Henrietta opened her eyes to take a look at the supposedly expert immortal who tried to hoodwink her if she was a clueless child, but despite her stoic demeanor a short snort escaped nevertheless. But not at him – it was the reaction she had towards herself. She kind of got annoyed she got played into having a visible reaction so easily, but then intended to focus back on the process inside of her, when something caught her attention at the corner of her eye.
At first Henrietta couldn’t tell what was wrong. While it was dark outside and the territory of the prison only had few lighting formations further away, illuminating the scarce buildings surrounding her pavilion, it was obvious that after the spar between her daughter and Jay Raynolds that just concluded, the Nascent soul stage guards dispersed, making the place feel deserted. But then she realized there were tips of few fingers touching the window to the right of her, fortunately still behind the backs of the other two immortals. It looked as if some worms were trying to find their way up and for a split moment she had this thought, when the top of a head with disheveled hair slowly popped out.
She knew it was impossible to see inside, in fact, on multiple occasions Alice complained about it, but for some reason it felt that the person carefully observed what the three immortals were doing. Clearly this was not one of the Raynolds’s men, but it didn’t make any sense for anyone else to be here, except …
Henrietta couldn’t finish the thought when a young man suddenly appeared next to the one crouching at the window. This one she recognized immediately – Jay Raynolds’s tall and handsome figure was rather distinct, but even before he could react, the first one suddenly punched Jay in the abdomen with both hands and the guy simply blew up. The muffled sound of blood splattering on the window attracted the attention of the other two immortals, but under the momentary flash of purple light that followed the attack, Henrietta recognized the dirty face of the attacker.
‘Damn it!’ She cursed to herself and without a second thought spat something at the Blood lord and Catrin Banes who just turned around to take a look at who dared to disturb them.
Henrietta’s attack was akin to spitting cobra’s, except the two short streams that came from her mouth directly hit the heads of the two immortals. And contrary to spitting cobra’s venomous poison, what she just ejected was a corrosive substance she had concocted inside of her during the past year.
It was not finished, not even close – she needed at least six more months to perfect it so that she could kill an immortal in body and soul, but the damned kid’s appearance messed up everything. It was not that she wanted to save him, in fact, she was ready to slap him dead herself, because after he killed Raynolds’s son there was no way anyone ever would willingly trade them away. Thus the only thing she could do was to try to immobilize the two immortals, take her daughter and flee.
A split moment later Henrietta realized she had severely underestimated her own talents. The corrosive effect of the substance she just spat was so effective that both Catrin Banes’s and Raynolds’s bodies began to melt at unbelievable rate and the Blood lord didn’t even manage to finish the curse ‘you, b*tch!’ when there was only two puddles of goo left from them.
Unfortunately, but as expected, the souls of the two immortals were not harmed and immediately dashed through the window. On one hand, it was good news since apparently after Raynolds’s arrival he didn’t turn on the pavilion’s protective formation, but on the other – Henrietta had no means of holding the two back. Obviously the local immortals had some forbidden weapons or artifacts that could capture a fleeing soul in their spatial treasures, but, ignoring the fact that those lie in the corrosive puddle of goo, she had to find the items first and learn how to use them, but there was simply no time for that.
That left Henrietta with only one option – run. But then something happened that made even a person with her experience and level of calmness freeze in her tracks. Under her shocked eyes the two fleeing red colored souls were smacked by the young man on the other side of the window and dispersed in light particles, indicating that the two immortals, with one being a Blood lord, were killed off entirely, just like that.
To Leo everything transpired almost in an instant and he hadn’t fully grasped what happened during the past few moments, but his heart wildly raced, fueled by large amounts of adrenaline. He realized he had caused some commotion, but what happened next almost gave him a stroke. Suddenly someone, a person, broke the dark window and landed next to him.
“I’m too angry to deal with you right now!” They said in a hoarse voice, “How many charges do you have left?”
“W … what?” Leo stuttered in shock, but then realized that the voice that somewhat resembled Blood lord Swan’s sandpaper-like speech belonged to a rather pretty lady, in fact, he had seen her before.
“Charges! Your item?!” Henrietta wasn’t sure she should actually be angry at the guy for using a forbidden item since she actually intended to do something that resulted in the same outcome, therefore she forced to calm herself down a bit and said, “How many souls can you still kill?”
This confused Leo even more and purely on instinct he replied, “Many?”
“Follow me!” She ordered and the group of five Nascent soul stage cultivators that rushed towards them instantly was destroyed.
They were twenty or so yards away at that moment, but Leo finally realized what his task was and five Lighting smacks later there were only dissolving particles left from the escaping nascent souls.
For the next few breaths he followed madam Henrietta’s mad rush and killed off Nascent soul stage cultivators like mosquitoes. When shortly after she realized they were the only ones left, she stared at him for few moments with complicated look and then said, “Give it to me!”
Leo’s first reaction obviously was a complete confusion. He has been a professional long ago, but he didn’t work anymore, right? And this was Alice’s mom! Why did she need to get horny all of the sudden? Or did the jailers feel her something bad?
Fortunately before he said anything stupid, Henrietta recognized the clueless expression in the dark and said with a sigh, “The forbidden artifact that you killed the souls of immortals with. Where is it?”
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“I … I don’t have any …” Leo finally understood what she talked about, but Musa’s warning immediately turned on the warning lights in his brain in addition to the rule number one highlighting above all.
“Don’t play games with me, kiddo!” She snorted.
Her bearing was so different from what Leo remembered, but once again it only accentuated the importance of his first rule. Even a fairy like lady’s like madam Henrietta’s true colors turned out to be scary, therefore he turned on his apologetic mode, “I’m sorry, I kind of did it without using anything …”
“Don’t give me that crap!” She barked and the next moment Leo felt a wave of heat washing over him.
Despite him being a proud Nascent soul stage cultivator, with the ‘proud’ part only according to any mortal realm’s standards, of course, Henrietta frisked him from head to toe and even checked his amulet in an instant.
She was confused with the results, but they didn’t have time to argue, so she paused, closed her eyes and massaged her temples few times to calm down, and then said, “We’ll come back to that!”
The next moment Leo realized she was gone. He stood alone and confused in darkness in the middle of the prison grounds, but then Henrietta’s shout ‘Alice, are you there!’ told him she only ran off to the place her daughter was held.
After arriving next to one of the smaller houses, Leo was met with Henrietta’s perplexed expression. For some reason the immortal didn’t just blow up the house and save her daughter, but stood there unmoving. He wanted to ask what the hold-up was for, but he was kind of scared of her after seeing her true colors. Fortunately Henrietta gave an explanation.
She said, “It’s protected by a formation or even several. If I try to forcefully enter she might get hurt.”
“Mhm.” Leo ‘knowingly’ nodded and stepped towards the door and, before the shocked Henrietta could stop him, opened it.
Madam Hubert couldn’t believe her eyes, seeing that Leo somehow completely ignored the common sense and the protective formation, but what she couldn’t believe even more was her daughter dashing out, jumping on the guy with a shout ‘I knew you’ll come!’ and planting a tight kiss right on his lips.
‘That damned f*cker was right! Maiden’s heart is unpredictable!’ Henrietta cursed in disappointment, but immediately softened up because Alice hugged her right after.
Of course, Henrietta couldn’t know that Leo once saved a woman by risking his life despite being enslaved by her, but Alice had heard this story several times and was certain he would not let her down. Of course, the circumstances were completely different and there was no basis for such confidence, but here he was, proving her right.
“Ok. Now we need to think of a way to get out of here.” Henrietta said after everyone calmed down, obviously not expecting any help from the two juniors and more voicing out her thoughts, “The formations protecting the perimeter could alarm the reinforcements and I won’t be able to escape with you two in tow. Leo, how did you get in?”
Actually this was the question that bugged her from the moment she recognized him after he killed Jay Raynolds. Unfortunately Leo’s answer didn’t clear up anything.
“It’s kind of ability of mine.” He said, awkwardly scratching his head, “I think I can bring the two of you out, but it’ll be your first time and will hurt a bit.”
“What?” The mother-daughter pair asked in one voice. The more the guy spoke the less sense he made.
“I think I have to infuse my Qi in you two, covering the surface of your bodies. It’ll allow us to bypass the formations.” Leo explained the best way he could, “But isn’t it easier for us to dismantle them from the inside? Just take down the flags? We did kill everyone, didn’t we?”
“What? You killed Jay too?” Alice clearly sounded upset and, seeing her mother nod, she complained, “Why! I was supposed to kill that damned bastard!”
Henrietta ignored her and said, “None of us are runemasters and even with my experience I’m not hundred percent certain I could detect alarm systems in darkness that might be set around the place. We don’t even know if there is someone coming from the capital at this very moment, thus we should rush to the closest teleportation platform as fast as possible.”
“Ok. Then we need to get to the city called Tenfu. It’s few hundred miles to the east, but with an immortal at our side we can freely use the teleportation platform over there.” To Leo her reasoning was good enough, but then remembered something and said, “Wait! You said there were immortals that we killed, right? We should take their stuff …”
“Right! Good thinking!” Henrietta nodded and for a brief moment vanished, and then returned with a small sack of items, “Blood lord Raynolds definitely has a lot of information on him that the Immortal Alliance will be interested in!”
Obviously Leo intended to get even richer than he was after looting Swan’s stuff, but he couldn’t say it out loud, at least not anymore, thus he awkwardly rubbed his nose and said, “Ok, then let’s go now. Hold my hand and try to not resist. I haven’t done this before, but I think it should work.”
This didn’t sound too convincing to the other two, but Henrietta quickly realized that there was no harm in trying – if anything went wrong it would’ve been the same as if directly charging through the formations.
Surprisingly it turned out there was harm in trying. Just as she took Leo’s hand, a slight numbness covered her body and a split moment later a stinging pain assaulted her from all over. It wasn’t an attack though – the pain came from the foreign Qi that in a thin layer enveloped her skin.
The realization struck her when she realized she didn’t recognize the element the Qi was infused with. Clearly the guy had some unique elemental mutation and that allowed him to do the weird stuff earlier. Henrietta looked at Leo in shock, but saw the guy’s brows wrinkled together and lips tightly pressed – apparently he was doing his best to concentrate and infuse as little Qi as possible in them to lessen the pain, but unfortunately it was too much for Alice who already passed out.
Nevertheless, Leo still held her tight and the trio flew over the wall and after they were few hundred yards away from the prison, Henrietta took Alice over. She had to admit, this was an incredibly unpleasant experience, but they were finally free, at least for now.
“Where are the rest?” She asked the logical question that popped in her mind earlier.
“Oh?” Leo knowingly nodded, “One of us went back around two months ago and Musa returned last night. I think he might get us some reinforcements, but you know how the bureaucracy in the Golden city works.”
Once again nothing Leo said made sense, although the way he said it made it seem as if he had a clue what he talked about. Truth to be said, from the moment she noticed him at her window not that much time has passed, but Henrietta slowly got used to the way he talked and didn’t get angry, but rather helpless.
“So you mean no Golden city immortals came with you?” Even though she realized how ridiculous the phrasing of the question was, implying the immortals could’ve tagged along him and not the other way around, she had to voice it and Leo shaking his head confirmed her suspicion.
‘You lucky girl!’ Henrietta looked at the unconscious daughter in her arms with loving eyes, ‘At least the ability to choose the right guy you inherited from me.’
Fortunately she said nothing out loud and Leo didn’t manage to spoil the mood by telling the truth. They were too busy rushing forth and at the sunrise they arrived at the outskirts of Tenfu.