Chapter 1431 - Reprehensible
Hardly had the voice died down when a dirty person in ragged clothes popped up in the smoke on the tower of Roaring Tiger City.
Li Yao had never seen anyone so ugly before.
He was like the very opposite of the handsome Master Bitter Cicada. His hair was dry and yellow, his cheeks were pointy, and his limbs were short. His back was hunched, his legs were not parallel, and his shoulders were slanted. Even one of his arms was longer than the other. Ulcers large and small were all over his dirty body. He could not have looked filthier!
At first, the guy certainly looked like one of the poorest beggars. If he were placed in the middle of the thousands of disaster victims outside of the city, it would have been impossible to spot him quickly.
However, he could not have been tougher. Snatching the ankles of two disciples of Roaring Tiger Hall, he picked them up and waved them as if they were two enormous axes.
Dozens of disciples of Roaring Tiger Hall were around, but they did not dare to draw any closer in case they injured their companions!
“Surround him! Kill him!” An infuriated voice burst out from the smoke.
“Leader Duan!” The hideous beggar chuckled. “Are you not resting because you suffered heavy wounds and nearly got mentally deranged while resisting the natural disasters? What, you have perfectly recovered so quickly?”
After saying that, the beggar threw the two disciples of Roaring Tiger Hall off the tower. While it was a mess down there, he bent down and crawled into the smoke once more!
Inside the smoke, his words, each louder than the last, were echoing. “Duan Tiande, do you still dare to claim that the notorious Black Devil Cult has nothing to do with your Roaring Tiger Hall? Let me ask you!
“Is the Black Devil Cult not headquartered in the place deep inside Roaring Tiger City?
“Is Qu Futong, the leader of the Black Devil Cult, not your blood brother, Duan Xingyi, who should’ve died fifty years ago? Is he not glaring at this beggar right now next to you?
“The thirty years when the Black Devil Cult savaged the southeast were the thirty years when Roaring Tiger Hall thrived. How could you have established such a magnificent city as Roaring Tiger City and set up a defense array as enormous as the Tiger Apparitions Array after only decades with your farmlands and your transportation business alone? Where did you get the money to buy the cores and bones of so many lion-type and dragon-type demon beasts?
“It is needless to mention the seven treasuries that this beggar has discovered beneath Roaring Tiger City. Besides loads of crystals and Jade Crystal Pellets, there are also the pills, magical equipment, and Heavenly Materials and Earthly Treasures that the Black Devil Cult has looted for decades. Tsk, tsk, tsk. The essence of the southeast has almost been entirely extorted!
“Haha. This beggar did not know until today that the sects whose wealth went missing during the riots of the White Lotus Cult were not destroyed by ‘Mother White Lotus’ Wan Mingzhu at all but by Roaring Tiger Hall and the Black Devil Cult under the cover of the White Lotus Cult. Otherwise, how could the whole warehouses of secret treasures have appeared beneath Roaring Tiger City?”
Every question that the ugly beggar raised was an attack toward the depths of the smoke. They were causing an earthquake inside the smoke as if they were a continuous meteor shower.
The guys inside were unable to argue at all. They were simply roaring in fury, “You—you—you are lying!”
“This beggar is lying?” The ugly weirdo burst into laughter. “I have followed the trail of the Black Devil Cult for an entire year. I also released false messages implying that I was active in East Peace County in order to ease your wariness. Then, using the chance offered by the natural disasters, I snuck into your nest. I have seen everything with my own eyes!
“Duan Tiande, Duan Xingyi, and Duan Yuanwu, you three inhuman b*stards, save your words for the fellow Cultivators outside!”
Hu!
A strong wind suddenly blew atop the tower, dispersing all the smoke and black mist.
As it turned out, on the top of the tower, surrounded by dozens of Crouching Tiger Cannons and Fiery Crow Ballista, except for the extremely hideous beggar and Duan Yuanwu who was wearing an armor with tiger stripes on it, there were two old men who were almost identical to Duan Yuanwu!
For the Cultivators in the Nascent Soul Stage, the change of their appearance caused by the passage of time would often not be revealed until they were dying.
Although the two Nascent Soul Stage Cultivators of Roaring Tiger Hall were father and son, their age gap was only thirty to forty years. For Nascent Soul Stage Cultivators, who could easily live hundreds of years, it was not much of a difference.
Therefore, the three guys who were confronting the beggar looked like three brothers at first glance, except that their hair color was slightly different. Duan Yuanwu’s hair was pure gold, while the other two had gray streaks mixed into the gold.
Naturally, one of the old men was Duan Tiande, the leader of Roaring Tiger Hall.
But who was the other old man that was almost made out of the same mold as him?
The three Nascent Soul Stage Cultivators of the Duan family all looked particularly awful.
Anger, fear, desperation, hate… All kinds of emotions were mixed together, and thick venom seemed to be shooting out of their eyes!
“Oh. It seems that this beggar was wrong about something.” The beggar smiled and said, “Qu Futong, the leader of the Black Devil Cult, is not necessarily Duan Xingyi. Perhaps you two brothers take turns to play the role. After all, you are twins, and it is difficult for anyone to notice anything wrong whichever of you appears in daylight as the leader of Roaring Tiger Hall!”
All the Cultivators on the flying boat saw exactly what was going on.
“It’s Senior Ba Xiaoyu the Beggar!”
“Huh. An old man identical to Duan Tiande has indeed shown up, and his scent is not half weak. He—he is also in the Nascent Soul Stage!”
“Three Nascent Soul Stage Cultivators in the same family!”
“I never heard that Roaring Tiger Hall had a third Nascent Soul Stage Cultivator. Is everything that Senior Ba Xiaoyu said true and the Black Devil Cult that has scourged the southeast for decades related to Roaring Tiger Hall?”
“There are a few secret treasuries at the bottom of Roaring Tiger City, in which the Heavenly Materials and Earthly Treasures and pills that the Black Devil Cult looted over the past decades are stored!”
Gasps were immediately echoing on the flying boat.
Ba Xiaoyu was a weirdo with a unique style among the Cultivators. He was known as the ‘Weird Saint’ of the Three Saints of the Great Qian Dynasty. As a marvelous person on par with Qi Zhongdao and Yan Liren, it was not hard to imagine his Cultivation and influence!
The Black Devil Cult, on the other hand, was the most notorious gang in the Great Qian Dynasty, which had plagued the southeast for decades. It had looted and even annihilated many small sects.
The Cultivators had long tried to demolish the group. However, the evil Cultivators of the Black Devil Cult were unpredictable, and their every ‘job’ was neat and clean, leaving no survivors behind. There was not a single trace leading to their nest, either.
Also, with the rise of the forces such as the White Lotus Cult and the Heaven Battering Army, which were even more troublesome, the Black Devil Cult had managed to survive to this day.
It had never occurred to the Cultivators that the ferocious Black Devil Cult was actually another facet of Roaring Tiger Hall, the ostensibly largest righteous sect in the West River State!
On the flying boat, the eyes of many high-level Cultivators were shining.
Things were easier now that Roaring Tiger Hall was a conspirator of the Black Devil Cult.
It was a moral issue whether or not Roaring Tiger Hall was willing to open the barn. The food was theirs after all. What could other people do if they looked away and refused to offer the food?
However, conspiring with the Black Devil Cult, killing innocent people, and looting other sects suggested that they were straight-up evil!
It was the responsibility of the Cultivators to slay evil. Thus, their attack was justified!
Moreover, the pivot of the Tiger Apparitions Array, the greatest headache for the Cultivators on the flying boat, had been destroyed by Ba Xiaoyu the Beggar and would not be repaired anytime soon. The clumsy artillerymen who were controlling the Crouching Tiger Cannons and the Fiery Crow Ballista could not lock onto the high-level Cultivators, who could move without any pattern at a supersonic speed!
Furthermore…
There are several secret treasuries that store the loot of the Black Devil Cult in the past decades!
Tsk, tsk, tsk. We thought that most of the southeastern sects were plundered by Mother White Lotus during the riots and didn’t know that the Black Devil Cult was involved, too!
There are so many treasures here, and their previous owners have died. Even their bones must have turned to dust. The treasures are now unowned!
The banners of the sects that were dangling from the flagpoles like wrinkled snake skin suddenly erected and fluttered in the wind in full spirits!
The high-level Cultivators of the sects, looking at each other for a moment, all looked at Qi Zhongdao passionately.
At that moment, they were truly respecting the ‘leader of the Cultivators’.
Qi Zhongdao’s dark face flushed red. He bulged his eyes and shouted angrily, as if thunder was rumbling, “The mill of the heavens grinds slowly but surely! The Black Devil Cult and Roaring Tiger Hall are evils intolerable for any Cultivator. Today, they have finally revealed their true faces! Fellow Cultivators, let’s work together to break into Roaring Tiger City, eliminate the Black Devil Cult, and save the people. Right now!”
Hu!
Qi Zhongdao stomped on the deck so hard that the front half of the flying boat tilted downward!
The flying boat became an enormous spring and sent Qi Zhongdao into the air.
He was back above Roaring Tiger City, only ten times more dominating than previously. Without saying anything, he shook his sleeve, and the Heaven Flipping Seal, said to be the ultimate treasure of the Ancient Sages Sector, dashed out of his Cosmos Ring in a streak of silver brightness, suppressing the entire world!
Crack! Crack! Crack! Crack!
The periphery of Roaring Tiger City had been covered in the magnificent Tiger Apparitions Array in the beginning, which was protected by the souls of almost ten thousand lion-type and dragon-type demon beasts and powered by a whole warehouse of crystals as the energy source. It was a super-large barrier, capable of resisting the Heaven Flipping Seal, which was essentially a piece of portable magical equipment for a single soldier.
However, the pivot and the warehouse of crystals for the Tiger Apparitions Array had been destroyed by Ba Xiaoyu the Beggar from inside after he snuck in. It was impossible to be restarted so quickly.
Without the enhancement of the defense array, how could the seemingly hard rocks and bricks withstand the suppression of the Heaven Flipping Seal?