Book 2. The Grand Gathering. Chapter 23. Terrible Miscalculation.
Laien’s body trembled despite him trying to suppress his nervousness as to not betray how agitated he truly was. “What do you want from us?” he asked helplessly, out of options. He couldn’t continue fighting when his enemies were holding Siana at the blade’s length.
At the same time, although Laien didn’t want to see it and wasn’t interested in those things at the moment, he could sense a substantial change occurring within his soul. Up until now he had needed to actively merge the essences of the Aspects of Tranquility and Wrath before making use of them, but now… he could ‘see’ two multi-colored orbs floating inside his soul. One of the orbs was giving away a sensation of perfect Tranquility, the other one was bursting forth with great Wrath.
The two orbs were orbiting around each other, their essence-energies intersecting and flowing from one to the other. Apart from constantly melting together, they were sometimes bursting out, only for the strands to be pulled back into one of the two orbs. The orbs were colorless, but at the same time, the light emanating from them contained every shade of light within it and kept changing constantly, making it impossible to tell apart; thus being colorless. At one moment, the mysterious orbs were green, at the another, they shined with a golden glow. After blinking, they would change to yet another color.
Somewhere to the side was even another gathering of essence… one which however didn’t form an orb of any kind and appeared to only be a loose gathering of gas-like substance. From what Laien could tell, it was the essence of the Aspect of Awareness of which foundation he didn’t yet possess.
“Don’t worry, as long as you stop doing stupid things neither you nor this girl will die. Now, put your weapon away and hand the interspatial ring over,” Snake ordered, all the time ready to back off at the moment’s notice. He sure enough didn’t want to share the same fate as Wolf as a result of his own carelessness.
Laien blinked, only when the man spoke realizing he had ended up completely focusing on his soul. “It’s nice they are merging on their own, but it doesn’t seem to be increasing my strength… it won’t be helpful in any way…” he noted to himself and breathed deeply. He was about to give up and obediently put his spear away and surrender, but then… he saw Siana slowly opening her eyes, her gaze very much conscious and steeled, ready to act.
Laien knew what to do in this situation; he allowed the greyish mist from his interspatial ring to engulf his spear, but instead of making it disappear he withdrew Siana’s Red Dragon Sword from it.
In the blink of an eye, Siana willed it and the longsword disappeared from the original spot and appeared in her hand. She roused her Qi and thrust back at the spot right behind her head, grabbing the sword at her throat with her left hand while covering it with the blood-red protective layer of Qi.
Snake reacted to the situation surprisingly quickly, but even with how careful he had been he failed to avoid the longsword which pierced a hole through his chest. He did, however, manage to make it miss all his vital organs and in response, applied strength to his own sword.
Siana felt how the blade cut into the protection of her Qi and began slicing her fingers, but at the same second she clenched her right hand and raised her arm.
“The blade is upside down…!” Snake merely had enough time to notice this one thing before the longsword split him apart, chest and head alike.
By this point, Zhira was utterly enraged. It was bad he had lost one martial master of the second rank, but now a second one got killed! “Fuck their arses! Damned idiots!” Zhira cursed silently. How did his subordinates manage to screw up a simple task to this extent? In the end, it would be his reputation which would suffer because of those incompetent fools!
“Come here, quick!” Laien called out, but even without him saying so Siana had already leaped forward. She fell into his arms before Zhira could shake off the feelings of rage, what in consequence resulted in even more trouble being created for him.
Siana shut her eyes tight and apologized quietly… she didn’t know if her two friends were being held in the same building, but she couldn’t afford to worry about them or tell her big brother to restrain himself. Whether they lived or died… was entirely up to their luck.
The left part of Laien’s lips quirked upwards in a smirk. He looked at the black-haired man who seemed to be the leader of those black-cloaked men. The spiritual energy in his body surged, three-tenths of it fueling the powerful spell. “Descent of the Storm!” Laien shouted inwardly, proceeding to release the omnidirectional destructive wave of water mixed with his most powerful insights.
Seeing the masses of water surge from Laien Zhira clicked his tongue. He had seen the effects of this spell and wasn’t about to recklessly allow it to swallow him up. Willing or not, he smashed one of the walls and retreated while cursing inwardly. “Fuck his grandmother. With such a large area of effect spell, he will surely draw the attention of the whole city!” He just knew it wasn’t going to end well. Those orders not to kill the siblings… it might have been manageable if they were weaker, but those two were goddamn monsters!
In his anger, Zhira had forgotten to warn his two remaining direct subordinates not to face the spell head-on. Thus when the building exploded from within, completely disassembled and torn apart by Laien’s Ascent of The Storm, only one of the two managed to flee. The other was completely taken by surprise, not having expected the spell to be so powerful and to cover such a large area; in the end, his body had been swept away by the chaotic masses of water.
The spell laid waste to a few dozen of the nearby wooden buildings. The accompanying crumbling noises were so loud that even kilometers away people could hear something suspicious was going on. As for the man who got swept up by the tidal wave… he was not nearly as skilled as Yin. The chaotic currents wrought his limbs out, then tore them away from his body. Seconds later his neck was snapped, his life ending in great pain and suffering.
A little over three or four breaths of time passed when the spell’s effects ended. What emerged was a huge pile of rubble and amongst it, dozens of black-cloaked, hideously twisted bodies of the unlucky bastards who had gotten swept in by the exploding waves. In the center of this wasteland was about a twenty meters wide clear area, in the middle of which stood Laien and Siana. Right after the magic died down, the two began fleeing for their lives; although their performance could be described as incredible, they were also aware they had been just as incredibly lucky.
Also, they knew the leader of those black-cloaked men was a martial master of the fifth rank. With their strength, they couldn’t hope to beat that man down even if they had all the world’s luck. Thus, they attempted to flee shoulder to shoulder, jumping through the air on the footholds of water which Laien kept creating. After all, traveling in this manner was much faster than going through all this rubble on the ground.
“Useless. All of them are goddamn useless,” Zhira murmured, converging out of the shadows right in the path of the siblings and proceeding to float there freely, his feet engulfed by a layer of wind-element Qi. Not many people knew he was a dual-element practitioner and that he had reached the fifth Realm of Heroes in both paths, but for the sake of quickly subduing… no, for the sake of quickly killing those two he would make an exception and reveal his wind-element affinity.
“He’s actually flying…!” Laien and Siana recognized simultaneously, their faces sinking in the same way. They might have had a small chance to escape from a darkness-element practitioner if they got high enough in the air and rendered him incapable of following… but against a wind-element martial master, they had no chance of fleeing at all. The wind element was most suited to sustaining flight out of all element! Adding the difference in strength, fleeing was no longer an option, as unlikely as it had been.
“First go back down,” Zhira said coldly and waved his hand, creating a gust of wind which smashed against the siblings and sent them flying into the pile of rubble below them.
Since Zhira hadn’t really attacked them yet, both Laien and Siana managed to regain their balance and not fall down after smashing onto the ground. “Big brother?” Siana asked worriedly. She couldn’t see a way out in face of this black-haired man. They really were about to be killed by him.
“Enough fooling around and enough bullshit, now go and die for me,” Zhira said emotionlessly and kicked at the air, charging at the siblings with a sword in hand and with wind-element Qi surging around him. He swung the blade, sending an edge of cutting wind towards the two.
“It’s too fast,” the thought crossed Laien’s mind. Even though he was able to perceive the attack, his body wasn’t fast enough to respond in time. All he could do was to hastily create a barrier of ice in front of himself and Siana… but he didn’t have quite enough time for that either; he only managed to put up a hastily made defense, which after meeting with the wind blade shattered almost immediately.
Laien was unnaturally powerful for his cultivation level and had deep insights into Aspects and other mysteries of the world, but he still couldn’t hope to be a match for an elite martial master of the fifth rank. The difference in their strength was simply too big.
Laien cursed in his heart, trying to cover Siana with his body to the best of his abilities.. but he would never have expected that suddenly, Siana would pull on his shirt and at the last moment, throw him to the ground while stepping forward and slashing at the wind blade with her longsword.
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As the wind blade met the Red Dragon Sword it violently pushed against its blade, instantly blowing the blood-red Qi away and pushing the longsword at Siana’s body. Yet, Siana kept holding onto the hilt with sheer willpower, accumulating as much Qi in her hand as she could; she ignored the cracking sounds of her bones and even when her wrist broke under the pressure, she didn’t loosen her grip.
Finally, the wind blade gave in and was sliced in half by the Red Dragon Sword. However, the remaining two parts didn’t dissipate. They surged forth and both sliced at Siana’s body, leaving huge gaping wounds in two places; to the right on her side and back, and all along her chest.
The protection of the Dragon’s Body Art mattered little in front of a technique this strong offensively. With the massive amount of blood spurting from both gaping wounds, Siana began falling to the ground. Zhira, however, was already mere meters away from her and had taken another swing, intending to finish Siana off for good.
Having been just thrown to the ground, Laien could only look how Siana got horribly wounded while protecting him and how that black-haired martial master flew towards her. The emotions which Siana’s actions brought to Laien’s heart were indescribable. Watching helplessly as that man was getting closer and closer… six meters, five meters, four… Laien let out an inward, agonized howl. If there was anything he could do, if he only was stronger… if he only could turn that man to dust…!
“Aaaaah!” Laien howled, releasing a surge of pure spiritual energy; he had no time to craft a spell nor to use proper magic. Yet, he eyed the man furiously, wishing to kill him with all his heart. The wave of spiritual energy passed by Siana, doing her no harm and then…
Zhira was suddenly overwhelmed by an unexplainable sense of fear. His senses were telling him to flee for his life, to retreat as quickly as possible. It was all happening too fast, he didn’t have time to think; he acted on instinct and brought himself to a forceful stop. He tried to back off or get out of the way of the incoming spiritual energy, but all he could do was to stop himself from getting even closer to it; he had been charging forward at top speed, after all.
“Nothing?” Zhira frowned as the surge of energy began passing by him, beginning to wonder if he hadn’t gotten scared for no reason like a complete idiot… but the next second, his whole body shook and he fell to the ground. Tears of blood flowed from his eyes, all his skin turned red and began oozing the crimson liquid. He coughed, spitting out a mouthful of blood; then coughed again and again, coughing up even more blood. His body… was on the verge of falling apart!
Laien had no idea what happened, but he grabbed Siana just before she hit the ground and laid her gently on the ground. He immediately began using whatever spiritual energy he had left to heal her and stop the massive bleeding. He knew the black-haired man was still alive… but if he didn’t at least patch Siana up right away, she would die in the matter of second.
“What was that…?” Zhira thought as he coursed Qi around his body to enhance its natural recovery rate. Thankfully, the internal bleeding wasn’t bad enough for him to be unable to deal with it; he wouldn’t die from these wounds, though he wasn’t all that far away from being in a critical condition either.
“As I thought, those kids need to die,” he told himself and began walking towards the two with great effort, incapable of releasing another wind blade with this kind of injuries. He glanced at Laien, who was so focused on healing his sister that he didn’t even notice he had approached the two of them and was standing a step away. Sighing silently at their Kingdom losing two young prodigies, he swung his sword and slashed at the siblings.
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“That was easy,” Fohan said while standing in front of the Valius family’s mansion. “Too easy,” he added, the calm demeanor of Garon when he was submitting and handing over the power to him causing Fohan to think he had missed something important.
“No, we didn’t miss anything. We attacked and suppressed all their bases at the same time; he had no other option than to surrender the clan to me and obey. Yet, what is this anxiousness I’m feeling?” Fohan frowned, unable to shake off the strange sensation of worry he was having. He turned around, sensing a group of people approaching while using the Cloak of Shadows to hide their presences.
“Luren, anything important to report?” he asked, appearing to be rather restless despite the operation ending flawlessly.
“Nothing on the matter at hand,” Luren began saying with a smile. He received a report for one of Zhira’s men that he had successfully secured the younger sister and was about to get his hands on the brother, too. He was about to mention this to Fohan and suggest using the siblings as leverage against Rudford… but he and Fohan both looked to the side as more newcomers appeared.
“Genzie, what are you doing here?” Fohan asked with a slight frown. He had only the senior members take part in today’s mission to avoid any potential failures and he, sure enough, didn’t appreciate it if Genzie had come here only to congratulate him or anything else similarly ridiculous.
Genzie allowed himself to smile slightly as he glanced at Garoth who had acted out of his own accord to inform the seventh Prince and his guardian of the situation at hand and came to report to him straight afterward. He really did a great job! Then, he glanced at his uncle very briefly before bowing to Fohan and speaking up politely.
“Grandfather, I wouldn’t trouble you with anything unimportant, but this matter can potentially harm our whole plan to peacefully take control of the Kingdom,” he explained himself, surprising Fohan that he actually knew what their true goals were. Even within their own ranks, not many knew what he was planning to do; the secretive nature of their schemes was extremely important in order to prevent the information from leaking out!
Either way, Genzie’s words caused the frown on Fohan’s forehead deepened. “Speak, what is it?” he urged, wondering if this thing Genzie wanted to tell him about wasn’t the source of his unexplainable anxiety.
“It seems that Uncle Luren for some reason decided to arbitrarily try and break up the alliance centered around the seventh Prince and his friends,” Genzie began saying, causing the expression on Fohan’s face to turn grim.
“Luren, didn’t you say we have no reason to antagonize them at this point?” Fohan asked coldly. The one thing he hated even more than incompetence was being deceived by his own subordinates!
“I simply saw an opportunity and acted on it to spare us the future trouble,” Luren said calmly, knowing that betraying how nervous he was would only undermine his already shaky position.
“However, since Genzie is bringing it up it means you have failed, did you not?” Fohan inquired, not too pleased by Luren’s actions this time around. “It will make dealing with their camp harder…” he said resignedly. They would need to reconsider their approach, but it wasn’t anything as groundbreaking as Genzie was making it out to be. Was this boy still too young to properly judge the situation?
“It still wouldn’t be that bad if Uncle Luren hadn’t had Zhira kidnap one of Rudford’s disciples, Siana, and use the fact to very crudely force her brother to walk into their trap on his own,” Genzie elaborated, his words this time around making Fohan’s face to turn pale from anger. “The problem is that according to my subordinates, the method Zhira used was so stupid that the seventh Prince and the others in the Royal Palace learned what was going on almost immediately,” he explained hurriedly, pretending to be in a hurry while still trying to maintain a polite way of speaking.
“You must be joking with me,” Luren shook his head and laughed disdainfully. “Zhira wouldn’t have made such a beginner’s mistake, your information must be incorrect,” he said with a slight smirk. No matter how badly Genzie wanted to shine in Fohan’s eyes, he really shouldn’t make up such blatant lies.
“Uncle, I suspect you ordered him to accomplish his task no matter what, am I not right?” Genzie implied and seeing that his uncle had nothing to say, continued. “Entrusted with a task that couldn’t be accomplished but in a position where failure wasn’t an option… it’s not that surprising that he ended up doing something stupid,” he concluded and to his satisfaction, noticed Luren’s face twitch just a little.
“It can’t be, everything will be fine,” Luren repeated, this time betraying some of his nervousness.
“You’d better be right that it ‘can’t be’, Luren,” Fohan uttered furiously. “You have those siblings in your custody, yes? Bring us to them immediately,” he ordered, intent on patching up this wound before it started bleeding too badly.
“Yes Master, I will. And I will show you how much easier my decision made the things for us,” Luren said with a smile, but just after he finished speaking an already quiet shout reached the place they were standing at. All of them turned to look at the city… and when they did, Luren’s face fell completely.
“Rudford!” Fohan felt his heart clench painfully. They weren’t prepared to properly deal with a supreme Great Master at this point! However, as if to make matters worse almost at the same time he saw a blazing golden light appear over the Two Weeks City. “The Twin Phoenix School too?!” he couldn’t help but yell the words out loud. He clenched his fists and gave Luren an utterly furious look. How was that anywhere close to being fine?!
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A few seconds before, in the Red Dragon School.
“Wait did you say?!” Rudford yelled so loudly that the messenger who Injar had sent trembled and shrunk in himself despite being at the first Realm of Heroes. He backed off in fear when blood-red draconic scales covered Rudford’s body and the man jumped out, shattering the stone roof of the meeting hall and getting out on its roof.
“All martial masters, with me right now!” Rudford roared furiously, his killing-intent voice spreading throughout the whole Red Dragon School and even a portion of Neil City itself. Without wasting any more time, he kicked out and charged towards the Neil City at top speed, transforming into but a red blur which shattered a portion of one random building with each leap.
The messenger jumped out through the hole made by Rudford, only to witness the most awe-inspiring and terrifying scene of his life. He saw how all over the Red Dragon School martial masters clad in blood-red armors of Qi began emerging one after another and following after Rudford as fast as they could. The aura which those three hundred martial masters were giving off… it was making his heart shudder.
Those on the streets and in the houses of Neil City were all thrown into utter chaos. The rooftops and whole buildings began crumbling as the three hundred blood-red draconic figures made their way up north, the sight of the numerous Elders rushing to one place taking away everyone’s breaths.
They could come to only one conclusion... the Red Dragon School had been infuriated and was heading out to commit a slaughter!
Just about simultaneously in the northern part of the Two Weeks City.
“What do we do, elder brother?” Ninrah asked, the decision of this importance being up to Einrah to make. It might have been Anatis’s request, but starting an open conflict so recklessly was…
“We move out! Everyone, get moving!” Einrah yelled unhesitatingly, waking up the two hundred Elders in the mansion they were residing at. He jumped out through the nearby window and created a huge platform of golden fire, onto which Ninrah, the Grand Elder Xuan and the two hundred golden-robed Elders jumped right afterward.
The people in the Two Weeks City all began looking up into the sky as a wave of golden flame surged through the air, heading south at a high speed. Those who were far enough to see the top of the platform well would cry out in shock; the Twin Phoenix School’s two Great Masters, their Grand Elder and two hundred of their golden-robed Elders were moving out, all of them bursting forth with killing intent!
The Twin Phoenix School… was setting out for a slaughter!