Chapter 226: Pursuit
“I shouldn’t have forced him to come with us,” Li Lang murmured weakly. “He could’ve stayed in the Crucible like he wanted. I forced him into a situation he knew he was unprepared for.”
“Enough with that already!” Long Yi bellowed. “It’s not helping. Save your energy for when we arrive.”
Seeing the two young men agitated, Zhu Yi shook her head.
“Your friend is right. There’s no time for reflection or second-guessing.”
With a dreary mood, the group silently proceeded in the direction of where the Tracing Origin Art indicated Wei Ping was. They all knew what was to come. Being captured by a demonic cultivator who had suffered from cultivation deviation, otherwise known as deviators, could only lead to one outcome. They would have their life force sucked out of them in order to fuel their cultivation.
The people who captured Wei Ping operated in numbers. Following them meant intruding on their stronghold. It was expected that there would be even more deviators there, and they had to face them if they wanted to rescue Wei Ping.
With them using Zhu Yi’s Skyrunner, they were making good progress, but they still couldn’t see a shadow of anything. They were reaching deeper into the mountain ranges where Qi beasts reigned. It wasn’t a surprising location, as the wilderness on the border was the perfect spot for deviators to hide. It made it hard for anyone to track them down, and if any sect or organization tried to hunt them down, they could jump between territories to break their pursuit. It also allowed them to be near their favorite sort of prey, orthodox cultivators.
It wasn’t that demonic cultivators could only use orthodox cultivators to advance their cultivation. Each technique was unique and came with different conditions. However, it was a fact that orthodox cultivators possessed purer Qi, which made it significantly easier and less risky to digest.
If they absorbed the life force from other demonic cultivators, the negative effects the victim was suffering from their own cultivation technique could be passed on. It was like how humans preferred livestock that were herbivores. Carnivores faced an additional vector of disease exposure through their diet.
As they traveled further and further into the mountain ranges, Li Lang composed himself. He began questioning his allies about their past experiences in dealing with these deviator hideouts.
“What should we do if they continue to flee into the righteous sects’ territories? It’s common for them to do that in order to escape, right?”
“Yes, but that is usually a last resort. They don’t know we can track them down right now. By the time they find out, they won’t have time to evacuate with their captives. It shouldn’t be an issue if our objective is only to rescue people.”