Without even checking at them, he could tell they were strong. Much stronger than the ones that you could find in the routes of Crimson Empire.

They were very much possibly on the same level as the bandits that invaded the Scarlet city.

His wave of spiritual sense went past them and it confirmed it. Of the 30 flying bandits, the weakest one was at True Disciple 5th realm, and the strongest one of them… was at True Lord 7th realm.

This was very bad.

His main priority was to survive. Shen Jing had brought him here to kill him, so Alex thought of instead going back to the caravan.

’No, they will follow me there,’ he thought. If they did, not only would they kill him, they would likely hurt everyone in there.

Alex had already done a scan of the caravan and had known that the strongest protector in there was a True Master 3rd realm girl, along with a few of her colleagues.

Those would surely not win against these bandits. Alex was the strongest person in that caravan and now, he was separated.

”Was that what Shen Jing wanted? To separate me from the group so they can deal with me alone?” Alex wondered.

He stopped. He had no more time to give to thoughts. Since the bandits were bringing a fight to him, he would bring a fight to them.

Light flashed as a sword appeared in his right hand.

It was a meter and a half long sword, with about 30 centimeters long hilt. The blade itself was about the size of his 2 fingers, that curved a little at the front.

The edge on the blade was so sharp that Alex wouldn’t doubt if someone said that light itself could be cut with it.

Alex put the sword in front of him. The silver blade pointed at the bandits, his hand on the stark white hilt, stopped by the bronze, circular cross guard.

Then, he took a deep breath and closed his eyes.

HAH~

Suddenly, light flared behind him illuminating everything in the night. He had released so much Yang energy behind him that it looked like a sun had appeared out of nowhere.

The bandits looked at him in the sky, the sun hidden only by his shadow. And then, the shadow moved.

The bandits saw nothing for a moment. The man had disappeared from the sky, leaving the blinding light in the sky for 3 seconds before it disappeared.

At that time, they heard multiple sounds of people gasping, but no one screamed.

When their visions came back to them a second later, they realized why there had been no scream.

As bodies fell to the ground in pieces more than one, they realized that their comrades had been cut through before they could even make a noise.

It was very much likely that they didn’t even see their deaths coming.

Alex huffed a little far away. He had released a bit too much energy at once and over-exerted himself to kill 8 of the bandits at once.

Still, his eyes flashed with a cold light as they constantly looked at the bandits for an opening.

It had been a while since he fought. In fact, now that he thought about it, this was the first time he was actually fighting. So, he was a little rusty, but the experience in his mind made the fighting easy.

He used bright light to blind his enemies for a few seconds, while using his shadow formed from the light behind him to teleport onto it.

With one last breath, he looked at the remaining 22 members and got ready.

Multiple attacks came flying toward him at once, all of which Alex had to dodge.

He could likely just stand in front of most of these attacks and not get a single scratch, but some of these bandits were too strong to underestimate them like that.

A woman with a fast movement technique flew right next to him and delivered a strong fist to his head.

With his spiritual sense, Alex had already seen it coming. As soon as she got close, Alex sent out Heaven’s impact, making the woman immediately lose consciousness.

As she started falling, he struck her with her sword. The sword carved her body like a hot knife on butter. It slid through her body with no resistance at all, and her two halves fell to the ground down below.

Alex made a quick slash with his sword to get rid of the blood, but there was no need, to begin with. The sword repelled blood off of it like oil repelled water.

Suddenly he ducked as a slash flew over him. 2 men came dashing towards him, with a few more not far behind him.

The 2 men that arrived next to him each had a cultivation base that was too great for his own cultivation. So, he had to rely on his body.

Alex wanted to send out slashes, but he couldn’t, for the love of God, put his Qi into the sword at all.

It was not like the Ebony sword, which actively refused to take in his Qi because of the primitive artifact spirit in there. It was more akin to his steel sword not accepting Qi as quickly because they weren’t bonded yet.

Only, this sword didn’t take Qi slowly. It didn’t take Qi at all. So, all of Alex’s skills that had him sending out slashes or pouring Qi into the sword were useless to him.

Still, this sword was way too good to replace with at the moment. Just its ability to cut things with such ease was reason enough.

Suddenly, fire erupted from around his fist. Alex couldn’t send Qi into the sword, but he surely could use it around the sword.

Alex used the Flame Scripture technique to quickly turn the fire into the shape of a sword, consuming the real sword in it.

Fire flared around him with each swing. The two men that were right upon him tried to use their techniques on him, but they just didn’t have enough strength to harm him at all.

After all, his physical strength was close to True Lord 1st realm, and there were only 3 people here that were higher than that.

One of the sword slashes sent fire into one of the man’s eyes, blinding him momentarily. Alex took the opportunity to hit the other man who was driving his sword at him.

Alex was right about to cut the man’s hands when his focus wavered and his sword hit empty air.

The man’s sword hit him and sent him flying downwards.

Alex caught himself midair and shook himself awake. ‘What was that drowsiness just now,’ he thought and sent his spiritual sense to search for the source.

That was when he noticed the man holding a square lantern with a flickering light inside of it.

Whenever that light flickered towards Alex, he felt a wave of sleepiness hit him as if he hadn’t slept for days.

’Dammit! Is that an artifact that induces drowsiness?’ he thought.

Alex’s body could cure a lot of things, but it never prevented most things at all. That was one thing he hated about his body.

Be it poison, toxins, or mental attacks. Alex’s body always dealt with it after the fact, instead of before. He really wished it were otherwise, but it wasn’t.

So, he had to deal with it.

He let the sword hover by his side for a split second as he sent a palm-shaped yellow light flying towards the man with the lantern.

While the man panicked, Alex took his sword and got back to fighting.

He had to deal with the man at some time, but right now, there were at least 5 people in between them. He needed to take care of them first.

Friction disappeared around Alex and he burst into speed as if he pushed on something solid even while in mid-air.

The man who hit him hadn’t expected such a quick burst of speed and tried to bring back his sword, but Alex appeared right next to him.

He slashed toward the man who was trying to put up his sword to block, but Alex’s sword cut it and the man together.

The fire appeared behind Alex in no particular shape and flew towards 4 of the different incoming men, while Alex himself went for the man whose eyes he had burned previously.

The man put his all into his next attack to try and hurt Alex, but Alex suffered it all and still slashed at him.

He felt the man get cut behind those colorful techniques, as his sword cut through it all. His lifeless body fell to the ground in 2 separate halves.

In just less than a minute, Alex had killed 11 of the 30 bandits, leaving them with nothing but shame.

The bandit leader hadn’t taken part in the fight because it was only a single enemy, but it seemed waiting would only get more of his men killed.

So, he took out his spear and got ready to attack as well.

Alex huffed and looked at them. This was hard. Fighting a group of people in similar strength to his own, with only one hand that was occupied with a sword that wouldn’t take in Qi at all.

The sword was great, but if he wanted to win, he needed to use his Qi no matter what.

So, he put away his sword as golden light filled the emptiness in his hand that soon turned into claws.

”Let’s see how good this is in a fight.”