Chapter 637 - Storm of the Abyss (X) (Patreon)

I thought I'd watch the kids fight to see whether there were any arts that I could spin up for them, but I kind of got distracted by this little, panicking gremlin who asked me to play some chess with her. Apparently, she'd been observing whenever little Feng and I played and had been studying all on her own.

She was good, just like the boy, and I immediately realized it was just the matter of time before she'd be whooping my ass on the regular. At some point, though, I was broken out of my thoughts by her comment; craning my neck, I saw, in the far distance, the now armless man standing with wide eyes full of terror, and I saw Jin Hua's gaze avert away from Long Tao, and I saw Lao Shun reaching some inner nirvana or something, judging my his expression.

The kids had beaten the man who cost 1,000 points to decipher and, from the looks of it, they'd beaten him quite soundly. Parts of me were proud and full of elation, while parts bore the same terror that looked to be seared into the man's brain.

Xiu'er yanked the man by his hair and dragged him over to me, tossing him at my feet as he yelped, blood spattering from his lips. All the while, she was smiling--and, perhaps worst of all, it was an adorable smile.

"Master, we subdued the bad guy!" yeah... I love you all, but if anyone were to walk in on us right now, they'd have very different notion of who was the 'good guy' and who was the 'bad guy'.

"Hm, good job," I nodded, standing up. At the very least, they've stopped putting things in front of my eyes whenever there's a bloody scene. That's progress, right?

I walked over to the half-dead man and crouched as the kids dispersed--alongside Lao Shun--to aid the survivors in the room. The man was all but whimpering, his lips shaking like a leaf in the wind.

"What are you after?" I asked. Even if I suspected it was the shard, it wouldn't hurt to get a confirmation.

"W-who... are... you?" he squeezed out the words one by one as if each required a hurdle to overcome.

"No, no," I said. "I am asking questions. You are giving answers. And if you give good ones, I'll grant you a swift death. If not..." I stopped myself, though that just sounded like an intentional threat, if I think about it.

More and more, I realized, I've fully embossed myself into this world. Murder, death, blood, and gore that, if put to film, would be quoted as 'unrealistic' and 'excessive'... they've become a normal thing. As much to behold as to inflict. I had to force myself to feel a trace of hesitation over killing this man; but I had to force it, and I had to keep it alive. Why? That's a question, I think, without a good answer.

All I know is that maintaining the semblance of it has allowed me to at least pretend my kids are 'better'. That, despite their hunger for destruction, they look up to me enough to understand that uninhibited violence, one without a rhyme or reason, was unnecessary. I feel that, if I slip past that final step in the descending staircase of my thin morality, they will lose even that. If they see me lose the grip, they'll abandon the idea of holding back. And if they are bad now, I can't imagine how much worse they'd be off the proverbial leash.

"I, I don't... know..." the man said as blood began to coalesce inside his eyes and trickle out of their corners.

"..." it didn't seem like he was lying. Best I could tell, anyway. Just as I was about to ask whether the woman was a Sage and maybe if he knew the title or something, the entire hall shook so violently that I was knocked backwards, barely managing to stabilize myself by manipulate space around my feet to stop the momentum.

The pillars shattered in an outward burst while the ceiling began to cave in. Just as I was about to rush forward to the kids that were still scattered about, a burst of light exploded outwardly and spread out into cloud-like vapors that latched onto the pillars and onto the ceiling, actually stopping the descent.

I glanced over at Rayce who suddenly fell to his knees, coughing up a mouthful of blood as Shufen caught him and prevented him from falling down. The shaking didn't stop, even after the fact; it continued to rumble and ravage, like strums of a guitar.

"They're actually fighting," Long Tao said, his gaze piercing past the walls.

"Who? Those two at the Eternal Barrier Realm?" I asked.

"Hm," he nodded. "I didn't think they would."

"Why not?"

"Because fights at those realms are never that simple," that was Shufen's voice. She appeared next to me with the boy in tow, hand extended as I fetched some healing pills from my rings and handed them over. She continued to explain while feeding the boy. "Even an Emperor can't simply kill somebody at the Eternal Barrier Realm. By that point in one's journey, they've assembled so many life-saving measures, probably splintered their existence into at least a dozen avatars, and, if desperate enough, had means of genuinely hurting anyone.

"When people that high up fight--but truly fight, not spar--it is always because there's no other avenue left. Furthermore, those fights usually last years, decades, if not centuries, and tend to drag the world around them into the fight one way or another."

"... let's suppose that the Sage entrapped the two of them," I said, frowning. "And implied that they're here for the shard and nothing else. There's no reason that the sect's prime master or whatever would fight, no?"

"There isn't," Shufen nodded as Rayce's complexion became rosier.

"Huh." what the hell did the sage say to kickstart the whole fight? "But shouldn't the aftereffects be more... explosive?"

"They're fighting inside a pocket dimension," Long Tao said. "The fact that we felt anything to begin with..."

"If their spatial dimension cracks or even bends at a strange angle," Shufen added. "A single trace of their fight could flatten this entire area in the blink of an eye. We should start moving toward the exit and figure out how to get as far away from here as possible."

There it was, the knot.

The anger.

The rage.

The want in me to find that Sage, and beat the ever-living shit out of her.

Just a few hours--that's all I needed. I'd have taken my stash of hundreds of thousands of stones, and I'd have been happy. So, so, so happy.

I was about to disagree when Long Tao spoke:

"I agree." it gave me a pause; ordinarily, he was the one pushing us to fight demons of higher and higher order. If even he was saying we need to get away...

"Hm. Alright, gather everyone back together." I looked around and tried to locate a trace of the enclosing array, managing to do so on the other side of the room. Activating Dao Sight, I at least got a slight idea of what we were up against.

[--Dao Sight used][Target: Immortal Spatial Lock Array][...][Immortal Spatial Lock Array][Tier: mid-Imperial Tier][Quality of Assembly: Minimal][...][No further information is available to the Host]

"You two," I turned to Shufen and Long Tao. "If you knew the exact name of the formation, would you know how to break through it?"

"..." they both stared at me for a moment, Long Tao breaking the silence first. "Perhaps. Do you know the name, Master?"

"It's Immortal Spatial Lock Array."

... alright, why do you both look like I said, 'Array that locks up emperors and empresses and probes and prods them for all eternity'? Oh, I've got a bad, bad, bad feeling about this.