Stranger Danger

“You’re not members of the Seventy Two Water Land Alliance?”

Inside a dense forest, a tall man and a short man looked at the man and woman in front of them warily. One of them threatened, “Who are you people? Do you know who we are?”

The tall man was over 2.3 meters tall, but he was as thin as a bundle of grain stalks and steelblue in complexion.

The short man was only slightly over a meter like a child, and his skin color was dark red.

Both men were Truemen. They were the Hallmaster and Vice Hallmaster of the Earth Fiend Hall, one of the Thirty Six Halls of Nine Nethers Sect. The jianghu people called them the Blue and Red Fiends, and they were a pair of twins.

The Earth Fiend Hall was responsible for fighting and killing foreign enemies. This time, they were tasked with eliminating the Seventy Two Water Land Alliance’s factions around Mirror Lake City.

At first, everything went pretty smoothly. Then, things started going awry a few days ago. Their disciples kept disappearing one after another.

At first, they hadn’t paid it any heed thinking that the disciples were killed by the Seventy Two Water Land Alliance or something. It wasn’t unusual for warriors to destroy bodies for either personal or practical reasons either.

They were so angry at the loss that they even fought several great battles against the Seventy Two Water Land Alliance.

However, the situation grew dramatically worse in just the matter of days. At first, the disciples that went missing were just ordinary disciples. Then, their elite disciples began disappearing as well. As of today, they had lost a significant number of Half-step Truemen, Half-step Grandmaster stewards and Vice Hallmasters as well.

That wasn’t all. According to their intelligence, the Seventy Two Water Land Alliance had also lost a significant number of disciples, gang bosses, Hallmasters and so on. They thought that it was the Seventy Two Water Land Alliance who killed their men, but as it turned out, their enemies were facing the exact same problem.

At this point, they would be a failure of a Hallmaster and Vice Hallmaster if they still couldn’t figure out that someone was fucking with them. So, the two of them set out to capture the killer.

After several days of overt and covert investigations, they finally locked down the killer and followed him all the way to this forest. They were just about to catch him when a man and a woman stepped out into the open.

The two warriors looked quite young, but they could feel their hair standing on end. Whoever they were, it was clear that they were dangerous.

The young man—he was none other than Ye Qing—greeted them smilingly, “You are the Blue Fiend and the Red Fiend, Hallmaster and Vice Hallmaster of the Earth Fiend Hall, one of the Thirty Six Halls of the Nine Nethers Sect, am I right? Your reputation precedes you.”

“You clearly know who we are. The two of you must be the mastermind behind our disciples’ disappearances!”

Blue Fiend uttered in a harsh voice, “How dare you kill the disciples of Nine Nethers Sect! You must have a death wish!”

“Kill? When did we kill your disciples?” Ye Qing chucked. “They’re still alive, every last one of them.”

“They’re still alive? Where are they?” Red Fiend asked.

“You can’t tell? They’re everywhere.” Ye Qing pointed a thumb at the swarm of cattles, goats, pigs, horses and other livestocks behind him. “I would point them out, but it’s been a while since I captured them. I can’t actually tell who’s a Nine Nethers Sect member and who’s a Seventy Two Water Land Alliance member anymore.”

“What?” Blue Fiend and Red Fiend blanked out. “You… you’re saying that these animals are our men?”

“What, you don’t believe me? Come, disciples of the Earth Fiend Hall. Come greet your Hallmaster and Vice Hallmaster.”

Ye Qing waved, and a bunch of livestocks immediately rushed forward while crying at the top of their lungs.

“Meh meh meh…”

“Moo moo moo…”

“Arf arf arf…”

……

“Do you believe me now?” Ye Qing asked while crossing his arms.

“Is this… the Livestock Creation Spell?!” Blue Fiend and Red Fiend exchanged a shocked glance with each other.

In fact, they had noticed the swarm of livestocks stretching as far as the eyes could see, and they were wondering who in their right mind would leave their herd in a heaven-forsaken place like this. However, it wasn’t until Ye Qing told them that they were previously human that they recalled the infamous Livestock Creation Spell.

“Looks like you’re not all muscle up there after all.” Ye Qing nodded approvingly. “That’s right. This is the Livestock Creation Spell.”

“How dare you use the Livestock Creation Spell against my disciples! You are courting death!”

Blue Fiend and Red Fiend grew increasingly cautious even as they threatened Ye Qing. After all, it was well known that anyone who managed to grasp the Livestock Creation Spell was an extraordinarily gifted warrior. The fact that they dared to attack the Nine Nethers Sect also situationally proved that they were no ordinary foe. Only an utter fool would dare to take them lightly.

“If you let them go now, we still can pretend that this never happened! Otherwise…”

“Let them go?”

Ye Qing laughed. “Dude, am I hearing things, or are you too naive? Do you seriously think I’m going to let them or the two of you go at this juncture?”

“Must you make an enemy of the Nine Nethers Sect?” Blue Fiend threatened with an ugly expression, “Aren’t you afraid of the vengeance of the Nine Nethers Sect?”

“Of course I am afraid.”

Just when Blue Fiend and Red Fiend thought that Ye Qing would offer a compromise, he said, “If I wasn’t afraid, I wouldn’t have bothered to lure you over, would I? I would’ve just killed you dead at your headquarters.”

“This is a trap?”

Blue Fiend and Red Fiend turned white in an instant. If this encounter was just an unhappy coincidence, then there was still a chance that things could end peacefully. But if the enemy had intentionally lured them over, if this was a trap…

The young man was right. Why on earth would he let them go?

At this point, no more words were necessary.

If peace wasn’t an option, then they could only resort to violence.

The two brothers charged toward Ye Qing at the same time. Blue Fiend began giving off clouds of blue qi, and the rest of his skin turned steelblue in color as well. The overflowing blue qi possessed both the cold of water and the chill of ice.

On the other hand, Red Fiend turned as red as molten lava. His crimson aura dyed the air around him in red and possessed both the heat of fire and the explosiveness of blaze.

The martial techniques they displayed came from the famous Nine Nethers Sect martial art, the “Blue Red Earth Fiend Art”. It was an insidious, ruthless martial art that cultivated the cold and hot of the earth, and refined the darkness and filth of a fiend. If the practitioner managed to reach the adept level and combine the two opposing elements into one, they would be able to cleanse the filth and become multiple times more powerful than they were before. It was a martial art that could carry a practitioner to the Sage stage.

However, the “Blue Red Earth Fiend Art” was easy to grasp, but difficult to master. It was extremely easy for a practitioner to lose control of the conflicting elements and experience a deviation. That was why Blue Fiend and Red Fiend decided to seek a different path and cultivated one aspect of the martial art each. Blue Fiend would cultivate the Blue Fiend Art, while Red Fiend would cultivate the Red Fiend Art. This both mitigated the risk of a martial deviation and allowed them to unleash the martial art’s greatest potency when combined.

Right now, the blue qi and the red qi were joining together and ripping through the earth with destructive fury. It was a ballad of water and fire, toxic and fiend. Their combined strike was on par with the strike of an ordinary Half-Sage.

“The Blue and Red Fiends, huh? You deserve your fame.”

Ye Qing took one step forward, lifted his arm, and punched.

His punch was like a hammer that shattered the three origins. In one punch, the blue-and-red blast shattered, and the deadly aura that surrounded it disappeared like it never was.

In one punch, the world was cleansed of the martial art’s filth.

For a moment, Blue Fiend and Red Fiend could only stare at Ye Qing in wide-eyed shock. Then, they turned tail and ran like hell.

What do you do if you encounter someone you cannot defeat?

What a stupid question. You run, of course.

However, the duo were still halfway from the nearest corner when suddenly, they realized that they were moving slower and slower for some reason. They subconsciously looked down at their feet, and what they saw nearly scared off two of their Seven Earthly Souls.

Their feet had turned into claws before they knew it, and their hands were rapidly turning into a pair of wings. There were feathers growing out of their skin and flesh as well.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, they could feel themselves shrinking at a visible rate.

“No—cluck cluck cluck…”

The two terrified men tried to beg, but before they could even get the words out, they had already transformed into chickens.

A pair of huge cocks to be exact.