COMING OF THE MARTIAL GOD, VOLUME 2 - Season 8 Episode 17

Austin threatened her. His face was menacing and Dahlia knew he meant business.

“I’ll never teach you, you asshole. Just do whatever you want to do to me. I don’t care.”

Dahlia roared in her indignation, seeming quite determined this time. She closed her eyes and straightened her neck as if preparing for an execution.

“What the hell! What’s the matter with you? Aren’t you afraid?”

Surprised by Dahlia’s response, Austin had lost all his leverage. He didn’t know what to do next.

Suddenly, his face darkened.

A huge Corrosive Cloud quickly wafted from the thick woods at the foot of the valley. It flew over the Wind Boat and shrouded it under a shadow before Austin and others could realize what was going on.

“Look! What the hell is that?”

The three girls on the Wind Boat shouted almost at the same time looking at the strange cloud.
Austin was startled as well. He could see absolutely nothing because the cloud had covered everything. He tried his spiritual sense, but, to his great amazement, he felt nothing at all. His spiritual sense had turned useless.

This new turn of events flustered Austin. He possessed a great ability of spiritual sense, which was even powerful than that of a lot of cultivators at the Master Realm. He had never failed in exerting it.

But this time it failed in the shadow of this weird cloud of darkness. His spiritual sense detected nothing at all!

Suddenly, in the middle of the darkness, saddening roars were heard as if a monster was howling in pain. The roars gradually prolonged, increasing in grief. The air stirred with every intensified howling, and spread the indignation and sorrow as far as possible.

“Tessa, come to my side. I’m feeling weird!” Austin said to Tessa in a hurry. Since the strange cloud was powerful enough to disable his spiritual sense, there was no chance for Tessa to see or hear anything. She was entirely in the dark right now.

Tessa recalled their positions by memory and fumbled towards Austin with her hands and feet. When she touched him, she stretched out her hand and held his right hand firmly.

“What’s happening, obscene guy?”

Dahlia asked, flustered. Scared by the strangeness, she and her maid had already stood near Austin and huddled by his side. Evidently, they had forgotten the unhappy memories between them. They clutched his robe tightly as if he was their only salvation at this moment. Due to the intimate distance, Austin could clearly smell the unique scent of their girlish fragrance.

In the Veritable Demon Sect headquarters, everyone treated the two girls nicely. They had seldom left the Veritable Demon Sect previously. They sneaked out from their home for this time only to make some troubles for Austin. Seeing such a terrifying thing for the first time in their life, they both felt scared, and were intensely shuddering. They were engulfed in darkness and all they could hear was the ghostly howling. Their teeth were trembling in extreme fear.

Austin felt both funny and interested at the two Veritable Demon Sect girls’ reactions. They called him “obscene guy” a moment before and now they came to him for help in the face of danger. Wasn’t that interesting?

“What the hell! I cannot use my vital energy, Austin. What’s the matter?”

Tessa shouted in shock.

“I cannot use my vital energy too. My body feels fragile now. The cloud is so weird!”

Dahlia said in a panic.

“Me too, Dahlia. My vital energy is also useless.”
The maid found herself in the same situation.

“Don’t get flustered. Stay calm. We must escape from this cloud first,”

Austin said in a composed manner, trying to calm everybody down. He was fully aware that the first thing they needed to do was to flee from the encompassing range of the weird cloud.

“Tell me how to activate the Wind Boat!”

Austin ordered Dahlia seriously.

Dahlia kept silent before murmuring something.
“That’s a secret of the Veritable Demon Sect. I cannot tell any outsiders.”

“I don’t think this is the time for righteousness, young lady. Do you know what kind of a situation we are in at this moment? Do you want to be trapped here forever?

None of you can use your vital energies. How can you order the Wind Boat to go without your vital energy?

I can use my vital energy temporarily, though not too much of it. If you don’t tell me the way to activate the boat, then we’ll all be trapped here forever once I lose my ability to use it!”

Austin roared at Dahlia with anger. He felt little influence of his vital energy, but he was fully aware that he was slowly losing control of it.

“So… All right. I’ll tell you.” Dahlia thought for a moment before assenting.

She told Austin everything about how to use and control the Wind Boat.

Without any delay, Austin raised his hands to inject several strong rays of vital energy into the bow of the Wind Boat as soon as he had mastered the tips to control the boat.

But the Wind Boat stayed motionless.

“Why didn’t it move? Did you hide something from me?”

Austin asked suspiciously, his brows furrowing.
“Of course not! I’ve explained everything correctly!

What should we do? Even the Wind Boat isn’t moving now!”

Both Dahlia and her maid shouted in helplessness.

Austin tried again, to launch some more strong rays of vital energy at the bow of the Wind Boat.
The Wind Boat still kept motionless.

“It’s useless. We cannot use the Wind Boat now.”

Austin sighed.

“Take back your boat and hide it well.

Follow me. We have to run out of this weird place,”

Dahlia murmured something to shrink the Wind Boat back into its original, tiny size and placed it back into her Space Ring.

Austin walked forward towards the rim of the cloud, with Tessa holding his right arm and Dahlia holding his another arm. Dahlia’s maid followed them closely, clutching her young lady’s robe firmly.

But they stopped after walking a few steps forward.

The whole space whirled violently, as if the heaven and the earth had turned upside down.

“My god! That’s the force of transmission!”

Austin shouted, his face turned pale.

It was beyond his imagination that there was a force of transmission in the weird cloud of darkness. But where would the force transmit him and the other three girls to?

The transmission force reinforced its effect as the space began to split. They all whirled, and they felt as if they were being tossed around the air. Their minds became a mess, feeling the fragmenting of the time and the space around them.

It became quiet after some time.

They gradually woke up from the coma caused by the violent transmission.

They blinked their eyes in an attempt to get a footing on where they were. But there was no sign of the Corrosive Cloud that had trapped all of them previously.

What lay in front of them was a dilapidated city. Such an experience was too weird! Austin and his three female companions all felt stunned.

They had been transmitted from a valley to a dilapidated city that they had never seen before!
And the city felt oddly serene for it was extremely quiet.

The city looked large, proving its former prosperity. The city walls had lost most of its coating to reveal dark bricks inside, obviously a consequence of being eroded by time. The streets were covered by a thick layer of dust, flanked by various shops on both sides. There were restaurants, rouge shops, a brothel named Spring Garden, wine shops, weapon shops, stables and a herb shop still with a faint scent of herbs, all of which stood quietly with their entrance widely opened. But not a soul inside them.

A breeze blew. As a result, several red broken lanterns rolled on the street and flew into the air.

They walked on the main street and went deeper into the city. Around the corner of the street, they saw some bones with rotten flesh. There were several bowls, bamboo rods and other tools made with the bones.

“Is this a city without life?”

Austin took the lead and carried the group ahead. Tessa, Dahlia and her maid, like three frightened kids, followed him closely. They had held his robe tightly, afraid of being left behind by him.

The sands blew around from time to time. The city seemed cold and gloomy when winds blew through the opened windows and doors of buildings from every direction and revealed the lack of vitality. The fading sun in the dusk shed a dim red light on the city to form a screen of shadow with the seething sands in the air. Everything seemed unclear due to this screen of shadow and sand. An atmosphere of decay filled every corner of the city.

Its prosperity and opulence were now a thing of the past.

When they passed a residential area, Austin noticed many luxurious mansions with a pair of red-painted gates, a sign of richness of the owners of the mason. Stone statues of lions and mythical wild animals were scattered everywhere in empty yards in front of those mansions, all lying on the grass in disorder.

Flowers and plants all withered within the yards in the mansions. But all the decorations and furniture inside those mansions clearly showed how rich and luxurious their owners had been. Now, however, they all stood dilapidated.

‘What the hell was this place?’ Austin and all his companions wondered.