hand came down, slamming down hard on the golden staff and Chu Xun sank into the ground with his lower half buried.

“Trinkets. You think such trinkets are enough to kill me? Amusing,” boomed the voice. But Chu Xun remained unfazed. With the Ancestral Dragon’s bones to protect him, the gigantic hand would have to do a lot more to kill him.

“Really?” he responded to the voice with a contemptuous voice.

But his face changed immediately. An invisible and powerful came from above—from the gigantic skeletal hand, and he felt his blood churning inside him. Then he saw red liquid trickling out the pores of his body, rising up towards the hand!

“ARRGH!” Chu Xun howled with pain and defiance. He conjured a shield—a protective cocoon made of Immortal Qi—to protect himself, but it was not working. The skeletal hand’s powerful force was drawing not only his blood, but also his True Energy and the Hong Meng Immortal Qi!