They were finally getting close to the village when they found someone standing in the shadows with his back to the side of the mountain.

  They didn’t see his eyes, but they could tell he was following them with his gaze from the shadows.

  Lilith whispered, “Who is that?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t see him very well.” Seph answered in a whisper, too.

  Suddenly, the mysterious figure in the shadows lit a matchstick and brought it up to his mouth to light a roll of tobacco in-between his lips. They could for a second see his face, which was an elongated face with very sharp edges; his hair was short and curly, and for a second, they thought he had two little horns on top of his head.

  Suddenly, he spoke as he huffed a small cloud of smoke from his mouth. “Greetings Seph, the dark masters, send their regards.”

  Lilith said, “You do know him!”

  Seph told her, “I swear I don’t. He must be crazy, better not mess with him. The man is speaking of dark masters. What dark masters?!”

  Lilith came closer to him and hooked her arm under his arm. Seph wasn’t sure was that a sign that she was scared, which would be weird: she definitely didn’t need protection.

  Or was it a sign that she was supporting him? Or being protective of him?

  Before the man’s face disappeared, Seph used the eye of the veteran on him.

  Name: Assistant 11

  Class: Underworld's Emissary

  Cultivation stage: Core creation (I)

  Seph gulped and thought, “He is way too powerful for me. I wouldn’t have attacked him anyway, but now I am afraid if he attacks me. What a weird name he has, or class for that matter! I shouldn’t tell Lilith anything about him though, no need to get her scared over nothing; both of us couldn’t stop him, anyway.”

  Regardless, the man’s face was drowned in shadows again, except for the glint of fire that made his teeth visible as he smiled maliciously, a smile that showed he had longer fangs than was usual between humans.

  Seph was low key, freaked out by the entire encounter, but he thought it better not to engage with that individual.

  He was finally close to his home, though, and it was very easy for him to forget entirely about the freaky encounter and focus on delivering the potion to his mother.

  Unbeknownst to Seph and Lilith, even though they were arriving in the twilight of that night. A villager was awake. He saw Lilith’s outlandish attire, and the deathly disposition of Seph, and thought immediately they were being attacked by thugs or monsters or something.

  He ran towards many houses in the village and woke up a lot of youthful men between the ages of 20 and 40, some carried their family swords to protect the village, while some carried pitchforks and torches, and a couple even had bows and arrows.

  They all waited for Seph and his companions at the foothill of the mountain. Seph was just a couple of minutes away. He was going to see them at any second.

  The mob was agitated. They were never attacked, but with how Seph’s group looked, everyone was fearful for their family; their instinct to protect had kicked up into high gear.

  Seph had seen the moving lights from far away, but he didn’t know what was up shortly after he noticed the mob. He wasn’t scared of them, since he knew there were no cultivators in the village, but he didn’t want to harm them either.

  He thought he would just tell them who he was, and they would let him pass to cure his mother.

  Once he was close enough, he heard one villager shout, “Stop right there, turn back now, or die!”

  Lilith whispered with an innocence that scared him, “Should I kill them for you?”

  The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  Seph gulped and said, “No, no, no need for that, I’ll talk them into letting us pass,” and then back to the villagers, “We mean you no harm, please let us pass I have to cure my ailing mother.”

  Another village shouted, “You have no mother here, you monster! Go back now or I swear by the goddess we will drop you dead where you stand.” He was an archer, and he was way too agitated to be handling a delicate weapon like a bow and arrow with the string pulled back.

  “Everyone, I am Seph, the water carrier; I am sure you remember me! I had an accident that made me look like this. Please allow me to pass and cure my ailing mother. You can even ask the village healer. He is in our house right now.”

  Whispers rose between the villagers. They all knew Seph, and some entertained the idea that what the stranger said was true, but others became unreasonably more scared after hearing that.

  “Is that who you tortured to learn where some of our valuables are hidden?” A villager shouted, and another said, “Did you kill the poor boy? His mother has only him, you freaking abomination!”

  Tensions were so high, and it didn’t seem like Seph was going to get anywhere with the mob. He thought maybe he could knock them all out.

  It would be hard, but possible with his current attributes. He was stronger and faster and more resilient than ever before, and he knew how to fight, too.

  Issue was he wouldn’t be able to use his skills; they were far too deadly to use again mere humans.

  “Attack them everyone, don’t let them get away or they will come another day with a larger force,” one villager shouted, and right after, an arrow flew from one archer and cut Lilith’s cheek.

  She touched the hot liquid descending on her face and looked at it. Her anger spiked sky high after seeing her own blood.

  Seph’s heart dropped for a second when he saw the blood on her face, and then he felt an unfathomable anger that he had never felt before.

  His body suddenly moved autonomously despite him, and both his hands smashed through the ground under his feet.

  He felt some weird heavy liquid flow through his body to his hands, making them bulge obscenely and into the ground. His legendary manual inside his spatial sack heated, and he heard a whisper in his mind, Graveyard Emergence.

  Lilith was about to lash the villagers with her whip of scales after the scales moved around her body to make the whip.

  Sun was screeching in anger and fear and waving his staff defensively in front of his body from left to right and back again.

  The villagers were roaring and running towards them. The archers were pulling the strings of their bows back.

  But it all seemed to Seph like a scene frozen in time, like everyone didn’t move. He didn’t understand what was happening to him, either.

  In the next second, dead hands emerged from the ground under the villagers’ feet.

  Each hand grasped a leg of each of the villagers, and they pulled them down with a terrifying force.

  A symphony of screams echoed through the night as each villager was being buried alive by the deathly hands.

  Lilith didn’t even lash anyone; she stopped in her tracks and looked at Seph in disbelief.

  Sun looked at his partner in fear. They both saw the bulging black veins on his face, and the obscenely terrifying bubbles that appeared to be moving under his skin because of the weird liquid he felt moving inside his body.

  The villagers tried to do anything to not get buried alive, but it was no use.

  Many villagers tried to cut the hands that were burying them alive, but the hands were too strong for their mundane weapons.

  When that didn’t help, some tried to stab the weapons into the ground and stop their descent into the unknown, but they couldn’t hold on and their hands slipped as they were pulled down.

  Out of desperation and cheer horror, some held the edges of their weapons to stop their descent, but their hands only got cut into a bloody mess for their trouble.

  Seph looked on with horror; his mind was screaming NO.

  Those people were his neighbors. He didn’t hold any grudges against them, and he had to see them being murdered by his own hands; completely helpless to do anything about it.

  Before long, the screams of all the villagers drowned as the earth submerged their heads.

  The weird liquid under Seph’s skin settled down, and his features became normal again.

  He looked on in disbelief. He never felt so desperate.

  Tears started falling down his face as he looked on at the upturned ground in front of him where more than a hundred men had lost their lives because of him.

  Sun looked at his crying friend, and his fear settled down. He could once again recognize the Seph he knew.

  He went over to Seph and hugged him, but Seph didn’t look at him. He was transfixed by the horrifying scene of the mass living burial he just perpetrated.

  Lilith wasn’t new to the cultivation world. she had seen skills more horrifying than this one before, but she didn’t expect Seph to use one.

  When she saw him cry, she figured he didn’t do this out of his own free will; it must have been a brand-new skill that got triggered in a hairy situation.

  The villagers signed their death warrants when they injured her. It triggered his anger and his desire to protect and his sense of imminent danger, all of which are factors to trigger these kinds of skills if you were lucky enough to own a high rarity martial art manual, since skills that come from stones are known already to the cultivator and he can use them at will from day one.

  The whip in her hand became undone as the scales moved back into her body to join the rest of her clothes again.

  She then got down on one knee beside Seph and hugged him as well.

  Unbeknownst to the group, deep under the upturned ground, one villager had taken a long breath before he was buried alive.

  Tears flowed down his face, which was seething with anger, and he held a jade slip between his fingers and with a primal scream he tore the jade slip in half, before his body started convulsing as he died because of lack of air.

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