“No, don’t do this! Please, I beg you, please don’t do this!” Another cry for mercy echoed out from one of the rooms, but it was his mother this time.

　　“Mom!”

　　In grief and indignation, Zhang Tao rushed inside just in time to see the son of town magistrate stomp a foot on his mother’s head. His mother rolled her eyes and her skinny body struggled a few times, and then she was dead, with her eyes wide open.

　　“Mom!”

　　Zhang Tao coughed out a mouthful of heart’s blood, and he felt the world around him spinning.

　　Fully naked, the son of town magistrate was lying atop his sister’s innocent body, plunging in and out of her excitedly while a group of ruffians and hooligans watched around them. Blood trickled down from both her thighs, and her young face of a ten-year-old girl was twisted with pain, her eyes filled with despair.

　　“Bast*rds! I’ll kill you all!”

　　Zhang Tao was completely crazy. Like a mad cow, he ran headlong toward the group of men!

　　“Kill us all? Hah! I was afraid of you, but how are you going to kill me now when you have lost both your arms? Beat this piece of rubbish to death for me!” As the son of town magistrate shouted wantonly, he did not stop his movement even for a moment. Instead, he moved even faster, as if he was getting more excited.

　　Zhang Tao only felt a sharp pain on the top of his head, and then he was thrown to the ground, with punches and kicks raining down on him like a storm, breaking all his limbs and bones. Soon, his head was reeling and his pupils were dilating, and he gradually began to lose consciousness.

　　Staring blankly at the blood that kept trickling down his sister’s body, he felt he had lost all his strength. His body was aching all over, but he could no longer feel it. The only thing he could feel now was the monstrous pain in his heart, as if someone was slicing at it with a sharp blade.

　　“Ah! AH! AHHH!”

　　The son of town magistrate thrust himself over and over again into his sister. Soon, he reached his climax, and after shivering for a moment, he fell feebly onto her petite body. Zhang Tao saw his sister’s fair body begin to slowly turn stiff and cold, with purple and green spots emerging here and there.

　　After all the humiliation, his sister finally died.

　　Zhang Tao’s heart broke in an instant, and his dilated pupils suddenly began to constrict. Lying face down on the ground, he felt strength coming back to him from somewhere, which made him clench his fists tightly. For a moment, a feeling of power that he had never felt before came to him.

　　“Fists?” He was confused. “I have fists now?” In fact, not only did he have both hands now, but he also had a sword in his right hand, a bright and cold sharp blade!

　　“Kill, kill, kill!”

　　His mind was completely blank, and then a huge character of ‘kill’ appeared in both of his pupils. He lifted the sword, and amidst streaks of bright light, the hooligans and ruffians who had beaten him just now were all cut into halves!

　　“A good sword!” His face twisted ferociously as he stepped over to the son of town magistrate.

　　“Kill, kill… I’m going to kill everyone… all the people are going to die!”

　　With the sword in hand, Zhang Tao walked out of his home and started toward the town magistrate’s house. Wherever he passed, he left behind numerous dead bodies on the ground.

　　“Run! Run for your life! Zhang Tao is killing everyone!”

　　“No, nooo! I’m the granny who lives next to your house! Don’t kill me!”

　　“Go get the town magistrate! Hurry up! Go get someone to bring this murderer under control!”

　　“Oh no! The entire family of town magistrate is murdered! What should we do now? Somebody help us!”

　　“Run! Run for your life!”

　　The town was plunged into chaos. Zhang Tao could not remember how many people he had killed; he had not stopped killing from day to night, and now, no matter where he went, there was no one alive. The whole town was empty.

　　The night was dark, and the moon was unusually round and huge. With his mind completely blank and his eyes devoid of emotions, Zhang Tao looked up at the moon in the sky.

　　It was not a full moon he saw, but a huge red eyeball of a man!

　　He stared at the huge eyeball in a daze. The whole town was dead, silent and lifeless. Suddenly, he felt a trance, as if the world around him began to twist, and an extremely unreal feeling came into his mind.

　　In the next instant, all the dead bodies were gone, and even the town had vanished. He blinked and found himself standing in a wilderness, surrounded by the black of night and two thousand peers from Jialan Academy, with the bright round moon over their heads.

　　“What…?” Zhang Tao glanced blankly at the surroundings with a look of confusion on his face. In fact, he was not the only one with that look. All of the two thousand students seemed to be struck dumb as well, with the same look of confusion in their eyes.

　　“AHHHH!”

　　Suddenly, a female student burst into tears, and her voice immediately caused a commotion to break out across the wilderness. Every student covered their faces or buried their heads between their arms and began to wail, filling the air with sad voices.

　　There were even many students who knelt on the ground and kept punching the earth with their fists, their eyes bloodshot and their faces covered in grief and indignation.

　　Jia Rong was dumbfounded as he stared at them from the outside. In his eyes, these students had barely stood there in a daze for one day and one night. He could not understand why they suddenly experienced such a violent emotional fluctuation. But then, he felt a chill run down his back as he thought of the ‘something interesting’ Yunxiao had told him. While shivering, he stole a glance at Yunxiao from the corner of his eye.

　　Yunxiao’s eyes had returned to normal, but he was extremely pale, with fine blood vessels all over him clearly visible to the naked eyes.

　　Jia Rong breathed a sigh of relief and thought to himself, ‘Had it not been because I am a second-tier alchemist and my spiritual energy is very powerful, perhaps I would already be pushed into the formation by him to experience that ‘something interesting’.’

　　Yunxiao did not feel good right now, as the load had exceeded his expectations. He had thought that after making the students run for three days and three nights to reduce their spiritual energy to the lowest level, he could easily pull all two thousand of them into illusions with his eye technique and the Thousand and Thousand illusion formation. But, he did not expect the consumption to be so huge that he was forced to end the journey of illusion earlier, releasing all the students.

　　As soon as his spiritual energy was cut, the whole illusion vanished. Then, he quickly sent his soul power into the Divine Realm Tablet and made his soul materialized in there. The golden Great Expansion Divine Technique appeared in the void and shone shafts of warmth onto his soul like sunlight expelling the cold, making him feel very comfortable and nourished.

　　He turned to Jia Rong and said, “Help me back to the chariot. I need to take a rest. Let them enjoy the happiness that they can still cry.”

　　After all, people did not even have the luxury to cry at times.

　　Jia Rong was taken aback, as he found that Yunxiao was already weakened to such an extent. He had never seen the latter so exhausted, not even when they were refining pills in seclusion last time. But, when he thought of the illusion that trapped all two thousand students at the same time, he could not help but shiver once again.

　　After experiencing great grief and joy for half a night, the two thousand students could no longer hold it anymore and fell asleep on the spot. Three days and three nights of running and the subsequent mental blows had completely crushed them.

　　Everyone had a beautiful dream, in which the world was full of pleasant scent and a sunny, clear sky. The next day when they woke, they found that they were surrounded in the same faint fragrance from their dreams.

　　“Have you all awakened, little bast*rds? Get up now!” Jia Rong growled, with dark circles beneath his eyes, “You all had a comfortable sleep last night, didn’t you? Do you know I burned the Purple Dragon Incense for you the whole night?”

　　Only then did everyone find the trace of burned wood beside Jia Rong and see him fanning the incense smoke toward them with a fan. They had never imagined that they would be served by a second-tier alchemist when they were sleeping. Frightened, they quickly got to their feet, and then each of them hurriedly jumped out of the circle of formation, not daring to stay within its boundary again.

　　The Primordial Stones socketed in the formation had all turned into heaps of dust as the energy contained in them had been exhausted.

　　At that moment, Yunxiao walked out of the chariot in great spirits. At the sight of him, the faces of all students fell and they stepped back involuntarily, as if they had seen a ghost.

　　Jia Rong’s pupils constricted as he was utterly shocked. He was one hundred percent sure that Yunxiao had completely exhausted his soul power last night. But from the energetic look on his face now, it was plain that his soul power had fully restored. But, it had only been a night! How could it be so fast?

　　Yunxiao glanced smilingly at everyone. “Did everyone have a good time yesterday?”

　　‘Fu*k you! Good time my ass!’

　　All two thousand students were cursing in their minds, but no one dared to reveal their anger. Looking at the smile on Yunxiao’s face, they felt as if a gust of cold breeze was blowing at their faces, which made them move back a few more steps. Zhang Tao’s face was pale, and he would shiver whenever he thought of what happened in the illusion. It was simply a nightmare!

　　“I know you all must be cursing me in your minds. But…” His face suddenly grew solemn and his eyes deep as seas as he spoke in a serious voice, “I don’t know what you saw in the illusion, but I can tell you that it is possible for that to happen in real life if you do not have the strength!”

　　Zhang Tao shuddered, and he screamed frantically in his mind, ‘Impossible! Absolutely impossible! It is too terrible! I’ll never let that happen! Strength! I need strength!’

　　Yunxiao stared coldly at those young faces. In his eyes, even Lin Yu and Bai Chengfeng, the two leaders among the students, were just kids. At that moment, a cruel smile emerged on the corner of his mouth. “Although the illusion is fake, the obsessions in your hearts are real. This is how the world runs, natural selection and the survival of the strong! If you want to live and protect the traces of weakness in your hearts, you will need to keep strengthening yourself and keep advancing on the path of martial arts!”

　　He saw that there seemed to be some murderous look in everyone’s eyes, which did not exist in the past. He smiled approvingly and said, “So, I’ll use the remaining five days to teach you all a set of skills that can quickly improve your strength. It is called the Murderous Air Script!”

　　Tempted, Ji Meng walked over from the distance.

　　Yunxiao gave him a look and said, “The style of sword technique you cultivated is agile and swift, which is the complete opposite of this script. But, all martial techniques in the world lead to the Great Dao, and they will eventually come back to the understanding of the martial essence. You can study it for reference, but you don’t have to learn it.”