Anthony’s eyes shifted to Jarod as he spoke once more without bothering to exchange words with the Above disciples.
"Follow behind me," he stated, his body turning as he was ready to protect Jarod if any of them made a move.
But again, before both of them could take a step, laughter erupted.
"HAHAHAHAHAHAH!"
Anthony and Jarod paused, their eyes shifting toward the direction of the laughter. It came from the golden-haired, purple-eyed man whom Anthony had recognized as the strongest among them.
The man took a step before leaping from the peak of his mountain, descending toward Anthony with a bright smile on his face as his laughter gradually faded into silence.
The rest of the Above disciples sighed as they watched the scene, as though they had expected something like this to happen. After all, it had happened before.
Anthony wasn’t on guard; he simply watched the man approach. Within a couple of seconds, the man came to a stop before Anthony, his purple eyes meeting Anthony’s sky-blue ones as though he were searching for something hidden within them.
The next moment, he stretched out a hand and spoke in a calm, inviting tone.
"Tory Hale, Rank 1 amongst the Above disciples," he stated as he introduced himself, waiting for Anthony to accept his handshake.
Anthony stared at Tory’s hand for a brief moment before immediately accepting it, their palms meeting in a firm clasp.
"Null Anthony," Anthony introduced himself. Then his head shifted toward his servant standing behind him as he added, "and this is Jarod."
Tory smiled as he spoke. "There was no need to say your name. Everyone already knows who you are." His eyes shifted to Jarod for a moment before he turned his gaze away as he continued, "You are the Sect Master’s only descendant to ascend to this Galaxy, so obviously you are very popular."
Tory spoke as though he and the rest of the Above disciples hadn’t just tried to pressure Anthony moments ago.
"Oh, and forgive me and everyone else for our manners. We truly just wanted to see what made the Sect Master send you to our ranks so swiftly," Tory apologized with a weak smile.
Anthony smiled at the man before shaking his head as he spoke. "Don’t worry, it’s fine. As an Ascendant, I’m familiar with hazing and stuff like that. If I get angry over something as minor as this, then I would only be wasting my time and energy on every little thing." His tone remained calm, as he genuinely didn’t mind.
Even in the military, people did this. Even in Omni Peak Academy, upperclassmen did it to students with no backing. Although almost nobody had ever done it to Anthony because of his ridiculous rate of power progression, he knew such things existed and were simply a part of life.
Jarod simply stepped backward, giving Anthony and Tory some space as he quietly moved closer toward Tory’s own servant. Jarod noticed that Tory’s servant wore finer clothes, carried a better weapon, and possessed a higher-grade space ring.
Clearly, the man was enjoying being the servant of an Above disciple. After all, no ordinary servant would look like this or possess equipment of such quality.
"Well... I’m grateful for that," Tory replied, his eyes shifting toward the eleventh mountain as he spoke. "Since you are new here, permit me to show you around... although there isn’t really much to show in the first place." He laughed softly toward the end of his sentence.
"I understand," Anthony replied with a small smile.
The rest of the Above disciples didn’t approach. They all remained standing upon the peaks of their respective mountains as they watched the exchange between Anthony and Tory. Geniuses were always like this, never acting overly chummy with one another, as they all seemed to keep their distance while constantly trying to keep each other in check by training harder and climbing the Above rankings.
They wouldn’t suddenly start acting familiar with Anthony just because he had resisted their bined aura and retaliated. Nor would they smile and wele him with open arms simply because he was the Sect Master’s descendant. Some of them even had Core Elders as their Masters, so they didn’t really care about Anthony’s status as the Sect Master’s descendant. Even so, they were undeniably fascinated and surprised to learn that a descendant of the Sect Master had arrived here.
Anthony already knew that Tory was the kind of social butterfly who could get along with almost anyone. After all, the man had practically laughed and smiled his way through the entire encounter, and with the way he spoke and carried himself, it didn’t take more than a few seconds to understand the kind of person Tory was.
A simple, straightforward kind of guy.
With that, both Anthony and Tory began to move, their bodies crossing tens of meters with a single step, while their servants followed a couple of paces behind them, maintaining a respectful distance.
"So, how was the Lower Galaxy? I know that Ascendants usually go through countless battles, fighting for their lives every single day in their respective Lower Galaxies," Tory spoke as they moved. "But I never thought it would be this exaggerated. After all, your killing intent alone already told everyone about the amount of blood on your hands and the countless lives you’ve taken," he stated with a weak smile.
During the moment Anthony had unleashed his killing intent, Tory had seen millions of mutilated corpses, countless bodies torn apart beyond recognition, and an endless ocean of blood stretching as far as the eye could see.
It had to be known that the effectiveness of one’s killing intent depended on the number of people they had actually killed. After all, a normal person who hadn’t even killed anybody or anything could only possess the faintest flicker of killing intent, one defined purely by their will and desire to kill rather than genuine experience.
It also had to be known that the visions people witnessed whenever someone projected their killing intent depended entirely upon how potent that killing intent was and how many lives its owner had personally taken.
It was also the reason Anthony had held back his killing intent. If he hadn’t, then the vision these ten Above disciples would have witnessed would have been so unimaginably horrifying that it might have shattered their minds pletely, driving them to take their own lives simply to escape the endless nightmare before their eyes.
Anthony didn’t hide anything, but neither did he go into detail as he replied, "It’s exactly as you’ve said. No Ascendant became an Ascendant by simply cultivating or quietly growing stronger, so our killing intent is naturally this potent because we had to fight our way to the very top... just like in this Galaxy." His tone remained calm and posed as they continued moving.
The entire Above Disciple Residence was unbelievably vast. Besides that, Anthony and Tory were moving at a rather slow and ordinary pace, making their journey feel more like a casual stroll than the effortless traversal of powerful cultivators capable of crossing incredible distances with each step.
"I see... I guess it goes without saying that you possess more bat experience and efficiency than every one of us," Tory replied as he simply stated what he believed to be a factual truth.
In his mind, Anthony was probably thousands of years old, at the very least, over two thousand years, to possess such an overwhelming amount of killing intent.
While he acknowledged that fact, he didn’t believe Anthony was stronger than him simply because he possessed millennia of bat experience.
"While I won’t deny that, it seems there’s been some kind of misunderstanding," Anthony stated with an amused smile.
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