Chapter 129: Destroying the Evidence

“Crap! It was a trap!” Not even a second later, Zhao Chuan realized what had just happened. He had fallen for an extremely obvious trick because of his panic!

The moment he turned back to look, Zhao Chuan felt a tugging sensation on his right leg. Looking down, he realized that Bai Yunfei had thrown a golden rope earlier that just seemed to “glide” over twenty meters, snugly wrapping around his foot! With this realization, Zhao Chuan wasted no time to slash his blade against the rope. But alas! Despite the sparks that flew, the rope was not cut!

A glint sparkled in Bai Yunfei’s eye when he saw this moment of succession. Pulling his right hand back, he forced Zhao Chuan to tumble to the ground while simultaneously speeding up to catch up. In the blink of an eye, he caught up to Zhao Chuan and brought his Fire-tipped Spear down toward his opponent’s stomach!

Aside from shock, there was a frenetic gleam in Zhao Chuan’s eye. The claws of death gripped his heart, forcing him to forego the sensation of the golden rope tied around his foot. His sword managed to swing out in one final attempt to escape from the brink of death. Somehow he managed to smash it against the shaft of the spear just enough to bring it careening to the side of his stomach, opening up a long gash in it.

The explosive effect of the Fire-tipped Spear had failed to activate, but Bai Yunfei took it in stride and recalled his spear back into his space ring. Without a weapon in hand, he was able to maneuver his fist down. With a powerful strike, he unleashed a powerful blow to the stomach of Zhao Chuan with the Ninefold Fist Force!

A crazy glare made its way into Zhao Chuan’s eyes as he tried to bite and swallow the rest of the blood coming out of his mouth. Exhausting all of the soulforce he could muster, the blade in his hand exploded with a dazzling amount of light. It came zipping toward Bai Yunfei’s face at a lightning-quick speed!

Bai Yunfei quickly analyzed the situation. He didn’t bothered to lift his right hand back. Instead, he allowed the blade to continue until a clear clinking sound could be heard. The Flameblade Bracer had successfully repelled it!

Bai Yunfei grunted as he tried to suppress the numbing sensation in his shoulder that had been formed from the backlash of the impact between blade and bracer. With a rush of soulforce into the bracer, it began to light up before a one meter long blade of flame materialized into view. Right in front of the forlorn eyes of Zhao Chuan, the blade came down on him with no hesitation!!

“Pfttt!!”

Following the sounds of flesh being cut, the blade managed to bisect Zhao Chuan in a diagonal motion from left shoulder to the right side of the waist. An acrid smell of something burning floated into the air, and when Zhao Chuan turned his head to look down at where his body had been cleaved, a black scorched ‘trace’ greeted his eyes. His head dropped back to the ground, and his mouth opened up to let loose a small wisp of steam. It rose into the air, and his eyes slowly began to lose focus…

A moment later, the Flame Winged Blade turned Zhao Chuan’s body into a funeral pyre. Before it could do so, Bai Yunfei had managed to secure the body’s space ring and blade into his space ring. Putting out the flames, he watched as the wind blew the remaining ashes of Zhao Chuan away, into the earth.

In practically no time at all, two mid-stage Soul Sprites had been killed just like that!

The +12 additional effect from the Flameblade Bracer had been activated when Bai Yunfei needed it the most, the powerful Flame Winged Blade! The Flame Winged Blade was a skill that completely outclassed whatever power Bai Yunfei’s opponents thought it possessed. With its power, it completely decimated the Soul Sprite from the Beast Taming School, and shell shocked Zhao Chuan at the same time; what unimaginable power it had! Combined with the intent to kill from Bai Yunfei, Zhao Chuan had been utterly cowed. After that, it had been an easy task to kill him!

In the past, Bai Yunfei had always been chased by those who were even stronger than him, making even escape extremely difficult. Today he realized just how strong both he and his upgraded equipment were against those of the same level of strength!

……

It was only after he finished putting the short blade into his space ring that Bai Yunfei managed to let out a sigh of relief. With a quick glance around, he managed to ascertain that all five people had been killed. He was free to walk to the forest where Tianming had been dragged and pull him back out.

With the beast tamer dead, the snake that had been wrapped around Tianming’s leg had lost all of its autonomous motion. It remained limp like a piece of rope. This allowed Bai Yunfei to ‘free’ Tianming from it and throw it to the side.

It took a brief moment for Bai Yunfei to make a detailed analysis of what was happening to Tianming, but he was able to let out a sigh of relief after finding out that he had only fainted. Taking out a small dagger, he made a careful incision near where the bite had been on Tianming’s arm. He then allowed his soulforce to leak into the wound. Not too much time later, the venom that had been injected into Tianming’s body was detoxified, meaning that Tianming would wake up soon.

“Brother Bai? What’s going on? Why does my head hurt…” Tianming groaned as he awoke. Shaking his head to clear away the rest of his dizziness, Tianming immediately became alert, “Ah! Caretaker Zhao! Brother Bai, are you okay? Were we captured?!”

Even after he spoke, Tianming realized that something was amiss with the situation. Firstly, he saw the mountains overhead behind Bai Yunfei. Secondly, caretaker Zhao was nowhere in sight, and the two tigers and wolf were motionless on the ground along with their respective three beast tamers. It did not take much for Tianming to realize that these three men were all the same people from the Beast Taming School.

“Brother Bai… wha-what happened here?” Tianming asked Bai Yunfei in befuddlement.

The other boy only smiled in response, “Nothing really, everything has been taken care of…”

While he was speaking, two distant cries of misery could be heard. Bai Yunfei paused mid-speech and stared up at the tree branches. Not too long later, the sounds of leaves being rustled could be heard before Jing Mingfeng reappeared with a body in each hand. Slowly leaping down, he discreetly looked around before giving a nod to Bai Yunfei. Throwing the bodies to the side, he walked on over the two.

“Brother Jing, are you…” As Tianming was about to ask a question of his well-being, he saw just what exactly had been tossed beside him, “Eh? This person, he’s…”

“Hm? What was that? Do you know this person, Tianming?” Bai Yunfei asked with raised eyebrows.

Scrunching his eyebrows together in deep thought, Tianming nodded his head slowly. “I think I do… oh! If I remember correctly, this guy once showed up at the same time of that damned fatty from the house of Zhao! One time, he helped the stupid fatty beat the crap out of some young heir to another house for accidentally crossing paths with him!”

“Someone from the house of Zhao? That sounds about right…” Bai Yunfei nodded.

“Oh, brother Bai, what happened to caretaker Zhao? And those other people, are they…”

“Yea. They came with ill intentions, so in order for them to not leave anything behind, we had to kill them all.”

“Kill!? You killed even the caretaker?”

“Yes, he’s dead.”

“……”

Tianming was dumbfounded by Bai Yunfei’s cavalier attitude. He didn’t even know how he should say it. The caretaker of the house of Zhao was a soul cultivator of the mid-stage Soul Sprite level. In Gaoyi City, he was considered one of the strongest. Even Ye Ting, his father, would have to show him some face whenever they met, but with Bai Yunfei downplaying the caretaker’s death like this, it was rather…

“Ol’Bai, so, just how should we… take care of this?” Jing Mingfeng pointed at the corpses and soulbeasts around them for Bai Yunfei to answer.

Standing back up from his squatting position, Bai Yunfei held up his right hand, revealing a bright ball of flames that levitated over it. He slowly walked over to one of the corpses before he turned to look at the other two, “Burn them. We can’t leave any evidence behind.”

With fire filling the air around them and all around the corpses, it did not take long for them to turn into ashes. With Jing Mingfeng by the side, he swished his hand so that the winds would scatter the ashes everywhere…

With the flames devouring everything, absolutely nothing was left.

After all of the bodies were burned and reduced to ashes, the space rings were taken from the Beast Taming School members, and ransacked for whatever valuables they had.

……

“Brother Bai, what should we do now?” Tianming later asked Bai Yunfei in hesitation.

Bai Yunfei had just stored the space rings into his own ring when he suddenly looked in the direction of Gaoyi City with narrowed eyes, “Someone’s here, and it looks like a small group of people…”

Jing Mingfeng noticed the situation up front as well when he asked, “Should we evade them?”

“No need,” Bai Yunfei shook his head, “We’re just travelers… let’s see how this works out.”

Even as they were debating to one another, the sounds of frantic footsteps grew louder and louder, and before long, a group of people pushed their way through the trees. The leading figure briefly glanced over Bai Yunfei and Jing Mingfeng before the third person caught his eye, “Tianming!” He cried out in joy.

“Bro!” Tianming was startled to see who it was that had called out to him, but he replied full of happiness.

This newcomer was roughly twenty years old, and bore a strikingly similar appearance to Tianming. At a rough estimation, Bai Yunfei evaluated this person as a soul cultivator at the early-stage Soul Sprite level. Right behind him was another six or seven people that were soul cultivators as well, but only just Soul Personages or Soul Warriors at most. They too, however, were ecstatic to see Tianming, and visibly relaxed upon the sight.

“You’re okay, what a relief!” The man cried out when he saw Tianming before patting him on the shoulder.

“Eh? Bro, what’s going on?” Tianming questioned.

“We received information that you were on your way back home. The caretaker from the house of Zhao also heard that information. He came after you with some people from the Beast Taming School. Knowing that they were definitely going to try and kidnap you to blackmail our family, second uncle and I came running as fast as we could. We were worried that you’d be kidnapped already, but thank heavens you’re alright…”

“Second uncle’s here too? Where is he?” Tianming asked.

“Right here.” As soon as Tianming asked, a second figure walked out of the right side of the forest. This newcomer was a middle-aged man with a decent build, wearing armor. He was a late-stage Soul Sprite in power which added to his demeanor. “I haven’t detected anyone suspicious. Did the house of Zhao or the Beast Taming School not find Tianming? Or did something else happen to them…”

“Well… the people from the Beast Taming School were just here a moment ago.” Jing Mingfeng suddenly answered from behind Tianming. He pointed to where the corpses of the beast tamers had been laying before they had been cremated.

“What!? Then where are they now?” Tianming’s uncle cried out in alarm.

“Right now?” Jing Mingfeng chuckled before circling around with his right hand, “They’re everywhere.”

Thinking that Jing Mingfeng was joking with him, the second uncle narrowed his eyes and barked, “What are you getting at!?”

“Tianming, who might these two be?” Tianming’s brother asked with a pointed look at Bai Yunfei and Jing Mingfeng.

“Oh oh! Let me introduce you to everyone,” Tianming hurried to reply, “These are the two friends I made on the outside. This is Bai Yunfei, and this is Jing Mingfeng. They’ve been looking after me on our way and even saved me.”

Finishing his sentence, he then introduced the two to his family, “Brother Bai, brother Jing, this is my big bro, Ye Tianwen, and this is my second uncle, Ye Quan.

“What did you say, they saved you? What do you mean by that?” Ye Tianwen gave Bai Yunfei and Jing Mingfeng a nod before looking back to Tianming.

“Uh…” Tianming didn’t answer right away. He hesitantly looked at Bai Yunfei.