"Stop!" she ordered from the front.
The group lowered their weapons and recalled their Qis, using only martial techniques to move along the dark and wet rocky ridge.
A couple of minutes later they appeared above the roach camp. Below, the battle between the cultivators and the Wizard's summoned army was in full force while Dai Zhi fought the larger wizard in the air above.
He moved with remarkable speed as if flying was in his nature. The dual swords in his hands showed their complete potential as sword glows flashed in the air with every swing, rending the surrounding walls into smithereens.
His attacks were precise but the power behind them was too much. Gravel and mud fell constantly along with the heavy rain, threatening to bury the cultivators below alive.
And this was with him holding back. They were all holding back in fact, be it the wizards or the cultivators. The valley was too narrow, surrounded on all sides by giant volcanos. If one of their attacks woke the slumbering creatures that lived in these volcanos, none of them might leave here with their lives. If those things didn't kill them, the lava would.
"Shouldn't we help them?" one of the youngsters asked with glittering eyes. He couldn't help but be excited as the thought of fighting those monsters below came into his mind, but was quickly squashed before it could take root.
"No," Ceni replied sternly. "We have to find the ones that were taken prisoner first. This is a great chance since we can go in from the back unnoticed."
"Yes…" the youngster replied meekly.
They were all more or less the same age as Ceni with her being in the upper bracket at almost 18 years of age, but it was her demeanor and confidence that didn't leave room for any negotiation.
Fulke was inwardly surprised.
'It looks like she was meant to be a ruler…'
They stayed as far back as possible, traversing the slippery rock wall to go around the battle. It took them another 10 minutes before they reached the end of the valley and slowly climbed down from a height of 500 meters.
Without using any techniques that required Qi, they had to depend solely on their physical abilities to help them get down, which wasn't an easy task in the darkness while being battered by heavy rain.
If they weren't cultivators of the Spirit Realm, having refined their physical bodies with pure spiritual energy and casting out impurities, it would not have been possible for them to accomplish such a task.
But even then, there were a few close calls. Riane slipped several times, almost falling to her death. If not for Hazel helping her out at every turn, she would have never made it.
The other three guys cast scornful glances at her every now and then, making her feel embarrassed even more.
"What was the point of coming along if all you were going to do was slow us down?" one of them, a young man of 16-17 years of age with long black hair tied in a bun, mumbled under his breath as soon as they all got down, with Riane bringing up the rear.
He was clearly heard by everyone but no one chose to comment on the matter.
Riane seemed to be around 15-16 at most. She looked young and frail with a small stature of barely 1.6 meters (little more than 5 feet.) Standing next to Hazel who was slightly more than 1.8 meters tall, she looked even weaker.
"Stay down," Ceni said from the front as they landed near the back left corner of the roach camp.
Hazel patted Riane's head, brushing her bangs away from her eyes. Riane looked up at her smiling face, holding back her won tears in the meantime.
"Don't mind them. Just do the best you can," Hazel said with an aura of a senior sister.
"Y-Yes," she replied weakly, lowering her head with a blush.
They formed a line and moved through the outskirts of the camp. Ceni and Fulke's expression became somber the deeper in they went.
There were roach corpses littered across the entire camp.
"It's weird," Fulke commented while examining a pile of roach limbs.
"What is?" Ceni inquired. The others leaned in to listen as well.
"Look at the marks, or what's left of them," he pointed at the sword cuts along the ground and burnt marks of the ranged weapons that the roaches used.
"They died while running towards the back of the camp. It looks like…"
"What?"
"It looks like someone or some…thing, attacked them from the inside."
Ceni's brows locked in a tight furrow. He was right. Most of the roach corpses were towards the center and back of the camp.
"Maybe…one of ours got free and attacked them?"
"Yeah, maybe…let's go in quick," Ceni replied and hastened her pace.
Staying away from the center, they reached the very end of the camp where a giant pit on the side of the mountain awaited them.
Along the either side of the pit were two large structures, much different from all the others in the camp. Together, they walked up to the one on the right and went in.
It was empty. There were a couple of severed human limbs here and some blood, but nothing else.
All of their expressions darkened at once.
Ceni ran out and sprinted towards the other structure.. As she opened the door, a horrid smell assaulted her senses.
