Cultivator’s Path to Infamy [Progression | Cultivation | Villain Lead]

Above the center of the Arena, right under the clouds, after the break, the Sect Leaders finally appeared, with the elders behind them.

"Well then, dear guests, dear participants! Here we are, approaching the final stretch! Before the finalist battles begin, I would like to congratulate you all, sincerely, from the bottom of my heart! To be able to overcome such a path, from one hundred thousand down to just one hundred participants. This shows not only your strength, but also your endurance and luck! After all, strength alone is not enough on this difficult and thorny path, full of betrayals and schemes... Haa..." By the end of his instructive speech, Gu Bai had drifted into negativity, his voice growing quieter and heavier.

"Ahem." Behind him, Wu Xin coughed softly.

"Oh, what's come over me! Haha!" Gu Bai immediately wiped the sadness from his face, replacing it with a smile that disturbed the spectators even more.

"Well then, let's not drag out what everyone is waiting for! Let's begin!" Gu Bai gestured with an open palm toward the one hundred participants below him.

DONG! DONG! DONG! DONG!

This time, the bell rang much longer and louder, enveloping everything and everyone around in its beautiful chime.

Only when the last strike faded did the top one hundred participants immediately begin teleporting to the arenas. This time, only twenty-five arenas were active.

Everyone was on edge, one step away from victory, from their moment of glory, their nerves were at their limit. The moment they found themselves on the arenas, without any talk, they started fighting.

….

Arena number 8.

After teleporting, Tunk Perry immediately activated his protective artifact.

"Young Master Tunk, I am Mon Tuo of the Mon clan. It is an honor to stand before you! I willingly yield to your greatness! Long live the Young Master!" Before the fight could even begin, Tunk Perry saw his opponent bowing on the other side of the Arena. Hearing the flattery directed at him, Perry puffed out his chest and raised his chin.

"Excellent..." Before Perry could finish, he was interrupted by the arena's mechanical voice.

"Outer Disciple Tunk Perry, Heavenly Soul Sect, is the winner!" A moment later, both were teleported from the arena.

….

Arena number 2.

"Hahaha! Junior Brother Ova, you still have much to learn... Eh... Not everyone can be like your Senior Brother Zen Do... But I'm glad, my Junior Brother, you held yourself together and didn't beg me for mercy. After all, everyone knows what a kind soul your Senior Brother is… Ah!" Zen Do alternated between laughing and sighing, constantly shaking his head theatrically, all while not forgetting to wipe the blood dripping from his fat forehead.

Right in front of him, inside an ice cube, Ova John, with a red face and blue veins bulging in his neck, was screaming at the top of his lungs, choking on his own saliva from uncontrollable rage.

"Scream, keep screaming! It'll make you feel better... Eh! I used four expensive talismans on you, my Junior Brother... Remembering how much just one Heavenly Spirit talisman cost... It makes my heart bleed!" Continuing to wipe his forehead, Zen Do walked up to the ice cube and leaned against it, looking with pity at the ground where the talisman fragments lay.

"Outer Disciple Zen Do, Heavenly Soul Sect, is the winner!"

….

Arena number 19.

Shen Romun, looking at the horizon, admiring the majesty of the three moons breaking through the thick clouds, raised his sword and blocked his opponent's attack.

His opponent, already exhausted, let her sword fall from her hands. She dropped to the ground without the strength or will to continue this meaningless fight.

"Haa!Kha... I-I surrender..." Ru Meng, clinging to the last threads of her consciousness, raised her head toward the elder and began coughing up blood.

The elder nodded, and she was immediately teleported.

"Outer Disciple Shen Romun, White Dragon Sect, is the winner!"

"All these are just children's games… My real opponent is Devi Ali. I'm waiting for you…" Shen Romun teleported away after Ru Meng, leaving behind words directed at the sky.

….

Arena number 1.

"AGH! Fire Invasion!" With a sword piercing through his chest, Duan Tomus detonated a mass of energy on his palm, directing it straight at his opponent, thereby sending both himself and his opponent flying in opposite directions.

"Kha... ptoo" Standing on one knee, Tomus spat out blood mixed with pieces of his own flesh onto the arena. Instinctively pressing one hand over the hole in his chest, he tried with all his might to stand up.

"Instant Flash!"

Duan Tomus squeezed his eyes shut. He hadn't expected his opponent to use a flash technique. Just as he decided to activate his protective artifact, he suddenly felt a chill on the back of his neck.

"You lose." He heard a quiet voice next to his ear. Opening his eyes, he realized that Mo Fan had gotten behind him, holding his sword to his neck.

"H-how! This can't be! Space element?! But... I-I won't give up! No!!" With gritted teeth and eyes flooded with fury, Duan Tomus couldn't believe what had just happened. The fact that someone possessed the Space element, and that he had lost on top of it, dealt a massive blow to his ego in this match.

"Outer Disciple Mo Fan, Heavenly Soul Sect, is the winner!"

Both teleported from the arena.

….

On the stands, among the crowd.

"My eyes aren't deceiving me, are they?! "

"Th-that's teleportation?!"

"He's only at Qi Condensation, how can he use a technique based on the concept of teleportation?"

"Perhaps… perhaps he has an affinity with the Space element?"

"Ha! Are you nuts? Impossible, cultivators with Space affinity are only..."

"Shhh! Enough! Close your mouth!"

Everyone around began discussing what they had seen on Arena 1. Everyone had different opinions about it. Some tried to find out everything about Mo Fan, specifically about his strange technique, others began to slander him purely out of envy.

.…

On the clouds, above the Arena.

"Hmm... Space element. What do you say, Gu Bai, will you give him to my Five Sacred Lives Sect? I wouldn't mind taking him as my personal disciple!" Wei Leo examined Mo Fan with interest, tapping his thumb against his other fingers in a specific sequence.

"Hah! Dream on! He belongs to the Heavenly Soul Sect, and no one else! You already have your hands full with the dozen concubines you secretly stole from my sect!" Gu Bai barked at Wei Leo, making it clear with his whole demeanor that, in this case, neither Wei Leo nor the remaining two should joke with him, or everyone would regret it.

"Hmm~ Brother Gu, after more than twenty years, have you finally decided to take on a new personal disciple?" Wu Xin, hovering nearby, smirked with sparks in her eyes, watching Gu Bai's face, trying not to miss any changes in his expression.

"If this disciple, with his mastered third-order element, perhaps… But who knows how he'll perform in the finals." Turning to Wu Xin, Gu Bai said calmly, in a low voice.

"Not even the old bones and hags can force you to take a disciple according to their instructions… Hahaha! I can just imagine their red faces when they find out you're taking a disciple without listening to their advice!" Black Marcus couldn't hold back and burst out laughing, projecting and imagining the Main Council from his own sect and their faces if he were to do something similar.

Wu Xin and Wei Leo both remained silent, but undisguised smiles played on their faces.

….

On the stands, the last row.

An carefully watched the battle between Mo Fan and Duan Tomus, trying to absorb all the tactics and techniques.

'He mastered the Darkness element, a second-order element… And now he effortlessly uses a third-order element, which has the official name of Dao Element, the Space element… I couldn't have imagined that he would have an affinity with so many elements. Having a system is definitely a cheat…'

Strangely, An didn't feel any real envy. Yes, deep in his heart, it stung a little, to find himself in this world without the cheat that was owed to him by the laws of the genre. But the moment he started imagining what it would be like if he had as many elements, his head began to hurt, realizing how much time it would take, studying and getting comfortable with each element and the different techniques, where concepts were intertwined with the very structure and uniqueness of each element. Right now, with his single element, he was desperately short on time for everything.

"Hmm?" Suddenly, he felt his plaque begin to vibrate and heat up. With bewilderment, An took it out. He was encountering this situation for the first time.

Sensing through his Qi what had caused such behavior from the plaque, An abruptly stood up, took out his ticket, and teleported off the Arena.

As soon as he found himself in the room with the Altars, An quickly walked toward the exit of the Coliseum.

Already outside, he activated his Qi, and not sparing his energy, he rushed toward Hope Peak, toward his home.

Stopping at the top of a huge tree on the very border between the forest and the residential plots, An began surveying his home from afar, first and foremost, looking at the Qi flows emanating from the formation around his house. But due to the enormous distance, he couldn't see the flows, and even if he could focus on one, he couldn't get any information from it.

With no other choice, he jumped down and, walking quickly, approached the formation. He began examining everything around again, but found nothing out of the ordinary.

After standing by the formation for a few minutes, he gathered himself, activated his Qi to its fullest, but keeping inside himself, took a big breath, and passed through the barrier to the gate.

Opening the gate, and taking the first step forward, An slowly began to survey his plot.

First, he found Baldi. The rooster was hiding in his burrow, not even moving. From his Qi, An understood that he was afraid to move or make any sound.

Taking a second step forward, and closing the gate behind him, he slowly looked at his ruined shack.

Near the shack, he noticed strangely behaving Qi flows, as if there was some kind of resistance between them in that spot, but visually, there was nothing there.

Having fully focused his attention on that spot, he took another step, turned his body toward it, and stood like a statue, not blinking and not making any more movements, only staring at that spot.

"Ho?! Could it be… Little brother Hu, you found me so quickly? Oh! Wait, I'm sorry, it should be Junior Brother An, shouldn't it? Still… how did you manage to find me? Hmm~" Out of nowhere, Yan Eli materialized, holding a strange artifact resembling an hourglass, constantly tossing and flipping it in the air.

Pointing her finger at the hourglass, "Oh? This? This is one of my favorite toys, it can make me invisible, completely masking me… just like a Two-Headed Chameleon. Haha!"

Yan Eli suddenly made a sad face, pretending that tears were about to pour from her big eyes, "Little brother An, you really are interesting, but too distrustful… I thought we had an agreement, I opened up to you, but why, in the end, didn't you come to meet me? You have no idea how much you hurt me, I thought something had sparked between us… you know…"

Not seeing any reaction from him, she wanted to take a step forward, but immediately changed her mind, "Well… why are you so quiet? Little An… Oh, wait! Are you checking to see if I'm alone or not? Haha! You really are up to something, aren't you?" By the end, she smiled sinisterly. Immediately, three daggers fell from her sleeve into her free hand.

"And what are you plotting, hmm, you little mischief-maker?" She squeezed her daggers so hard that several drops of her blood fell to the ground.

No longer able to endure his silence, she couldn't take it anymore, and finally showed her true self, "Did you really think that if you humiliated me and ignored me, it would just go unpunished? You think, because you're a pathetic slave, whom nobody cares about, lower than the dirt under my foot, you can do whatever you want! Say whatever you want?! Who gave you the right to think you're above me! No one! Do you hear me! No one dares to ignore me!!!" By now she was shouting, her eyes growing wild, her smile long gone, replaced by disgust and rage.

"Ha!" Shouting at the top of her lungs, the artifact disappeared from her hand as she flipped a dagger into her now-free palm.

"Beauty of Death! First Form!" Exclaiming, Yan Eli launched from her spot, moving directly toward him, holding her daggers at the ready.

Simultaneously, An launched from his spot, moving just as rapidly toward her.

Seeing this, she hesitated slightly, not expecting him to attack her head-on without any hesitation. This was the first time she had encountered such a reaction. Usually, everyone either went on the defensive or simply couldn't initiate an attack due to her speed and suddenness, but not this time.

Realizing that she still needed time to activate the main part of her technique, but because An wasn't doing what she had counted on, she had to stop early, disrupting the sequence of her technique.

"HAA!" Stopping dead in her tracks, she screamed and threw two daggers in different directions.

Unlike her, An continued to close the distance between them, seeing her release the daggers, he waved his hand, and with tremendous speed, far exceeding that of Yan Eli's daggers, three Qi Blades flew out. One went behind his back, covering him from the invisible third dagger.

Just as the Qi Blade went behind his back, three simultaneous explosions occurred, all three of Yan Eli's daggers were destroyed.

But suddenly, straight through the cloud of exploded energy, two more daggers shot out, flying along the same arc as the previous ones, tearing through the chaotic Qi around them, they headed without any deviation straight toward Yan Eli.

Hearing the air tearing, and barely seeing the blurred Qi Blades, their speed was too high for her to track. Panic began to take hold of her.

With a quick movement, she took out an artifact in the shape of a moon from her inner pocket, pushed off the ground, jumped back, and threw it, detonating it just as the Qi Blades were close to her.

The explosion disintegrated all the blades, turning them into a cloud of raging Qi, just a few meters from her.

Just as Yan Eli was about to exhale, from the very center of the explosion, still through the unsettled flames and smoke, An flew out. His green, glinting eyes never let Yan Eli out of his sight. His right hand was drawn back slightly behind his head, preparing to deliver a devastating blow. One fleeting glance was enough for her to understand: if his hand touched her, it would end very badly.

"Ah!" Filled with both rage and fear, Yan Eli continued trying to retreat backward as fast as possible, to respond with her next attack.

But seeing the speed at which the inevitable was overtaking her, she could only think of one way to buy even a little time: to distract, to knock this disgusting, arrogant bastard off his game.

"How dare you! You damned! Dirty! Sla—!" Before she could even finish, she barely noticed it before it was too late. The speed at which An was approaching her increased as if at the snap of a finger.

"Ah! AAAGH!" An's right hand touched Yan Eli's chest without any obstruction, directly into her solar plexus. Before she could even register what was happening, she suddenly felt a strong vibration and a terrible tearing pain from inside her chest.

"AGH!! S-slave... ackgha!" Along with her cry, the words she hadn't had time to finish came out, mixed with blood.

Standing in place, she couldn't move. Her entire body was enveloped in a strong chill, her arms and legs obeyed no command, as if they no longer belonged to her. Her head, under its own weight, fell down, and her already heavy and clouding eyes saw a huge gaping hole where her chest had been.

"A-ah~" With no way to do anything, she collapsed onto her back. Upon impact with the ground, her head lolled toward An's silhouette.

With difficulty, she raised her eyes to him, the first thing she saw was his right hand, which was covered in blood up to the elbow. Looking at An himself, she noticed pieces of her flesh, still stuck to him, slowly sliding down his clothes and falling to the ground. She saw a pink nipple slowly slide from his chest onto the dirt.

She raised her gaze to An's face, she saw a multitude of emotions boiling there: disgust, relief, hesitation, and a strong fear, shifting from panic back and forth.

Uncontrollable tears began to run from her eyelids, which were no longer obeying her and were closing.

"I... I don't want to die... I... My... Khm... P-please... aaah~" Choking on her own blood, Yan Eli released the last breath from her torn lungs.

….

Standing over her, covered in blood, An didn't know what to do. He hesitated, watching a person die before him. Fear overtook him, making his skin crawl. Everywhere, scattered pieces of flesh, blood, and the metallic smell were driving him mad.

Right before him, at his feet, lay the girl with a ruined chest. Hesitating, An took a step toward her, deciding that helping her, saving her, would be the right thing to do. But he suddenly stopped, clenching his fists as he tried to control himself, and focused his gaze on Yan Eli, on her wound, on her pleading and frightened eyes, and her final breaths.

Seeing her tears, her snot, all of it mixed with blood, her weak moans, he fought with himself not to turn away, not to close his eyes. He forced himself, through sheer will, to continue watching as life left her body. Fully aware, even at this moment, that if he couldn't overcome himself now, break down those formed mental boundaries, still deeply embedded within him from the time of his first life, then in the future, in a similar situation, his hesitation could be the cause of his death.

"Khm... P-please... aaah~"

Hearing the last breath leave Yan Eli's throat, and seeing her eyes glaze over, losing their bright pink color, An collapsed to the ground, a violent shiver seizing his entire body. Every hair on his skin stood on end as an uncontrollable trembling took over.

Sitting, he breathed chaotically and quickly, trying to take in as much air as possible. His face went pale, and cold sweat began to appear all over his body.

But the next moment, realizing that emotions were beginning to overtake him, taking full control of his body and mind, An closed his eyes, held his breath, and sharply tensed every muscle in his body, trying to pull himself out of this emotional pit.