Chapter 833: Civilisation Realm Appears In The Two Suns World (Patreon)

A/N

Only 1 chap today, we see a more human Ke Yin, enjoy!

Chapter 833: Civilisation Realm Appears In The Two Suns World

Before anyone could properly react to the unfamiliar face that was towering over them, an overwhelming pressure came out of the vessel and pressed the Vermilion Vale into the dirt.

After that last exchange, there had been crimson leaves flying around in the air, well, they had stopped drifting and were now heading straight down. The frost that the lich had pulled out of the sky? It was now forced to cover the stones without melting.

The influence the pressure had wasn’t just on the environment.

I didn’t mean for it to happen, but my friends were affected too. Beric had gone down to one knee. Lady Laelyn was holding onto the bark of the Eldest Tree with both hands. Even Elder Thorn, the man who had spent centuries hunting down Saints and Saintess, and a true Rank 7 expert, was struggling to stay upright as his knees buckled.

What I found most interesting was that this wasn’t even an attack.

It was simply the weight of a Civilisation Realm cultivator existing inside a space that had not been built to hold one, so all the valley could do was bend over, and so it did, as well as everything within it.

As for the Otherworldly Being, who was floating forty feet in the air with an enormous spell matrix already in motion to take off the Head Monk’s head, its technique faltered, losing the three outer rings and leaving it hung there half-drawn.

The side of my master’s face that still belonged to my master went slack, and the other half, the grey one that had the bone showing along the jaw, pulled tight as the being frowned.

“You,” it said, pointing its index finger at me. “You are not from this world…”

I wasn’t foolish enough to respond because I knew better than to willingly give away information about myself to my enemy, especially when it already took every ounce of effort I had just to maintain this avatar.

The Dharma Vessel wasn’t a joke, it was the most powerful technique in my arsenal, and right now it was in what could be considered its final form. Just holding the avatar in place was causing blood to run down my nose, and my legs to shake as though they were going to collapse any second.

Knowing that I didn’t have much time, I acted. The avatar raised its right hand and spoke.

“Severance of the Borrowed Thread.”

Unlike most techniques where something visible would leave the palm, whether it be light, sound, or some shockwave, there was none of that. It concerned Beric so much that he actually looked around to check whether something had gone wrong.

But it quickly became apparent that it hadn’t when the Otherworldly Being’s eyes went wide and it screamed, clawing with both hands at its chest like it was trying to physically dig something out of its ribs.

However, that would all be for naught because this wasn’t an attack on the body. Hell, it hadn’t touched the body at all. Like most of Sect Master Yuan’s attacks, it targeted the karmic threads, particularly those connections that tied a passenger to a vessel.

When a being took over another’s body, there was always an invisible arrangement between them. In this case, Hiron had paid for those threads with three elders and his own Rank 8 soul, but such a payment was weak on the grand scale of things.

That was one of the reasons why I made it such a great point about gaining consent anytime I had to use someone else’s body, because if you didn’t have their permission, that link could be targeted, and more importantly, it could be cut off, expelling you.

“Stop it! Get out,” the being said in a voice that came out doubled while it dropped ten feet before catching itself. “Get out of my head, you filthy little—”

It couldn’t finish its sentence because the jaw moved away from its control. Someone else was using it.

“No. You parasite. You’re the one in my head. I thought you would know how possession works since you jumped on it the first chance you got. Do I really need to spell it out for you? Don’t tell me the education where you come from is as bad as the Red Sun Academy. It’s the administrations fault, isn’t it? I bet they…”

I didn’t listen to the rest of it because my heart nearly leapt out of my chest. I recognised that voice. That was Elder Molric’s voice. Sure, the volume was wrong, and the throat was half open down the side, but it’d recognise that irritated, lecturing tone anywhere.

“Parasite? You dare call me a parasite?” the being spat out. “You are a residue. A smear on the inside of a dirty jar.”

“Ha! That sounds high and mighty coming from someone who doesn’t even have their own body,” Elder Molric retorted. “You should be grateful that…”

As the two continued to fight amongst themselves about who was in fact what, the sight from where we stood looked terrifying.

In mid-air, the body hung there as it fought itself. The left arm came up and grabbed the right wrist and forced it down. The spine arched backwards before folding forwards. It walked four steps on nothing and stopped and walked one back. Half the face was snarling, and the other half was talking. Both halves were doing it at the same time out of the same mouth, and the sound that produced was something that I’d expect to come straight out of a horror movie.

But what caught my attention more than any of that was that right now, it was vulnerable.

And I wasn’t the only one to realise that.

Head Monk Cairan’s Dharma Vessel got back onto its feet with the bell arm still ringing low. But it was the third hand, the one holding the brush, that made my heart skip a beat. It began to draw a character in the air in strokes of burning gold. This was a finishing technique. If he landed that, it would take out Elder Molric with it…

“Don’t do it,” I said, my voice coming out broken and distorted. The vessel behind me shuddered from the shoulders down, and I felt the golden flow through my ankles stutter for half a second. Damn, even talking in this state cost me.

“Saint,” Cairan said as the giant stopped with the character half written. “All we need is one strike and we can end this. Why would you command me to stop now?”

“Because every spell it casts costs it health. If your strike doesn’t kill it, it will pay for its next spell.” I barely got the words out. “And even if you are able to kill it in one shot, my master will be killed with it.”

“Boy,” Headmaster Monroe, who was now floating beside me, cut in. “I don’t know you, and you don’t know me. But I have buried thousands of students over the centuries. I know this isn’t easy for you, but this isn’t a world where one man weighs against the sky.”

“Master Molric is still alive in there,” my voice came out sounding pathetic. “We have the chance to save him.”

“Then he is a brave man dying badly, and he would tell you the same thing if he wasn’t arguing about academy politics right now.” Monroe pointed up. “We need to cut this thing down before it cuts us down.”

“He's right.” Kal added, flying over to stand beside the other two Rank 8s. “I am sorry, but we went past the point where we get to save individuals about six hundred loops ago.”

They were right. I knew that, and I knew it was selfish and naïve for me to argue otherwise.

And what helped their case was that Elder Molric was no selfless saint. Hell, some people would probably argue that he had a tragic death like this coming to him. After all, the man had kidnapped a teen and forced him to fight against me, he had also kidnapped a girl from the Blue Sun Academy so he would figure out the secrets of the Blue Sun, and I doubted that kidnapping was the worst that the elder had dabbled in over his long life. No, far from it.

So, it only made sense to sacrifice someone like that to save the world.

But unfortunately for me, emotions didn’t follow logic.

This was strange for me to admit because I had always thought I would take the most logical option in every situation, yet it was moments like this that reminded me of my own humanity. The thought of giving in and sacrificing my own master when there might be a chance to save him made my heart pound in my chest, my breathing frantic, and my throat close up.

Not only that, but the whole reason any of this was happening was because a headmaster had looked at the sky and decided the numbers were bad, so had justified to himself that the lives of thousands of people were worth risking. It was the mathematics that got us here. And if the answer to Hiron was a slightly nicer version of Hiron's solution, then I don't actually think we are any better.

“No,” I shook my head as best as I could. “Elder Molric is fighting that thing right now. If he wins, then it’s all over anyways.”

“And if he doesn’t, then it's over for us all,” Monroe muttered, but he didn’t make any moves.

I didn’t reply to that because Elder Molric was going to take back control of his body and put an end to this outsider’s attempt to rule over this world. That was something that I believed, or maybe it was something I was trying to convince myself that I believed. I didn’t know, and I didn’t have the time to figure it out because the body had finally stopped thrashing.

Slowly, the figure regained its upright posture as it lowered both of its arms.

The head rolled once on the neck and settled, then it turned its gaze on it.

It looked at the three Rank 8 floating beside my Dharma Vessel. It looked at Beric, at Lady Laelyn behind him, and at Elder Thorn on his knees against the trunk with his palms flat on the bark. It took its time about it, going along the line of us one at a time, and it finished on me.

The face gave me nothing.

One side of it was still grey and drawn tight over the bone, and the other was still the old man who had shooed me out of his laboratory and told me not to die.

Who was in control?

Was that Elder Molric looking at us?

Or was that the Otherworldly Being?

A/N

Ke Yin's Dharma Vessel isn't as simple as being Sect Master Yuan, we will find out more next chapter.

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