1011 Getting Answers
Alex walked into the broken hall that had the Sacred flames in the center. It seemed the beasts hadn’t gone too far in and had stopped near the flames only.
Alex looked at the floor around him and such bones that clearly belonged to humans. The people that were killed here were already eaten by the beasts. He couldn’t help but feel a little bad for the.
“Scarlet, get rid of this fire,” he said.
Scarlet flew out from her beast space and saw the flames that burned in front of Alex. Without missing a beat, she quickly walked next to the flames. As she did, the fire vanished.
Alex sensed the area and suddenly the vortex of Qi that was underneath this place started pumping out Qi into the air.
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“Well, have fun,” he said to Scarlet who was already starting to cultivate by the Qi. Alex had let her cultivate yesterday morning before the sun rose as well, so she was happy when she got to do it again as the sun rose today as well.
Alex wanted to go call the people and tell them the good news, but he felt a little greedy and wanted to wait an hour or so before calling them. He wanted Scarlet to have as much time to cultivate as she wanted to.
A few minutes later, Scarlet broke through again. This time, she had entered the Skin Tempering 7th realm.
‘She’s quite fast really. If I let her go on for a day or two non-stop, I’m sure she can reach Bone Tempering realm,’ he thought. Seeing her cultivate made him want to cultivate as well.
“I really should go to the south quickly,” he thought to himself. He waited for a few more minutes as Scarlet gathered up even more Qi. It was slowly getting to the time when he had to tell the people.
He didn’t want to keep them waiting any longer. “You have an hour or two more before they all come here, so you need to be ready to relight the—”
Alex paused because he heard some footsteps. He turned around to see a young man with a dark skin wearing a necklace made up of beast teeth. There was a white tattoo on his stomach that looked like a triangle of some sort.
The young man looked dumbly at Alex while Alex looked back at him curiously.
The young man immediately ran away from the place.
Alex stood there for a few seconds wondering what had just happened. He couldn’t understand who the young man was or why he was there at all. What he did know was the young man didn’t have a white hair that the Bonehead tribe did.
Which meant that he was from a different tribe.
Alex’s senses immediately captured the young man, and his action of running away started looking like one that might belong to a person that had been caught at the act of performing some sort of illegal activity.
Alex got curious.
The moment the young man reached outside the tribe’s grounds, Alex was already there for him.
“Aah!” the young man shouted and started running the other way.
Alex quickly got next to him. “Why are you running?” he asked as he placed an arm before the young man to stop him.
The young man tried to dodge, but he ended up hitting the hand due to his momentum and stumbled to the ground.
“Argh!” the young man groaned. He was hurt a bit to badly on his back. Still, he tried to move, but Alex quickly caught him and put both of his hands behind him.
The young man tried to fight back, even kicking Alex, but none seemed to hurt Alex the slightest bit.
“Stop struggling, or I will have to use force,” Alex said while lightly squeezing the man’s wrists, which seemed to start cracking under pressure.
Alex had no qualms about breaking off the young man’s wrists. He had already done so twice just the other day. If anything, the young man’s wrist would come back stronger once he healed.
The young man screamed again and finally stopped struggling.
“Now, tell me, who you are?” Alex asked.
“I am Ke Zenquan, please don’t kill me,” the young man shouted.
“That depends on your answers,” Alex said. “What tribe are you from?”
The young man didn’t speak.
“Say it!” Alex said as he cracked his wrists even more. Some more force and one of the wrist would have all its bone crushed to nothing.,
“I’m from the Arrowhead tribe,” the young man said.
“And what were you doing here?” Alex asked.
“No-nothing,” the young man said.
Alex crushed his left wrist completely and the young man started crying out loud. Alex couldn’t help but hate what he was doing, but he had no pills that could help him at the moment so he could only use torture to get his answers.
“I told you not to lie,” he said.
“I-I was just looking around, that’s all,” the young man shouted.
“This Arrowhead tribe of yours, how far away is it?” Alex asked.
“It’s far, very far. You will need to walk for a day and a half,” the young man said.
“If the Arrowhead tribe is that far away, what were you doing here?” Alex asked. He didn’t remember hearing about any Arrowhead tribe during his talk with Li Yun and the others from the Bonehead tribe.
The man named Han had mentioned the tribes he had been to, and this one was not it. If that was the case, then Alex wondered what the young man was doing here.
“Please don’t kill me,” the young man started crying.
“Answer me!” Alex shouted back. “What were you looking for here? What is your purpose in this place? What is a young man like you doing so far away from his tribe?”
The young man continued remaining quiet, so Alex crushed his other wrist as well.
The young man screamed in pain as it was more than just broken bones that hurt at this point. Alex was being so reckless with his crushings that the bone splinters were piercing through the young man’s wrist.
“If you answer me what you were doing here, I will take you to the sacred flames where you can heal all you want,” Alex said. “However, if you don’t say anything instead, the next thing I crush will be your neck.”
Ning’s hands reached the young man’s neck. “Your choice.”
The young man who was crying in pain had to stop as the shock and fear of what was going to happen overwhelmed him very easily.
“I-I came to check on the beasts,” the young man said.
“Came to check… what? How did you know there were beasts here?” Alex asked as a suspicion grew in his heart.
“We… we…”
Alex’s grasp on his neck grew tighter until the pain started seeping through to the young man.
“We were the ones that sent the beast here,” the young man said.
Alex stopped. “What? Explain yourself!” he demanded.
“We were the ones that rallied the beasts and sent them to this place,” he said.
“We? Do you mean there are others involved?” Alex asked.
When he heard the young man say nothing, he tightened his loose grip again.
“Y-yes, many tribes are in on this,” the young man said.
Alex’s eyes widened. There was some sort of conspiracy going on here. “Why are you doing this?” he asked.
“It helps mitigate the danger from the beasts,” the young man said.
“Huh? How?” Alex asked.
“The beasts like to flock to the sacred flames. So if we gather them up and sent them to the tribes, they won’t bother the rest of the tribes ever again. Its a sacrifice for the greater good,” the young man said.
“Is that what your chiefs said?” Alex asked with a disgusted look on his face. Sacrificing innocent lives to save themselves, Alex could understand why one would do so, but that still disgusted him.
It was no different from the mad immortal kidnapping and killings dozens upon doznes of alchemists just so he could get a pill out of them. Alex hated those sorts of people.
“How did you control the beasts? Do your group of tribes hold some sort of artifact?” Alex asked.
“No, we just hurt the beasts and leave them. The wounded beasts are forced to find a place to heal. Once enough gather to go to a place, the others follow too,” the young man said.
“Wounded beasts?” he thought. He had seen that recently hadn’t he? A thought came to his mind.
“What were you doing here exactly?” he asked.
“I-I was checking to see why there were no beasts here,” the young man said.
“And was that a task that you were given to do?” Alex asked.
“N-no, I was returning and was on my way home, so I randomly decided to check how it was going. When I saw that there were no beasts from afar, I decided to come and check,” the young man said.
Alex’s eyes narrowed even more. “When you say you were returning home, where were you returning from?” he asked.
“Th-the east,” the young man said.
“You are planning to send another group of beasts to another tribe aren’t you?” Alex asked as his hands tightened. “Do you have a target this time around?”
“Ye-yes,” the young man said.
“Name it!” Alex said.
“I-I do not know the name, but it is a lone tribe living by the cliff near the canyon.”