BXBX NOVEL Chapter 163: City Massacre
Bright lanterns hung from every building, their warm glow casting a golden hue across the streets.
The city was alive with laughter and music, the air thick with the smells of food stalls offering delicacies, and the sound of children playing echoed through the crowded festival grounds.
Everywhere you looked, people were smiling, enjoying the festivities without a care in the world.
But beneath the surface of this joy, something sinister was lurking.
Hidden from the festival-goers\' view, an illusionary dark formation had been set in place, slowly drawing in Spiritual Qi from the environment.
It was subtle, almost invisible to the naked eye of the low-level cultivators, and even those with cultivation would need to focus intently to notice it.
This was the sacrificial formation designed to harness the life energy of the people in the city.
It was being powered by the lives of over a thousand captured yang cultivators hidden away at key nodes throughout the city.
The evil organization had chosen this night of celebration to begin their ritual, hoping the noise and chaos of the festival would hide their actions.
However, they hadn\'t anticipated the arrival of the Shadow Serpents, who had accepted their death missions.
The Shadow Serpents moved silently through the crowd, blending in with the masses.
Each of these women was an expert in stealth, trained to kill without hesitation.
Unlike the regular Shadow members, the Serpents specialized in taking out threats amidst chaos, using crowds to cover their deadly work.
One Serpent, cloaked in dark robes, moved effortlessly through the festival crowd.
She smiled politely at those she passed, her movements casual, like any other cultivator enjoying the festival.
Still, her eyes scanned the area for the evil cultivators disguised among the citizens.
Her blade, hidden beneath her sleeve, was already coated in a thin layer of spiritual qi, ready to strike.
She spotted her first target—a man leaning casually against a food stall, his eyes darting nervously around the crowd.
He wore the garb of a festival-goer, but his aura was wrong. It was laced with dark red energy, a clear sign of his allegiance to the evil organization.
Dark cultivators typically have either a black or silvery aura due to the yin energy and cultivation manuals they practice.
Still, the evil cultivators use the lives of others, which causes their aura to turn red and dark.
However, only cultivators who practice dark arts or those with special physiques can differentiate between them.
This is also why most people don\'t know the difference between dark and evil cultivators; instead, they categorize all dark cultivators as evil.
In the future, items will be created to distinguish between the two, and the discrimination will gradually fade from people\'s minds.
This was an issue in the past, but with Xu Qianghua and his group, maybe this misunderstanding could have been solved before it became a problem, unlike in the last timeline.
Without drawing attention, the Shadow Serpent slipped past him, her hand brushing against his side. In that brief moment, her blade flicked out, slicing cleanly across his ribs.
The man gasped, his eyes widening in shock, but he couldn\'t scream.
The Serpent had already melted back into the crowd, disappearing as quickly as she had struck.
The man slumped against the stall, dead before anyone noticed.
The Serpent then reappeared as she reached into her robes, pulling out a small vial filled with a shimmering, dark liquid.
With a single drop, she touched the poison to the man\'s lifeless body. Within seconds, the corpse began to dissolve, the flesh breaking down into tiny particles.
These particles floated for a moment, almost like fine dust, before evaporating completely as soon as they touched the air or anyone nearby.
The body was gone—no trace of the kill left behind.
Across the city, similar scenes were playing out.
The Shadow Serpents moved through the crowded streets like ghosts, their faces hidden by the shadows of their hoods or by masks sold in some stalls.
They were everywhere and nowhere at once, appearing just long enough to deliver a fatal blow before vanishing into the crowd.
They struck with deadly precision, targeting the evil cultivators stationed throughout the city to protect the sacrificial formation.
After each kill, the Serpents used the same poison, ensuring that no bodies were left behind.
The poison worked quickly, dissolving the bodies into tiny particles that evaporated when they came into contact with the air or anyone nearby.
The evil cultivators were being erased from existence, their presence wiped clean as if they had never existed.
In the market square, where the festival was at its peak, another Serpent found her target—a man standing near the central fountain, seemingly watching the festivities.
But the Serpent could sense the dark energy surrounding him. She approached from behind, her hand resting lightly on the hilt of her hidden dagger.
As the crowd cheered and fireworks exploded overhead, she struck.
Her blade slipped between his ribs, piercing his heart in one smooth motion.
He fell to the ground, the life draining from his eyes, and the Serpent was gone before anyone noticed the body lying lifeless on the cobblestone.
The poison vial was uncorked once more. A drop landed on the body, and within moments, the flesh began to dissolve.
The tiny particles drifted into the air, harmless to the crowd. By the time anyone might have noticed something was amiss, nothing was left of the body to find.
The festival-goers continued their celebrations, completely unaware of the silent war being waged in their midst.
The Shadow Serpents moved like shadows, eliminating their targets one by one.
They were experts in using the noise and confusion of the festival to their advantage.
The music, the laughter, and the fireworks explosions served as a cover for the quiet sound of blades finding their marks.