Days Before The Banquet

Both Valeria and Fu Lan fell from the one and only arena remaining in the stadium. Tens of thousands of eyes physically visualized Fu Lan 'dragging' Valeria down with her as her abdomen was pierced by her own sword, but the next moment they both had already gone out of the people's eyes as the whole remaining arena became pieces and dust flew about like crazy all over the place.

With their mere raw strength alone, they would of course not have this much power to do more than to slightly crack the arena a little bit even to break it a tiny bit even if both of them joined each other in order to destroy the arena’s floor, but… With both Valeria and Fu Lan’s Mortal weapons having flown about and already destroyed the other arenas previously amidst their fighting, this time was no different as the whole thing collapsed with that one last move from Fu Lan.

“...There!!” But it only lasted about a few seconds, as the entire arena became a large cloud of dust spanning over more than 80 meters in diameter, it wasn’t that ‘tall’. Hence, the crowd could already see them the moment they went down the arena by quite a lot and came close to reaching halfway before plummeting against the cold and deathly ground down below.

Ciemnosc’s eyes shone when seeing their predicament, as Valeria held the handle still but Fu Lan no longer held Vay’s nape. Instead, her limbs were relaxed in midair as they both fell but her skin was slightly paled yet their eyes were still locking onto each other.

Neither the crowd nor anyone could hear it and even more so as they began making sounds, either by voicing their minds in these times of anxiousness as they fell or by standing up and becoming really too restless. Ciemnosc was the only one capable of truly hearing what they were saying, though it wasn’t anything scenery-like or cool.

Merely, Fu Lan suddenly grabbed Valy’s hands which still held onto her own short sword’s handle, then coughed a few bouts of blood that colored her mouth and the tip of her nose. Then saying, as her tone turned somewhat quiet and even soft. “Okay, you got it… I’m even with a higher cultivation base. You deserve my admiration…besides my love.”

Ciemnosc: ☉Ô☉

And so, Fu Lan braced herself from impact, whispering the words ‘I surrender’ under her breath before once again grabbing at Valeria’s nape, but this time, for the sake of closing their mouths together as their eyes were already finding themselves closing and meeting each other mentally.

With that last ‘struggle’, not that of Fu Lan destroying the last arena around with their bodies but of trying to wrestle back ownership of her short, thin, Mortal sword at the very last moment. Their kiss was accompanied by the silenced crowd which couldn’t help but marvel - at the beauty of their image together down below as they fell.

Swoosh, swoosh, swoosh- swiiiish~.

Just then, when Fu Lan and Valeria were just a few meters away from the ground and becoming beautiful blood, organs, bones, and hair spread all around it; a dozen figures came out from the sidelines and enveloped both of them in what Ciemnosc could easily see as a pre-inscribed array.

The array slowly came to slow down their fall and directly managed to stop them from falling without forcing their bodies to a sudden stop which, though they were advanced cultivators and not ordinary people, with the injuries they’ve sustained, their bodies were too weak to be considered at the same level as an ordinary person.

Slowly coming to a halt, the pair of beauties didn’t smile resplendently at each other once their eyes open, but slowly opening their eyes indeed, they looked at one another while standing with their feet on the transparent array beneath their feet while supporting each other.

It was only then, and finally, that the announcer himself became aware when they both glanced at him up above and then followed by the crowd that he claimed…

“Victory for Miss Valeria of the Self-Mutilating Honores Sect!! Champion of the current grand event, strongest Spirit Gathering realm cultivator in the world!!!”

“WEEEEEEAAAAAHH!!!!” - “Valeria, marry meeee!!” - “Valeria, marry Fu Lan~!!” - Woooooooooohhh~~!!”

While everything was going crazy, Valeria smirked to herself, and was proud of her achievements. Why wouldn’t she, eh? Fu Lan looked at her for another moment, Valeria’s right cheek appearing so docile and cute, before staring away and beginning to walk off the arena while taking out her own pelican from one of her bags and getting Valeria and herself onto it.

While more and more crowd cheering and loudly screaming continued, Valeria embraced Fu Lan from behind as they went up in the air, her head leaning over Fu Lan’s seemingly fragile upper back as she didn’t forget to give Fu Lan some medicinal pills that Ciemnosc gave to them 2 days ago…

Fu Lan’s body, especially her tummy could already be seen healing, riding her own pelican up into the sky and leaving the crowd for themselves as the little lovers went on their way to who knows and to do what.

The crowd continued to cheer on, especially from the Self-Mutilating Honores Sect seats, where all disciples were already aware that their sect would’ve yet again become champion of all the world in the Spirit Gathering realm and some of the other sects or cult were also similarly cheering on for whatever reason - be it at the spur of the moment or simply excitation.

“...Seems like our love will only be platonic, my Ciemnosc?” Hearing her voice, Ciemnosc turned around and looked up to see sect master Yolin looking down at him already and once again. His unfocused eyes became sober once more, the array’s inscriptions inside his head already moving, flowing, and formulating about as he crazily thought about it just now and became even more concentrated when they looked into sect master Yolin’s eyes and her whole beautiful face.

“...Mn.” Nodding towards her, Ciemnosc silently kept on glaring so directly at the sect master, while the grand ancestor and grand elder to her sides were with slight smiles around their faces. Not because of their conversation but because it was a ‘congratulations’ and ‘an honor’ time as all of the leading figures of all major organizations were slowly meeting each other at the center.

“Let’s go. We’ve already spoken long enough, I think. Let’s not make them wait any longer to hear our congratulatory words, the same as almost every year…” Sect master Yolin said, her dainty head shaking before standing up, revealing to Ciemnosc a nice rump behind her despite her long robes covering them. The white hugging her bottom and the azure-dull blue single stripe falling from her shoulders to the sides of her buttocks contrasted her tush evermore.

Ciemnosc stood up along with the Preferential Light Justice Sect’s grand elder and the grand ancestor to stand together with the sect master of the same. And as Ciemnosc was thinking enviously of these Obsidiafying realm cultivators being able to fly, a strange sensation that smelled all about sect master Yolin enveloped him suddenly but smoothly.

With his feet lifting from the floor, he turned his head to look at sect master, who was already looking up ahead but still turned and tilted her head to look at him and smiled, her eyes squinted and appearing improbably magnificent with her whole beauty being now accompanied by cuteness.

“...” Then, with a knowing smile, she made Ciemnosc feel a ‘you’re welcome’ from the left side profile of her face before they 4 moved towards the center where the Eagerburning Flames Sect, the Moribund Yearning Cult, and the Self-Mutilating Honores Sect, his own sect, were meeting.

“...congratulations, haha! That too…” Already coming close to the ‘little meeting’ as the crowd still not fully dispersed could only look at their leaders up above at the center of the stadium as if its damage mattered not. Ciemnosc could hear some ongoing congratulatory words. Indeed, from the other sect and cult to his own sect as he arrived with the upper echelons of yet another sect; the Preferential Light Justice Sect…

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“Sect master Holoriu, congratulations yet again for having your sect birthing another 2 fantastical disciples. Your elder and grand ancestor must be the most content right now.” Sect master Yoling came with her entourage into the fray, already congratulating her with a cold, stiff face.

“... Many thanks to sect master Yolin for her words, her little disciple Helala wasn’t anything easy to deal with by my sect’s disciples, hahaha.” Holoriu responded with a smile on his face, and after some moments of silently glancing at them and especially at Ciemnosc, who was seemingly coming with the other side to this meeting…so strange.

Needless to say, the rest of the upper echelons of the Self-Mutilating Honores Sect were simply looking at Ciemnosc, who came with the ‘saints’ of the world, not imagining such an image despite already being told by elder Tin about such a thing happening.

Grand ancestor Xing Kei seemed to have a lot of serious words to say but he ate them when he got to see grand ancestor Pesela standing unmoved and calmly beside Ciemnosc. While ancestor Pu Lianter looked at Ciemnosc, firstly taken aback and then with ease as if this couldn’t matter in any way possible and that everything was under control, fine.

“Ciemnosc…?” Still, the grand ancestor was the grand ancestor, and thus, while avoiding grand ancestor Pesela’s eyes that suddenly turned to look at himself; grand ancestor Xing Kei spoke to Ciemnosc, who was being semi hugged by the shoulders with sect master Yolin’s left arm.

“Um, grand ancestor?” Ciemnosc looked back at the old man and said, rather casually and inquisitively, not bowing nor showing a respectful-to-death attitude. Which for some reason, became more apparent now than ever, despite Ciemnosc always having been just like this.

“What are you doing there? Come here! You are from the Self-Mutilating Honores Sect, not the Preferential Light Justice Sect! So what are you doing on their side? Hurry up!” Grand ancestor Xing Kei’s voice was powerful and emitted his strength, which was wholly blocked by sect master Yolin, since it wasn’t a full attack nor was the grand ancestor versed in such ‘mild’ methods for attacking.

“...?” Raising her eyebrows and tilting their head to the left altogether. Both grand ancestor Pesela and sect master Yolin looked at the grand ancestor who tried to attack a Link Consolidation realm 7th stage cultivator of the same sect. With this, sect master Holoriu gave out a bitter and actually defeated smile when also seeing grand elder Li Tong also prepared to get involved, judging by the way her face changed to disgust the moment that grand ancestor Xing Kei actually attempted to attack a little boy.

“Well,” elder Tin intercepted at this moment, the rest of the Eagerburning Flames Sect and Moribund Yearning Cult is more than glad to see both enemy major organizations be so close to fighting each other right after the grand event - which wouldn’t be new at all. Hence, elder Tin showed no similar facial expression to when he first saw Ciemnosc ‘leave’ their side and ‘join’ the Preferential Light Justice Sect’s side.

“Ciemnosc, you should have spent enough time knowing the other major organizations. It’s time for you to return back to your own sect. Eh, don’t you have to go back to elder Apegos and train in your arrays and so on? Go ahead, this time let the adults talk to each other about what should be talked about… You have nothing to worry about.” Elder Tin seemed to add in the end, instinctively thinking that it was necessary to say.

Elder Tin became tense after saying them though, but seeing and hearing Ciemnosc’s next actions and words calmed him and everybody else - down.

“...Go ahead, my Ciemnosc. I wasn’t going to steal you away without a good reason anyway. You should leave us to do the talking here indeed.” Being looked at by the cute Ciemnosc, sect master Yolin said in return, caressing the back of his head a little before pushing his upper back.

“Mn.” Ciemnosc semi-nodded, his actions leaving everyone raising at least an eyebrow and at least halfway up. Being very careful, Ciemnosc stepped towards his own sect master, not greeting nor anything the most important member and the upper echelon of the entire sect before ‘standing’ beside and behind him and grabbing at his left arm to not fall down.

Sect master Holoriu ignored the happenings around them and slowly spoke again, with Ciemnosc watching how an elder came towards him and helped him fall back down to the bleachers where he could leave the stadium on his own…

“Sect masters and pastor, it is an honor to have you here. I can confirm with my word that the possible experiment will surely be successful…” The sect master Holoriu’s voice was already far away, but Ciemnosc was, yet again, still able to hear it. It contained conviction and not a small amount of obsession. While Ciemnosc couldn’t hear anymore after a few hundred meters separated them, and a special kind of barrier was set up around them.

The elder that brought him down seemed ill-humored and didn’t say a single word even as he left and went back up to surround the ‘little meeting’ going on, making sure not a single soul could go through or come nearby to peek or anything at all.

“...” Looking a few bits more into the sky, Ciemnosc’s darkest pools of eyes showed not a single emotion with his head facing up for a long, good while; before finally starting to move away with his feet sending him out of the stadium with concise, unhurried and…naive footsteps.

Ciemnosc wasn’t going to be bothered by a pair of big sisters anytime soon anyway, so he could patiently and calmly do his own in the mountain-rock basement however he wanted. Though, for the banquet a week and a half ago, he was rather quick to begin moving both his body and mind to start devising all kinds and tons of blueprints of sorts left and right.

. . .

For the next few days, Ciemnosc spent them all under the mountain-rock building, sometimes spending a lot of time in the basement and some other times in the study itself. Doing arrays, practicing new arrays he slowly came to begin with, and imagining new arrays that were all too necessary but seemingly…’not there’?

To create a really wide variety of tools, be it to craft or to use as a cultivator, Ciemnosc was already even capable of forging top-notch quality weapons and equipment alike. But as for equipment like Fu Lan’s bronze armor or her bracelets, he was naturally not capable of building anything like that.

Still, as he sold all of his creations off on his own and without the need of having elder Apegos do such a thing for him, all the money went into Ciemnosc’s pockets, with the materials having already been bought by him by those vouchers which were mostly long gone already but that at least did work as intended and gave Ciemnosc the type of help he needed the most.

As a ‘simple’ inner sect disciple, Ciemnosc was of course completely hopeless to even begin learning how to create shit quality equipment, let alone any weapon of sorts. If he didn’t have grand elder Jing Zhu’s help, going the conventional way, he would’ve taken tens of years to achieve what he had achieved now.

And it would’ve been even worse had it not been for elder Apegos accepting him early on, taking him as his student and amazing the poor old, grumpy man with only one eye remaining. Ciemnosc had indeed proved himself. Both to grand elder Jing Zhu and to elder Apegos, both in the ways that they hoped he would develop.

But it wasn’t just them whom Ciemnosc tried to ‘appease’ with his achievements; hence, there were the little, few events that were put up all by him. The victories, though helpful, were secondary in Ciemnosc’s plans as he couldn’t just go ahead and ‘hope’ that his corps would be attacked, much less go ahead and kindly ask the enemy to attack them so that he could gain merit.

If anything, a simple tactic in the middle of such wars or prelude to wards was the cold treatment-’tactic’; as long as a great enemy with leading and devising capabilities showed up, after a couple, or few, battles. One could deduce the kind of power that they held over their troops and what kind of fate awaited them if they kept on fighting such an enemy.

Hence, simply reducing the merit of that enemy by…not doing anything was what was most opted to do by all 4 major organizations, let alone kindly sending walking merit to die at the hands of one’s enemy to become their merit. In any case, and in some way, Ciemnosc had been just lucky to find such eager commander enemies that were also clueless to the practical use of the armored cars.

And it is in such a way that Ciemnosc at least did manage to find his way through the victories he got before, to return and ask for much more than he should’ve. Not only confident in not being berated or ignored, much less said no to - but also confident in knowing he couldn’t be denied such a thing since…owning the Little Lake was just that much of a temptation.

Besides, who is to say that a little kid wouldn’t move away to another, better-treating and ‘beautier’ place where his talents were fully developed and allowed to grow as much as they could? At least it would be so with others, especially with the Preferential Light Justice Sect, whose hegemony was just nearing that of the Self-Mutilating Honores Sect.

But then again, anyone else would want to have technology and array-fusion to the best of the best at the moment, conquer the world and prepare for the upbringing of the whole world to a brand new level never seen before!

Ultimately, however. Though Ciemnosc didn’t have any more visits from Valeria’s part… He still had a reason to be motivated, even if he was just a child and needed cuddling and being pampered. The sensation of danger that he got…from his own sect when he returned to them… Really made him not want to come back at all, fearing as if… As if they would devour him the moment he went to sleep.

Hence, his already sleepless self…became totally sleepless. But, at least his work was there and was improving despite it being already mind-blowing very well beyond the norm.

…