Darian didn't dare be careless against soone at the absolute peak of the Celestial Nascent Realm. He moved his scarlet dagger, activating an offensive technique and slicing through space with a blade of light.
*CLANG!!*
Everyone was shocked, especially the captain of the guards, who was at the eighth level.
Darian actually blocked his opponent's strike.
Not only that: he counterattacked. Dozens of scarlet blades of light crashed against the old man's sword. Thunderous explosions echoed through the skies.
A single strike from the old man's sword was enough to shatter the dagger's attacks. But because of Darian's precise power and technique, the old man couldn't deal any damage.
"You damn brat, I'll tear you apart limb by limb!" the old man roared.
His hair stood on end, his eyes were red, and he looked insane. At that mont, he had to suppress the turbulent Celestial power inside his body while fighting.
Darian was truly lucky to cause trouble at such an important mont. The old man's combat power was now less than a third of his peak. He had to spend trendous effort just to fight Darian on equal footing.
Otherwise, even if Darian was extrely abnormal, he wouldn't be able to fight him head-on. At the ninth level of a realm, a cultivator could already use a trace of power from the next realm. In the Celestial Nascent Realm, everyone was like mortals, just a bit stronger, but in the realm above, everything changed, and the true power of a cultivator erged.
"You stupid old man, why are you yelling? I hunted and killed you people for months. Did I ever scream like that? Grow up a little. This ti, I just took the initiative," Darian mocked.
Darian repeatedly unleashed his power to keep his opponent at a distance. He refused to clash with everything he had and kept pressuring him while dodging. It was a safe tactic, since his opponent's power was clearly showing signs of going out of control. If the old man kept fighting for too long, he might die on his own.
"Is that old man a cultivator from the Evil Path?" Several people in the crowd started noticing the clues.
"Those bastards really dared to take root inside Golden Crow sect territory?!" the guards roared in fury.
For many years, the people of the sect knew sothing was wrong there, but they never figured it out. Now everything was being exposed.
The sound of tal clashing and dust-filled wind roared through the city.
The small alley where they first appeared had long been destroyed. But the surrounding buildings were protected by powerful defensive runes, and even though both of them released Celestial power, their attacks bounced off upon contact with the structures.
"Who is that young man? Those battle instincts and experience are terrifying!"
Darian and the old man were so fast that ordinary people could barely follow them with the naked eye.
The old man's movents were refined and cruel, strange and cunning. Many tis, he launched sudden attacks from Darian's blind spots, making the spectators' hearts tremble.
But… Darian looked like a God of Battle, moving with precise perfection. He dodged and always counterattacked, forcing his opponent to exhaust his power to the limit.
"Although the cultivators of the Evil Path are a shaful bunch, their assassination skills are truly supre. Even fighting head-on, he still has such cunning moves that could easily catch soone off guard and kill them," the captain of the guards sighed.
Almost all Evil Path cultivators specialized in assassination and stealth. That was how they profited the most and advanced more easily.
An assassin's movents were different from those of an ordinary person. Each move was deadly, and sotis several moves ford a continuous lethal trap.
Yet no matter how precise his movents were, no matter how cunning his attacks were, nothing worked against that young man who was supposedly much weaker than him.
More and more people arrived; all the guards from the sect stationed on the planet had gathered around. Even though they didn't have the strength to interfere, they were waiting to capture the old man once he was exhausted.
They watched, sweating for Darian. It looked like he was dancing on the edge of a blade. He could die at any mont.
But Darian's expression remained indifferent, without the slightest trace of fear or panic in his eyes. He moved with the sa fluidity as clouds in the sky or water flowing through a river. He advanced and retreated, attacked and defended without the slightest hesitation. That cold expression sent chills down the spine, yet it was fascinating to watch.
"All you know how to do is run?!" the old man roared.
"Do you have even a shred of sha left?" Darian shot back. "Did you spend all those years cultivating just thickening your skin? You're fighting soone at the fifth level and still can't do a thing to . And now you want to use psychological warfare against , a junior not even close to your age? You really opened my eyes to the world."
The distant spectators also looked at the old man strangely. He truly had no sha.
But thinking about it, they concluded that attacking from behind was the natural habit of assassins. To achieve their goals, thods didn't matter, which was exactly why that specialty was despised by most people. Even ordinary cultivators, if they had any pride, would never choose to learn that kind of thing.
With no choice left and seeing death approaching, the old man's eyes changed.
He spat blood, and suddenly the power of his sword surged sharply.
*BOOOM!*
Darian couldn't dodge and had to block with his own strength. The collision caused a massive explosion of dust.
"He's running!"
The captain of the guards roared when he saw the old man turn and flee.
But Darian wasn't naive and had already anticipated sothing like this. He would never let him escape, and his dagger rapidly closed in on the old man's back.
The old man didn't turn around. He coughed up even more blood and kept running.
The truth was, he wasn't fleeing. He ran to a spot in the rubble and kicked the ground, revealing a hidden underground entrance.
Darian narrowed his eyes. He hadn't had ti to inspect the entire underground hideout, so he didn't know exactly what the Evil Path cultivators were doing there.
The old man entered quickly, and Darian chased after him, less than five ters behind.
Everything was dark, but after just a few seconds of pursuit, the old man kicked a concealed entrance ahead with all his strength. It burst open explosively and then…
…a scarlet light and a nauseating sll of blood hit Darian.
He jumped forward with the dagger in hand, attacking, because when the old man stopped to kick the entrance, that shortened the distance to less than two ters.
But… the old man didn't care about burning his own life away and coughing up even more blood.
That gave him an extra boost, allowing him to use more of his chaotic power. Soon, he also leaped forward, getting out of Darian's range.
Darian struck nothing but air and landed on the ground.
Then, he looked ahead, taking in that place.
At that mont…
"!"
His eyes widened. His heart skipped a beat. Then it started pounding like a frantic drum.
The walls weren't made of ordinary stone; they were covered in red runes pulsing in a sick rhythm, as if the walls themselves were breathing. It was a profane inscription, typical of Evil Path cultivators.
But what stole Darian's breath was what stood at the center.
A pool twenty ters wide. There was no water in it. What filled the basin was a crimson liquid, thick and bubbling.
It wasn't just blood. It was Bloodline. The vital essence extracted from hundreds of beings, concentrated into a single sacrificial well.
And floating at the epicenter of that horror… he saw her.
It was a woman.
Half of her body was covered in cold black scales; the other half, bare and pale. Her eyes were open, but there was nothing in them. They were empty pits. She was dead, her life drained to fuel that sinister ritual.
The mont Darian's eyes t that figure… his world shattered.
*Clang!*
The sound of tal hitting the ground echoed through the hall. Darian didn't even realize he had dropped the dagger.
His hands flew to his head, fingers digging into his scalp. His legs gave out, and he fell to his knees.
"AAAGH!"
The scream didn't seem to co from his throat, but from his soul. It wasn't physical pain; it felt like a thousand burning blades were shredding his mind from the inside out. Like an ocean being forced into a small glass cup.
Cracks spread through his soul, as if soone was trying to rip sothing out from within by force.
In his mind, the image of the dead woman began to waver.
Her entire form beca slightly distorted and strange… as if there were a thick fog around her, keeping him from seeing clearly.
The only thing clear to him…
Were two pairs of extrely bright amber eyes.
The eyes of the woman in the pool were black and lifeless, but in Darian's vision, they shone with eternal authority. There was no logical reason for him to see that color, much less for all of this to be happening.
It was as if…
…his soul was trying to rember sothing, but couldn't. Even so, he kept forcing it desperately, and that caused serious damage within him.
The internal conflict was devastating. Blood began to stream from his nose and ears.
Watching everything from afar, ru and Alear widened their eyes in disbelief.
ru, who knew very well what was happening, was the most shocked.
Fate wasn't just a coincidence; it was cruel irony. That scene was a twisted copy of the mont Darian t Niara for the first ti. The trauma was acting like a master key, forcing the gears of reincarnation to spin in reverse.
Sotis, when soone lived through sothing very intense in another life, upon facing a similar situation in their current incarnation, they would feel sothing strange, as if they already knew what was going to happen. But it was only sothing subtle, sothing everyone simply ignored.
As for him… he clearly noticed and felt sothing devastatingly greater.
Before Darian, the scene was practically a copy of the first ti he saw Niara.
In the past, when he was reborn and woke up in that dark cell, the first thing he saw were the amber eyes. Then his curse activated, and he saw her past. It was a little different, since the first Niara he saw was just a little girl. But this present woman, covered in scales, created a connection with the adult Niara, rging the two images.
"Damn it!" ru exclaid, panic taking over her voice. "We have to call Father! He's going to collapse!"
When she moved to stand up, a firm and warm hand grabbed her wrist.
ru looked at her mother, confused, but found Ruri watching the scene with absolute seriousness. There was no fear in her eyes, only confidence in her son.
Ruri let out a serious sigh. "Trust him. He isn't soone who lets himself be destroyed. He knows he needs to live, so he can find her again."
ru swallowed hard, not knowing why she trusted him so much. Was that a mother's intuition?
When ru looked back at Darian…
In the hall, Darian stopped screaming.
That old man was in the middle of the pool of blood, moving toward sothing inside it. He was confused by Darian's reaction, but his life mattered more, and he was searching for sothing.
Until… Darian lowered his hands and closed his eyes, revealing a face soaked in blood.
*Whoooooooosh!*
A pillar of multicolored light exploded from Darian's body, tearing through the hall's ceiling and shooting into the sky. The pressure was so vast that the Bloodline pool was instantly repelled, creating a vacuum around him.
Darian floated, his feet leaving the blood-soaked ground.
When he opened his eyes, the world trembled.
His left eye was pure white, like a newborn star. The right was black like the absolute Void of the underworld.
Behind him, space bent. A gigantic ethereal circle manifested, slowly rotating. At its center, the five-pointed star shone, radiating colors that shouldn't exist on that material plane.
There was no more pain.
Darian looked at his own hands, feeling a power flowing from his soul. Inside him, five cores pulsed, full of energy.
The aura emanating from him didn't belong to that place. It didn't belong to a cultivator. It was an abnormal power, capable of shaking the pillars of any universe.
A faint smile appeared on his lips. He felt as if he had found again sothing he had lost a long, long ti ago.
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