Eternal Cultivation of Alchemy

Zhu Shaofan thought for a bit and asked, "Did you know that I am forbidden to kill people?"

Alex was slightly confused. "What?" he asked.

"You heard me right. I'm forbidden to kill people," he said. "It's not just me of course. All 11 of us are forbidden from killing anyone. That was a result of the oath we spoke all those years ago."

"You're avoiding my question," he said.

"I am, of course," Zhu Shaofan said. "You're accusing me of being an assassin, so I have to give you this explanation so you can understand properly."

Alex frowned, but there were enough people around him, so he felt relatively safe. "Go on," he said.

Zhu Shaofan smiled. "My oath was something I didn't take part to say. I was pretty much forced into it," he said. "Just because the incident happened to take place near where I lived at the time, I was forced to be part of it."

"The incident?" Alex asked.

Zhu Shaofan nodded. "I can't go into more details than I already have. And I have gone into more than I'm allowed to already," he said.

"I didn't join the council of course. Why would I? I was forced to speak such a nonsense oath that stopped me from killing people, and then they wanted me to stay in the capital until… no, I didn't want to join them. In fact, I hated them so much for what they did," Zhu Shaofan said.

Alex was surprised. "You hate the 10 elders?" he asked.

"Hated, in the past, " Zhu Shaofan said. "I hold some resentment, but it's not something I can't just bury. It was just that I believed they were the reason behind the incident at the time and hated them."

"It turned out that they were more of a reaction that the continent needed at the time. I didn't know, I just saw what I saw and made my own judgment. I was also pretty ticked off from being forced into the oath to hide what they did."

"I thought I would get over it soon enough, but no, fate didn't want me to," he said. "The 10 elders became the center of attention as they took over the ruling of the continent, while little me who never chose the spotlight was forgotten entirely. I didn't mind at the time, but then those bastards attacked me and my family."

"I fought back, but I could never truly harm them. Any time I tried to use my power, the oath would stop me, forcefully making me stop mid-attack." Zhu Shaofan's face was slowly changing. "So many of my people died that day yet I couldn't even harm the enemy. I… I was useless."

"I asked the elders for help, but they ignored my call for help because the skirmish was small in their eyes and the ones that had died were not big enough to warrant their attention. All they did was gave a strong stern to the bastards and made them not attack us again."

"That didn't satisfy me at all. I wanted those bastards dead, but I couldn't do it. So, I decided to commission a few assassins for the task. Unfortunately, it turned out there weren't many strong assassins at the time at all. Every single one of them was a wimpy little bitch that only knew how to talk big."

"That was when I got the idea. If I wanted these bastards dead, I needed to do it all myself. So, I decided to form my own assassin group who could kill for me," he said.

Alex's eyes went wide. "You're confessing?" he asked.

"Of course," Zhu Shaofan said. "Anyway, I decided to form my own assassins group, but of course, I didn't know how to do that. I didn't even know who was strong or who was cruel enough to kill people."

"That was when ht perfect opportunity showed itself. You see, we got to go to the Western Continent, where we attacked them and stole their resources," he said. "I found the people I wanted in my group, and I also found something else."

"After we returned, I opened the Dark Phoenix assassins group. I employed the assassins and trained them. Since they were bloodthirsty, they killed those bastards that had come to attack my family all those years ago. Oh, that was a glorious night for me."

"The night sky was stormy and dark, lit up vaguely in the north by… ah, that was wonderful," Zhu Shaofan said.

Alex didn't say anything. He could understand the mentality of taking revenge on someone who has hurt you and your family but reveling in it was not something he could relate to.

"So that's it? You are the leader of the Dark Phoenix assassins," Alex said.

"Yes, of course," Zhu Shaofan said. "The group itself has gone through multiple iterations by now. Most either died during a mission or died while cultivating. There was one group that even died because of infighting. But I continued adding people bit by bit."

"I will have to add some more now," he said. "It's been a while since I've had to change all 6 people entirely. But if they were weak enough to die, then who cares right?"

Alex ignored the question. "Why are you telling me all this?" he asked.

"Because I don't need to hide anything anymore. Come on, ask me what you want, I don't have to hide anything."

Alex's eyes narrowed for a second. "Who hired your group to kill me?" he asked.

"I have an oath, remember? I can't say," Zhu Shaofan said. "What I can say is the thing I skipped over before. The thing I learned about in the Western Continent."

"All this time I thought I was so sad that I couldn't kill anyone anymore and that I was likely going to be a very bad cultivator too, only to realize I was wrong. You see, I was entirely mistaken about the oath."

Alex frowned. "What are you trying to say?" he asked.

"You see, it turned out that the oath I spoke had a bit more condition to it than I initially thought. When I was fighting in the Western Continent, I could kill people that was a surprise."

"It was then that I found out that my oath did stop me from killing people, but only the people that were from the Southern Continent. As long as someone was from outside, I could kill them easily," he said. "So, let me ask you. Where do you come from again?"

Alex scoffed. "Is that a threat? Are you going to kill me with everyone watching?" he asked.

"Of course, I can't kill you while everyone watching," Zhu Shaofan said. "But why do you think anyone is even watching?"

Alex quickly turned around and saw that no one was really looking at him at all. He tried to figure out why, but before he could vines burst out of the ground and grabbed him.

He tried to break through them, but they were too strong.

"I realized you had killed everyone inside, so I had already planned to kill you right here, and had made the preparations for it all," he said. "It took me some time to activate. Fortunately, you are a fantastic listener. You gave me enough time to activate the formation without you finding out."

"You can't call out to anyone, and no one can really see you in here at all," he said. "And my cultivation base is simply too strong for you to run away from me."

Alex struggled against the vines and they were indeed too strong. 'I should have checked for traps,' he thought. But he could have never imagined that he would try to kill him so publicly.

"Well, I would say there's no hard feeling, but you did kill 6 people I had to nurture for over a century, so I'm going to enjoy this if you don't mind," Zhu Shaofan said.

"Like hell you will," Alex shouted. He immediately used his teleportation dao and Qi filled inside him and a place far away in the middle of the people.

Zhu Shaofan's eyes narrowed. 'Something's wrong,' he thought. "You're not getting away!"

Even as Alex was teleporting away, something came from behind him and hit him right in the back of his neck.

Instantly, Alex saw the world spin for a second as his head rotated far enough that he saw his own headless body stand there for a moment. In the next moment, his body was teleported away, while his head fell to the ground.

Then, his eyes went white and he died.

Alex's headless body plopped outside far away in the middle of the group of people, all of whom stepped away in surprise.

Some of them were horrified at how horribly he had died, no one expected foul play at all. If anything, they expected this to be a dead body that had just come out of the Sanctum as well.

Zhu Shaofan took Alex's head and nodded. His face had changed back to his normal face after being ripped off from his neck and was relatively unharmed above the neck.

"Tsk, tsk, tsk," he thought to himself. "I was even hoping you could accept their oath so that the Southern Continent didn't have to lose such a gem like you. But in the end, you killed people that were under me, and I don't take that lightly."

"I wished I could have obtained your recipes, but I suppose someone from those people will get it," he said. "Whatever, as long as I get the pills I'm fine. Time for me to take your head to them and gain my reward."