Pov: Vik
He bent down to one knee and lowered his head to the deck plates.
This disciple... grasps it. Thanks, Master.
Pushpa leapt down from my shoulder, moved across the ground on her paws, and gave Noah's lowered forehead a soft tap with her black paw, then emitted a gentle, approving purr.
Having observed Pushpa's behaviour, I then said, "Since she has now given her approval, we can consider this conversation to be closed and turn our attention to other matters."
Noah nodded and then looked at Uncle Han, who was still unconscious and was sleeping so soundly.
While saying this I turned to all my disciples and said, "Right, everybody, let's go back to the Anonymous hall."
Therefore we took Uncle Han along with us, even though he is still unconscious but stable, and returned to Anonymous Hall via the teleportation gate located in Great White, while at the same time putting Great White into autonomous mode so that it will continuously change its position, moving from one lake to another lake or river.
One of the things I teach is to keep changing our position when fighting the chosen one since they could locate you regardless of the situation if you remain in one place; therefore, it is best for your safety to change and conceal your location.
When we got back to the Anonymous hall, we went to the main hall, where I asked my disciples to take a rest before holding a meeting, so that Lu Xiaoran went to see his parents, Roman went with him, Lina went to her research laboratory and Noah stayed with me.
Uncle Han of Noah awoke soon. When he woke up he looked at me in a confused manner and then looked at Noah and the surroundings. After that he said, "Young Master! Is that really you?"
While saying this, he hugged Noah and stammered, "Master, I've failed; I wasn't able to protect the young master. Now ourselves are in the afterlife. How am I ever going to face you?"
On hearing what he had said, Noah replied, "Uncle Han, you have truly gone senile; I have not died nor have I died, we are still alive and safe."
Uncle Han then settled down a bit, and Noah went on to explain to him the circumstances under which he had met me and had become my disciple. Upon this, Uncle Han looked at me with great gratitude and thanked me repeatedly, something which I accepted.
Having had a conversation with Uncle Han about certain matters, I then decided to interrupt them since I needed to ask Uncle Han some questions, the main ones being about Ruby.
Noah also knew what I intended, and so, before I could speak, he said, "Uncle Han, although you have a number of questions about me, I am all right and in better health than ever; but that doesn't matter—what I have come back here for is to recover the honor that I have lost and my family name."
Noah said, "That's the reason why I need your help—will you please tell me what happened to Ruby and what she did after I left West Oak City?"
Listening to him in a serious tone, Uncle Han smiled and remarked, "Ah, I understand, Master—you've come back to recover your lost honour and family name, perhaps even your lost love."
The remark concerning lost love had a strong effect on Noah, since I noticed his hand trembling. He still holds out the hope that one day he will be able to restore Ruby to her original state.
Yet Uncle Han didn't notice this and went on with his account of the things that Ruby had done in Noah's absence.
Uncle Han said to the young lord, "After you had been defeated by that Ruby, everything turned out exactly as she wanted it—the Bloodborn family and all its possessions became her private property, and she made certain that anyone who had remained loyal to the Bloodborn family was either exiled or ended up as her slave; I too unfortunately became one of her captives."
The retainer families who previously struggled to maintain the Bloodborn family's honour have now become mere lapdogs, tailing her whenever she gives the order, but that is not all. She has received support from a great many important figures, to the point that the
Heavenly Sword Sect has decided to make her one of their heirs; there is in fact some speculation among the sect's disciples that she is a direct disciple of one of the Heavenly Sword Sect's old ancestors.
"He's not merely a potential heir, Young Lord," Uncle Han went on, lowering his voice so that it sounded as if dry parchment were rubbing against stone. "The talk among the streets is a total lie. The true madness taking place inside your ancestral manor... no one outside those walls would ever believe it."
Noah tilted forward, his red eyes fixed in attention. "What on earth is this, Uncle Han? Tell me."
"Now she's not practising at all, Young Lord," Uncle Han whispered, his blind and scarred face expressing pure astonishment. "Two months ago she gave up swordsmanship altogether and stopped meditating as well; instead she locked herself up in the clan's ancestral vault, destroyed our thousand-year-old bloodline libraries, and turned the whole manor into an industrial slaughterhouse and workshop."
Noah blinked and was completely taken by surprise. "A... workshop?"
"Yes," Uncle Han muttered, shivering. "She ordered the city guards to round up hundreds of low-tier rogue cultivators, beast-tamers, and vagrants from the slums. But she didn't devour them for mana. She had them strapped down to stone slabs. The servants who carried food down to the dungeons saw things that made them vomit their guts out—she was methodically cutting open their Dantians, peeling out their spiritual roots, and surgically stitching them into living monsters! She grafted thunder-wolf organs into earth-bear beasts, fused human spell-pathways into mechanical brass puppets, and built strange, humongous glass vats filled with boiling green bile!"
Uncle Han held Noah's wrist with shaking fingers.
She is constantly talking to herself in a loud voice, arguing with a voice that is not there at all. She shouts things such as: 'Standard cultivation is far too slow! The drop rates from the high-ranking beasts are rubbish! If this world isn't going to provide me with an army of S-rank summons, then I'll just make them myself!' Young Lord, she's not behaving like a proud fairy or a sect master; instead, she's turning our ancestral home into a factory where chimeric abominations are produced!
Noah remained motionless, his jaw hanging open. The mental picture he had kept for months—of his well-bred, treacherous ex-fiancée standing elegantly on a mountain as a perfect fairy of the righteous path—was ruined and turned into a monstrous and strange reality.
This is really getting more and more complicated
I pondered this — a transmigrator who had abandoned the usual method of increasing his power level and instead turned himself into a mad Dr. Frankenstein with a system interface — while tapping my chin.
I questioned the system as to what he thought about this Ruby.
The system reports: "Ding! The telemetry scan has confirmed that target 'Ruby' has completely changed her method of operation! Instead of progressing through the usual circle ranks, she has activated a second administrative tree: the 'Apex Flesh-Forge Protocol!' She is now using the population of West Oak City as biological test subjects in order to mass-produce synthetic chimera cores!"
A slow and dark smirk appeared on my face, as I am now clearly adamant about killing such a chosen one who kills innocents to gain power.
This was entirely outside the usual cultivation stereotypes. The typical chosen ones were predictable in that they joined a sect, took part in tournaments, beat up arrogant young masters, snatched ancient inheritances, and pursued powerful prodigies.
Ruby had skipped the whole script; since the conventional cultivation route seemed too dull to her, she turned West Oak City into her own private laboratory for biological experiments and treated the local population as raw materials for an illegal army of monsters.
"Master..." Noah whispered, and turned his head in my direction, his face displaying a mixture of shock and absolute revulsion. "She's not only a greedy thief; she's entirely mad. If she releases an army of abominations that have been made out of flesh from our family's ancestral vaults, West Oak City will turn into a slaughterhouse all at once."
"A slaughterhouse?" I chuckled quietly and leaned back in my chair, running my finger gently over Pushpa's head. "No, Noah; the thing she's constructing down there is an alchemist's greatest nightmare."
I turned my gaze towards the doorway that led further into the Anonymous Hall, where the enormous emerald figure of Chintu, forty metres tall, was currently sleeping under the trees of the Great Fire Forest.
Does she want to play with chimeric mutations, flesh-forging, and bio-mechanical terrors?
My yellow eyes shone with a deep and wicked sense of amusement.
I got up and tapped the clean folds of my white scholar's robes as Pushpa coiled herself tightly around my collar.
You've done very well, Uncle Han, so rest and let the medicine take effect.
I looked towards Noah, my scholar's smile sharp, elegant, and wonderfully confident.
Noah, get Xiaoran, Roman, and Lina, and ask Lina to prepare Chintu's containment gate. If our beloved little transmigrator wants to have a monster battle, then we'll show her what a true prehistoric top predator is like when it crashes her laboratory.