As the strong cultivators walked closer, both subordinates kneeled and held the prisoner firmly.

The Duke and his guest kept observing the man, but they still couldn't sense anything unordinary.

After a few moments of scrutiny, Greatstar activated his aura completely, staying at his peak. Then, he looked at the young apex figure.

"Are you doing it?" He asked.

"So hasty. Chill."

But even while saying so, the young man still acted. His aura rose and suppressed everyone else in the room.

His hand then moved slowly to the prisoner's head.

As someone with experience, he never acted carelessly.

Yet, as he touched the head, nothing happened. But he still couldn't feel anything, so a frown appeared on his face.

After some preparations, he then initiated some techniques.

Everyone was waiting for this, so even while feeling suffocated, everyone stared at him since it wasn't an everyday occurrence to be able to see an apex figure making a move.

However, as soon as they felt this extraordinary power flowing toward the prisoner's head, they heard some random clock tick.

Then, immediately, everyone but a few cultivators began suffering from severe dissociation.

---

Ben Higgs fell deep into a coma.

As soon as his target found him, he chose to shut off.

He had already examined this place by then and determined it was likely the one where he could more easily complete his plan.

Once he was gone, he would only wake up under some specific circumstances.

One was if thousands of years had passed. And second, if an anchor tried to connect to him.

In this city, he felt another anchor close by, so he wasn't acting blindly.

And since he knew they had some similarities, Ben hoped they could also notice something and try to investigate. So, he ended up betting on that assumption.

And because he acted on such unpredictability, as soon as he woke up, a hysterical smile appeared on Ben's face.

He couldn't believe his insanity worked, but it did.

Once his sense returned, he immediately noticed the demise of another anchor since he had already experienced this feeling.

However, Ben couldn't enjoy his wild emotions since he had to enter battle mode as soon as he woke up.

He knew things somehow worked, but he didn't care how. Right now, he only focused on his next objective: getting out.

So, his body moved.

While almost everyone was frozen and lost in time, Ben jumped back.

At the same time, his extended refined soul retreated and splattered blood from the surrounding targets on the floor.

Meanwhile, a few powerful cultivators didn't become absentminded. So they noticed the weird jump in time. But they couldn't believe their eyes, as the matter that reacted to nothing now impaled their Duke, his guest, and the two subordinates that held this prisoner.

They couldn't believe their eyes, but their years on the battlefield still made them take action since they could always leave the astonishment for later.

Ben also didn't overestimate himself, so he didn't even check if the others were dead. Knowing that the anchor stopped working was more than enough.

And his decision was right since as soon as he jumped back, he felt a big hammer crushing where he was.

At that moment, his eyes could see the hammer smashing a couple of humans, but Ben didn't care.

He also noticed another cultivator taking the other two men and flying back, but he didn't care.

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Ben didn't focus on healing, either. Instead, he burned his life to make his refined soul move as fast as he could.

So, for the first time in a while, Ben could react to his sense and not just feel hopeless.

As he flew back, his left hand moved up and struck a sword coming toward him.

Yet, even now, he was still slower than his enemy, so the blade cut through his wrist before he could use it to push himself farther back.

But that was all he wanted. So, even while Ben felt his hand detaching, his smile didn't dwindle.

And the cultivators in front of him hated that since it felt like this crazy bastard was enjoying this. They felt like he was playing around with them.

But soon, they couldn't see the smile anymore because the hammer didn't stop and flew in for a second attack. Yet while it aimed at Ben's chest, he didn't even try to dodge it. So, Ben flew back even faster and hit the wall so strongly that a dust cloud covered that side of the room.

However, the hammer wasn't the only attack that didn't stop. After the other cultivator cut into the floor slightly, she immediately followed up by sending daggers to pierce Ben into the wall.

Her actions also activated the protective Array of the castle, so it began suppressing her target.

Yet, with their Spirit sense, they still could sense the assassin smiling idiotically from within the dust cloud.

The commotion and fierce attack couldn't clean Ben's face out of happiness.

But the sudden battle did wake up everyone around them. So, most of the rest of the cultivators joined the attack formation. But while they tried to prepare for the fight, they weren't at their peak. And some of the weakest had even passed out.

"What are you even doing? Keep cutting him!" The elder who had retrieved the Duke and apex figure returned yelling.

However, his voice couldn't be heard by the end of his sentence because a loud explosion had happened.

A weird array sprouted out of Ben's chest and transformed the whole section of the wall behind him into gravel.

After destroying the place he was pinned to, Ben fell out of the room.

Since he expected the worse, the elder was the first to move out with his sword in hand.

He jumped out while activating his power and connecting to the castle defense system.

So even if Ben was falling toward where he calculated, another sword was already aiming at him.

But even then, Ben still beamed while the midday sun lit his face.

His happy expression only vanished when his body suddenly swelled up.

He had already activated two trump cards, which had pushed his body to its limit. So, once he tried to trigger another one, he couldn't control it.

The system in his body failed, and something unwanted happened: a few of his trump cards melted together and fired off.

The excess energy overheated his body and deformed it, so Ben could barely control the direction he flew off.

After the attack was released, the ray of chaotic energy shrouded the coming swordsman. So Ben wouldn't notice the result of the clash even if he could focus on it.

But he couldn't. He only focused on falling toward where he intended.

'I DID IT!' He yelled in his mind.

As he finally splashed into the river, a sense of accomplishment he had never felt before drowned him.

However, not long after he began sinking, a monster viciously bit into Ben Higgs's disfigured body and swam away.

But then, while Ben was taken away, the time gained by the attack was enough that when those cultivators arrived at the riverbed, they couldn't track Ben anymore.

---

The Greatstar Duchy had been peaceful for thousands of years.

But not today.

As the public in the capital noticed the protective Arrays activating, they all quivered in fear.

There was no planned maintenance or testing. So, everyone knew there was no plan for this.

So, as soon as some cultivators noticed it, they ran away as fast as they could.

While they didn't know what was happening, they also didn't want to.

Some still stuck around, thinking running away like that was too extreme. Those people felt safe since there was no prior notice of the Duke making enemies or any planned war.

And the locals, while apprehensive, most stayed in place and waited.

This place was their home, so even while they felt the loudest explosion in their life, they still only searched for shelter.

However, the same didn't happen to the outsider business people.

As soon as they noticed the battle, they initiated emergency evacuations.

All the big-sized businesses did it. Most middle-sized did it too, and even many smaller ones didn't wait for more precise news.

And that decisive action moved some locals, who also began to leave the city, at least for now.

However, despite their actions, no one expected the worst.

The Greatstar Duchy was too much of a mammoth for that. But that didn't mean they held back on evacuation, which many had imprinted into their head since they began working. Doing so was just common sense.

And those who left despite the sense of safety that the Duchy emitted would soon understand why that was common sense.

In a couple of hours, they would all understand why every respectable business didn't only have an evacuation plan but also preached to others to have one too.

---

All around the world, multiple factions began receiving weird and insane intel notes.

They were all used to this, but this one felt special since it noted that the information sent was not exclusive to their station.

It also advised them to look for an attack in the next few hours. And that if an apex figure moved quickly enough, they would easily confirm if such data held any veracity.

Nevertheless, despite such big claims, most factions acted calmly. They still contacted their peers to see if the prank held any meaning while searching for any aggression news. But given the speed of the process, it would likely take hours for the information to get into their superior's hands.

But in a specific place, the procedure was different.

"Write down that this note will be in the hands of Joyce Breaker!"

A young teenage girl yelled at the other middle age men in the room.

This girl was the same one who delivered Ben the book ["INSIGHTS"].

She had spent many hours in this station almost every day for months since her master was adamant about having someone she trusted here at all times.

But while she followed her master's wishes and shared the time wasted on this monotonous task with her peers, the girl hadn't understood the seriousness of her master. At least not until today. Things finally became explicit while she read this intel note.

Fortunately, Joyce's insistence on waiting for some vague update had indeed paid off. All this preparation from the Volcano Clan made the intel get to the hands of their strongest cultivators in not even a dozen minutes.