章 66: Confrontation
One tendril rammed through the back of the soldier on the left and exited through his chest with a spray of red, he looked down in disbelief at the wriggling smoke-like tentacle protruding from his chest.
The horse stood next to him again entered into panic mode and tried to flee but before it could move, it too fell victim to a black tentacle, it was run through from its rear end and the tendril exited the left side of its neck.
The horse neighed out loud as it was suspended like a suckling pig over a camp fire.
The creepy tendrils yanked back with force and a screaming ghost-like replica of the impaled soldier started to be pulled from his shiny armor. The man's soul screamed out a horrific miserable sound which traveled through the region like a harsh wind.
The second soldier was shocked with his mouth hanging open looking at his squad mate's horrific ending, with desperate urgency, the man wrapped in glistening armor tried to flee with his own legs abandoning the panicked and unresponsive horse, the remaining four tendrils twisted like black snakes and made a beeline for the man and horse skewering them both in the blink of an eye.
The second soldier's screams were even more gut wrenching, he was impaled with multiple tentacles as his soul was harvested even more quickly than the first.
The screaming made Ryu Hang forget about all his pain, the wild beast pulling the carriage didn't need any instruction to get away from this place as fast as possible, they bolted forward rumbling through the mud with loud clopping sounds.
Qin Li had exited the carriage leaving Zhi Ruo inside, he had seen this before but this time the unseen enemy seemed to be way stronger than the one they faced in the Cosmos region.
Hartley looked at him and said "protect her"green lights danced around Qin LI's ankles as he flashed away, chasing after the carriage without saying a word.
A slim hunched-back figure walked out from the tree line. The hooded man had no visible face only darkness, a darkness that weaved around him like a suit of armor bringing the stench of death with it.
His dark aura shimmered around him and his dark discolored hand beckoned towards Hartley as if he was inviting his grandson forward.
"You've killed my best two apprentices, now come and kneel before me ...Join me and we can conquer this mortal plain together or you can surrender your soul and die, make your choice now."
Each word he uttered had echoes of painful screams as if someone was screaming the same time he was talking.
Hartley did not answer, his body language made it abundantly clear he didn't even intend to exchange words, he was ready for combat.
"So be it." came the man's voice once more.
The floor again rippled and churned like boiling water, black smoke-like tentacles erupted from the ground and rose with eerie wails and moans, leaving horrible craters dotted on the ground. A dozen tentacles the width of a fist curled downward towards Hartley.
Boom! mud splashed everywhere as chunks were ripped out of the road, each time the black tentacle crashed into Hartley it turned out to only be an after image. Hartley pushed his level 5 star feet movement technique to its maximum agility within the tight spaces of the tentacles which looked like trees in a forest rising around him.
"Submit!"
The hunched-back man barely visible under the shimmering dark aura that surrounded his body shouted in a voice that sounded like a painful scream.
Hartley dashed forward towards the man, his short red sword which was usually in his left hand was now replaced by a a similar sized silver sword. His battle with the scar face man in district 6 had damaged the red sword so he had to replace it with one from his collection this was a rank 2 spirit weapon, a little stronger than his original red sword.
His fist clasped tightly around the long silver sword in his right hand as he emerged from the forest of smoke-like tendrils, he was now like a blue ghost with vibrant white tendrils of smoke rising upwards from his body, he delivered a wicked forward thrust. The cloaked man's shimmering body turned to smoke and change position as if he was teleported diagonally ten meters backwards and to the left, wasting no time the cloaked man fired a fist at Hartley from fifteen meters away.
Another black tentacle shot forward from his outstretched fist, curled and arced towards Hartley who had to activate his advance state of focus. Everything approaching Hartley was now moving eight times slower.
Sweeping the short silver sword in his left hand from low to mid-left, the silver short sword imbued with zero gravity met the ghostly tentacle like lightning and with a massive clang the tentacle wriggled and was diverted to his left accompanied by horrific screams.
Blue lightning sparks crackled around Hartley's feet, his robe fluttered as he moved to the right leaving a few after images, the ground rippled again like a stone being thrown in a calm lake.
Instantly six more tentacles behaving like smoke erupted from beneath the earth sending big chunks of earth exploding outwards in all direction.
The intricate web of black tentacles created a mesh formation as they darted down back towards Hartley. Hartley's brows became slick with sweat in an instant, his eyes squinted into slits, he invoked zero gravity on all the chunks of earth that was exploding outwards.
The random chunks of earth that were all falling down back to the earth from different heights, started to float upward again, Hartley hopped onto the nearest one and then onto the other in front of it at a higher elevation, He hopped four times in the blink of an eye like he was climbing a make-shift stairway and hurdled over the mesh of black tentacles landing with a forward roll on the other side.
The hunched back d man couldn't help but be impressed by the quick fluid maneuver.
"Join me!" he exclaimed again with a shrieking tone to his voice.
Hartley paid the man no mind, before the big chunks of earth could hit the ground again Hartley used gravity repel on them, the chunks fired at the speed of light towards the hunched back man leaving a trail of wet mud. The man immediately turned ghost-like dodging to his left, the chunks decimated the trees off in the distance with a loud crash as the tentacles behind Hartley fell back to the ground like water,and smoothly retreated back underground without a trace.
Hartley activated a 30x gravity field a hundred meters around him entrapping the man as he moved forward in a flowing fluid motion, the man stumbled and his legs dug into the wet mud, for the first time the man's body lost the dark shimmer and looked more human-like even though his face was still just a black outline.
When Hartley was within ten meters of the stumbling man, three humanoid black apparitions about two meters tall, looking like living shadows left the man's body and screeched towards Hartley with horrific wails, not hindered by the gravity field they reached and slashed out their sword shaped hands at Hartley's throat in the blink of an eye.
Hartley used minute movement technique to skillfully dodge the blurry slashes as he retreated backwards from the onslaught, He moved quickly to the left in a semi circle leaving a plethora of life-like after images trying to isolate a single apparition while the cloaked man struggled with the heavenly force pressing down on everything...
The opportunity came when one of the apparitions broke away and attacked, Hartley was waiting for this, he applied 20x gravity to his long silver sword in his right hand, took a step forward and executed a uppercut strike whipping up a gust of wind and dust as his robes fluttered in the chilly winds of the spring evening. Hartley's eyes bulged as wide as saucers in surprise, the massive momentum of the sword passed through the dark figure without any resistance as it dispersed like smoke and reformed to the side with a forward thrust of its own sending the swirling dust from itself and back towards Hartley.
Hartley left deep cracked footprints in the soft ground as he struggled to dodge to the side, the black hand of the dark figure went through Hartley's fluttering robe, his clothes charred black and crumbled like ashes blowing away without catching fire leaving his naked blue figure scrambling away in fright.
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