“Jesus Christ, can you stop yelling for two fucking seconds? You might actually be more annoying than your brother was.” Ares was getting fed up with Fen. He was starting to wish he could just kill him here and now and be done with it. “Elder Teng, is there a life and death arena in the sect?”
Life and death arenas were fairly common in most sects for resolving disputes.
Two people would go in, one person would come out.
Sometimes, no one would come out!
Sometimes, under bizarre conditions, both would come out!
There were also rumours about one time when a guy and a woman went in, and, nine months later, three people came out! They had clearly taken the ‘life’ part a little too seriously.
“No, we don’t condone killing one another within the sect at all.” Even Teng seemed a little regretful.
“Hahahaha, you think you could beat me? Not in a million years, Ares.”
“Actually, if you two fought, Ares would kick the shit out of you, so could you just shut up?” Teng had finally had enough of Fen so he decided to put him in his place and move on. From what Teng had seen in both the test and the tier assessment, Fen stood absolutely no chance. The only people here that could fight Ares on even ground were the top three of the fifth tier and that’s only because, on average, their cultivation hovered around mental accumulation, 4th stage. To essentially be ranked definitively in the top 5 immediately after joining the outer court was a one-of-a-kind achievement. “This month’s tier assessment is over, you are all dismissed,” Teng carried on speaking immediately to make sure Fen didn’t have a chance to interrupt.
The disciples all followed their respective tier leaders as they were shown around their new area of study. The fifth-tier area had the largest lecture hall and the most Elders despite having the fewest number of disciples. It also had the largest quantity of mana in the air which made it easier to cultivate. Although there were cultivation rooms in the disciple’s residences, pretty much everyone would go to their tier’s cultivation rooms instead due to the abundance of mana. Being a fifth-tier disciple was mostly a matter of convenience. Ares could take better missions from the mission hall; more things were available to buy in the treasury, and he received a greater number of resources than his neighbours every month. Fifth tiered disciples also had an easier time setting up stalls in the market but Ares already had a deal with Rud, so that was irrelevant.
After showing everyone around, Elaine led everyone to the lecture hall and gave a quick introductory speech before giving a lecture on the mental accumulation realm. Elaine noticed Ares wasn’t paying any attention whatsoever but ignored it as Teng had already mentioned his matter was complicated. He also seemed to be cultivating, so it''s not like he was just idling and wasting his time, then she would have been really annoyed!
Truthfully, Ares wasn’t cultivating, he was just pretending to. It wasn’t that he couldn’t focus with the lecture in the background, but that there was really no point. Trying to cross from the tenth stage of one realm to the first of the next required him to have a deeper understanding of his pillar thanks to the dedication cultivation technique. There was no one he could ask for help, so he just had to work it out on his own. The two ways of crossing realms when he was stuck that he had discovered up until now was to either finish creating a new art, or to blow things up. Right now, there was nothing to blow up, so he was working on a nothingness art that was relatively simple as it made use of his already existing Shift art. There were still some specifics he wasn’t sure how to work around though, and he wasn’t making any progress due to his lack of understanding. Perhaps there was something else he could do first, but he would have to wait for the lecture to end so he could visit the arts library. Of course, there wouldn’t be any destruction arts there, but Ares had an idea for a technical which should be fine as the technical pillar was an open pillar and affiliation was irrelevant. He would create his own technical using his knowledge of the destruction pillar and a technical from the arts library as a base. Having Grand Annihilation was great and all, but he could do with something that wasn’t dangerous to wield indoors or around innocent people. He had long since thought about what direction to take and decided on one after watching Li Li’s fight against Slick.
A while later, the lecture ended and Ares headed over to the library while Elaine went off to Teng’s meeting. Ares arrived at the library hall and found Rud dozing off, so he just decided to head in and look for what he wanted. If he wasn’t supposed to be somewhere, then Rud should have stopped him!
---------------------------------
In a large hall, the five tier leaders of both the outer and inner court were all present. There were also a number of other Elders here, including Zhang. Most of the Elders were experts that specialised in the various open pillars and were in charge of overseeing disciples that wanted to learn anything regarding their specialties.
“Tsk, Slick, you''ve really screwed up this time,” Gao started complaining as soon as he found Slick who had just taken a seat.
“Humph, I’d love to see you fight those eight little menaces. They’re no joke.”
“I meant the bet.”
“If you were in my shoes, I guarantee you would have made the same decision. Besides, Rud will be here in a minute to explain everything.”
“Where is Rud anyway? The real one, I mean.”
“He went to go get the sect master.”
“Seriously? He’s even getting the sect master involved?”
“It’s a really important matter after all, there’s a reason we’ve gathered so many people to discuss it. Our little sect might be on the verge of greatness.”
“All because of that one kid?”
“Yep, pretty much. Funny, isn’t it? How one person can just change everything.”
“I’ll believe it when I see it. Did you really lose an arm and a finger?”
“Tsk, if I didn’t know any better, I would swear you almost seem glad.”
Gao couldn’t hold back a mocking smile any longer. “Maybe I am.”
“Asshole.”
“Hunk o’ junk.”
“Do you two have to be like this every time?” A silky-smooth woman''s voice rang out.
The woman had a mature vibe and was slightly taller than average. She wore little makeup, but it worked for her, and she could definitely be considered beautiful by just about anyone’s standards. She seemed particularly fond of the colour purple as her robe, earrings, and sandals were all the same colour. She was the third-tier leader of the inner court, and Elaine’s sister, Alaine.
“He started it!” Gao and Slick shouted in unison.
“Well, I’m ending it, play nice you two,” Alaine chided them as though they were children.
“Don’t go easy on Slick, sis’. He got his ass beat by a bandit.” Elaine lazily slouched on the table and joined in the conversation.
“A bandit?”
“Yeah, you know those famous bandit brothers Ares and Aejaz?”
“Haha, of course I know them. A lot of the inner court disciples still have mental scars from their time as outer court disciples thanks to them.”
“They’re the reason we’re having this meeting, apparently.”
“Actually, it’s mostly about Ares, although Aejaz is weird as fuck too,” Slick clarified.
“Oh? Did those two finally show up and cause a ruckus then?” Zhang heard the name ‘bandit brothers’ and came over.
“YOU! You could have bloody well warned me what a little bastard that Ares is. Where the hell did you find a devil like that?” Slick was feeling cheated.
“Just running around on the streets, why? I actually thought Aejaz would be the bigger deal what with his unique aspect and all.”
The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
“God no. Ares is definitely the bigger problem child of the two. I’ll let Teng and Rud explain everything later. Speaking of unique aspects, how’s Allie doing?”
“Good. She’s advancing quite steadily and will be ready to leave the sect shortly. Now we just need to wait for Enyo to come back and act as her guardian. She’ll do quite well in the alchemy competition, I’m sure.”
Everyone chatted amongst themselves until Rud and Teng arrived with a young man in tow. The young man looked to be in his mid-twenties. He wore a smile on his face but it looked forced, not because he was in a bad mood but because he was tired. He had bags under his eyes and was yawning pretty much without pause. If it weren’t for his exhaustion, he probably would be quite a good looking individual.
“Greetings, sect master Yulo!” everyone called out. The sect master was indeed this young man. This world was not actually typically run by the old, but rather the young geniuses that had risen up and taken over. Yulo had reached the cultivation peak of what was possible in this domain, the transition realm, at an astonishing speed before being appointed to his new position by the previous sect master. He was undeniably a top-dog in this domain and was arguably the strongest person around. If it weren’t for Yulo, the sect would inevitably struggle to hang on and maintain it’s current position.
As for the previous sect master, he had grown old and wanted to cultivate in seclusion to try and break through to the transition realm. Doing so would extend his lifespan which, while certainly long, was still fading. He had struggled to reach the transition realm for countless years and was eventually overtaken by the younger generation. The younger generations would always have a quicker cultivation speed, after all. Even Ares’ current ‘slow’ cultivation speed would probably end up being quicker than Yulo’s when he started receiving cultivation resources and going on excursions to find treasures.
The current sect master was definitely not happy being tied down like this, but he felt this was a fine way to repay the sect that raised him so he stuck around. Despite pawning off most of his responsibilities to Rud, he still had a mountain of work to finish 24/7. Turns out, being a sect master was both hard and incredibly boring. Yulo would still occasionally long for adventure, he really wanted to escape into the next domain, but he couldn’t just leave the sect as it was. He was willing to wait until he could find someone else to take over, but still, he felt a little remorseful. He was, after all, a renowned genius, considering the speed at which he reached the transition realm, and that same genius level talent was being stifled the longer he stayed at the sect. There were also people waiting for him but, at the very least, they were understanding of his position.
This was the main reason Rud never complained about having to do a million and one odd jobs. Yulo had it hard enough as is and there weren’t enough Elders around to do these miscellaneous jobs.
Then Ares showed up!
Now an avenue has appeared to potentially earn some more stardust, hire more Elders, and reduce the workload! Yulo would feel more comfortable leaving the sect if it were doing well for itself. In Rud’s mind, Ares was too perfect of a solution to simply pass up.
“Yo,” Yulo raised his hand and greeted everyone casually. Like Ares, he really didn’t care for formal etiquette or respectful gestures. If he could have convinced everyone to just treat him normally, he would have done so years ago.
Rud and Teng checked everyone was present and seated before starting. “Today, we’ll be discussing the events that took place in yesterday''s entrance examination and the future of this sect in relation to those events. As with every entrance examination, the test was recorded in its entirety, so we’ll be showing you the video and explaining everything as we go,” Teng was the first to speak.
Yulo raised his eyebrow. Even he wasn’t aware of why he had been called over. He figured it must have been something serious to call a meeting with this many people, but could it really be that important if it involved new disciples?
A large hologram appeared in front of everyone that had a still image of Rud in the middle of closing his book of blood. Ares and Aejaz had just walked through the door and Teng was about to start the first examination. “We’ll start from the very beginning, although Ares is the main focus, Aejaz’s unique aspect is unlike anything I’ve ever seen. I’ll include his parts too as someone may be able to think of a use for his aspect.” The video started, and when the book was stolen from Rud’s hands, there were a few audible gasps from the audience of Elders. “This is the unique aspect of thievery. We later learnt a few other things about this aspect, but we’ll get into that later. Long story short, if you aren’t paying attention, he can steal near enough anything from anyone. As it turns out, six years ago, when he was 11, he managed to steal a signature treasure directly from the Chen clan’s patriarch without alerting him, for reference.”
“Is that why the Chen clan stormed out of the meeting all those years ago?” Yulo asked. He wasn’t the patriarch at the time, but he’d heard details about the incident.
“It was, yes. That, and Ares had murdered his grandson, Farro,” Rud answered, then gave a brief explanation detailing Ares’ history before moving on.
Everyone was shocked at the bandit brother’s cultivation; one was far too low and the other far too high. Then came the first test. The video showed the start of the test and Ares standing out like a sore thumb.
“I should note that at this point, I was also secretly using my own pressure as well. I later confirmed it had something to do with his bloodline, but he doesn’t know anything about his family so it can’t be traced. Whatever his bloodline is, it does at least two things, the first is a complete immunity to pressure. The second thing, you’ll see later.”
The video continued and everyone watched as the second trial was underway. As the bandit brothers did nothing for the majority of the trial, everyone instead watched the other test participants. “There are some good new disciples this year, huh?” One of the inner court tier leaders spoke.
“Seems I hit the jackpot this time around.” Loopo was overjoyed at having picked up seven of these geniuses as the performance of a tier leader’s disciples was somewhat related to their wages.
“Wait, shouldn’t only seven people pass this test? Weren’t there eight new disciples?” Yulo was the first person to notice something was amiss.
“That’s what we thought too. You’ll see in a minute.”
The video displayed Ares pretty effortlessly dealing with two failed participants.
“Tha’s an interesting treasure,” a slow, deep, gruff voice came from somewhere in the hall.
“It’s a personal treasure, right? I saw him with it six years ago,” Zhang added.
“It should be, yes. If you want to have a look at it, Dabble, you can always ask. He seems relatively easy-going about these kinds of things,” Rud voiced his opinion on the matter.
Dabble was a dwarf, barely taller than an average human’s knee height. He wore a silver helmet with two oak horns coming out of it and carried around a hammer twice his size. He was the resident forger/blacksmith at the sect and taught disciples that were interested in the open pillar of forgery.
The video reached the conclusion of the second trial and was paused on a still frame of eight people holding up tokens. “We mentioned earlier the thievery aspect was really quite strange, now would be a good time to explain a few things,” Rud took the helm to explain Aejaz’s capabilities. He talked about increasing the quality of stolen items, duplicating items, stealing things from great ranges, not leaving hardly any traces, and his ability to steal through spatial rings. “Honestly, I don’t know how we can make use of this without pissing people off, but we figured we might as well show you all in case someone can come up with a use for him.”
“Wouldn’t we only piss people off if they knew it was us? If we could find a way of bringing him to meetings with other sects, couldn’t we secretly rob everyone blind?” Alaine suggested.
Yulo put his hand to his chin. “We could, but that’s risky. I know sometimes you have to take a risk to be rewarded, but I don’t know just how far his thievery aspect can really go. It’s certainly worth thinking about though. We do have a few enemies here and there that we only try to get along with as a means of keeping up appearances. If we stick to targeting those groups then maybe we could indirectly improve our own situation. First, we should see just how well he can use his aspect before trying anything at that scale. Let’s put that on hold for now, but keep it in the back of our minds as an option.”
The third trial garnered a few ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs’ from the early participants. They really did have quite a good showing. A few people even shed a tear for Lightning Guy. Then came Aejaz’ trial. Rud didn’t pause the video or explain anything about the Shock Bead, all he said was, “Pay attention to that Bead when he uses it, that thing is why we’re all here today.”
Naturally everyone became serious upon hearing that. The Bead was certainly strange enough as no one recognised it at all. What kind of effect could that thing possibly have to warrant a meeting like this? The video went on and finally, the moment of truth arrived. The thundering explosion rang out and everyone present gawked at the hologram. What the fuck? That’s no toy! How did someone at Ares’ cultivation level create that… Thing. It was quite a sight to see roughly a hundred Elders all staring stupidly in the same direction.
Rud held back a laugh as they hadn’t seen anything yet! Rud paused the video. “Alright, I’m sure you have a lot of questions. Save them all until I finish my explanation. If your question still isn’t answered, you can ask after.” Rud slowly recounted his conversation with Ares including absolutely everything without missing a single detail. He talked about the unique pillar, the results of the crystal ball, the ancient sword, the three aspects, and how the bet came about.
“This… is really quite something.” Yulo was wide awake now. He was staring at the dark gold explosion on the hologram which had a surprising allure to it. It was a really nice shade of gold to just stare at. He was excited! Without Rud having to explain his thoughts, he already knew where he was going to go with this. Those Shock Beads were probably the most valuable thing the sect had ever had access to since its inception.
The Elders were confused and overwhelmed with this information. It felt like everything they ever knew had been thrown on its head. A new pillar was simply an earth-shattering occurrence, and it happened right here in their Heaven’s Path Sect! “I mean… That’s certainly impressive, but I don’t think I quite understand how we’re going to use this,” an Elder near the back said.
Rud briefly explained the importance of the Beads being an art that could grow stronger, and the fact that Ares could create these with little effort. He painted a picture of every single disciple in the sect holding even just a single Shock Bead, creating an unstoppable army. If Ares could increase his cultivation, he could single-handedly raise the sect’s status straight to the top of this world. The biggest advantage of these beads was how quickly and easily they could be made.
Bit by bit, the Elders began to cotton on to what he was trying to explain, all the while Yulo was getting more and more restless. This was an incredible chance! This new disciple had to be protected at all costs, he could shape the sect’s future! He could be Yulo’s ticket out of here! Yulo thanked Ares in his mind before speaking out, “Incredible. We can absolutely use this to our advantage. All the lives we can save, all the disciples we can weaponize. This will surely be a turning point. I guess we have to protect Ares then?”
“Actually, we don’t have to protect anything. He’s far stronger than his cultivation would lead you to believe. You should watch his third trial,” Slick finally spoke. He mostly just wanted to watch the fight again to see how his arm was cut off. He never did manage to find out.
“Right, even with those Beads, it’s still surprising he won the bet,” Alaine agreed.
Rud resumed the video, letting Ares’ trial play out in its entirety before stopping it at the end.
Naturally, everyone was utterly dumbfounded by what they had just watched, that was categorically not what you’d expect to see from a fight between two people in the 3rd realm. The lethality of the arts, the incredible swordplay, the refined movement, the tactics. Everything was just done to such a high level that it seemed almost implausible for Ares to be at such a low cultivation, but then they remembered the justification for why it was so slow.
“So that’s how the bastard did it,” Slick grumbled underneath his breath. How could he forget about the damn treasure! He deserved to have his arm cut off. Not that it would have mattered even if he had remembered though as he was still unaware of that function at the time. Now he knew though! Never again!
“This might actually be a problem.” Yulo broke everyone out of their stupor. “I’m not saying this isn’t phenomenal, it’s the most spectacular thing I’ve personally ever seen. Unfortunately, I think I know where his bloodline comes from and, if I’m right, we’ve picked up a potential ticking-time bomb. That level of healing, still managing to live with a pierced heart as though it were nothing? There’s only one bloodline I can think of.”
“What do you mean?” Rud asked.
“It’s a bloodline from a higher domain. Not just the next domain up either but the ones above it. Very few people know that there are more domains out there, but there’s a long and complicated reason for that. As for the bloodline and its respective clan, they have a long, arduous history and are currently in a very complex situation. As things currently stand, there are a great number of people who would happily slaughter any living thing with that specific bloodline without second thought. I heard about it when I was researching the next domain, about a clan that was forced to escape from the domain they once ruled, and were now being hunted and murdered like it was a sport. Even the place that clan is currently trapped in is referred to as ‘The Perpetual Massacre Zone’. I’m not certain if it really is that bloodline, and I don’t know how Ares got here if it is, but this could be a serious issue. If anyone of significant importance from the next domain finds out about this, this sect will probably vanish off the face of the planet by the end of the next day if we don’t hand him over. How sure are you, Rud, that Ares doesn’t know anything about his bloodline?”
“Very, he really didn’t seem to be lying. He may have withheld some information but I really don’t think he knows much, if anything about his clan at all.”
“Then his situation is that much stranger. I can’t explain the specifics because the more everyone knows, the more likely it is to leak out. Then we’d all be screwed. Everyone here is going to have to make an oath never to mention anything about his bloodline. It’s that serious I’m afraid. We can still stick to the original plan; we just need to make sure everyone is too focused on his unique pillar to see anything else they shouldn’t be seeing.”
All the Elders immediately swore an oath, one that would be the death of them if they broke it, never to mention Ares bloodline to anyone that wasn’t supposed to know. They carried on discussing various plans to make use of this new, strange duo that showed up on their doorstep.
“Where is the lad now?” Dabble queried Rud.
“Let me look.” Rud closed his eyes and started using his clones to check their surroundings. “That damn little runt!”