CHAPTER 210: The Ash Lotus and the Portals of Chaos
Here again... thought Kael Morningstar, contemplating the impenetrable undergrowth that rose before his eyes after stepping out of the portal.
The young warrior let out a sigh, resting his hand on the pommel of his great obsidian sword. How strange the contrast feels. When I came the first time, I was a mere child in the Origin Realm trying to survive every shadow... And now, stepping on this earth as a damn Saint. Hehehe... let's see what kind of beasts we run into today.
But just as he was about to take his first step into the dampness of the forest, a heavy, thick, and oppressive feeling overcame him.
What was that feeling? What was happening in the thicket? His Sword Heart beat with abnormal force against his ribs; his body tensed instinctively, as if the very wind rustling the treetops were laden with malice. In the midst of that sudden alert, he felt an invisible pull, deep and visceral, calling him in a specific direction.
Remembering his Patriarch's exact words—"Turn off your reasoning, follow your instincts, and let your blood do the rest"—Kael did not hesitate for a single second. The marble of the portal cracked beneath his boots and the youth vanished in a blur of silver speed.
Sprinting through the foliage, the speed granted by his Saint Realm cultivation was overwhelming. The leaves barely moved in his wake. As he advanced like lightning, he constantly used his spiritual sense, scanning the area within a radius of several kilometers.
Mmmm... there are only beasts up to the Origin Realm at most here, and a few stragglers from the Semi-Saint Realm, he calculated in his mind.
However, as he ran, his chest tightened more and more, as if he were about to lose something supremely important.
...I have to go faster. If only I could fold space like Violeta, he clicked his tongue. Let's pick up the pace.
Just as he prepared his meridians to push his speed to the limit, the earth trembled. From the brush, three colossal Stage 1 Saint Grade beasts suddenly emerged, stepping directly into his path, flanked by hundreds of lower-ranking creatures growling with drooling fangs.
Kael stopped dead in his tracks, kicking up a wake of mud and dry leaves.
Knowing he had no time to lose, as his instinct was already warning him of a bloody hunt occurring in the distance, he released the overwhelming pressure of his dragon bloodline. The weaker beasts backed away whining, but when the three Saint Grade beasts roared, the rest were forced to ignore Kael's pressure and prepared to pounce.
Kael gritted his teeth, unsheathing The Magma Fang.
"DAMN IT, I GAVE YOU THE CHANCE TO LEAVE!" roared the young warrior. "BUT NOW, DIE!"
In order not to waste a single microsecond, Kael unleashed his ultimate art without mercy.
[Semi-Domain: The Realm of the Crimson Ash Lotus]
The metallic beat of his Sword Heart tolled in the forest with the force of a colossal zen bell. There were no loud detonations or uncontrolled bursts of fire. Within an exact radius of fifty meters, the world suffered an instantaneous degradation: the entire forest lost its colors, turning a pale, opaque ash gray. The fabric of reality slowed down abruptly, and a deathly silence fell over the battlefield, extirpating the noise of the wind and the enemy's roars.
Kael launched his slash.
[Crimson Slash: Extinction of the Blood Lotus]
The warrior did not execute a common physical slash. His heavy sword vibrated at a frequency so high-pitched that matter began to unravel before being touched. A line of pure, white light tore through the gray world. The cut ignored the hardness of the scales and the beasts' Qi because the technique had just "erased" the very concept of protection.
The slash passed through the hundreds of monsters accompanied by the echo of the bell. The bodies of the beasts did not spill a single drop of blood; they cracked like old ceramic and crumbled into a fine white ash and red lotus petals that withered in the empty air.
All the beasts were exterminated before they could even blink.
Kael did not stop to look at the corpses. He sheathed in the same movement and activated his movement technique.
[Dance of the Crimson Dragon: Step of the Fiery Void]
His Eternal Forge Heart converted his anatomy into a mass of pure ancestral fire. Kael stopped running; he began to "flow" with the density and heat of molten metal. The air around him scorched, warping gravity as multiple silhouettes of a translucent lava dragon flickered across the forest, leaving behind white ash lotuses that burst into sparks in his wake.
His speed exploded. In a matter of minutes, he crossed tens of kilometers until reaching the hollow where the scent of human blood originated.
Instead of landing on the ground, Kael leaped cleanly onto the thick branch of a millennial tree, hiding his presence to evaluate the situation.
Looking down, his golden eyes opened wide.
A girl lay sprawled in the mud, breathing agonizingly. Her face, though covered in dirt, displayed noble, symmetrical, and sharp features, framed by long hair of a brilliant, pure silver. Her athletic and compact figure, with subtle curves and wiry legs optimized for extreme speed, was covered in bruises, and a deep cut bled on her waist and back. Despite the pain, her eyes the color of winter frost shone with an indomitable resentment.
Around her, ten beast-men mercenaries mounted on ebony panthers laughed uproariously.
The bandit boss dismounted, walked over to the girl, and, with a heavy spiked boot, stepped directly onto the bleeding wound on her back, tearing an agonizing groan from her.
"Ah... since you're going to die in this swamp anyway, I will grant you your final question," the mercenary mocked, twisting his foot to make her scream. "The one who sold you to us was your own dear uncle, Vane Vael. HAHAHAHA!"
"W-What...?" the silver-haired girl opened her eyes wide, shaking her head frantically against the mud. "How could that be...? No, no, no... This is a lie! You are a damn liar!"
"HAHAHAHAHA! Why would I waste my breath lying to a corpse like you?" the man spat to the side. "Your uncle handed us all your information on a silver platter, and my young master used the little gift to win his favor. You're just a bastard bitch. Just because your mother was someone of status in the past you thought nothing would happen to you, huh? Hehehe! Your mother is a filthy whore."
Hearing that insult, the young woman's eyes injected with blood. Kael, hidden on the upper branch, felt his own heart skip a violent beat. Why did it hurt so much to see this girl? Why was fury burning his throat?
"YOU DAMN BASTARD! DON'T TALK ABOUT MY MOTHER!" she screamed.
She lunged upward, seeking to cut the man, but the mercenary slapped her with the back of his armored gauntlet, sending her sword flying and knocking her to her knees.
"You, an Origin Realm Stage 2 think you can take me, a Semi-Saint! You are stupid!" roared the boss. "HAHAHA! But now that I think about it, your appearance isn't bad at all."
The leader licked his lips. The young woman closed her eyes with tears of despair, murmuring an apology to her mother.
"I like that expression!" the leader shouted to his men. "Now, boys, let's enjoy this delicious body!"
"Yeah, I want to be first!" another shouted.
"Shut up, obviously it will be me, understood!" the leader bellowed, reaching his claws toward the collar of the girl's dress.
Kael gritted his teeth on the branch. Something snapped inside his mind.
But the mercenary's filthy hand never touched her.
At that exact second, the ten immense ebony panthers reacted to the dragon aura Kael intentionally let drip from above. The siege monsters let out a sharp, pathetic, and pitiful whine; they peed themselves out of sheer panic and cowered against the mud, trembling violently and refusing to look up.
And from the shadows of the tree canopy, breaking the silence, a slow, rhythmic, and sepulchral applause flooded the hollow.
Clap.
Clap.
Clap.
Clap.
The ten beast-men looked up simultaneously. They saw no one. But just as the boss was about to yell an order, an ultrasonic whistle sliced through the air.
Kael descended like a blur of ancestral fire, using the dead space of his technique.
Slash!
The sound was wet, brutal, and definitive.
"Aaaagh! AAAAAAAGH!" the mercenary leader's shriek echoed off the tree trunks.
When the nine remaining bandits looked down, they were struck dumb with terror. Their boss had fallen to his knees, clutching his right shoulder as blood gushed out. His dominant arm, along with the claws that were about to touch the girl, had been severed cleanly from the collarbone and lay in the mud.
Standing in front of them, placing himself between the young woman and the mercenaries, was Kael. His long dark-red hair fluttered fiercely. With one arm he supported the exhausted body of the girl, and in the other hand he wielded The Magma Fang, its blade dripping with the leader's smoking blood.
"What a pathetic story I just heard from the branches," spoke Kael, flicking the blood from the blade with a dull snap. "And how deeply disgust me you people. Ten grown men... all in the Semi-Saint stages, plus ten siege beasts, against one Origin Realm girl. Have you no shame? Your ancestors must be rolling in their graves."
"YOU...! WHO ARE YOU, BASTARD!" shouted one of the beast-men, backing away in terror.
Kael looked up. The floodgates of his killing intent burst open, and his pupils mutated, shining with molten gold and the vertical slit of a primordial predator.
The air became as heavy as pure lead. The mercenaries felt the edge of ten thousand swords tightening around their throats, unable to move a muscle.
The girl in his arms, on the verge of passing out, barely managed to whisper:
"Help me..." before falling into a deep sleep, shattered by the wounds and the days of hunting.
Kael looked down at the girl's dirty face. I will find out why I feel this indomitable connection with you, he promised himself. Then he returned his attention to the assailants.
"You don't need to know my name," Kael ruled with an icy voice. "The dead do not speak."
"YOU DAMN BASTARD!" shouted the leader, desperately using his Qi to stem the bleeding from his stump. "YOU CAN'T KILL US! OUR YOUNG MASTER IS THE YOUNG MASTER OF THE IRON FANG SECT. HIS FATHER IS THE SECT MASTER, A SAINT KING! YOU CAN'T DO ANYTHING TO US!"
Kael blinked, and a grim, mirthless smile curved his lips.
"Mmmm... Oh, so... HAHAHAHAHAHA!" the youth's laughter cut through the air. "That idiot is your master. Well, it just so happens that guy owes me something: his own head. So don't worry, you'll soon join him in hell. But before I execute you, I want to know why you attacked this girl."
"HAHAHAHA!" the leader spat blood, believing himself untouchable due to his faction's name. "You're playing the hero saving the damsel, thinking that's how you'll win her love. Boy, a word of advice: that girl is out of your league. If you touch her, King Yama will rip your skin off!"
"Since you don't want to talk... you can die."
"W-!"
Before the mercenary could finish the syllable, Kael unleashed the entirety of his Sword Intent.
[The Realm of Opaque Ash]
The forest lost its color abruptly, swallowed by an absolute gray. From Kael's pores and the outline of his heavy sword, clouds of white and red ash detached and floated toward the sky, defying gravity. The acoustic void buried the heartbeats of the mercenaries.
Kael traced a single horizontal arc with his sword. The distant toll of a zen bell marked the end of their existences.
Crimson ash lotuses bloomed in the air, consuming the matter of the ten men and their beasts at a molecular level. In a matter of a millisecond, the hollow was emptied, leaving only black lines of void in space that quickly closed. Total silence.
The next instant, Kael's divine sense caught dozens of hostile presences approaching rapidly, led by an overwhelming Qi signature. Knowing he couldn't protect the wounded young woman in the middle of open warfare, Kael hoisted her onto his shoulder and vanished in a blur of white ash.
A few minutes later, several dozen experts dressed in black landed in the muddy clearing.
In front of them, an elder with a cruel gaze and dense aura descended.
"Tsk... I told those useless fools to finish up quickly," the elder grunted, spitting in the mud.
However, looking closely, he didn't find a single trace of vulgar combat. There was no blood, no bodies. He only found perfect grooves where matter had simply been excised from reality.
"Mmmm..." the elder narrowed his eyes. "A great swordsman was here. That little girl couldn't have made these cuts. Someone saved her. Search the entire damn place! If you don't find her before dawn, you know the consequences!"
"Yes, sir!" shouted the assassins, scattering through the forest.
The elder was left alone and extracted a communication pearl from his space ring. When the link vibrated, the expert knelt on the mud with his head bowed.
"Young Master... the girl has escaped," the elder reported. "Or rather, someone intervened. The trackers could not complete the job."
From the other side of the pearl, an arrogant and furious voice spat venomous words.
"Elder... I sent you thinking you would manage to complete such a simple order. I thought you were competent. Should I tell my father you are no longer of any use?"
Cold sweat ran down the back of the expert's neck.
"No, Master! Do not worry! This time I will personally take charge of the search and make sure to rip her heart out myself!"
"Do not disappoint me. Now let me think what the hell I'm going to tell 'that person'. There will not be a second chance."
The pearl went dark. The elder stood up, clenching his fists until his palms bled.
"Shit... pieces of trash. Now where are you hiding, you little rat?"
Leagues away, after hours of fleeing and erasing his tracks, Kael found an enormous waterfall. Thanks to his sharpened senses, he perceived a hidden cave behind the curtain of water. He accelerated and leaped toward the refuge.
He carefully deposited Kira onto the dry stone, quickly extracted a handful of Saint Grade healing pills from his ring, and administered them to seal her internal wounds. While waiting for the young woman to wake up, Kael sat cross-legged with his sword on his knees, meditating to calm the tide of his thoughts and quiet the violent beating of his heart.
Somewhere hidden in the northern continent.
Beneath the darkness of a gigantic abyssal cavern, thousands of people wrapped in black robes and hoods knelt before an immense, bloodied altar. In front of them, the shrieks of dozens of human sacrifices echoed off the walls.
"YOU'RE INSANE! HELP!"
"MOMMY, I DON'T WANT TO DIE! AAAAAGH!"
"NOOOOO! NOOOOO!"
Blood ran through the stone channels until filling the pit. Suddenly, on the torn ceiling of the cavern, a colossal vertical eye with a yellow iris opened, illuminating the chamber with a sickly, putrid light.
A demonic voice, ancestral and laden with ruin, resonated in the skulls of everyone present.
"MY LOYAL SUBJECTS... THE GIRL'S MARK HAS APPEARED IN THE WORLD. IT IS TIME TO BRING HER TO ME."
The high priest prostrated himself until his face was crushed against the damp stone.
"As you command, my Lord!"
"GO. AND BRING THE MAIDEN OF DESTRUCTION BEFORE MY ALTAR."
The thousands of cultists raised their arms in unison, screaming in an ecstasy of fanatical madness:
"THE TIME HAS COME! IT IS THE MOMENT OF OUR LORD'S AWAKENING! YEEEESSSSSS!"
In a completely different geography.
A portal of starlight spat out seven female figures into the middle of an immense valley surrounded by rocky mountain ranges. High above, avian creatures of monstrous size crossed the clouds.
"Where the hell are we?" Eris asked, brushing the dust from her crimson robes, her hand resting on the shaft of her spear.
She tried to release her divine sense to map the terrain, but immediately retracted it, letting out a groan. Everything around her felt shackled and heavy, as if the mountains themselves harbored formations suppressing spiritual exploration.
"I don't know where we are, but this place gives me a bad feeling," Violeta said, materializing the void at her fingertips. "Let's try to look for traces of other people. Eris... in which direction is the Patriarch's compass pointing?"
Eris nodded and took the Dragon Bone Compass from her robes. The bone-carved needle began to spin wildly for several seconds, humming with energy, until it stopped sharply and definitively, pointing directly south.
"That way." Eris put the artifact away, her mismatched eyes shining with martial resolve. "Alright, girls. Let's go."
The seven maidens began their march toward the mountains, advancing into the jaws of a dark destiny.
At a coordinate further east, a portal crystal shattered, dropping two figures onto the rubble of a devastated city.
Cedric scanned the grayish terrain, instantly recognizing the shattered architecture.
"So we start from here... The ancient ruins of the Iron Blood Alliance."
Iris nodded beside him, her amber eyes scanning the residual Qi currents.
"From what I understand of the continent's maps, the largest commercial city nearby is Aethelgard," Cedric analyzed. "We can go there first to use their long-range shuttles and travel to the borders of the Star Ice Empire."
Iris affirmed in silence, and both began to walk among the smashed blocks of stone.
However, in the distance, buried among the rubble and camouflaged under concealment arrays, a pair of terrified eyes watched them. The trembling spy pulled out a jade tablet and whispered desperately:
"Inform the Master... Someone just appeared out of nowhere in this cursed place. They might be the ones responsible for what happened to the Alliance."
"Understood... Hold your position."
And while stealth dictated the missions of the spies and assassins... an enormous, violent portal erupted in another location.
But unlike the other groups that appeared in forests or abandoned ruins, the physical transmutation squad was spat directly into the exact center of the main courtyard of an immense, fortified mercenary bandit lair.
The silence lasted a microsecond.
"ENEMIES! CALL THE MASTER!" shouted a lookout from the tower.
In a matter of seconds, thousands of bloodthirsty bandits poured out of the tents and bastions, surrounding the twelve colossi with axes, swords, and drawn bows, ready for the carnage.
Borg, surrounded by thousands of blades, looked around. He observed his massive brothers—Tormund, Aion, Bren, Magnus, and the rest—and a wide, brutal smile split his face. The colossus cracked his knuckles on his fists, which were the size of siege boulders.
"HAHAHAHAHAHA!" Borg bellowed, his laughter making the wooden walls of the fortress tremble. "WHAT A PLEASANT PLACE THEY SENT US TO VISIT! COME ON, YOU LITTLE BASTARDS! DADDY IS GOING TO TEACH YOU SOME NEW TRICKS!"
The barrel-chested giant raised his fists while the fire of war ignited the eyes of the twelve Morningstar warriors.
"LET'S DANCE!"
Note from Void_Scribe: 🐉
And if you want to directly support this humble author, swing by my ko-fi.com/void_scribe (for a little coffee... wink, wink hehehe ☕). Thanks for reading! Are you enjoying the story? Then don't forget to add it to your library and leave your votes to support the book! Every show of support counts immensely and motivates me to keep writing. See you in the next chapter!