The Truth(Finale)

Lin Fang looked around at those dead bodies and noticed that they were sitting in a pattern, a formation he thought as his narrowed, but a formation of what? Lin Fang moved forward until he reached the middle of the inverted cone.

"hahahahaha", as he neared the middle, he heard a rough laughter coming from ahead. Lin Fang grew vigilant as he entered stealth and slowly moved behind a pillar to look at the scene playing out in front of him.

An old man was lying in what was supposed to be the center of the formation according to his calculations and standing next to him was an old woman who was looking at the old man who was laughing crazily with pain in her eyes. Both of them had white hair with wrinkles covering their faces, their backs were hunched and their clothes a bit lose for them. The man was sitting cross-legged while the woman stood behind him.

"All Dead, hahahahaha, All Dead", the man wailed tears flowing out of his eyes as while he laughed crazily. He stood up as he turned towards the woman, he used his hands to shake her shoulder's as he asked, "How could I do something this foolish? I have doomed us all."

As the old man shook the woman, tears fell from her eyes as well, she was biting her tongue stopping herself from wailing as well. The old man was too weak and his hands grew tired after a few seconds, he stopped shaking her as the fell loosely to his sides.

"Sometimes, things happen that we have no control over. We try to save everyone but somehow end up destroying everything.", When the old man stopped shaking her, the woman spoke in a cracked voice. "But this doesn't mean that it is the end, we must try to save the city, otherwise..." The woman didn't continue as she looked at the crying old man in front of her, her heart tearing up in pain. She used her hands to caress his face as she tried to comfort him.

"Hahahahaha, I the city lord who performed the ritual for the destruction of his own city, how could I be do anything, look at us, we will die in at most a few minutes and then the rest will follow.", The old man shouted crazily as he opened his eyes wide, he had clearly given up hope.

"No, There might sti-", Before the woman could continue her words were cut short from a voice that came from behind her.

"What do you mean 'we will all die'?", Lin Fang asked from behind the pillar as he moved into the light.

Meanwhile, above the city

"And so it begins", Ruth Wakado looked down from above at the city which was glowing red and black at the same time(red due to the formation and black due to fire). Just as he was smilingly smugly, his expression stiffened as he looked towards the north.

"What have you done?", he turned and asked The Ice King who for the first time since the battle began was smiling.

"Ah, what could I have done?", he said this lazily, he raised his right hand forward as if he was about to catch something. A small dot became visible over the horizon which grew bigger in size at a quick rate due to its high speed.

"After traveling across half the continent, you have finally arrived, Armitaha", Ice King said as the flying object drew closer. The object finally became visible after a few seconds, it was a massive hammer with a long handle bigger than ice king itself. It was blue in color and had various ruins floating on it which were glowing gold, they seemed like snakes which were alive and were wrapped around the hammer which was humming due to the closeness of their master after a long period of separation.

Ruth Wakado quickly moved from its path as the furious object flew past him. It was flying very fast but it immediately halted when it hit Ice Kings palm, the furious winds that it brought with him blew past waving Ice King's hair in the air giving him an indomitable aura, "Hahahaha, Armitaha, It wasn't a waste to stall for time while I awaited your arrival." He laughed as he felt the massive strength of the hammer in his hands. Even the stone in his forehead started to glow in resonance with his hammer.

"You are not the only one who was stalling for time.", Just as the Ice King was reliving the happiness of once again having his weapon in his hands, he heard a snicker from Ruth Wakado who had a mocking expression on his face. Ice King's eyes narrowed as he asked, "What do you mean?"

"Why don't you see for yourself?", Ruth Wakado smiled as he spread his arms. The formation that was surrounding the city suddenly changed colors as it turned blood red and the various ruins started changing positions. Looking at the new formation that appeared out of the old one in the blink of an eye, Ruth Wakado had a massive smile on his face while the Ice King's face was covered with disbelief as it turned pale, "The Bloody Devil Body Formation", he said, The Ice King couldn't even believe his own words as he said it.

"Oh! So you do know about this formation. Heh-Heh, then I don't have to waste my time explaining." Ruth Wakado laughed with a crazed expression of his face. The Ice King's expression transformed from disbelief to rage as he waved Armitaha towards Ruth shouting, "You Lunatic! What have you done?"

But his attack had no use as the hammer passed through the flaming body, the ritual had already begun...

Under the city,

"What?", Lin Fang shouted as he looked at the two people in front of him. One of them was supposed to be the 'young' City Lord while the other one was supposed to be the 'beautiful' secretary of his who was at the prime of her life. After what he had just heard, he realized how terrible the things were.

Even though he was a demon the two didn't have any qualms explaining what had happened as according to them, whether demons or humans, they were all about to die anyway. How were they so sure? Their bodies and the dead bodies surrounding the area were proof of their 'claim'.

They and all the royal guards with a large number of soldiers had entered this underground tunnel to this location which was the core of the formation guarding the city. They performed the rituals written in the scroll that was given to them by their ancestor to activate the city defense formation. They followed all the directions written in the scroll to the dot and set up a small supplementary formation inside to use their cultivation base as a sacrifice to power the formation which was written inside the scroll as well.

But they were all misled, the formation was never about taking away their cultivation bases, it was, in fact, a trigger to activate the hidden formation inside the defense formation. While one was a trigger formation and the other the hidden formation, the two still shared a certain similarity, both the formations were powered on the longevity of the people who used them, not their cultivation as the City Lord and the others were misled to believe. When the CIty Lord was trying to control the defensive formation, he had been able to see the whole city and when the formation started to reject him, he realized that something was wrong. When he came out of the formation, he fell into despair when he saw that all of his guards were dead and only he and his assistant survived due to their strong bases although not for long.

To make matter's worse, when he matched the similarities of the two formations, the trigger, and the hidden formation whose traces he noticed because they were the areas which were rejecting his control, he realized that both of them worked on the same principle, life steal. Thus, it didn't take him much to figure out the future of the city, everyone was about to become fodder for the grand scheme of things. The City Lord didn't even know what the ancestor was going to do with all this power which he gained through the sacrifice of millions of lives, both humans and demons. If the ancestor wanted to save the city, he obviously wouldn't kill everyone in it so his goal had to be something else.

Listening to The City Lord's tale, Lin Fang didn't know what to do.

"What about the core of the formation? It should have been around the trigger right?", Lin Fang asked with hope in his eyes. If they could break the core of the formation, everything would be sorted.

"It was here until the trigger was activated, the moment the trigger formation stopped working, the core disappeared.", The City Lord replied bitterly. As he said these words, his breath rate started increasing as his feet grew wobbly.

His secretary realized that he was too weak to stand up so she ran to catch him. But the moment she reached him, she too started breathing heavily as her body weakened, in front of Lin Fang's eyes the boss secretary duo's body withered further as they fell to the ground.

"Sagve- leafspr", The City Lord looked at Lin Fang as he tried to convey his message. Unfortunately, Lin Fang wasn't able to understand his cracked voice. Before the city lord could repeat his words, his body withered further and he died.

The secretary also wasn't able to live for much longer and died seconds after, her eyes still on the man lying next to her. Her eyes were full of unbound love as she looked at the withered old dead body of the City Lord next to her even till her last breath. Their bodies which had just died started to lose skin at a visible rate as only the skeleton was left after a minute or so.

Looking at this scene as Lin Fang realized the terrible way in which all these people in the formation had died. Meanwhile, a terrible event similar to the one below had started taking place in the city a few floors above Lin Fang.