The three of them simply could not accept this fact.
The one lying on the ground was a Separation-Union Realm expert — a freaking Separation-Union Realm expert! And he'd been killed by a Kaiyuan Realm warrior?
The gap between them spanned two whole major realms. This was an absolute joke.
True, Senior Brother Cai had previously had most of his cultivation sealed by that woman, and he'd been forced to expend both energy and mental focus to resist the yin energy invading the valley — but he should still have been able to display at least the strength of the Qi Movement Realm, right? How could he have been killed?
The three of them went pale and flushed in turns, their faces cycling between terror and lingering dread.
Each of them was thinking: What if Yang Kai's target just now hadn't been the senior brother, but one of them instead? What would the outcome be? Without a doubt, they'd all be dead too.
Only now did Yuan Lang truly understand Senior Brother Cai's wisdom and vigilance. Had it not been for the senior brother's warning, he probably would have been the first to die at Yang Kai's hands.
"Senior Brother... how exactly did he die?" The weakest of the three finally spoke up, breaking the awkward, suffocating silence.
Once the question was voiced, the three of them stared at each other. The scene of their recent clash replayed in their minds, and they finally picked out the traces of Yang Kai's move.
It was that palm strike — the one where he traded a wound for a wound! The only offensive move Yang Kai had made during the entire fight!
"His strength is that terrifying?" one of them asked in horror.
"That's not his own ability! He must have been hiding some devastatingly powerful artifact, otherwise there's no way he could have broken through Senior Brother's yuanqi defense and killed him in a single blow!" Yuan Lang glanced at him, his mind gradually calming, and offered his analysis.
The third man nodded in agreement.
If it wasn't the power of an artifact, how could Yang Kai's own strength possibly achieve something like this? Even if Yang Kai himself stepped forward and admitted it, they wouldn't believe it.
"The energy required to activate such an artifact must be enormous, and his strength is only at the Kaiyuan Realm, so he'd only have one shot. After that single strike — whether it succeeded or failed — he'd have to flee immediately!" Yuan Lang's expression was dark and gloomy, but the more he thought about it, the clearer his reasoning became. His mind grew increasingly sharp, giving him a sense of having the answer firmly in hand. His deduction matched Yang Kai's suspicious behavior perfectly.
"So right now, even if he still has some strength left, he's nothing more than an arrow at the end of its flight. He definitely can't activate that artifact again, and on top of those heavy injuries, he's no longer a threat to us!"
The other two found his analysis quite reasonable, and the hearts they'd been clutching in their chests finally relaxed.
So he'd only been able to pull that off thanks to an artifact — they'd been terrified for nothing! If his strength had truly been monstrous enough to easily kill Senior Brother Cai, then they might as well have just washed their necks clean and offered them up, rather than clinging to life.
"Senior Brother was killed — should we go back and report it?"
Yuan Lang turned to look at him and snapped, "Go back for what?"
"Not reporting it seems... inappropriate," the man said hesitantly.
The other one looked thoughtfully at Yuan Lang, then suddenly broke into a grin and said to the weakest one: "Junior Brother Wu, you don't understand Senior Brother Yuan's intentions."
Junior Brother Wu looked utterly confused. He glanced at one, then the other, suspicious and puzzled.
Yuan Lang chuckled: "As expected of Junior Brother Ye — your mind is always so sharp. Nothing gets past you."