After confirming he hadn’t made a mistake, Red informed Aurelia about what he felt.

“There’s someone I recognize from my old town.”

“Hm? Who is it?”

“You wouldn’t recognize him. He was gone before you arrived, but he used to work for Gustav.”

Reinhart was a subordinate of Gustav back in Bestrem town. After the trial where Red acquired his inheritance, he disappeared and was never heard from again.

“So it’s a spy?” Aurelia asked with a dismissive tone.

“Very likely.”

“We already knew there would be those around her, so why do you seem surprised?”

Red didn’t respond. In truth, his time interacting with Reinhart was short, but their struggles inside the trial land were something he could never forget. The man was decisive, ruthless, and second only to Domeron in swordsmanship. And of course, he also betrayed them and had a vendetta against Allen and the remains of the sect behind him for removing his Spiritual Sea from his body.

‘He wouldn’t remember much about what happened inside there, though.’

The hawk spirit had wiped out the memories from every participant but Red, and all that remained in their minds were lingering feelings and conclusions about what happened then. For all he knew, the man might not even remember Red at all after so long.

‘But why is he here?’

Was he still working for Gustav?

‘He was also inside the trial like me, so he wouldn’t be able to avoid the Empire’s divination.’

Unlike Red, he didn’t have protection against divination and, unlike his companions, he also wasn’t under the protection of a sect, so he would be chased down to verify if he received the inheritance. So how did he escape their chase?

‘No, he might not have escaped.’

It was difficult to imagine he could have fooled their pursuit, so the most reasonable conclusion was that he was likely captured but not killed. That led Red to come up with one possibility.

‘He could be working for the Empire directly.’

After they found out Reinhart did not win the inheritance, they might have wanted to use him to find the rest of the Water Dragon Sect, whom he was very familiar with. In fact, it could be possible he was the one who might have told them about Yrsa, something only Gustav should have known about.

This was all just a theory Red came up with on the spot, so he could still be off the mark. Whatever the case, he refused to believe the man’s presence here was just a coincidence.

“You’re not speaking!” Aurelia’s voice brought him out of his thoughts. “Tell me why you seem so worried. Is there something strange about this man? Is he a powerful cultivator?”

“No. He hasn’t opened his Spiritual Sea.”

“Damn it, then why all the fuss? I know you’re not the sentimental type.”

Aurelia was right. It wasn’t sentimentality that gave Red pause here. He could continue with his plan without having another thought about Reinhart, but his cautious nature told him to not act rashly and think things through.

His Water Dragon Sect was full of people who were stuck at their cultivation level but had achieved things beyond what one would expect, which was something Red was sure about after learning what mastery meant. Hector was a water grandmaster, Rog was an archery master, Goulth was a blacksmith master, and Domeron, he was at the very least a sword master, perhaps a grandmaster. All of them had an air of experience and danger around them, and they could accomplish things that weren’t limited by their cultivation level.

This was something that always stuck in Red’s mind, and very few people ever invoked a similar feeling in him.

Reinhart was one of those people.

“He might be working with the Empire… And he’s a dangerous man.” Red said.

“Huh?” Aurelia seemed confused. “You want to kill him?”

“If the opportunity presents itself, yes. However, I want to follow him for now.”

“Ugh, does this really call for a change of plans?”

“If it was anyone else, maybe not.”

Reinhart, however, was both a dangerous man and also someone with deep connections to the trial and, consequently, the Empire. Even if Red succeeded with kidnapping Yrsa, his mere presence in this city was a threat to his identity, even if he could not remember what happened inside the inheritance land.

After reaching this decision, Red set off to stalk Reinhart. When he set eyes on him from the rooftops, he could see the man had aged and changed his appearance a lot, but his figure was still recognizable. Not only that, but that same sensation Red felt from him before seemed to have intensified.

‘Did he get stronger?’

His cultivation hadn’t progressed, but somehow the man carried himself differently. It was hard to pinpoint, but it made Red raise his guard even further.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

Reinhart walked through the outskirts of the capital, never seeming to keep to the shadows or cut corners through an alley. He wasn’t afraid of being spotted.

Finally, he arrived at a small wooden house in a less active street and entered it. Red couldn’t feel any fluctuations other than Reinhart’s inside, and nothing else stood out to him either from the neighboring houses. Controlling his breath, he then approached the now lit house, peeking into a window while remaining unseen.

From between the gaps of a half closed curtain, he saw the man taking off his armor before sitting down at a table with an exasperated sigh. Then he took out a strip of paper from a small box that Red immediately recognized.

‘A communication talisman.’

Reinhart activated the talisman before speaking into it.

“Nothing new to report. I still think this is worth pursuing, and since the girl’s condition is worsening, if they’re going to do something, they will do it soon,” he scratched his beard with a bored expression. “Whatever the case, now that we have captured her brother too, the kids would be forced to move one way or another.”

Red felt his blood run cold once he heard this.

‘Captured Rimold? How?’

Wasn’t he in the Skycrown Mountains? Why would he leave the safety of that place?

A second later, Red realized his question was silly. He left that place because he was worried about his sister, of course.

‘Still, there must have been better ways to check up on her than doing it himself.’

Yet, he couldn’t put it past Rimold to do something like that. He didn’t know whether his sister would survive so long without medicine, and he obviously couldn’t imagine Red was here looking out for her. Then, there was also the fact he probably wouldn’t trust anyone else to help him out, considering his upbringing. All things considered, perhaps it wasn’t strange at all he would set off on his own and be captured.

Whatever the circumstances behind this capture might have been, though, it created a lot of other problems.

For one, Allen would definitely not stand still after learning his companion was captured, though whether he, a talented cultivator, would be allowed to leave the Crystal Sky Sect on his own was questionable. Knowing this, a lot more pressure was then put into Red to act.

‘I need more information.’

Even if he was eager to help, he knew rescuing Rimold wouldn’t be a simple matter. For one, it sounded as if he was being kept by the Imperials, and from Carlhanne to the Skycrown Mountains was a vast distance, so it was simply impossible to know where he was captured or was being held. Even if Red knew, what kind of guards would the Empire have dispatched to imprison Rimold considering this was a matter they took so seriously? It wasn’t far-fetched to imagine even Spirit Core cultivators could be involved.

‘What can I possibly do?’

The more Red thought about it, the more helpless he felt. Yet, abandoning a sect member wasn’t a choice either.

With that in mind, Red looked at Reinhart again before making a decision. He hopped up to the second floor of the house before finding a window to enter.

“Hey, I thought you were just going to watch him!”

Aurelia’s alarmed voice reached his ears as he unlatched the window with a wind tendril. He didn’t respond to her, afraid of raising his voice and being noticed.

As Red stepped in, he used a gentle breeze to soften the noise of his footsteps and looked around in search of traps or formations Reinhart could have set for intruders. Sure enough, there were a few of them set around the corridors and doors of the second floor, which he could immediately identify with a cursory glance.

It was evident these weren’t installed by a formation master, and in Red’s eyes, they were all quite amateurish. Without so much as hesitation in his movements, he avoided and disarmed the traps, waving his finger around as imperceptible but sharp waves of wind cut and disrupted the formations. Soon, he arrived downstairs, where he saw Reinhart.

The man was sitting at the table with his back to him, seemingly busy writing something. His fluctuation showed no signs that he had noticed anything amiss, so Red continued to approach. It wasn’t until he was just a few meters away that something happened.

“Hm?”

Reinhart seemed to notice something amiss, but before he turned around, Red acted.

Four wind blades shot out of his hand, targeting one of his limbs each. The man reacted with surprising agility as he rolled off the table to avoid them, showing reactions far surpassing the average vein opening practitioner. Yet, this too was something Red was expecting, which was why he got so close before attacking.

Three blades found their mark, cutting into the muscles of his legs and left arm and causing the man to immediately buckles as he failed to sustain himself. Yet, with his right hand, he had grabbed and drawn his sword, which he swung around even in the process of being cut.

Red, however, was already upon him. Covering his right arm in wind, he slapped the sword out of Reinhart’s grasp and then stomped into his chest with an attack too fast to dodge.

“Ugh!”

Reinhart spit blood as he was pinned to the ground under the intruder’s foot. Still conscious, he tried to struggle to free himself, to no avail. Then, when he looked up and saw the masked individual staring at him without moving, he seemed to give up.

To Red’s surprise, the previously serious expression on Reinhart’s face gave way to a resigned smile.

“Ah, fuck… I should have seen this coming.”

Red ignored him, instead focusing his consciousness inside his body as he communicated with the crimson mist.

“Allen would never act like this, so I can only assume… You’re Red, right?”

Although the man sounded confident, it was clear from his fluctuation that he was merely bluffing. After all, there were other people with reason to target him.

‘But none of this matters.’

A few seconds later, Red received a reluctant but positive response from the mist inside his body. It told him that there were limits to that power, but once more shouldn’t be a problem.

“Heh, it’s fine if you don’t want to admit it. I can tell just from- hey, what are you doing?”

Reinhart’s expression changed as he saw Red cut his own hand with a dagger before dripping the blood over the man’s mouth. He tried to turn his head to avoid it, but the blood seemed to take a life of its own as it shot into his mouth.

“Argh, what the fuck?!”

The man started coughing incessantly, and Red stepped off his chest.

He was now establishing a blood oath like he did with Emer.

The crimson mist battled with Reinhart’s will. The man was offering far more resistance than the imp, and as such, the process was taking much longer than Red was expecting. For a second, he was even expecting the crimson being to lose, but eventually Reinhart’s resistance seemed to die down along with his coughs.

Then Red could feel it. They were now bound as servant and master.

“You…” Reinhart looked at him in shock. However, a second later, he burst out in laughter. “Haha, oh my! Who knew you had such tricks on you?”

His sudden acceptance of his situation made Red frown, but his response didn’t matter.

“You can feel our connection, correct?” He asked.

“Ah yes. Some kind of blood contract, I assume?”

“That’s right. So you should now understand that any actions you take against my best interest are considered a breach of the contract and will result in your death.”

“I see,” Reinhart nodded, still wearing a smile. “I was expecting a lot of things, but I must say you took me by surprise. You were decisive and ruthless, as all cultivators should be.”

Red ignored his backhanded compliment.

“Tell me about Rimold. Where are you keeping him?”

Reinhart looked at him in confusion for a second, before bursting out in laughter again.

Red frowned under his mask. “Answer the question.”

“I wouldn’t know, kid. We haven’t captured him at all.”

“…What do you mean?”

“You know exactly what I mean. I was just fishing in case the fish were listening,” Reinhart shrugged. “I had a plan and everything, but… While the fish took the bait, it seems I ended up reeling in a shark instead.”

He had been tricked in the end.