Awakened: The Spirit King!

The clouds blocking the wonderful view of a night sky covered with stars just happened to move away to reveal the moon when Black Monkey died without leaving behind a corpse.

Under the magnificent and bright moon that remained high above the snowy whiteness below, all traces of his existence vanished.

Rays of moonlight passed through the center of the ring of clouds, which the crows were soaring through in a hurry, and fell on Xie Ye, illuminating his rather pale, stern, and ghastly face.

At this moment, he was quietly looking at the underlings of Black Monkey with a piercing gaze so cold and terrifying that they felt a bone-chilling iciness stabbing them all over their body.

None of them dared to make a move or hurl a mouthful of curses at him or attack him to take revenge for their boss.

Xie Ye has so easily killed their boss that they have given up on all ideas of facing him.

They knew he could crush them with a single move,

In such a situation where they couldn't run away from the man who could kill them at any time, they wished to beg Xie Ye to spare their life.

They opened their mouth, yet when they saw the piercing coldness in his eyes gleaming frostily, they managed to utter not a word as if there was a huge pearl in their throat, which they were finding impossible to swallow or spew out.

While gazing into his eyes, they felt like they were looking straight into a hell where souls were tortured and set ablaze.

They wanted to look away from Xie Ye's eyes to stabilize their mind, but they failed to do so as his reddish killing intent was shrouding every inch of their body and keeping them immobilized and as still as copper statues.

They couldn't look away from his eyes, run away from him, or even beg him!

Just what could they do?

Nothing!

Such was the hard cold truth they faced at the peak of their life.

Only a day ago, they had enjoyed embracing women and killing their husbands, parents, siblings, and children, but now, the ones facing misfortune had become them.

The difference between them and Xie Ye was too huge.

He was the sky while they were merely ants on a mountain.

Their life and death were in his hands, and as it was up to him how to deal with them, he chose to break them to the point where they would forget that there existed something called death.

They would live on like retards who anyone could bully until they die of old age.

Xie Yang noticed that his stepbrother was eroding their soul with his killing intent and realized two things.

The first was that, unlike his initial judgment, his brother wasn't at the corporal stage of killing intent but at the corruption stage!

Killing intent had different stages.

Crimson Infusion was the name of the first stage, for, in this stage, a cultivator could infuse killing intent into their weapon of choice to increase its sharpness and penetration power and cause it to glow red. A cultivator in the second to the fourth stage of killing intent can manifest rays of red light, crimson waves & tides, and kill others from a mile away, respectively.

But cultivators above the fourth stage could use their killing intent to break people's minds, which Xie Ye was currently doing to the winter bandits.

The second thing he realized was that his stepbrother was going way overboard. It wasn't wrong for Xie Ye to kill them, but it wasn't right for him to torture them and sully his soul in the process.

Corruption was the name of the fifth stage of killing intent, not because one could break other people's minds, but because each time they corrupt a person's soul, a part of their own soul becomes corrupted. When the corruption erupts, they become mindless beasts that only know how to kill others.

Xie Yang, who didn't know that his stepbrother was more than just a human, was certain that Xie Ye was harming himself while punishing them.

"Stop it!"

Thunder rumbled in the sky, lightning flashed through the clouds when Xie Yang yelled to snap Xie Ye out of his murderous daze.

He didn't want to see his stepbrother corrupting his soul in front of his eyes any longer.

"I can't do that."

Xie Ye's reply was immediate, but it wasn't what Xie Yang expected.

He was shocked by his refusal to follow his order, for this was the first time he refused him, the very first time since they started hanging out together!

"Why? Why are you going so far?" Xie Yang questioned in a calm voice after composing himself.

"Because they deserve it."

Xie Ye explained why he was so intent on making the winder bandits indulge in a hellish life worse than death to Xie Yang. It was yesterday when he came across the news of a village between Cloud City & Blue Moon City meeting disaster. Something had killed everyone belonging to that place overnight. They didn't spare even the children and even as far as to torture newborn infants to death.

The men were cooked alive and eaten. As for the women, the empire's officials found them naked, and from the marks on their bodies, they determined that whoever it was had done them a great injustice before killing them. The officials were mere mortals and feared death, so they publicized that an evil spirit was behind it.

As it was something beyond what they could handle, they could do nothing but wait for the Central Government to dispatch a special team of investigators that deals with spirit to the north.

After coming across Winter bandits on the road close to the place of massacre, Xie Ye realized that what the officials had publicized was total bullshit, and the ones behind the villagers' death were fellow humans.

No!

They weren't humans but bastards that have long given up on their humanity and started treating humans like livestock.

Xie Yang's expression distorted out of anger.

The north was cold and harsh, and sometimes people starved to death in this part of the empire. Such people deserved his pity. The winter bandits weren't among them. They had made small accomplishments in their cultivations and could live a good life in the mortal world through killing and selling low-level beasts.

Yet, they did nothing like that and only committed acts of pure evil and cannibalized not out of desperation or hunger but for the sole reason of having fun.

These people deserved what was happening to them.

They kept looking into Xie Ye's eyes that were brimming with intense killing intent until, one by one, they lost their minds to fear, became insane, and fell unconscious.

After dealing with them, the rage in Xie Ye's heart dispelled a little.

The one thing he didn't tell Xie Yang was that among the many women who the winter bandits had abused before crushing their necks, one of them was the sister of a soldier that had served him in the army for two years before eating a blade meant for him and falling on the battlefield.

Years ago, Xie Ye had given her three years' worth of his lifetime saving, a permit to stay and live in the cloud city permanently, and a house in the most popular District of the city.

She had lived in the city ever since then, enjoying a life of luxury and sweetness.

But it just so happened that for that one week when she returned to her village to sweep her parent's grave and weed it out, she met great misfortune.

Xie Ye's eyes lowered, and he scowled down into the snowy ground, his thoughts far away.

He has failed that person too.

He felt better knowing that he has avenged her.

However, the feeling of goodness filling him couldn't compare to the loathing he had for the world and himself and the sadness of losing another one he should have protected from harm.

Fate was cruel to him and death was always looking for him to lower his guard to make a move and snatch the people he knows from this world.

'Is he crying?'

'Maybe I am seeing things.'

Xie Yang thought that he saw tears in his stepbrother's eyes, but when he looked again, they were still as red as blood.

Xie Ye raised his head, sternness adorning his otherwise emotionless face.

The redness in his eyes receded, revealing black pupils.

He has disappointed many people, but he wasn't willing to fail to live up to the expectations of his master!

He straightened his back, appearing ready to fight against his cursed fate of bringing misfortune to the people around him and save the youngest of his master's offspring from all harm.

"Forgive me if I may have offended and terrified you with my actions, young master." Xie Ye said.

As a relic of the past, who has lived for many years and has reached the ninth stage of killing intent, Xie Yang wasn't terrified at seeing a Spirit Grandmaster using fifth stage killing intent, nor was he offended seeing him corrupt other peoples' souls.

"Am I the type to feel afraid from witnessing killing intent or murder in cold blood? What do you think?"

While sitting on the horse and having his eyelashes and head covered by snow, Xie Yang crossed his arms before his chest and looked at Xie Ye with annoyance and anger.

Xie Ye knew that his young master's mood might improve or worsen depending on how much his answer satisfies him.

After a moment of thoughtful silence, Xie Ye still chose to be honest and said, "You don't look well."

Xie Yang's face was ashen white as if he could faint at any time.

"I am not a badass cultivator like you. You can survive the wind and cold for endless days and nights, but I can't for even half an hour. I've long run out of spiritual energy and only have a few layers of clothing to keep me warm. Naturally, with no one blocking the cold and snow for me, this young master's white complexion will turn pale.

What will your young miss say if I return home with a sickly face? Hurry up and men this situation before it becomes worse."

Xie Ye didn't need to hear him anymore to know what he wanted him to do.

A barrier of spiritual energy manifested around Xie Yang and his steed, cutting them off from the harshness of the snowy day.

Xie Ye fastened the mentally disabled bandits' hands and feet together before activating a military spiritual flare, which shot out an energy wave so far away that the radars of the soldier on an army camp many miles away caught it.

Merely a few moments later, many horses with people on them came out of the camp and into the snow and darkness without caring about the wind and rain.

When they reached their destination, they saw some tied-up fools sleeping on the snow, waiting for the cold to freeze them to death, and a letter with the stamp of the Xie Family on it on a tree stump.

After going through it, the expression of the leader of the reserve members of the military changed.

He found a truth too hard to swallow.

"Drag them back to the camp."

"They would die."

"Then, let them!"

"Shouldn't we give these travelers medical treatments and stop their wounds from bleeding and festering instead of giving them a death sentence? Leader, do you have beef with them?"

"Traveler, my ass! Look at them carefully! They are bandits, the worse among their kind! You think I am too cruel for telling you to treat them harshly, but do you know why I am doing it? They are dogs, deserving of experiencing hell on earth! Do you know what they did a day ago?

No? Stand on attention! I will tell you!"

Bao Shu rolled his eyes and announced each of their crimes to his rather naive subordinates.

An expression of disgust appeared on their faces.

Some of them puked their guts out in disgust.

After knowing how evil these devils in human skin were, Bao Shu's men tied the cannibalizing bastards to their horses and dragged them back to their camp without feeling guilty.