10x Rewards: Novel's Extra's Cultivation Stealing System

"Something isn’t right."

Not long after facing the darts and the arrows,as the group continued they soon reached the widened tunnel that opened into an underground lake.

There was a narrow bridge connecting the two ends across the lake, and Gu Chen frowned, as he watched a disciple carefully step onto a narrow stone bridge.

The water was cold and serene. Way too calm.

Well.... Not for long as the surface suddenly exploded.

ROAR!

Three enormous Iron-Jaw Cave Serpents burst from the water, each one was nearly twenty metres long as their black scales reflected the dim spirit crystals embedded in the walls.

"Enemy!"

"That’s not an enemy!"

"What is it?"

The disciples quickly jumped back and formed a defensive formation. But in front of the wildly attacking serpents, the weak, exhausted disciples had no chance.

One serpent wrapped itself around a disciple.

Crack!

In an instant his bones groaned beneath the pressure.

"Help!" The disciple cried out for help, and Gu Chen flashed forward as his sword drew a brilliant silver arc.

And the next moment, the serpent’s head separated from its body, and blood splashed across the bridge.

Just then, another serpent lunged and Gu Chen barely avoided its poisonous fangs for the serpent to meet the same fate.

The battle lasted nearly the time it took for a quarter of an incense stick to burn.

When everything ended...

The bridge was covered in blood.

All the serpents lay dead.

The disciples looked even more exhausted.

Gu Chen quietly sheathed his sword.

"Continue." Gu Chen spoke without looking at any of them.

And no one complained. Because complaining required energy, and nobody had any left.

Another tunnel. Another dead end. Another hidden mechanism.

More chains. More hidden blades. More poison needles.

By now...

Even Gu Chen had begun questioning whether the Weeping Gorge was secretly alive.

"How many tunnels does this cursed place even have?"

No one answered. Nobody knew.

"Young Master..." One disciple suddenly spoke, "I think we’ve been walking in circles."

Another disciple quickly shook his head, "No."

"..."

Gu Chen pinched the bridge of his nose.

For the first time in years, he genuinely missed the sect.

Even Elder Gu’s endless lectures sounded pleasant compared to this place.

Gu Chen almost wanted to laugh. Has the heavens really abandoned him?

Well, the guilt tripping did not really work as the true nightmare finally began.

The surviving Phantom Sirens had already regrouped, and before the Gu Clan disciples could even raise their weapons, a chain-blade whipped out of the pitch-black shadows.

The chain wrapped around the throat of a bandaged disciple standing right behind Gu Chen, and with a terrifying yank, the screaming youth was pulled directly into the dark gloom.

CRUNCH!

The loud sound of a human bone snapping echoed through the cavern.

"Show yourselves, you cowardly demonic sluts!" Gu Chen roared furiously, his eyes burning with madness. From the moment they had entered the Miasma woods, his men were being butchered like helpless pigs in a slaughterhouse.

One disciple shouted.

"They are everywhere!"

"They are using the walls!"

"They are behind us too!"

"Radiant Lotus Sword Art: Thousand Petal Severing Slash!" Gu Chen screamed loudly, forcefully burning his precious blood essence

His silver sword erupted with a blinding radiant white light, illuminating the dark cavern as he swung the blade in a massive arc. The heavy sword Qi clashed against the spinning steel chains, sending sparks and explosive shockwaves everywhere..

Every strike severed chains. Every slash forced another assassin backward.

Still... They kept coming.

One Phantom Siren suddenly wrapped her chain around Gu Chen’s sword. And then another attacked from behind.

Gu Chen twisted his body.

His elbow struck one woman in the jaw.

And then he stepped inside a Phantom Siren’s guard, ignoring the deep gash her chain-blade tore straight across his left thigh, and thrust his glowing silver sword completely straight through her stomach, pinning her body against the wall before heavily ripping the blade out.

But the female assassins were relentless, using the narrow restrictive space of the cavern to bounce off the walls and launch unpredictable strikes, heavily prioritizing the remaining two weak disciples.

Within less than exactly three minutes of highly brutal, exhausting close-quarters combat, the last two Gu Clan disciples were chopped into bleeding, unrecognizable chunks of meat, leaving Gu Chen entirely alone in the dark, surrounded by the surviving assassins.

"I am Gu Chen!" Gu Chen roared wildly, his perfectly groomed hair now entirely covered in mud and dried blood, "I will slaughter every single one of you!"

He fought exactly like a cornered beast, abandoning his elegant sword forms to hack and slash with raw brutality, heavily relying on his superior Origin Realm cultivation base to overpower the female assassins.

He violently chopped one Siren’s arm completely off at the elbow, kicking her heavy body into a deep pit, before spinning on his heels and driving his sword directly into another assassin’s masked face, crushing her nose and cheekbones into bloody paste.

By the time the brutal skirmish finally ended, the dark tunnel was completely littered with mutilated female corpses and the butchered remains of his loyal disciples.

Gu Chen finally could not take it anymore and collapsed onto his knees, panting like a dying dog, coughing up a mouthful of black blood, while clutching his bruised ribs.

Still he forced his shaking legs to push himself back up, and his spiritual sense detected a faint breath of a Phantom Siren crawling away from the carnage, clutching a bleeding sword wound across her stomach.

Gu Chen’s eyes narrowed as he stumbled forward, ignoring his own pain.

He quickly reached down and grabbed the bleeding female assassin by her long, dark hair, dragging her struggling body across the rocky floor without a single ounce of mercy.

"Ahhh! Let me go!" the Phantom Siren shrieked weakly, as she desperately clawed at his iron grip.

"You are going to guide me directly to where you have hidden the Gu Clan’s tribute," Gu Chen snarled, lifting her by her pale throat with his free hand, choking her just enough to deny her proper air, "If you hesitate for a single second, I will peel your skin off while you are still breathing."

And the look in his dead eyes finally terrified the woman. She was not afraid of dying, but the look in his eyes told her that death by his hands is not going to be pretty.

With no other option left, she nodded her head, raising her trembling finger to point directly down the stretch of the dark tunnel.

Gu Chen looked in the direction she had just pointed and without wasting another breath, he dragged her body, his boots splashing through the puddles of blood and mud.

Soon, the woman guided him along the confusing tunnels for him to finally stand in front of heavy stone doors which were wide open.

But exactly as his wide, bloodshot blue eyes shifted across the massive room, and his tired jaw dropped completely open in disbelief, as he loosened his grip on the choking woman’s throat.

The massive underground vault was completely empty.

There were no massive stacks of spirit weapons, no rare spiritual herbs, and absolutely not even a single, pathetic low-grade spirit stone left in sight, like he had been expecting all this while.

The entire room was stripped completely bare right down to the cold rocky floor.

But as he stared at the completely empty stone walls, his gaze finally landed directly on the broad back of a tall figure standing perfectly right in the absolute center of the massive room, casually looking around the empty space just like him.

Gu Chen’s blood-stained lips trembled, as his wide eyes twitched staring at the broad back.

"Gu Fan?!" Gu Chen barely managed to say.

Hearing someone call out his name, Gu Fan turned, looked at Gu Chen’s disheveled face and smiled.

"Brother Chen!"

"You finally came."

"I was so scared without you."