Awakened: The Spirit King!

Bam! He had only regained his balance and stood up when the beast slammed its head on the spiritual ashen tree, causing the latter to crack apart and fall on the ground.

"What a powerful monster. Even after I dealt a killing blow twice to it, it is still going around wantonly. Its vitality must be on another level, comparable to the Black Spirit Rat.

Xie Yang judged as he took out a spiritual object.

"Thankfully, I expected it to survive my assassination and came prepared."

He wore it in his hand.

It was a gauntlet with two different effects.

It was a rank four spiritual object, but it had cost him one-third of his entire fortune!

The good thing was that it was going to come in handy now.

Xie Yang's brows raised as the beast turned around and landed its red eyes full of intense killing desire on his body.

"GAHHHHH!"

It released an intense roar reverberated throughout this area before stomping its eighteen legs on the ground and rushing towards Xie Yang.

Its eyes exposed its thoughts to him.

[Human bastard, I want to trample you to death!]

A typical person would have already turned tail and made a run for it, but Xie Yang stood at his spot.

"I guess I will have to try it out today."

While uttering those words, he raised his hand. It was as if he believed that his tiny palm would stop it from crushing him!

The beast increased its speed, causing its heart to pump blood more furiously.

As a result, blood came out of its wound faster.

Since it would die anyway, it wanted to take him down to hell with it.

Thus, it didn't care about the harm it was doing to itself.

[First Skill: Celestial Hand]

Before it could reach him, though, streams of blue force surged out of Xie Yang's gauntlet, swirling and compressing in mid-air, condensing into the form of a vast blue hand that was twice as large as the eighteen-legged beast.

Bam!

The beast rammed into it, but except for several spider cobweb-like cracks appearing on it, nothing else happened.

He had successfully stopped the beast!

"Got you!" Xie Yang said in a confident voice as the giant hand grabbed the beast and pressed its finger on its flesh.

It felt its bones shattering one by one.

As he had it immobilized and crushed by the Celestial, it didn't take long for the beast to breathe its last in regret.

It hated that it failed to take down the human bastard with it!

"Phew~finally done."

Xie Yang wiped the sweat off his face, controlled the big hand, used it to grab the carcass of the eighteen-legged beast, and rushed towards the cliff close to his position.

After reaching it, he entered the cave, reached its end, and exited the secret spirit realm.

__

The people of the Cloud City were preparing for many things. To make sure that his people will not feel bored this winter and make things eventful for the city's cultivator, Xie Yong had announced the start of a tournament, the winner and talented participants of which would gain the chance to enter the secret spirit realm to search for their fortune.

It was, in simple terms, a grand event.

Leader Xie Ye had returned to the cloud city after Xie Yang left the manor to hunt the beast. He took care of some things for his master and went to announce a piece of good news to his young master. As a result, he discovered that Xie Yang was missing from his room.

He knew where he might have gone to, so he went out of the manor to look for him.

Along the way, he met some assassins of the Spade Organization.

He was lucky enough to overhear them talking about killing his young master.

The two people were ahead of him and sitting on a tree branch.

They didn't notice him.

He appeared behind one of them before performing a clean assassination technique.

Crack!

The second assassin looked around and saw that the noise of neck cracking came from his partner.

The lifeless eyes of his partner startled him.

He jumped away from his place in terror.

"Who the heck killed him?!"

He was an assassin, so his sense was sharper than humans and cultivators of the same level.

However, even then, he failed to find any tracers of the one who killed his partner.

"Fuck! Is this place haunted?!"

He cursed out in despair.

He had taken a supposedly easy mission of assassinating Xie Yang, completing which would.net him 1k gold taels.

How significant was this amount?!

It was more than the money he had earned killing people over a decade.

Yes, he was a lucky one to have survived in this chaotic underworld for so long.

According to the information provided by his organization, Xie Yang was going in and out of the golden woodlands these days.

Thus, it teamed up with its best friend and decided to kill Xie Yang.

He wanted to complete the mission, get the gold taels, and retire to live a good life with a harem of beauties.

Who would have thought he would find himself in such a sticky situation where he knew danger was around him but didn't know what kind it was and where it was.

"There's no ghost in this place."

A voice came from behind the leader.

At the same time, it saw a shadowy figure behind it.

But he only blinked his eyes once, and the figure vanished from its spot.

He felt as if he was seeing and hearing things.

'No! I am not seeing and hearing things. I am sure someone was behind me. Where did he go?'

"Looking for me?"

The familiar voice once again came from behind him.

"I got you!"

He turned around and thrust his dagger towards the shadowy figure in one swift motion.

Leader Ye raised his hand and pinched the dagger behind his hand, stopping it a few inches away from his chest.

"Why are you using this kind of toy when you're an assassin? You must be quite lucky to have lived for s long."

His judgmental words stabbed the assassin's heart.

The assassin literally felt pain in his heart.

He looked down and saw a hand embedded into his chest.

"P-please let me go... I will leave this city behind and never look for Xie Yang before. Please don't kill me."

The assassin was looking forward to living a life of riches.

He didn't want to die in this place.

As long as Leader Ye lets him go, with his healing elemental art, he would be able to survive and recover from even this dreadful wound.

However, Leader Ye wasn't willing to show mercy to an assassin that dared target his young master.

"No."

A single word full of mercilessness came out of Leader Ye's mouth before he clenched his hand, which was holding the assassin's heart into a fist.

Due to his action, the assassin's heart exploded.

The assassin's body fell weakly from the tree branch and crashed on the ground with a loud noise.

****