Moniker: Blood Butcher!

Up until the final moment the void rift sealed shut, Li Guanqi's mind and body remained taut as a bowstring. Right before the rift closed, he had distinctly felt the figure lurking in the shadows hesitate several times!! Every flicker of that faint, elusive aura meant the other party was truly tempted to strike!! Thus, the instant he stepped into the void, the taut cord in his mind snapped completely, and he blacked out. Upon the mountain peak of the Crane Alliance! A mysterious figure shrouded entirely in black robes slowly emerged. He murmured under his breath, "He actually noticed me?" Incredulity filled his voice, and his bright eyes narrowed slightly. He replayed everything that had just occurred over and over in his mind... The boy had clearly noticed his presence long beforehand. Otherwise, there was no way he would have deliberately cast a glance in his direction in the midst of slaughtering so many foes. He was clearly blind, yet those eyes of his seemed capable of seeing through so much. His breath-concealing technique was a secret of the Dark Crow organization; very few people could ever pierce through it. Unless the opponent's strength vastly surpassed his own! Standing atop the peak, the black-robed man looked down at the rivers of blood washing through the Crane Alliance, unable to keep from murmuring softly: "What a ruthless bastard." For an assassin of the Dark Crow organization to marvel in such a way only showed just how shocking Li Guanqi's slaughter had been! Pondering for a moment, the man pulled out an oddly shaped black jade slip and sent a transmission: "The target detected me. Requesting task reassignment. I cannot kill him." As the words fell, a faint gleam flitted across the pitch-black jade slip. On the back of the jade slip, the character 'Yellow' was carved. This represented his rank within the Dark Crow organization: a peak Yellow-rank assassin. Had Li Guanqi seen this, he would certainly have deduced a great deal! Such a terrifying killer was merely a peak Yellow-rank in the Dark Crow organization. After the mysterious black-robed man vanished, numerous experts who had rushed over upon hearing the news arrived through the air one after another. Void rifts tore open in midair with increasing frequency. Yet when they laid eyes upon the scene before them, they froze where they stood, every face turning thoroughly grim! The Crane Alliance, once steeped in the majesty of an immortal sect... was gone. The peaks across the Crane Alliance's domain had been shattered to pieces, their summits lopped off by sweeps of sword radiance. Blood had dyed the main peak crimson, thick gore cascading from the summit all the way to the foot of the mountain! The heavy stench of blood was utterly nauseating. Flying into the Crane Alliance, they looked down and saw dozens of dazed boys and girls. Their cultivation had all been crippled; with numb, hollow eyes, they sat limp amidst the pools of blood. Ruins and collapsed walls were everywhere, with shredded flesh and broken corpses dangling across the shattered buildings. Confronted by such a gruesome sight, even quite a few lower-cultivation practitioners could not help but retch and vomit. Just then, someone cried out in a trembling voice: "Come look! Here... there's writing here!" On a boulder over ten zhang across, someone had written a sentence in blood: "He who kills shall himself be killed!" Blood trickled down from the massive characters, sending shivers down their spines. The meaning behind the words was clear. Li Guanqi was telling them: 'If you want to kill me, prepare to be killed in return.' And this was only the first step of Li Guanqi's campaign! Seeing this line of blood-written characters, a chill crept up from the depths of many hearts. The eyes of the hovering cultivators wavered slightly, and many turned away and left. Yet many others still gritted their teeth, reached up to tear open the sky, and stepped into the void! Amidst the pitch-black void, a purple dragon quietly bypassed terrifying spatial tempests as it forged steadily ahead. No one knew how much time had passed when the figure atop the dragon's head twitched slightly, snapped his eyes open, and coughed up a mouthful of blood!! *Pfft!!!* A large blood clot was expelled. Startled, Jiuxiao halted immediately. Li Guanqi slowly came to his senses, sat up, and let out a long breath. The clot that had clogged his meridians was finally purged. As his chest rose and fell slightly, Li Guanqi grimaced in agony. He patted Jiuxiao's massive head to signal that there was no need to worry. Sitting cross-legged on Jiuxiao's head, he retrieved healing pills and swallowed them, then set down a spirit-gathering array disc, embedded spirit stones into it, and took a meditative posture. Drawing in the dense spiritual energy, Li Guanqi let out a breath of relief. Turning his head to look behind him, he saw how fast Jiuxiao had flown. It seemed that during the time he had been unconscious, Jiuxiao had pushed forward at maximum speed without resting for a single moment. Looking down at Jiuxiao beneath him, Li Guanqi's lips curled into a faint smile. Raising a hand, he tossed the dragon several pills. The enormous dragon head narrowed its eyes, savoring them immensely. Li Guanqi began inspecting his internal injuries. A single sweep told him that his insides were in an absolute shambles. Breathing out a breath of turbid air, he began unblocking his clogged meridians. Yet before doing so... Li Guanqi drew Red Lotus and nicked his swollen eyelids, draining the pooled blood from them. Looking down at his chest, he saw seven or eight broken ribs in his caved-in torso. One fractured rib had pierced straight through his lung; he had to pull the bone out and set it back into place. Yet... with an injury of this severity, he could no longer use primal energy to force the bone back out. Li Guanqi thought for a moment. With a calm expression, he gripped Red Lotus in a reverse hold and slowly cut into his own chest!! He sliced a palm-sized incision along the side of his ribs, then reached his right hand right into the opening!! *Hiss!!!* Li Guanqi's face went stark white, his lips trembling slightly. Blue veins bulged across his neck, and his entire body went rigidly taut!! His throat bobbed as he sucked in sharp, ragged gasps of air, his right wrist sinking slowly into the wound. Locating that broken rib, he pulled it out bit by bit!! "Nngh!!! *Hiss*!!! Motherfucker!!" He didn't even know where he'd heard those words; right now, he just wanted to say anything at all to distract himself from the pain. Half an incense stick later... "Haah... haah..." Drenched from head to toe as though pulled from water, Li Guanqi collapsed sideways across Jiuxiao's head. Gazing at his blood-soaked right hand, Li Guanqi cursed under his breath: "That really fucking hurts!!" Forcing his weakened body back upright, he sat cross-legged and began to nurse his injuries, reviewing the prior battle in his mind. Meanwhile, another target for vengeance gradually surfaced in his thoughts. "North Sea Monastery, was it?" His heavy eyelids slowly drifted shut, and the aura about him began to climb steadily. And a few hours after he departed the Crane Alliance... Li Guanqi had wiped out the Crane Alliance single-handedly. Counting Alliance Leader Wei Xian, the alliance elders, and their disciples, he had slain a total of four hundred and ninety-two people! Adding the Nascent Soul experts who had rushed over upon hearing the news, another twenty-nine individuals fell! Including the Crane Alliance's own Nascent Soul experts, there were a full forty-three cultivators in the Nascent Soul realm! As for Crane Alliance Leader Wei Xian... he was a bona fide mighty expert in the early Soul Formation realm!!!