Chapter 72
I was only a few miles out when I realized just what the guard meant. The danger isn’t wildlife, it’s other people. Other cultivators to be exact. At first I caught a disgusting whiff of unwashed body and wrote it off as someone else on the road.
But an hour after I turned off the road and picked up my pace to a jog I caught the scent again when the wind shifted. Someone’s definitely following me. It’s only a few miles to the portal, at this pace I’ll be there in 5 or 6 minutes.
Concentrating on the Death Energy on the area I’m hoping to get a clearer idea what the situation is. Luck favors me and the wind shifts again, bringing 3 clear scents to my nose. All particularly rancid. Even feral rogue werewolves don’t smell that bad.
I stop in a clearing, waiting to see what they’ll do. My Goddess enhanced senses pick up 3 faint shimmers of Death Energy, so whoever these cultivators are, they’re murderers. Not that I’m in any pace to judge.
I can clearly smell them, but can’t see them without the shimmer of black energy sticking to them. It doesn’t seem like magic though, more like they’re channeling their cultivation to hide? I’ll have to learn that trick at some point.
Two have stopped, and the one on my right is slowly circling behind me. Time to make this fun.
"If you’re going to sneak up on a lady, learn to wash your arse first" I sneer and they all freeze.
"Seriously, I can smell you all from here. You might as well come out."
"It’s a bluff" I hear one in the woods whisper.
"Aye, Rupert has this". the other replies.
"Your mother named you Rupert?" I ask the one advancing "She really didn’t want you did she?"