"I was notified you would be arriving," the man on the ground started speaking after seeing Alex. "I did not expect you to come here so quickly."
Alex pulled out Midnight and got ready to fight. "Drop the spear," he said once more.
"Hah! I have heard you are strong enough to kill Reushen, so I know I shouldn't fight you. But if you force my hands, my spear with go through this man's head," the man shouted back. "Men, prepare to fight."
The few Saint cultivators that were on the island readied themselves to fight and capture Alex.
Alex looked at his father who seemed to be unconscious at the moment. These people had most likely drugged him to make him controllable while Alex was coming here.
Alex thought so and looked back at the man.
"You were the man that recorded my father and sent the talisman to me, aren't you?" he asked.
The man frowned. "How do you know that?" he asked. He was surprised that he was found out.
"You don't need to know how," Alex said as his sword started glowing pale white as Sword Qi flowed onto it. "All you need to know is that for the past half a year, I've been looking forward to finding you. Once I did, I would kill you."
"Thank you for placing yourself in front of me to die."
Alex prepared to send an attack as he poured energy into his sword.
The man smirked. His spear inched ever so closer to Alex's father's head, threatening to send it through if Alex dared launch the attack at all.
"Try it. Then we can see what's faster. My spear, or your—"
Alex slashed.
The man saw a white colored sword slash fly out of the sword. The moment he saw that he quickly moved his spear to kill Alex's father. However, instantly, the sword slash appeared in front of him.
With nothing more needed, the sword slash cut the man in two, dropping the halves of his body to either side.
Alex appeared next to his body the next moment and immediately burned it, turning it into ash a moment later.
He quickly held his father before he dropped to the ground and looked at the others that were on the island.
Follow on NovᴇlEnglish.nᴇt"Leave or you will be the next ones to die."
The Saints were already weaker than Alex appeared to be, so after seeing him effortlessly cut the strongest person there in half, they ran away without question.
After they were all gone, Alex finally took a deep breath and let himself appear weaker.
"Dammit!" he thought to himself. He had just used the Dao of Cutting and Dao of Teleportation together on that attack, so it had put a burden on him.
Normally, the burden would be small enough to make him uncomfortable only, but it appeared that this land had no Qi at all, so the Dao he used all came from himself, and that made the burden increase even more.
He ignored the thought and looked at his father.
He could feel his father's tough and rough body. He looked noticeably older, somewhere in his late 50s, but his physique hadn't changed as much. It was just what Alex remembered him to look like for the most part.
This was most definitely his father.
He quickly used his spiritual sense to check him and didn't find anything wrong with him that could be found out immediately.
He carried him and took him to the tent that was nearby. He walked through the tent's opening and saw the nearly 100 people that were inside, surrounding a phoenix flame that was at the center.
They looked at him with weird looks on their face.
Alex saw these men and women, all of whom still had dirt and mud on their clothes and bodies. He saw the red dirt on their bodies and frowned.
"Who are you??" one of them asked. "What are you doing with our leader?"
Alex looked at the man asking the question and asked one in return, "how long have you guys been here?"
He slowly placed his father down and lay him on the floor.
The man gave a frowning look and answered, "about 3 hours. What? Is it time to go back to the tent already?'
"No, I didn't mean that," Alex said. "Don't worry, I'm not with those other people. I'm here to save him, and if I can make it out fine, you guys will be safe too."
"Huh? You're not with the others?" one of them asked quickly.
"No," Alex said. "You can go out and check. The person in charge of keeping you in check is dead outside."
A few men instantly stood up and went to check. In the meantime, Alex pulled out an antidote pill and fed it to his father.
"Holy shit! It's true," one of them said. "No one is outside, and there is a patch of burning ground with bones in it."
Everyone was shocked to hear that and one of them asked with a quivering voice. "Are… are you really going to save us?"
"Yes," Alex said. "I'm sorry you had to go through this. Can you tell me how long ago you were abducted?"
"About 5 years ago for me."
"20 for me."
"I've been here for over 16 years."
Alex heard every one of them and it seemed that each person was brought here less than 2 decades ago. That didn't mean that the Kang family had only started doing their dirty work 2 decades ago, but rather that everyone before that had already died.
"You guys were abducted by them, weren't you?" Alex asked.
Everyone nodded.
"Is this abduction not well known in the Wastelands? I never heard about it when I was there, and no one really brought it up to the people in the north," Alex said.
"How could they?" one of them said with clear hatred hidden in his voice. "No one was ever left behind to make any complaints."
Alex's eyes narrowed. "What do you mean?" he asked.
"They attacked our entire tribe," a woman said. "They attacked us and waited for us to come out to fight them. Then they judged which one of us was the strongest and captured us. As for the rest, they let us watch as they killed them all. My brother, my mother, my father, my husband, my children, my friends, my family— I had to watch everyone die before they brought me here."
Alex couldn't help but feel the same anger as her when he heard that.
"These monsters don't even leave children alive. They destroy everything and make it out to look like a beast horde attack and leave," a man said.
"You guys must have fought back, right?" Alex asked.
"We did," another person said. "Most people tried to fight, but no one can defeat them. We would have most likely killed ourselves by now if we hadn't seen a ray of hope. A chance to escape."
The man pointed towards Alex's father.
Follow on Novᴇl-Onlinᴇ.cᴏm"Him? Why?" Alex asked.
"Leader is strong, and…" the man paused. "Let's just say unlike the other hundreds of people who killed themselves to relieve themselves from their misery, we stuck around in hopes of revenge."
Alex saw that these people were still careful about something. But it seemed that they thought that his father would be the one to save them in the end.
Just then, Graham started coughing as he spat out a red spit. For a moment, Alex thought he was bleeding internally, but when he saw closer, he could see the specks of red in the spit.
It was the dust from the Blood-stained Lead ore.
"What happened? What the hell did that bastard give me to drink?" Graham asked as his vision slowly returned to him.
He looked to the side and saw Alex. For a while, he simply looked at him, not understanding who he was looking at exactly.
However, when he saw Alex's almost crying face, his eyes went wide. "A-Alex?" he asked.
Alex looked at him softly. "Father!"
Before Alex could say anything, Graham immediately grabbed him into a hug. Alex was surprised for a moment, but he quickly hugged back as well.
Graham let go and looked at him. "Is… is it really you?" he asked.
"Yes, it's me, father," Alex said as he wiped his tears. "I finally found you."
"Alex, how… what are you doing here?" Graham asked. "Did they get you too? Did those bastards capture you?"
"No, they didn't," Alex said. "I came here on my own after learning you were here."
Graham's eyes widened. "You… you came here? Why?" he asked loudly. "Alex, you shouldn't have come here. This is not a good place to be. How did you come? Can you leave? You should leave before they find out."
"It's alright father," Alex said. "I know what sort of place this is. I came here exactly because I knew what sort of place this is. I came here to save you from all of this."
"You came here to save me?" Graham asked.
"Yes, I—" Alex paused. "They're here."
Alex walked out of the tent and the others followed him. "Stay inside, this might get dangerous," he said.
20 or so people flew in the sky with many others flying over from the other islands. The Patriarch of the Kang family looked down at him with his men behind him.
"Good, you've had your wish fulfilled. You've met your father," he said. "Now, you can be together as I send both you and your father to the afterlife."