Chapter 24

Aiden Thorne kicked a loose piece of petrified bark, his frustration simmering. The Ashen Courtyard was supposed to be a treasure trove, a training ground for the disciples of their families. 

When his team first arrived, it had been exactly that. They had been ambushed by terrifying shadowy beasts that fought with a ferocity he had never seen before. 

Not only were they stronger than any Stage 1 monsters he had fought, but infuriatingly, they revived after each death. 

His group suffered immense losses in the initial fights, losing twenty disciples among the two hundred.

Thinking about it made his heart bleed. They were all good men, the most talented youngsters the Thorne family had ever birthed. 

But the rewards were immense. 

The strange glowing crystals the monsters dropped were filled with pure life energy. Absorbing a single one increased his total lifespan by one hundred years. 

Its value was immeasurable.

A hundred more years of lifespan wasn't a small thing. 

A Body Tempering cultivator could live up to one hundred and fifty years, an Essence Gathering cultivator to three hundred, and a Core Formation cultivator had a lifespan of five hundred years. 

Each absorption of these crystals gained him one hundred years of lifespan, and it had the same value no matter how many times he had absorbed them. 

He had five hundred years of lifespan now! 

He was sure even the ancestors of the great families would be overjoyed if they heard about this treasure, since all of them were just a few years away from dying.

First, he had tried to hunt the monsters on his own, but he quickly understood these monsters were more cunning than ordinary Stage 1 monsters. 

They would either run away or hide when they saw his large group. That's why he split the groups into ten, with each group having twenty members. 

That was efficient for a few hunts, yet the monsters also learned their pattern and started using guerrilla warfare.

Only then did he plan to group with the Sterlings, their ally. The Sterlings were masters not only of alchemy but also of searching. 

Their youngest and most talented heir, Anya Sterling, even had a Pathseeker's profession core. It took him almost a day to regroup, but when they did, there was nothing.

The forest was silent. Almost as if the dead forest had died again. The monsters were gone.

He stomped over to where Anya Sterling was examining a glyph on one of the stone trees. Her calm, analytical demeanor grated on his nerves.

"Where are the monsters?" he demanded, his voice a low growl. She didn't even look up from the glyph. He continued, his impatience growing. "Are there no more?"

He tried to reason it out himself. Perhaps the rewards were so precious that the number of monsters was naturally limited. That had to be it. 

He checked the small, enchanted compass given to them by the families. It showed the locations of the other three family teams as distant, colored dots. 

The Ashtons were miles to the east, the Crestfalls to the west. The Azures weren't even on the graph, meaning they were too far away for it to sense. 

They were all sticking to the agreement, avoiding conflict in the early stages. He breathed a sigh of relief.

'So they aren't hunting these monsters.'

Anya finally turned away from the tree, her sharp, intelligent eyes sweeping over the area. She shook her head slowly.

"There are monsters," she said, her voice quiet but firm. She pointed to the ground. "Look."

Aiden followed her finger. He saw the signs now that she had pointed them out: faint claw imprints in the ash, deep skid marks where a body had been thrown. The signs of a fierce battle.

"They are being hunted," she stated simply.

Aiden was taken aback. Hunted? By whom? 

"Is that my brother?" he wondered aloud, thinking of the cannon fodder team led by Tiberius. Had they somehow gotten here first?

 He dismissed the idea. Tiberius was strong, but he wasn't strong enough to make a monster population in this area extinct, especially not in a few days.

Anya shook her head, mirroring his reasoning. 

Her gaze was fixed on the tracks as she continued, "Not a group. The tracks are singular. They belong to a single person."

He recoiled. "How is that possible? The device shows no other families are here." His eyes widened as a thought struck him. Anya voiced it before he could.

"The Labyrinth announced 1002 participants," she said, her tone grim. "As far as I remember, 200 disciples from each of the five families are here. That leaves two extra." She paused. 

"I thought some families had cheated, snuck a few extra children in. But it seems that is not the case."

"Is one of them that lunatic who was supposedly killed by the ancestors?" Aiden blurted out, thinking of the intruder who had breached their perimeter. 

That was a huge slap in the face of the Apprentice Formation Master of the Royal Family; some random guy had breached his perfectly crafted formation.

Anya shook her head, her expression certain. 

"He is dead for sure. I saw his half-burned body fall into the Labyrinth's entrance myself. The Regent's attack would have erased him completely."

"Then..." Aiden was confused.

"Someone else," Anya said, her eyes scanning the silent woods. "Either they are working together, which would explain how they can kill so many so fast... or..." She stopped, her thought trailing off into a disturbing silence.

"Or what?" Aiden pressed.

"Or he is hunting solo," she breathed, a sharp intake of air.

They were all Body Tempering cultivators. She and Aiden were even at the Peak stage, just an ounce of insight away from breaking through. 

They could kill the monsters, sure, even if they were caught off guard at first. But to do so this efficiently, this quickly, without any sign of rest... she wasn't sure it was possible.

"Is it someone who is doing... Meridian Opening?" Aiden stopped himself as Anya shot him a sharp, silencing look.

The secret of Meridian Opening was the greatest advantage their two families held. A decade ago, their ancestors had discovered a revolutionary cultivation method. 

Traditional cultivators in the province formed a single dantian below their navel, a vulnerable point that limited their potential. But the new method was different.

It involved opening the 108 meridians that ran through the human body first, then forming countless smaller dantians in every cell connected by these energy pathways.

It was a path to a truly unshakable foundation. He and Anya had both opened three meridians over the last six years. Their spiritual energy reserves were triple that of the other family heirs. 

He shook his head. There was no way an outsider could know this secret. It had to be something else.

Anya knelt, studying the scene of a past battle. She frowned. 

"The kill was eerie. Look." She pointed to a dark stain in the ash. "It's a stain of dried blood. From what we've encountered, the monsters' bodies dissolve into ash and lifespan crystals after death. Which means this blood... it's from the killer."

They continued walking, studying the aftermath of the ghost's hunt. They found seven distinct battle sites, each one a testament to a brutal, swift conflict. 

At one point, Aiden saw the expression on Anya's face become grim.

"...these are all dried bloodstains from the killer," she murmured, her voice barely a whisper. "We have seen seven fight scenes with the same scenario, and all these fights happened at maximum ten-minute intervals..." 

She took a deep breath, her composure finally cracking. 

"I prefer to think there are two people, and they simply take turns fighting. But still... this much blood... it's the kind of loss you see when someone loses a limb. And that's not even considering the possibility he was gutted."

Anya turned to look Aiden in the eyes, her own filled with a mixture of fear and fascination.

"Also... as the fights go on, the killer's technique isn't becoming more refined. His kills are becoming more brutal. Almost like..."

"Almost like what?" Aiden gulped, a cold feeling creeping up his spine.

"Almost like he's enjoying the kills," she finished.

Aiden felt the blood drain from his face. 

"Don't tell me not only has someone sneaked into our Labyrinth... but he's also slowly becoming a sadistic, unkillable killer?"

A sudden, cold breeze swept through the Ashen Courtyard, and for the first time since he had entered this place, Aiden Thorne felt a genuine sliver of fear.