The first guard didn’t even have time to turn his head before Uhtred’s fist pulverized his chest, ending his life. The second guard reached for his weapon, but he was dead before he could draw it.
A third guard was sitting under a tree about fifty feet away. The man scrambled to his feet, reaching into his cloak for a signal flare.
Before his fingers could touch the device, a spear of compressed air shot through the air, impaling him through the throat and pinning his body to the tree trunk.
Uhtred scanned the surroundings sharply, searching for any more hidden threats.
Seeing no one, he turned to sprint down the hill — only for his perception to catch a sudden movement in the bushes to his left.
The hair on his arms stood up. One of the guards had been squatting in the bushes, and ironically, taking a shit, when Uhtred blew open the grate. The man had flattened himself against the ground in terror while Uhtred decimated his squad.
How the hell did I not sense him?! Uhtred thought, his eyes narrowing.
It was the same with the hidden figure that had always been watching him — the shadow. Uhtred had silently tried to pinpoint their location several times between the previous day and now. However, it was as if the An clan possessed some sort of unique shrouding technique that was beyond his perception.
Some version of it had surely been passed to these guards, and this particular fellow had used it to hide himself from being seen.
Fuck! That means it’s possible there are more of them hiding...
Uhtred kept running, making it look as though he hadn’t noticed the hidden guard.
The moment he passed the bush and the guard exhaled in relief, reaching into his coat for a signal flare, Uhtred flipped his wrist backward without looking.
A razor-sharp wind blade shot through the foliage, pinning the guard to the ground through his chest, ending his life.
Uhtred spread out his senses as much as he could to pick up even the slightest trace of movement. However, at this point he couldn’t be bothered to focus on finding any more hidden guards.
He increased his speed instead, tearing down the hill, his body caked in shit and grime.
At the bottom of the slope ran a fast-moving river — the channel where the clan workers dumped the sewer waste to be carried downriver as fertilizer for the An clan farmlands.
Uhtred sprinted towards a side of the hill with a cliff and dove straight into the river.
The cold, rushing current slammed into his body, instantly washing away the thick layer of sewer filth clinging to his skin and clothes.
Surging against the current, Uhtred felt a striking sense of deja vu. It felt just like his early days on Earth after the integration, when he was forced to fight for his life against those Epicyon wolves.
Except now, he was a Level 47 Nascent Realm powerhouse.
Uhtred released the full might of his strength, swimming through the river with ease, even against the rushing currents. He was no longer the same low-level ascender from that time.
Behind him, up on the hill, he caught a glimpse of two red flares that had been shot up into the sky, alerting the clan to a danger at the sewers.
So there were two more of them!
Uhtred dove underneath the river, no longer swimming across the surface. He had achieved his intended goal.
Those two guards had seen him swimming against the current to the north, so now he could do what he wanted instead.
Uhtred’s act of jumping into the river wasn’t simply to wash off the filth on his body. He could simply have done that with so many means. He could have used water magic, materializing it out of thin air, but he didn’t... And that was to throw the clan guards off his trail.
The guards who saw him dive would report that he was swimming north to cut across to the west and begin heading for the territories of either the Wudang Sect, the Righteous Sword Sect, or the Righteous Fist Sect.
In reality, his destination was south, straight towards the lawless territories of the Demonic Cult.
Uhtred knew this wasn’t enough to completely throw them off his trail. Anyone powerful enough would quickly realize he hadn’t surfaced somewhere upriver.
So he capitalized on his head start, using the precious time he had gained to surge downriver at full speed.
He propelled himself with water magic, gliding smoothly beneath the surface like a fish until he vanished into the deep waters far downriver.
When he was certain he was well out of visual range from the hill, he burst through the surface, leaping onto the muddy bank. He ripped off his soaked, filthy clothes, channeling a brief wave of fire essence across his skin to burn away the lingering odor and incinerate the rags.
Pulling a fresh set of clothes from his spatial storage, he dressed quickly and sprinted into the cover of the dense forest, curving in a wide arc around the An clan farmlands.
"They should have figured out my trick by now," Uhtred muttered as he sped through the forest. "I’m guessing the most powerful of them will already be heading this way."
Uhtred’s main fear was the clan Ancestor.
He had gauged Nayu An’s capabilities, and even though his estimate wasn’t precise, he knew she was in the Nascent Realm. He reckoned he could handle her if it came down to a fight.
The Ancestor, however, was a different story entirely. He had never seen the man and knew nothing about his strength or what realm he was. An unknown factor like that was a massive red flag, an entity capable of ruining his plans in a single move.
That was why he was not making any grand moves and was being very low-key in his escape.
Normally, he would have sprinted straight through the An clan farmlands without bothering with diversions or hiding himself.
From the moment he gained a head start, he would have trusted his capabilities as a Level 47 Nascent Realm cultivator to outrun anyone sent after him. But instead, he had to take the long route and use the forest as cover.
Uhtred continued running for more than ten minutes, and by now he had gone extremely far from the sect itself.
In fact, he was beginning to make a full arc around the farmlands, already nearing the east side of it, and that was saying something, considering how vast the An clan farmlands were.
However, just as he had feared, his escape was cut short...
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