The Human Giant

"Keep our heads on our shoulders? Is there someone that is not afraid of the consequences of murder inside the Immortal Palace?" Alosa asked Immortal Patty in a curious tone.

"Murdering your fellow student inside the Sect will be punished heavily inside the Sect. However, if you aren't caught, then who is the Sect going to punish." Immortal Patty replied to Alosa's question in the same quick and brutal tone as before.

Showing that not only was murdering a fellow student not uncommon, but it was most likely secretly encouraged by the Sect itself. Even though it was harsh and dampened everyone's spirits, they secretly also heaved a sigh of relief.

As rogue immortal cultivators, they were used to not having many rules to follow and would always try to remove their enemies from the world of the living as soon as possible. Hearing that as long as they were smart about killing their enemies and made sure to leave no clues behind, they could still remove their future obstacles was a huge relief.

"Thank you for your advice." 

While everyone was still digesting Immortal Patty's advice, Alosa thanked Immortal Patty with a voice that showed her gratitude. Even Yoze felt that it was better for him if he was allowed to kill people secretly inside the Immortal Palace and not be afraid of being kicked out.

Though he didn't plan on doing so for most people, if he needed to remove some immortal cultivators or immortals to gather some secret treasures, he didn't mind having some blood on his hands. He especially placed grabbing the Crystal Grape treasure as one of his most important treasures to collect since it could rapidly improve his immortal cultivation speed.

He knew clearly that the Crystal Grape still stored enough energy to support him being able to cross into a few more realms. He also planned to have Tiki use the Crystal Grape to quickly improve her own Immortal cultivation.

That way, she would become much stronger and be able to better protect herself from any dangers as well as protect everyone else. If possible, Yoze planned on using the Immortal Palace Sect's resources to also assist her in becoming an Immortal herself.

As Yoze and the other rogue immortal cultivators were busy with their plans for their future, they suddenly heard a deep rumbling coming from the mountain below them. The mountain that was supposed to be the Immortal Palace Sect's headquarters slightly cracked open on the top of the mountain, allowing them into the mountain's insides.

Unlike what they expected, the inside of the mountain wasn't dark and was not filled with tunnels used for transportation. Instead, a beautiful rainbow mist exited the mountain due to the massive crystal fortress inside the hollow mountain. 

Just from what Yoze could see, the fortress was nearly as large as the mountain itself, and from his perspective, it seemed more like the Sect had covered their Crystal Fortress in a thick layer of dirt and ice. Even the thickness of the layer surrounding the Immortal Palace was only a few feet thick at the thickest points.

Though the rainbow mist surrounding the Crystal Fortress was beautiful, Yoze felt that it had another function as well. However, before he was going to examine the rainbow further, he noticed that a small tunnel had formed inside the rainbow fog that led straight to the Immortal Palace's entrance.

Without saying another word, Immortal Patty shrunk his giant sword to half its size before quickly flying through the tunnel that was formed for them. Not wanting to be left behind, the beautiful array of stars and the bloody cloud quickly turned into streaks of light as they rushed to enter the tunnel before it closed.

With the speed of the sword, it didn't take long before they reached the entrance, which was two doors that were easily ten feet tall. After reaching the entrance of the Crystal Fortress, Immortal Patty waved his hand, causing a heavy gust of wind to blow everyone off his sword.

"Can you just get off," Noticing that his heavy gust of wind didn't kick Yoze off of his sword, Immortal Patty didn't bother to waste his crystal energy trying to cast a more powerful wind spell and just told him to get off on his own.

"Sorry about that, sir; I've been trying to pack on some more weight recently," Yoze said with a smile as he jumped off of the sword.

Even though he weighed more than a thousand pounds, he seemed as light as a feather as he softly landed on the ground below him as if he was a feather. Seeing this Immortal, Patty secretly shook his head as he simply couldn't understand why such a talented man would waste his time practicing martial arts.

Even though their interaction with each other was nearly nonexistent, he was able to tell that Yoze was obsessed with continuing to practice martial arts even though there was a hard limit on how strong he could be taking that path. 

"At least with his martial arts, he has a slightly better chance of surviving assassination attempts. If he can survive long enough to reach the Crystal Skull realm, I'll offer him some protection so I can get a valuable ally." Immortal Patty thought to himself, fully expecting that Yoze wouldn't reach that realm for decades.

"Everyone is here and accounted for, except for Immortal Welse, who had left the mission early." Immortal Patty said loudly into the void as if he was speaking directly to someone.

A few seconds of silence engulfed the area as everyone waited for the doors to open. Weirdly enough, it took more than a minute before another voice came somewhere in the mist and sent a command to everyone.

"No one is allowed inside the Sect until the arrangement between us and the Immortal Shadow Sect is complete. If you want to enter faster, you may head to the base of the southern mountain and enter these new immortal cultivators in the tournament that was created to test each of our Sect's strengths."

After the voice gave its response, silence followed as Immortal Patty sighed and turned to the two brothers that had somehow appeared on the hilt of his sword beside him. Seeing the two brothers once again appear out of nowhere, Yoze felt his heart clench as he didn't notice that they appeared at all, even with his extraordinary senses.

He only noticed their presence when everyone else had become aware of their arrival, and even with his sharp spiritual senses, he didn't even see them arrive. That either meant that they developed a method to teleport anywhere around the world as they pleased, or they were able to somehow hide everything related to their existence.

Either way, Yoze felt that these two brothers were far more dangerous compared to Immortal Welse since they could easily keep off his head at any point. 

"Are we required to participate in the tournament, or can we just wait?" Immortal Patty asked calmly.

"No, it isn't required, but it can land us some extra points if these six join and do a good job." One of the twins smiled as he spoke in a cheerful tone as if he was excited to talk for the first time.

"Extra points? I guess that all six of you will be joining the tournament then." Hearing that he could acquire extra points instantly made Immortal Patty's eyes sparkle as he quickly waved his hand to lift everyone except Yoze back onto his sword.

"Yoze, jump on quickly; I don't want any delays to ruin our chances of getting valuable sect points." Immortal Patty said with impatience in his voice.

Understanding that this wasn't a choice, Yoze lightly tapped his foot on the ground and jumped tens of feet to lightly land on the sword's tip. Before his weight could shift the direction of the sword, Immortal Patty sent more crystal energy to rebalance his sword.

Luckily by the time he was able to make sure everything was stable, Lily was able to softly land beside Yoze and excitedly waited for them to the tournament. She felt her blood boil with excitement as she wanted to see Yoze beat up someone as badly as he defeated her.

She had full confidence that whoever Yoze's opponent would regret that they ever stepped into the ring. She could still clearly remember being afraid for her life just from Yoze using his spiritual energy to suppress her.

She could only imagine how powerful he had to be that just looking at her could make her a monster lose.

After everyone had settled, Immortal Patty and his giant sword turned into a black beam of light and left straight toward the base of the Southern Mountain in the least possible time. With their speed, it took only a few minutes before they arrived at a small mountain that was covered in a thick forest.

At the base of the mountain was a large black square platform that seemed to have been made entirely out of obsidian. In the middle of the platform were two young men that seemed to be fighting to the death.