"Someone, stop him!" the shout resounded in the air, a mere few moments too late. A few moments too late to change the fate of the man who ordered my death.
This shout happened a mere moment before I ripped the arms away from the poor fellow. If it happened before I was told to die, maybe I would still stop. If someone nicely asked me, that is. But now, after the futile attempt at my life, someone appeared and wished for me to stop.
Wasn't that unreasonable?
When they wanted to kill me, it was all right. But when I defended and retaliated, I was suddenly the bad guy?
'Gosh, I hate politics,' I thought, shaking my head with disagreement over the sect's method.
To say that this moment made me disillusioned with the Skyladder sect would be a slight overestimation. Sure, if I still harbored any expectations towards the sect I was supposed to be a part of, I would be disillusioned hard.
But at the current state of things, I no longer held any expectations towards this place and its people. Not anymore.
I looked down at the two arms I ripped away from the man. This sight would easily shake to the core in the past. Even just a single day before, I would still freak out at such an image.
Right now, I simply shook my head and set the arms alight, discarding them to the side and allowing them to fall down as they burned away.
Before long, I started falling down to the ground. I never learned the art of levitating or hovering, only able to enter the domain of the skies for a short moment. A moment later, I dropped right down to the ground, using another explosion of flames to soften up my descent.
I could feel my flames eating away at the barrier of fake calmness that I shrouded my consciousness with. It was the only way in which I could cope with what happened to me before, but this self-protection was quickly rotting away under the influence of my own flames.
Bit by bit, all those bottled emotions that raged deeply in my soul would take over, forcing me back into the hell of being not only aware of all those emotions but also forced to take the reins of them while dealing with the situation at hand.
In other words, my hell was only about to start, and every flicker of the flames that surrounded me meant getting closer to the doorstep of that hell.
****
By the time Vaner arrived at the scene, the illusory peace was long broken.
The sight of having a disciple tear apart one of the deputies was too much for the sect elders, patriarch, and other deputies.
Bit by bit, those fearsome men continued to throw their attacks at Arthur, hoping to squash him like a worm.
Normally, a single attack of the scale that only elders and deputies were capable of unleashing should do the job...
But in this specific situation, Arthur simply refused to like, like some persistent bug set on annoying the hell out of him.
Yet, that was only the beginning.
After the first round of bombing that proved to be completely futile, Arthur started to retaliate. Unable to fight at a distance, he would somehow explode himself towards the people in the sky.
Whoever would be too slow to escape from his clutches would end up ripped into several parts by the prowess that should not be within reach of a simple disciple of the Skyladder sect.
"Isn't he supposed to be just body reinforcement?!" someone cried out, proving just how well Arthur managed to integrate his little lie into the common sense of the Skyladder sect.
Right now, calling him out as the first-stage cultivator was simply laughable. Even when accounting for his cultivation going berserk, the first level?
Only the dumbest of the dumb could still consider such a scenario as a possibility.
"He has long reached the mana condensation stage," Vaner muttered in a low voice when it was the first thing he heard upon arriving at the scene. He then squinted his eyes as he looked down at his direct disciple.
'I knew that this was going to turn ugly,' he thought, casting a quick glance over at the burning remains of several elders scattered all over the area. 'But I didn't expect it to reach such levels of insanity,' he thought, bitting down on his lips.
It was Vaner's fault that the Dual Cultivation sect disciple could push forth with her plans. Naturally, under the protection of Vaner's influence, even a guest from the upper sect would dare to act freely.
After all, Vaner's origins and power came from a place even higher up on the social ladder than those middling sects!
"Just kill him," another brave soul shared their intention, pulling out a sword and rushing down from the skies. Without a second thought, one of the guests joined his rush.
A few seconds later, their remains only added to the pile of burning remains dirtying and fertilizing the soil of the sect.
'Something is growing,' Vaner thought as he observed the situation from a relatively safe distance. 'It's like with every kill... his limits are slowly but surely shaved away,' he noticed, watching the sorry state of his disciple.
"His mana..." Someone uttered, pointing their hand at the disciple below. "His mana is agitated!" they shouted a moment later. "He went fully berserk!" that was the only conclusion to the previous statement.
"It seems like we don't have any choice," the patriarch himself said, appearing right in the middle of all the chaos.
The look on his face was troubled, slightly guilty whenever he looked down at Arthur on the ground.
"Dear disciple, it looks like my sects have failed to protect you," the old man said in a sad tone, shaking his head over Arthur's sorry fate. "But at this point, the most that I can do as your protector is put you to the rest," he added, raising his palm.
Arthur's head sharply raised, proving that while he previously paid no mind to the patriarch's appearance, he now became Arthur's center of attention.
"No!" Vaner shouted, reaching out with his hand to the man. "Don't do anything stu..." he attempted to warn his old friend.
"KILL!" two deputies used the words of the patriarch to rush down. One of them brandished a glorious-looking sword, while the one threw some beads as he descended down towards Vaner's disciple below.
This time, Arthur didn't play no games. He didn't even bother to rip those people apart.
Arthur's flames coiled around him, condensing as if his qi itself took a breath and held it in. And then, all the stored energy of the flames released, turning into a pillar of light that enveloped both the two deputies and the patriarch at once!
Arthur was looking up. It appeared that even for the current him, the kind of attack he just unleashed, seemingly out of nowhere, didn't come without a cost.
He was panting heavily, quickly regaining the proper amount of air in his lungs necessary for his body to keep on going. The flames surrounding him before were already culling down the amount of air he could breathe, but the explosion right now almost made Arthur simply suffocate.
And then, his and Vaner's eyes met.
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