She was currently at the middle phase of the Integration stage’s fifth level. If she could refine even a fifth of the soldiers up ahead, at the very least it would provide her with enough energy to achieve a minor breakthrough. The same could be said for Havel, who would likely step into the third level of the same stage after this stretch of training. Considering the astronomical growth in cultivation that they had enjoyed in recent weeks, it was no wonder that so many members of the sect obtained elder status during the last Acquisition. In order to be the lowest of said rank, one was required to be in the late levels of the Integration stage, or to possess a strength that fell into that range. She couldn’t help but wonder how many members of the Core would achieve a new status in the coming years.

  Sersa quickly located the rest of her black-robed brethren, as well as Renay, and instructed them to head to the city of Westerbrook and hasten to take it. The nobles of this city had made a name for themselves in defence of their kingdom, for despite the city’s modest size the Earl that ruled over it and the surrounding lands had produced over a dozen sons and daughters that had all inherited his natural talent for cultivation. The scions of their house were also in possession of several martial skills that had given the invading armies a difficult time in recent weeks, felling one allied war party after another while taking minimal losses on each occasion.

  The Earl’s heirs were estimated to possess strength similar to disciples from the Core, giving their army a tremendous advantage over any of the roaming war parties that at best were commanded by two or three of such disciples. With the aid of the local nobility they had carved out a small territory where fleeing citizens had been able to enjoy safe haven for several weeks, a prime stock of valuable cultivation resources that had peaked the interest of the largest war parties in the area.

  Kane was left in charge, a stimulant to the blond boy’s vanity that she hoped would heighten the chances of rash decisions.

  “Look, brother.” The shorter sibling had turned to Havel upon receiving his orders, indicating toward a large pillar of smoke that rose up from the eastern end of the city. “Someone went ahead and burnt down their library. All that burnt parchment. A wonderful smell, isn’t it?”

  After dismissing Kane and commanding the others to ignore the approaching infantry, she led Havel eastward toward the oncoming soldiers, who had changed course at the sight of the war party that had just poured out of Camomile.

  Sersa dove into the main body of enemy troops and leapt skyward where she finished activating the Crippling Blood Palm and then plummeted downward to flatten a knot of forty heavily armoured soldiers. The force of her attack sent all of them to the ground with a crude series of steel clangs, strong enough to floor them, to break their bones and steal their breath, but not enough to allow their lives to bleed away.

  Havel appeared at her side as a large scarlet serpent swam through the air around them and then suddenly constricted around a dozen startled men, who were quickly crushed at the midsection after being compressed into one another by the powerful translucent creature.

  Although the local lord’s forces put up a valiant fight, they were defeated in a destructive manner that left a vast stretch of bloodstained steel and horrific gore where their once intimidating force had just stood. Sersa managed to reserve a hundred survivors for herself and forty for Kane, for hardly any of the enemy’s number managed to live long enough to serve as supplementation for their cultivations.

  “You see the great elder more than anyone else within this new domain. Why hasn’t he made a move yet? He is a Genesis-staged cultivator capable of flight and heightened inner essence manipulation. Surely he could flatten Westerbrook and all within it without much trouble.”

  “I don’t doubt it,” she said carefully. “But he has hinted that there is an individual within this kingdom that he doesn’t want to provoke. If he were to openly participate in the war then the person in question would have no choice but to act, and the same could be said if it were the other way around. Neither side would benefit if those two were to fight one another.”

  “There’s someone in this kingdom that is powerful enough to make a great elder act with such caution? The people of this land were supposed to pose the lowest of threats among the member states within their so-called League of Easterly Kingdoms.”

  “It sure makes you think, hmm, Havel?”

  She led her new forces to meet up with the greater body of disciples that had moved to surround the city of Westerbrook in the same fashion that they had done with Camomile, though was put off to find a massive war party locked in combat with another host of equal size in a huge swath of spilling violence that surrounded the sizeable grey-walled city. Several battles were taking place on such large scales that the turbulent pockets of fighting spanned a stretch of an entire league, a vast spectacle that she and her second-in-command observed from the highest point of a distant hilltop tree.

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  “That’s not our war party.” Havel squinted as a rough breeze shifted the upper foliage of the tree. “Ours is the scattered force.” He pointed to the northeast where one of the many pockets of dispersed bloodshed had caught his eye, Renay and Kane contributing more to the slaughter than most in their area.

  It appeared that dozens of local lords had led their armies toward Westerbrook, and that Sersa’s war party had fragmented in order to deal with them as they appeared.

  “It seems that they chose to cover the backs of the other war party. Your brother isn’t as foolish as I thought.”

  “You give him too much credit,” the young man said, his brow beaded with sweat as he observed the tens of thousands of people warring before his bright blue eyes. “A war party of that size will have more than just a few members from the Core. They’ll want to claim all of those resources for themselves—why share with those from another domain?”

  “It’s possible that they sent him away.” She wished she could have seen the look on the insidious boy’s face as he was turned away by the others of similar station and denied such a vast supply of high-quality cultivation resources. “He must have rejoiced at the oncoming armies.”

  “I suggest that we leave him be and join the main force. It seems that they’ll be in need of some assistance soon enough.”

  A great column of heavy cavalry had plowed through their main contingent, killing hundreds of their brethren as they made a bid for the rear of the sect’s forces where several hundred inner court disciples stood on standby atop a wide knoll covered in trampled grass. Three horses at the fore of the Haussian charge were larger than those around them by a significant margin, their heavily armoured riders sitting a full pace higher than those at their backs, with heavily drooping mains of soft inky hair and dark black eyes that contained an awareness that superseded partial sentience.

  This breed of horse was impressively muscular, taller and broader of shoulder than most others with dangerous slabs of rippling muscle on every section of its body. Of the ones within her line of sight, there was not one whose dark silken mane lacked thick-plated armour of matte black metal, which also covered the bulks of their figures. The knights that rode upon their backs were also clad in suits of heavy black armour, their powerful arms lunging out with regular ferocity with long lances that were sharpened to needle-fine points.

  “That should be an elite force of the Earl’s,” she murmured, holding her hand up for the small force behind the hill to hold its position.

   How could a city of this size raise so many Blackmare stallions? Although this particular breed of horse had an extremely low fertility rate, each one was born at the fifth level of Profound Entry and wouldn’t be at risk of demonizing until achieving the middle levels of the Integration stage. The only drawback was the remarkable amount of resources that it took to raise even a single one, as she had personally experienced once her master had purchased twenty such steeds off of an elder of similar station.

  The oncoming force left a destructive path of devastation in its wake, a crimson stretch of countless youthful corpses that were pockmarked with grotesque holes that the deadly lances had punched straight through their bodies. Just when it seemed as if the powerful charge would penetrate as far back as the knoll that supported the commanders of the large war party, several blurs of nondescript blackness flew forth from the centre of the reserve formation and immediately appeared above the oncoming force with manifestations of their devious-handed martial skills.

  Six massive hands swatted down at the trampling force, which galloped forward at a blinding pace as the sea of disciples before them leapt directly into their ranks with glowing red hands or sizeable, deadly serpents extending from their scarlet-robed arms. Aside from the more powerful individuals, most people that cultivated the Blood Burning Heart Technique tended to blackout during largescale conflicts, lost in literal bloodlust. This often caused them to make irrational decisions and thus compromise their safety and that of those around them, a damaging impracticality that none among those in command seemed to care in the least about addressing.

  The mass of battle-hardened horsemen scattered in all directions as the house-sized hands came hurdling down with pressing authority, the leaders of the enemy charge leaping from the backs of their horses and arriving before the Core disciples in a flash. Several powerful auras followed suit, and every single leader of the sect’s war party suffered from a pincer attack of varying severity.

  Those should be the young nobles that I’ve been hearing so much about.

  Three powerful disks of indigo energy honed in on a young man that had just killed thirty of the scattering horsemen with a devastating attack, one flying wide while the other two hacked him into three disconcerting pieces. Only a few black-robed youths were able to entirely avoid the surprise attacks that the enemy leaders had opted to take instead of attempting to protect their soldiers. The target of two attacks, another disciple slid into several slices of gore in an explosion of bright light and scarlet liquid.

  A young woman lost an arm but managed to summon a smaller hand of devious energy that served as a wall between her and her assailant, who cut the martial skill in half as the single-limbed disciple plummeted downward while standing atop a scarlet serpent that bore into the central front of the battle like a starved, deranged dragon.

  Ariana! Sersa recognized the young woman that always stuck around Marcus’s direct disciple, that flippant boy that always subjected her to the same incessant taunts that he directed at nearly every disciple within the Core without care for their reactions. The large war party before her likely came from the great elder Marcus’s principal domain.