Immortal Cultivator System

Chapter 35: The Basilisk, the Snake, the Phoenix and the Rotting Dragon

Luckily enough the curse worked like a charm and the disciple didn't turn into a rage fueled berserker. He merely collapsed on the ground, his eyes wide opened as he stared at the forest.

"Huh...Jian ? What did you do ? Is this a new technique ?" Li Kuo asked. Jian cursed for not thinking of the fact that Li Kuo knew next to nothing about his powers.

[ Host, before you do anything stupid. Do remember this. We are not in some sort of fairy tale. Friendships aren't built this easily and most importantly...Loyalty is not guaranteed. Li Kuo is someone you can trust yes, I can feel it too, his feelings towards are quite clearly..You are his family. Such an emotionally unstable person would easily latch on the first person that can help them. However he might reveal some things to people without even wanting it. You can explain....Just keep some informations to yourself ]

Hearing the warning from the system, Jian nodded to himself and proceeded to explain to Li Kuo how he actually didn't know who his family was, but they apparently passed on some soul heritages to him. He told him that he was slowly discovering them and Li Kuo left it at that, not wanting to force Jian to reveal anything too personal. What was a real lie in what he told him , was the part about his family.

He knew exactly who they were...

*******

( A few days later )

They hadn't gotten anything really that interesting from the camp, expect some materials that could be sold or some pills to help cultivate. They could've have trained on the way, but they decided to get back to the headquarters as fast as possible. Jian had a feeling something had happened since they hadn't seen Wei Feng or Wei Lu after getting into the capital, as if they hurriedly left because something bad had happened.

Which is why Jian and Li Kuo were already a few kilometers away from the mountain. They had already entered the territory of the sect, so they were a bit more relaxed. While they were at war and the sects wouldn't hesitate to cross that territory, it was still the beginning...No one would dare to act while Giran was most likely as paranoid as possible and ready to unleash his full might on anyone who approached the mountain.

From the little bit of knowledge he had about military strategy, Li Kuo had suggested that they might decide to launch a siege on the mountain. This was one of the best ways to exploit the clear lack of ressources of the sect.

However before they could reach the headquarters, they met a group of disciples, lead by none other than Huang Lei.

" Hmm...Well if it isn't Jian and....Li Kuo, right ?" Huang Lei asked. The literal mountain of a man was quite an imposing sight, even to the Jian and Li Kuo of now, who had changed a lot from their first.....Evil actions. For even if those were ennemies, Jian and Li Kuo hadn't really been raised to believe that any reasons were good for killing. The parents of Li Kuo had done their best to make him a peaceful person, someone who wouldn't follow their example, while Jian had been raised by the rare adults slaves who cared about him. That and the kind noble who had owned him at some point when he was 6.

This was even worse for Jian who was just 12. And yet they both acted as if nothing had happened, as if their actions weren't slowly torturing them, the faces of the disciples they had killed appearing in their dreams every nights. Jian had spent the last three nights having nightmares, and they all revolved around him being chased by a man whose eyes had been ripped.

" Big Brother Huang....What are you doing here ?" Jian asked. He still remembered how Peng Fu had told him to adress Huang Lei. The man himself raised an eyebrow at this but shrugged it off. Now that Jian had an occasion to take a good look at Huang Lei he realized that the man was quite...Special. Wei Lu and Jin Wang looked relatively normal, Zhi Li was very...Exotic looking. Huang Lei however, was an oddity. He had some sorts of black vines with thorns painted under his eyes that continued and faded into his hair. And talking about his hair.....Well those were oddities too. He had what the Knights Orders called Military cuts, however his hair were quite special. To start with they were silver, which was a rare colour. Also for some reasons ashes continously fell out of them whenever he moved his hair too much. Jian figured that the man had some sort of fire power that he didn't master well, which would end up in him covered in ashes, but he was obviously a clean man, so it was weird that only his hair contained ashes.

Jian didn't have the time to think about anything else when Huang Lei answered his question.

" We're going to the Old Sea's Valley. Apparently the patriarch got a message from the General of the Gorudenryu. They won't lend any help, but they have a deal for us. There exists an order that can indeed help us. Only secretly though and it will only work because-"

"It would look like the Knights Orders had nothing to do with it, since that specific order is an order that has been forsaken and as such doesn't really work for them...The Basilisk Order." Jian said, his eyes unfocused as he got lost into his toughts once again.

Whilst his friend was in his own world, Li Kuo found himself unable to breath as Huang Lei let out an immense pressure, and the noble got to see why he had ashes coming out of his hair. They suddenly sprang to life, fire being unleashed and covering them, while a circle  appeared around his neck.

"Hmm...Tell me little brother Jian...You know of them that is for sure, but you seem to know a little bit more than someone who just heard about them. What do you know exactly ?" He asked as the other disciples around him all went to hide behind the nearby trees. Meanwhile Li Kuo was just glued on the spot, unable to even lift a finger. This was no mere pressure...This was.

' Mother...The pressure he is letting out is comparable to Mother when she is angry.....How...He is just an inner disciple he shouldn't be this strong !!' The noble thought in panic.

Jian lifted his head, and looked at Huang Lei before suddenly his eyes changed to two wild blue flames as he grabbed the man's shoulder. Huang Lei made the mistake to gaze into Jian's eyes and suddenly found his mind invaded by foreign images. Depictions of thousands of people being tortured in the worst ways a human brain was even able to imagine, a thousands of blurred screams ringing into his ears.

He fell onto his knees as thought Jian had forced him down. Unable to look away he was still looking into Jian's burning eyes, until the boy spoke, in a voice that clearly didn't match his own. At least not completely, as though he was speaking but someone was too, saying the exact same words.

" You have that symbol on the back of your neck. It's quite an unimportant symbol, however it's there to hide one of your scars. It's the only scar that you've hidden, and you've hidden it by placing that specific symbol over it. Now it wouldn't be strange, but there is something you must know, Big Brother.....I have seen that before, a few days ago to be more exact. I saw it while I was walking along the knights of the akaryu order. A man who seemed to be on equal footing with the captain and who was called Berum had that exact same symbol. It was on his hand, and guess what ? It was also covering a scar....The exact same scar. A vertical slash, extremely deep, maybe even deep enough to nearly cut the man's hand or paralyze you by reaching the vertebrae." Jian said, his face only a few inches away from Huang Lei.

However the man suddenly smiled, having been able to finally look away. He whispered to Jian in a way that made no sure no one would hear him or even be able to read on his lips.

" The Basilisk lived alone atop a mountain. It was a king, reigning supreme over all other beasts, but one day it met a little snake. Tired of simply killing all those who dared to approach him, the basilisk decided to give the little snake a chance. And the snake soon evolved and became a magnificient beast, a two headed snake with wings. However the basilisk disappeared one day, living the snake alone. And the snake waited, no matter the weather or the state it was in...It waited. But the Basilisk never came out. A phoenix came and ripped apart the wings. A rotting dragon came and took the snake's second head...But it waited. It never ceased to wait, slumbering for centuries in hope that the Basilisk would one day come back. The snake however never knew that the Basilisk died, suffering a fate that no one would even want to hear. Both died, but they had children...And it's time for those children to form an alliance and rise to the top, like the Snake and the Basilisk. Their heritage lives on through us." Huang Lei said, before getting up and dusting his knees.

He then motioned for the other disciples to follow him as they continued on their way. Li Kuo was able to move after the intense aura disappeared and immediately went to see Jian. The boy was now back to normal but was completely unresponsive. No matter what Li Kuo did, the boy just wouldn't more, or even bat an eye.

He didn't know that Jian was currently having a crisis, and so were the Zero King and the unholy being.

' The basilisk..The two headed flying snake. The order of the basilisk and the Raja sect....They are linked ?! The order of the basilisk was once the most powerful order out of all the others.....If the Poisonous Raja Sect was linked to it....What would happen if the world was to learn about this....The Sect was always able to get through anything and even now they are getting help from the knights orders who are supposed to be neutral at all costs...They are willing to break their sacred laws to help the sect....Is this...Is this some sort of conspiracy ?! The vunerable sect is actually allied to the most powerful knight order ?' Jian thought. He knew now that the war wouldn't go as he had first thought.

This would be a slaughter, and only the Lizards would stand on top.

***********

(With the Zero King and the Unholy Being)

"Mara ! Is this what I think it is ?!" The Zero King said. In her current form she was no more than some flying shadowy figure surrounded by chilling winds and snow.

" Shut up for a second ! I am thinking ! Okay so....There is the basilisk order and the raja sect, they are linked. The snake that this brat talked about wasn't the raja I fought, very obviously. So the one I fought must've been the oldest of the original Raja's children. And the basilisk is...."

" The very same basilisk that rescued us when Yama threw us out of Hell !" The Zero King exclaimed as Mara, who was also a shadowy figure but with an aura of absolute death around him, gasped.

"And...And...The phoenix...That can only be 'that' phoenix? It's the only phoenix that ever visited this world. I can sense him, but only slightly...Either he is on another world near this one...Or he is hiding here. And then the rotting dragon...That's very obviously the ghost dragon. And my brat got that guy's abilities....That Huang Lei kid got powers that ressemble Agni's.....And Agni was blessed by the phoenixes....Is it me or...."

" Everything is linked !" The Zero King shouted.

" Jian encounters several people with that double headed snake symbol, that man Wei Feng, Huang Lei, Berum.....And then he also encounters a member of the Basilisk Order....The huang lei kid got the phoenix's powers and Jian himself got the ghost dragon's powers.....I'm gonna find it, I swear Eve....I'm gonna find out why they are all link, and why that damn God planned for all this to happen. "