The Modern Martial Immortal

Chapter 102: Coldness

Since it was already nearly 10 PM, the traffic was light. In just half an hour, Yaoguang arrived at Griffin Garden. It was a villa district that had been left nearly unfinished because of its poor location. Compounding this with the late hour, nine out of ten villas remained shrouded in darkness.

Yaoguang observed the area for a moment before quickly approaching a villa near the main road. Using his Perception ability, he locked onto qi-blood fluctuations belonging to someone who was at least a martial paragon.

There's actually a mimic here, he thought.[1]

He immediately used Formless to restrain his qi, silently creeping toward the martial paragon stationed there. On the way, he spotted several other guards. Two of them possessed grandmaster-tier strength, yet they failed to notice Yaoguang as he slipped past them without a sound.

The martial paragon in charge of Griffin Garden was conducting a patrol. After briefly judging the man's movement trajectory, Yaoguang stood silently at a corner, using Formless to reduce his qi as much as he could.

Relying on his wealth of experience, he remained undetected even when the martial paragon arrived right at his hiding spot.

Just as the man turned the corner, a cold glint pierced the air. The Divine Shadow Sword resembled a ghost as it tore through the void under the stark white lights, arriving in an instant.

The martial paragon sensed the light of the blade being thrust to assassinate him immediately, but it was too late. His physical reactions simply could not keep up. In that instant, he could only erupt with his psychic will, transforming it into a psychic-will secret technique. It seemed to condense into a terrifying ball of fire, intended to completely incinerate Yaoguang's mental world.

It was undeniable that the psychic-will martial paragon acted with incredible decisiveness in that desperate situation. Faced with a sudden attack where his physical responses were too slow, he did not hesitate to gamble everything on a psychic-will secret technique.

If the opponent could not withstand his psychic-will technique, he would be able to quickly escape the disadvantage of the assassination and launch a counterattack. If it were withstood, that would prove the opponent’s cultivation realm was not much inferior to his own.

Having lost the initiative against a sneak attack from an expert of the same realm, the situation was already nearly impossible to reverse. The only thing he could do was take a gamble. Yet, in the end, he still lost.

An even more violent, brilliant, and blazing light instantly illuminated his mental world, and the mental backlash brought about by the psychic-will secret technique caused him to fall into total despair in an instant.

"It's over!" In that moment, while his heart felt icy cold, it was also filled with a sense of indignant rage.

Psychic will! A fellow psychic-will martial paragon was actually so despicable. We're in the same realm, yet he didn't even have the courage to confront me head-on. He had to use a sneak attack. If we had fought openly, I'm sure I would not have been so powerless... He thought.

***

"There's movement!"

"Who's there?!"

The clash between Yaoguang and the martial paragon instantly drew the attention of several people below. The entire villa was suddenly brightly lit, erupting into a clamor.

However, as Yaoguang charged down to face the several martial masters and grandmasters in the yard, the uproar lasted only a few minutes before falling silent.

"I need to speed things up." Yaoguang lightly flicked the Divine Shadow Sword, shaking off the blood.

He glanced at the sword blade, which now showed signs of cracking, feeling a bit of regret.

"I have to replace it," he muttered.

This divine weapon, which had accompanied him through several intense battles, was about to reach the end of its journey.

Although the Divine Shadow Sword was a divine weapon, there were still grades of quality among such weapons. The grade of the Divine Shadow Sword was clearly inferior to items like the Heavy Star or the Crescent Saber. It was even less comparable to the combat weapons held by the high-ranking officials of the Crimson Star Empire.

Reflecting on this, Yaoguang followed his memories and soon arrived at a basement entrance. There was a keypad door at the entrance.

Jiang Shengtian had considered this transit point extremely important and remembered the password very clearly. Thanks to that, Yaoguang was able to enter the correct code quickly, and the door opened.

However, when the basement door swung open, what appeared before him was not some collection of divine weapons or gold and silver treasures, but rather cultivation resources. It was a massive amount of cultivation resources used for condensing psychic will. This anomaly surprised him slightly.

"Does it have something to do with the Fiend Lord Plan?" Yaoguang pondered for a moment and soon guessed the truth.

The fiendish artifact that the Crimson Star Empire was originally supposed to deliver to the Artifact Sect had been forged by taking advantage of the period of unrest. However, due to various reasons, such as insufficient strength or realm, the Crimson Star Empire was unable to completely master the fiendish artifact.

To wield immortal weapons and fiendish artifacts... Psychic will, or rather, psychic consciousness, was clearly an extremely important metric. Because of this, they needed to provide a vast amount of psyche-refinement resources to a single person, allowing their psychic consciousness to reach the mastery stage. Then, that person could control the fiendish artifact and use its power to crush the Rebirth Society and forcibly open the Star Gate.

No wonder the Crimson Star Empire tried its best to monopolize psyche-nurturing and psyche-refinement materials over the past few decades. I thought it was because they feared the birth of psychic-will martial paragons in other countries...who would have thought it was this instead...

Having understood the cause, Yaoguang quickly got to work, organizing and collecting the processed medicinal herbs. Since there were simply too many herbs, Yaoguang could only pick the most precious ones to pack together. He abandoned the rest with regret.

Half an hour later, Yaoguang left Griffin Garden carrying a bag as tall as a man on his back. He did not burn the remaining medicinal materials that he could not take with him. After all, it would take some time to use up these supplies, and perhaps he could return one day.

***

Within the Crimson Star Empire's military base in Dayu, in the meeting room, the expression of the sixteenth prince, the highest-ranking individual present, looked incredibly grim.

"This is sheer rebellion!" Unstoppable rage burned in Jiang Zhengming's eyes. "It has always been our Crimson Star Empire that coerced others; no one has ever dared to coerce us."

He slammed his hand heavily onto the table. "How did the World-Saving Society have the audacity to go this far, forcing us to release the terrorists we captured? This behavior is a direct provocation to the Crimson Star Empire’s dominance over the Artifact-Nurturing World. If we do not punish them severely, where is the dignity of our imperial family? Where is the majesty of our Crimson Star Empire?"

"Please calm yourself, Your Highness," said Shangguan Xiong, who was standing on the side. "The emperor's decision to let those remnants of the World-Saving Society go for now was surely just a temporary measure. That fanatic dared to run wild in our capital, and there was only one end for him: death. Perhaps he already became a prisoner, personally ordered by His Majesty to be executed by a thousand cuts."

"Are the people from the World-Saving Society still being followed?" Jiang Zhengming asked.

"They are," Shangguan Xiong nodded. He paused for a moment before continuing, "However, those remnants aren't so weak. We are currently only monitoring them to ensure they do not leave our sight, but if we truly want to arrest them again, Your Highness will need to order some experts from the surrounding regions to take action."

"That's fine. I already issued commands to the surrounding countries. Ten martial paragons are heading in this direction as we speak." Jiang Zhengming sneered. "Those from the World-Saving Society are nothing more than a group of clowns... Did they really think leaving the military base meant they were safe? Every inch of land under the heavens belongs to us! In this world, there is no one the Crimson Star Empire cannot catch, and no one can walk away unscathed after offending us!"

Upon hearing this, Shangguan Xiong nodded with a hint of envy. Compared to the Shangguan family, Jiang Zhengming, as the sixteenth prince, held far more authority. The surrounding nations did not dare to ignore his orders. True enough, as soon as Jiang Zhengming's command went out, ten martial paragons had immediately mobilized.

Among those martial paragons, there were even some former members of the World-Saving Society who felt compelled to prove themselves now, in an effort to distance themselves from the organization, fearing a later reckoning.

Suddenly, a trusted subordinate of Shangguan Xiong in the meeting room seemed to receive a message and spoke up. "General, Martial Paragon Fang from the White Tower Federation said a sudden illness struck him and he cannot come."

"The White Tower Federation?!" Shangguan Xiong snorted. "Fang Quan, right? I will remember this. It seems the Fang family thinks their lives have been too comfortable... since they do not wish to continue like this, there is no need for them to exist anymore."

Jiang Zhengming nodded slightly. But before long, the subordinate spoke again. "News also came from Longque. Their martial paragon’s cultivation went awry, and he cannot exert himself..."

"Longque?! It's a great honor for the Crimson Star Empire to use him, yet he dared to disobey an imperial decree? Fine, very fine!" A flash of anger crossed Jiang Zhengming's eyes.

As the news from Longque arrived, the remaining countries seemed to have reached an agreement. Messages flooded in, stating that their martial paragons were all delayed by various matters. To put it bluntly, they were not coming.

When the first two messages arrived, Jiang Zhengming and Shangguan Xiong merely sneered. But when the third and fourth arrived with similar excuses, the two realized something was wrong. By the time every country replied in the same manner, completely disregarding the Sixteenth Prince’s status, even the slow-witted Jiang Zhengming realized how serious the situation was.

He immediately tried to contact his father, the emperor, but there was no answer. He then contacted Qi Renjie, who was specifically responsible for intelligence processing, but similarly, there was no response. For a moment, a terrible premonition filled Jiang Zhengming's heart.

"Something bad happened," Jiang Zhengming said in a low voice. Could it be the fanatic who broke into the palace escaped unscathed? Is that why the martial paragons of these countries found the courage to reject the Crimson Star imperial family?

Just as the two sensed the shift in the atmosphere, their phones simultaneously rang with notifications. They had both received a message from an unknown number, with a photo attached to it.

With just one glance, the expressions of Jiang Zhengming and Shangguan Xiong, who a moment ago were filled with the superiority of being Crimson Star citizens, changed drastically.

"Impossible!"

"That's absolutely impossible!"

The two quickly opened the photo, enlarged it, and examined it closely. As they looked, their bodies began to tremble uncontrollably. The information sent by that unknown number revealed the corpses of Jiang Shengtian, the head of the Jiang family, and Shangguan Jinlong, the head of the Shangguan family.

They were dead! The Crimson Star Empire's emperor and the head of the Shangguan family were dead! In that instant, both men felt a dizzying sensation as if the sky were collapsing.

"How could he?! Who exactly is he... How could he..."

"Lawless! This is simply lawless!"

The two shook, their hands trembling incessantly. For the first time, an emotion other than arrogance, mockery, or anger appeared in their eyes—fear.

Ring, ring! Shortly after the photo arrived, Jiang Zhengming's phone rang first. Seeing the number on the screen, he scrambled to answer it and asked urgently, "What on earth happened?"

"You know already?!" An old man's voice came through the phone. "Never mind everything else. The situation changed. Return to the capital immediately!"

Almost at the same time, Shangguan Xiong's phone also rang.

"Mom—"

"Something huge happened! The power of the Shangguan family must not fall into the hands of the branch families! Come back quickly!"

Hearing the voices on the phone and comparing them with the pictures they received, Jiang Zhengming and Shangguan Xiong felt as though they had fallen into an ice cave. They could no longer feel a single trace of warmth in their entire bodies.

1. In the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game, the mimic is a type of fictional monster. It is portrayed as being able to change its shape to disguise its body as an inanimate object, commonly a chest. ☜