"Greetings mystic master," the two both offered daoist salutes as they bent their backs in greeting.
Zou Yi was puzzled at the couple's reaction. They seemed to be fearful of Yang Qing. He found it strange since if it wasn't for Yang Qing disappearing before their faces they would have never guessed his cultivation realm. From their clan records he knew that the greater the disparity in cultivation realms the harder it is for the weaker party to detect anything different with the stronger party.
Only those who were at the same level or close would be able to realize each other's cultivation base. But based on the couple's reaction it seemed like they were aware of Yang Qing's cultivation realm despite only being in the middle stages of the foundation establishment realm.
"You don't have to do that, you can just call me Yang Qing. Agewise you can even be considered my seniors," Yang Qing said as he lifted them up with an invisible force.
The couple looked up in confusion because in their eyes despite Yang Qing looking young they had gone down the typical assumptive route, which they assumed he was just an old monster donning a young look.
It was common practice and most palace realm experts were usually over 1,000 years old as for the younger ones they were prodigies of rank 1 organizations and holy lands who rarely made appearances.
Yang Qing next words interrupted their speculative thoughts.
"The reason I called you just like I said earlier is because of them and our little friend here," Yang Qing said as he pointed towards the Zou siblings and the man kneeling down respectively.
Zou Liqin had a happy expression on her face since she assumed Yang Qing was about to suggest they relocate with them. As for the old couple they were surprised at what a palace realm big shot needed their help with when he could handle the matter easily.
"A blood fiend cultivator?!" Grandpa Wang said in surprise when he got a clear look at the man kneeling.
Grandma Wang took notice a few seconds after he did due to his sudden exclamation. When they came in they were so tense that they blocked out everything else except Yang Qing.
Only when Yang Qing pointed at the kneeling person did they have the time to notice a few distinctive features on that person that sent waves of fear coursing through their bodies.
The kneeling person had pale white skin, thin red fibrous patterns on his skin, bone-like nails, and purple-red pupils along with a baleful aura surrounding him that had the accompaniment of the metallic smell of blood.
These were the signs of a blood-fiend cultivator. These were cultivators who cultivated through draining other cultivators' blood essence. In simpler terms, they literally devoured someone's cultivation realm.
One could rapidly improve their cultivation realm as long as they successfully devoured someone's blood essence however despite the fast progress it came with its inherent risks. One of them was mental corrosion that turned the blood-fiend users into nothing more than murderous bloodthirsty beasts who couldn't restrain themselves.
This was commonly observed in those who just started using the art. They would be quickly swallowed up in the thrill of the rapid increase in strength which then devolves into the thrill of slaughter and blood consumption very soon their sense of self and reason disappears till all they are is a puppet for their cravings.
Villages, towns, cities, and even some weaker kingdoms have been decimated because of an out-of-control blood fiend cultivator. Normal orthodoxies be they sects, empires, clans, other organizations, or rogue cultivators, as long as they are not blood fiend cultivators themselves, would put all enmity aside to eliminate a spotted blood fiend cultivator or cult.
The whole continent has a shared distaste for them due to the damage they cause.
The reaction isn't unwarranted since there was once an organization called the Crimson wave close to ten thousand years ago that was composed solely of blood-fiend cultivators.
The founder of the Crimson wave was a former prodigy of a rank 1 sect who fell out with it when it was discovered he conducted taboo arts on his fellow disciples.
He lived constantly on the run from the sect as he slowly formed the group. He kept improving on the blood fiend cultivation arts highlighting its major weaknesses, the mental corrosion. After close to a thousand years he finally created an art called the crimson resurrection tide which in terms of the quality of grade was just inches away from becoming a purple-grade art. It was a bonafide top-rank gold-grade cultivation art.
With it, he transformed the Crimson wave from a rootless organization made of runaways into a behemoth that shook the entire continent. With the rapid increase in strength and the mental corrosion issue being reduced, they had a burst increase in strength.
After the creation of the art within a few centuries, they had more than twenty domain experts while the founder stepped into the soul formation realm. He bided his time for a few more centuries till he finally bared his fangs on his former sect and decimated it within a week.
The sect had two soul formation experts and over a dozen domain realm experts but even they couldn't handle the onslaught of the Crimson wave.
After its destruction, the organization added three more soul formation experts to its ranks along with a wider increase in the numbers of those in the domain realm and below. With their surging numbers, they plunged the continent into a never-ending blood bath with the organization growing stronger after every successive battle.
With the reputation it had of rapid increase in strength with no setbacks whatsoever even some orthodox sects and organizations joined the Crimson wave. Their numbers continued to increase to such an astronomical degree that you'd find a crimson wave member all over the continent, there was not a single place that lacked them they had even encroached the lands of the holy lands.
The holy lands at the time were just calm observers detached from the whole thing. They only made a move when one of the disciples from the radiant sword sect became a victim of one of the members of the Crimson wave.
The continent finally got to see a glimpse of what it meant to be a Holy land.
From the records Yang Qing read, the radiant sword sect dispatched four inner core elders and a hundred core disciples against the Crimson wave.
It was an impressive lineup since the inner core elders were all in the soul formation realm as for the hundred core disciples, a third of them were in the domain realm while the rest were in the palace realm.
Yang Qing remembered how shocked he was when he read about it since he knew as far as the internal structure of the radiant sword sect went, above the inner core elders were the core elders and after that, he heard there were the supreme elders who in terms of status were even superior to the sect master.
As for the disciples' hierarchy, he heard there was one rank above the core disciples that was left for the best of the best. Its numbers were few but all who made it to that rank could no longer be described as geniuses. Those who made it to that rank were called the sword heart disciples.
Even though the four inner core elders and hundred core disciples were not weak by any measure, their presence made a lot of people more fearful and awed especially those old organizations who were in the know about their internal structure.
A cleansing tsunami ensued with the radiant sword sect team hunting down every crimson wave member they came across as they destroyed stronghold after stronghold. Other organizations who hadn't thrown their lot with the crimson wave joined in on the momentum as a continent-wide battle front swarmed together under the banner of the Radiant sword sect.
The purge and hunt went on for almost a century with most of the Crimson wave stronghold decimated, the clans and other organizations who had joined them tried to defect but they were destroyed along with them leading to the astronomical loss of many long-standing heritages. However, there were also innocent victims in the purge who got falsely accused due to some enmity with a few parties. No one had been in the mood to verify the veracity of whether a certain party was a true collaborator or not.
As long as suspicion was cast on them, they would soon be swarmed. The carnage was worse than even when the Crimson wave rose to prominence.
About two hundred years later, the upper echelon along with the founder of the Crimson wave was besieged by the inner core elders of the radiant sword sect along with some of the domain realm core disciples along with a few other domain experts and soul formation experts from other organizations who had tagged along.
A fearsome battle ensued between the two groups which ended in the decimation of the crimson wave members however things didn't go as easily as they expected. The crimson wave had hidden itself well not even counting the founder, they had nine soul formation experts hidden within their ranks.
Two of the inner core elders of the radiant sword sect died in the siege but not before triggering a secret technique that summoned one of the supreme elders from the radiant sword sect. But by that time the team had suffered enormous losses.
The supreme elder single-handedly decimated the remaining sources while the founder of the Crimson wave held on until the last minute till he exploded into a rain of blood.
His blood turned into a literal lake that continuously corrodes the land the battle took place in and the battleground turned into a perilous place filled with sword qi that would shred a palace realm cultivator to pieces and a blood mist that would easily corrode their minds.
However, despite the battle ending over 10,000 years ago, the echoes of that period still remain. It was an extremely dark period even by the standards of a war-prone area such as the southern continent. A monster in the name of the crimson wave had risen to feed on the very nature of the continent till it threatened its very survival.
To date, blood fiend cultivators are constantly hunted and purged with major organizations around the continent such as the Order even offering rich bounties for every proven blood fiend cultivator caught or information that may lead to their lair. The radiant sword sect even occasionally sends its outer core disciples for training missions to purge blood-fiend cultivators.
However, despite the constant attacks, blood-fiend cultivators never stop appearing. Worse still, the art created by the founder of the Crimson wave, the crimson resurrection tide went missing during the attack on their main stronghold. The rumor floating around is that it's with the founder who didn't really die in the attack by the supreme elder of the Radian sword sect and is instead biding his time for a second wave.
It's not known whether there is any truth to the statement but what is known is the art is indeed missing and frequently among the blood fiend cultivators caught there would be those who exhibit the signature characteristics of the crimson resurrection tide cultivation art, such as the member by Yang Qing's feet who had some rationality to him despite only having an early stage core formation cultivation level.
This in and of itself was proof the inherent teachings of the Crimson wave are still being passed on even 10,000 years later.
