No More Escape

Recently, Xie Mei's and Han Junqiao's lives had got a little more exhausting than before. Sixteen days ago, the day after they had been told about the Soul Sculpting Stage, Vigdis had begun to instruct them on the usage of Energy, at Theodore's request. Because he had yet to step into the Energy Refinement Stage, he couldn't actually give them any practical demonstrations, so it was best to leave it to the only other expert in their group.

All of this came about when the two young women had asked to help their lover on his endeavours. What they had thought to be an innocent question, however, led to them having to 'endure' a 'tough training regimen'. After all, they had little to rely on except for their pure Attributes–and they didn't even know how to make use of their Energy other than to increase its number via cultivation.

Fortunately for them, Vigdis was quite adept at explaining complicated concepts easily, and at incorporating very practical, easy to understand examples into her lessons. In addition to that, both Xie Mei and Han Junqiao could be considered to be geniuses of their own, with their own instincts feeding them exactly what they needed to know.

This included but was not limited to general Energy utilization, various Skills and Arts derived from their cultivation Techniques and Talents, as well as basic combat understanding.

Xie Mei had a particular knack for barrier-, healing- and purification-related methods, whereas Han Junqiao was the most extreme example of an all-rounder who Vigdis had ever encountered. The term 'Long-related' in her Long's Descendant Talent really did the heavy lifting here, because it apparently truly applied to any- and everything which her family's progenitor had ever been proficient in. While that sounded great on the surface, it could also become a hindrance to her if she spread herself too thin.

With a little more than two weeks of guidance under their belts, Xie Mei and Han Junqiao could now confidently say that they could hold their own against regular cultivators with about the same Attributes as them. This was quite impressive, considering how mind-bogglingly quickly they had increased their cultivation stages. However, facing anyone from a Named Family–or even a somewhat more talented expert or Heaven's Chosen–they would be unable to resist.

When Vigdis restrained herself to a weaker cultivation stage than theirs and utterly trounced them, this served as their grim wake-up call. Especially during these early years of the first round of the Heavenly Succession, they would pretty much only be a burden if they tried to help, unless their cultivation stages far surpassed their opponents. Somewhat downtrodden, but also more motivated than ever, the two of them focused on both their training and cultivation, frequently exhausted to the point that they fell asleep right after eating dinner.

Although there was a part of Theodore which slightly pitied them, he was also relieved to see them take bigger steps in the right direction. While he wouldn't particularly mind 'carrying' them, this didn't mean that he didn't want them to be at least moderately useful in the future.

He himself hadn't been the slightest bit idle either, of course. Rather, he had increased the number of cities which he 'cleansed' to four per day a week ago. This was partially because his growing Attributes allowed him to speed up a tiny bit, but also due to having refined his approach and Array even further! Lastly, his nightly activities had lessened a bit now that his lovers truly needed to rest, so he had a bit more 'free time' to spend on becoming stronger.

His Body Refinement Stage had progressed all the way to the 154,440th realm–which sounded fantastic at first glance, but his Standard Attributes were still lower than those of a peak Core Formation Stage Named Family member–albeit not by too much. Fortunately, his Endurance had seen an astonishing increase, from 90,690,310 to 1,769,636,433!

76 cities worth of prey had finally allowed it to enter the billions. This enabled him to confirm that 400 billion might be possible to reach if he cleaned up the entirety of the Qinglong world! Naturally, the rest of the Heaven's Chosen's actions could very well interfere with this, so he might still need to venture forth to other worlds.

His current resilience was enough for him to be utterly invincible against regular peak Initial Ascension Stage experts, yet he was still extremely far from being able to scratch them–even if they simply stood there and let him do whatever he wanted. But luckily, there was someone else who he could rely on for the 'damage output'.

Not artificially held back by an insane plan like he was, Vigdis had made full use of the high Energy concentration in their base to elevate herself from the Soul Sculpting Stage's Coreflame Ignition Realm all the way to the 3rd realm of the Initial Ascension Stage! By now, she felt her advancement speed slow down ever so slightly, as she was getting progressively closer to the 'limit' of the first round. However, her current power was more than enough to ensure that a regular peak Initial Ascension Stage expert wouldn't be able to escape!

With that in mind, this morning, Theodore and her set off to 'fish'. And after that, they would progress his plan to the next phase.

On the surface, their 'cleansing' of the first city for the day looked no different than usual–however, they had deliberately chosen a branch which was protected by someone at the peak of the Soul Sculpting Stage. By tuning down the effects of his Arrays, this allowed them to perfectly replicate the events of Jingshan City. But this time, whilst 'fleeing', the two of them were a little bit too slow.

For the past more than three weeks, Han Liangyun had been getting increasingly frustrated. At first, he hadn't noticed any abnormalities, but very quickly, he realized that the lack of any distress signals being sent out was the most suspicious part of it all. Therefore, he randomly chose a few cities to travel to, only to soon find another one which had the local Imperial Han Family branch slaughtered to the last.

This seriously alarmed him, as it confirmed his suspicions. Whoever was responsible for this had likely been up to their genocidal deeds for a long time already. Back in Jingshan City, they had slipped up, allowing him to catch a trace of their actions. If this hadn't happened, then it was likely that a vast majority of this world's Hans would be eliminated before he was ever aware of anything going on at all!

Returning to Qinglong City, he used his authority to send out experts at the Soul Sculpting Stage to every city of at least prefectural capital level. Even this already stretched the local military might somewhat thin, but thankfully, the Initial Ascension Stage cultivators in the state capital could easily 'keep the peace' here.

All those who he had sent out had been equipped with communication artefacts and were told to report back to headquarters every four hours. Unfortunately, the time intervals couldn't be reduced any further, as they needed to be recharged in between uses.

With a wide enough web spread out, Han Liangyun relatively quickly confirmed that three cities were obliterated every day–but whenever he made it to the most recent point which had lost contact, all that he was greeted with was yet another city bathed in blood. But rather than impotently lash out like before, he merely silently accumulated his rage, determined to unleash it upon the enemy when he finally came across them again!

Bottling everything up inside for weeks, he endured, even when the number of cities losing contact daily increased to four. Finally, after almost bursting at the seams from vexation, another distress signal reached him!

Reasoning that the enemy had likely slipped up again, he rushed off in even more of a hurry than last time, employing every method he could muster to further increase his speed. And finally, it all paid off!

When he got close to his destination, he spread out his senses to the maximum, barely catching a couple of people desperately dashing away far into the distance. Although he had only managed to glance at them for a moment, he had already identified one of them as being at the Initial Ascension Stage, yet still quite a bit weaker than him. There was also a Body Refinement ant who was likely brought along for some unknown purpose.

With a cruel, bloodthirsty grin, he closed the gap between them in but an instant, somewhat curiously sizing up the red-haired beauty in front of him. No matter how confident in himself he was, he would at least afford these Heaven's Chosen the bare modicum of caution–after all, they were well known to be able to fight above their realm.

"Not running any longer? Then it's time to–"

Right as he was about to finish his threat, he noticed that something was off. The expression of his enemy–and even that of the insignificant ant–was not the slightest bit panicked. Rather, they both were looking at him in amusement.

'Wait a moment! Could it be...?!'

He was all alone out here, in the middle of the wilderness–and one defining feature of his enemy's approach was that they had always spared those worthless civilians. This indicated that from the very start, they had planned to fight him here. That could only mean one thing: He had fallen into their trap!

But just because he had realized it all at the last moment, due to them not bothering to hide it, that didn't mean that he was capable of doing anything about it. With a speed far faster than his own, Vigdis arrived in front of him, not using any particular Art or Skill–or even Energy, for that matter.

Although Han Liangyun managed to move backwards a little, he still couldn't flee from her. Before his brain could realize what was happening, his body had been ripped apart by her bare hands, forcing his soul to squeeze out of it and into a desperate escape. But no matter how much he struggled and burned even his very Coreflame, he couldn't utter a single word before his soul had been snuffed out as well, ending his life for good and making him enter the cycle of reincarnation.

Ironically, Vigdis' only utilization of Energy during the whole confrontation happened when it was all over: She cleaned herself of the blood which had stained her hands. Because they had made sure to only make their move when they were absolutely certain of success, this encounter was entirely anticlimactic. Neither she nor Theodore, who had been observing it all from the sidelines, showed many ripples of emotion.

Wordlessly nodding at her Leader, the two exchanged a smile, then they teleported to the vicinity of Qinglong City, whose approximate location they had long since confirmed. Hiding themselves to the best of their abilities, they proceeded to adjust their plans to the local conditions, thoroughly investigating their only other target for today. This time, their modus operandi would be quite a bit different than usual, especially considering that there were still a few weaker Initial Ascension Stage experts holding the fort.

Unbeknownst to them, shortly before they had arrived, a grey-haired teenager had appeared right next to the Teleportation Array in the centre of the city and was patiently biding his time while avoiding the detection of everyone stationed here with practised ease.

Mentally counting down, he eventually narrowed his eyes and gazed into the distance, then got even closer to the Array. Right before a practically imperceptible ripple spread throughout all of Qinglong City, he rushed straight into the Array's core and activated it, wrestling control of it away from the ones in charge without any issue.

But just when they were about to react to the intruder, their minds suddenly shuddered, before falling into an illusion–Theodore's Arrays had started to take effect. At exactly the same moment, the Teleportation Array lit up, sending Salvator Predizione to another one of the worlds under the Hans' command.

Of course, a development of this magnitude couldn't be hidden from Theodore, who caught a fleeting glimpse of the young man right before he disappeared. Momentarily pausing his actions, he had a contemplative look in his eyes. Then, a small yet oddly terrifying smile spread across his lips, his gaze chilling to the bone.

'... looks like one of them managed to escape before I could cut off their path of retreat. Not bad. I'll remember you.'