Chapter 4523: An Unknown Enemy

“Come out! Come out! What did you do to my clan members? I don’t have any grudge with you, and they have never done anything to you. Why are you doing this?

“Why aren’t you speaking? Weren’t you waiting for me? Just what in the world are you aiming for? Are you going to run away? Heh, looks like you’re just a tortoise who only wants to act high and mighty in order to conceal the fact that you’re useless trash!”

Chu Feng howled loudly across the entire world, using a mocking tone to speak increasingly jarring words.

Faced with an expert stronger than him, Chu Feng had no choice but to resort to trying to provoke the other party to lure him out. If the other party were to have really left, Chu Feng would really have been at an utter loss as to what he should do.

“Acting high and mighty? Hehehe… Yes, there’s indeed someone acting high and mighty at the moment, but that person isn’t me.”

The black shadow spoke up once again. Chu Feng hurriedly turned around, only to find that the balck shadow had appeared right behind him.

At proximity, Chu Feng could tell that the other party was indeed a shadow. The other party had no eyes, no mouth, and no aura at all.

Yet, his very presence there made Chu Feng feel deeply threatened. His instincts told him that it was an unprecedented level of danger that he had never encountered before.

“Why did you capture my clan members? I don’t know you at all,” Chu Feng spoke with a slightly calmer voice this time around.

He didn’t dare to act too audaciously before such a powerful expert because he knew that he had no rights to pull his weight around now.

He wasn’t worried about anything happening to him, but he couldn’t allow the Chu Heavenly Clan to come to harm because of him.

“Don’t you know full well who you have offended before?” the black shadow asked Chu Feng.

Those words made Chu Feng’s heart skip a beat.

He had made simply too many enemies in the past. He had settled most of them, but it was possible that some of them might have a formidable background behind them.

“Who are you?” Chu Feng asked once more.

“Hehehe…”

The black shadow began laughing eerily once more before remarking, “You must have offended far too many people that you can’t even remember now.”

The black shadow had no face and thus no expression at all, but Chu Feng was still able to sense the other party’s ridicule through his words.

It was clear that the other party would be a difficult fellow to deal with.

The world that Xianhai Shaoyu had created boasted great defensive power, but this shadow was able to breach the defense and enter this land. This only showed that the latter’s strength was extraordinary.

Before an expert of this caliber, Chu Feng felt utterly helpless.

“If I have offended you, you should come at me alone. Let my clan members go,” Chu Feng said.

Faced with such an existence, Chu Feng didn’t even have the rights to challenge him to a duel. He could only try to bear everything by his own.

“You want me to just go after you? Sounds fine to me,” the black shadow remarked with a chuckle.

In the next moment, it flitted forward like a specter. By the time Chu Feng finally processed what was going on, there was already a stabbing pain in his chest.

Lowering his head, he saw that the hand of the shadow had already pierced through his chest.

Gah!

Chu Feng shouted in anguish from the pain of being impaled.

However, it didn’t just end there. After the black shadow pierced his hand into Chu Feng’s chest, he reached forth and grabbed Chu Feng’s heart.

Typically speaking, with Chu Feng’s current level of cultivation, even if his physical body were to be torn apart, he still wouldn’t die.

However, what the black shadow grasped wasn’t just the vital of his body but his soul as well.

There was a bizarre power in the black shadow’s hand that swiftly gushed into Chu Feng’s heart and pulsated across his entire body. 

Chu Feng felt like someone was slowly slicing away his flesh a piece at a time, extracting his blood bit by bit, and slowly grinding his bone down to powder.

This was a pain that was several times greater than that of being killed by a thousand blades.

Shoosh!

However, the black shadow quickly retracted his hand from Chu Feng’s chest, freeing him from the pain.

Chu Feng staggered weakly a few steps back before he finally regained his balance.

Inexplicably, there was not a wound to be seen on Chu Feng even though he had his chest impaled a moment ago. It was as if nothing had happened ago, if not for the fact that Chu Feng was still sweating buckets and panting heavily from the excruciating pain that had been inflicted to him a moment ago.

It was the means of the black shadow that had healed him.

He looked at the black shadow with deep fear in his eyes.

The means that the black shadow had displayed thus far was simply too terrifying. It was fortunate that the other party had only tortured him for a brief moment, or else his mind could really suffer a breakdown if it had continued for any longer.

At the same time, Chu Feng was deeply intrigued by the situation as well. Since the black shadow had a grudge with him, why didn’t the other party kill him straight away or continue to torture him? It didn’t make sense to let him off just like that.

“Just what is your ultimate goal?” Chu Feng asked once more.

“You don’t seem to be particularly afraid of me?” the black shadow asked.

In truth, Chu Feng was feeling terrified on the inside, but he didn’t allow it to show on his face.

“Like I said, come at me instead of my clan members! Don’t harm the innocent!” Chu Feng said.

“Heh… I acknowledge your guts. Since that’s the case, I’ll give you a chance to save your clan members then!” the black shadow said as it flung its sleeves grandly.

A black vortex appeared above the cliff in front of Chu Feng. The black vortex was completely dark initially, but as it rotated, it slowly became clearer and clearer.

A bizarre aura began to suffuse the vortex, and vaguely, cries of agony could be heard coming from within it. At the same time, the scent of danger coming from the vortex grew stronger and stronger.

“Nine out of ten people who step into this formation will lose their lives. If you dare to enter this formation, I’ll consider sparing your clan members,” the black shadow pointed to the vortex as he said.

“You must hold to the end of your words!” Chu Feng said before he leaped right ino the black vortex.

However, when Chu Feng’s feet landed on solid ground once more, he noticed that he was still standing at the peak of the mountain.

And the black vortex that was before him a moment ago had vanished without a trace.

“Looks like your courage isn’t just for show,” the black shadow said.

As it turned out, the black shadow had removed that formation. He didn’t intend to really allow Chu Feng to leap into the formation.

“Just what are you up to?” Chu Feng asked.

He really couldn’t figure out just what the black figure was aiming to do. 

“There are a few people who don’t fear death in the world, and those who don’t fear death tend to be the hardest to deal with of them all. I can tell that you have no fear of death. I would be letting you off easily if I allowed you to die just like that. So, I’ve changed my mind. I’ll slowly grind you down instead,” the black shadow said.

Following that, his body began to dissipate into the surroundings, a sign that he was planning to leave the area.

“Don’t go! You haven’t put things clearly out yet. Where did my clan members go? Who are you, and who are you trying to exact vengeance for?!” Chu Feng asked.

“Don’t worry, your clan members aren’t dead yet. It’s just that they might suffer a bit at the place where I’ve imprisoned them. I’ll give you this for now. You can think of it as the reward for courageously leaping into the vortex earlier!

“But as for whether you’ll be able to save them or not… That depends on your capabilities!” 

In the end, the black shadow still disappeared. However, as he vanished from sight, a scroll appeared in place of where he stood a moment ago.