Alys was the perfect probe. A Four Star Shaper like her was supposed to be stronger than a Five Star Naturamancer like Logan, but she had only recently leveled up. By Aaron's calculations, her attacks would be enough for Logan to narrowly escape, if he escaped. This should be enough for any hidden defender to step up and protect the boy.

That is, of course, if she hadn't attacked like an idiot.

He couldn't even begin to fathom how in the seven hells she had interpreted his words as a hint to kill the Vitamancers first. He even wondered if he had misspoken.

A spatial bubble, her most powerful attack, appeared around one of the Vitamancers. She didn't have enough energy control to create two bubbles, so she surrounded the other Vitamancer with spatial blades that resembled shards of floating glass, only much thinner. The bubble shrank rapidly while the shrapnel shot towards the target at high speed.

The bubble's target, a male, died instantly, crushed into a misshapen mixture of bones, flesh, blood, and metal, with no way of fighting back. But the target of the blades fared much better. She dropped to her knees and stood in the fetal position, facing down, covering her neck with her hands, and her head with her arms as best she could.

Spatial blades were made from space itself and easily pierced the woman's armor. But they were unable to find her vital spots and finish her. Aaron felt the woman do what Alys and Lana thought impossible, use her Vital Energy to fight the Space Energy that formed the blades and pierced her body. By doing that, she halted the advance of the blades almost completely.

Alys froze as soon as she turned the man into... that.

She felt disgusted. Not disgusted with what she was seeing, but with herself. It had been so easy to kill him, to reduce everything he was, everything he had been, everything he could be, into something so terrible.

Her spatial blades pierced the woman, and Alys watched it with morbid fascination. The blades were much stronger than when she was just a Three Star Sorceress, cutting metal like a hot knife in butter. It was only a matter of time before Vitamancer died.

But suddenly, she felt something different. Her Space Energy inside the woman was being fought against! But how?! The target was a Vitamancer! Different types of energy could not interact, everyone knew that!

No, wrong. The Patriarch had taught her otherwise. He had said that all nine types of energy in the world came from the same higher source, Divine Energy, and could interact with each other.

So that was true? Was it possible—

Her line of thought was interrupted by Logan's counter-attack.

Aaron looked interested when Logan did exactly what he said he would do. He snapped his fingers.

Shadows left his body, thousands of them, like a fast-forwarded explosion. In just a few moments, the entire cave was filled with shadows of beasts of all sizes, from small dogs to gigantic humanoids, surrounding Aaron and his clan. Although they were mere shadows, they looked solid and weren't completely transparent, thanks to the Nature Energy that held them together.

Despite their large number, only two of them attacked Alys. The shadow of a flying octopus shot its tentacles at her, while one of the giant humanoid shadows attacked with its weapon, a shadow halberd.

Alys was already in an altered state of mind because of what she had done to her targets, and her surprise increased when the shadows appeared. She reacted barely fast enough to save her life, creating a spatial shield over her head.

As the shield was hurriedly assembled, it broke instantly when the halberd struck. Fortunately, it was enough to change the weapon's trajectory and save Alys' life by a hair's breadth.

The redirected halberd hit half of the octopus' tentacles and destroyed them, but the other half gripped Alys tightly and squeeze her tightly. She cried out in pain.

Aaron felt the Nature Energy of the octopus invade Alys' body and soul, something much more painful than the physical squashing. Still, he didn't save her. First, because she hadn't lost the fight yet. Second, because overcoming obstacles and pain were part of growing up and that was an opportunity for Alys. If she didn't free herself in a few seconds, he would prod her in the right direction. If that also failed, he would act directly.

He heard a sob and turned to Lana, who was crying and hugging herself. He felt bad for her, but he didn't act to comfort her either. The same truth about growth applied to her. After he killed Logan, if she didn't push him away, he would give her emotional support.

Meanwhile, Alys clenched her teeth as she tried to resist the pain. Logan was saying something stupid about surrendering, but Aaron wasn't really paying attention to what the idiot was saying.

A few seconds passed, and Aaron helped Alys a little.

"Alys," he said, using Qi on his vocal cords to make his voice explode in the cave, to make sure she heard him through the pain he felt. "Remember my lesson. How can his Natural Energy invade your soul, which is already full of Qi, Space Energy, and Arcane Energy? How can an energy fight a different type of energy?"

She only stopped screaming for a moment before resuming with all the power of her lungs. Her eyes widened, their veins becoming more apparent. Space Energy swirled within her.

Logan looked at her with wide eyes for a moment, then with pity and shame, then with pure disdain, his feelings as unstable as Lana had said.

"Is that what you taught her?" he asked while turning to Aaron. "To scream to death?"

Aaron would've ignored him even if he had heard the man over Alys' screams. He was focusing on her, feeling the Space Energy within her touch the Nature Energy. Her energy did nothing for a while, only kept being pushed back by the invading energy, without fighting back.

But Alys was screaming, and Alys was pushing.

With all her willpower, she broke through the restrictions of her own mind.

As if it were a dam burst, the Space Energy inside flowed wild and uncontrollable. It pushed Nature Energy out, cleaned Alys' body and soul, and kept going outwards. Space Energy invaded the octopus, and it immediately dissipated into nothingness.

The energy only stopped flowing when it created a sphere around Alys, spinning at high speed, visible to the naked eye. This sphere was gray, transparent, and unlike the bubble that Alys used to crush the man to death, it was filled with rotating Space Energy.

Alys started to float, still screaming, and the sphere became unstable. The flow of Space Energy condensed into small fragments of space, rotating wildly, and began to cut through her skin. It was then that Aaron intervened.

"Enough!" he shouted.

She didn't answer, so he took one of the Arcane Crystals from his Space Ring and threw it at her. The crystal exploded shortly after touching the sphere, just as a grenade would.

The shockwave of the explosion penetrated the sphere almost unimpeded, hitting Alys' head and throwing her body to the side like a rag doll. The sphere dissipated and she fell unconscious on the floor.

"Alys!" shouted Lana, running to her.

Lana wouldn't be able to do anything, as her powers were limited to body and spirit, and Aaron knew that Alys' real wounds were in the soul. He couldn't feel other people's souls directly, just the energies inside them, but the situation was simple to read for anyone who had seen it before.

The mind lived inside the soul, and Alys' mind had simply grown too fast when it broke through its wrong paradigms in a moment of great stress, going beyond what her soul could handle. It damaged her soul in a way that even Nature Energy hadn't been able to.

The space sphere was an unconscious defense mechanism she had used when her soul was injured shortly after suffering the pain of being invaded. Unable to differentiate the pain of the invasion from the pain caused by the growth of her own mind, Alys instinctively attacked everything and everyone around her, hoping to destroy the responsible for the pain. But the damaged soul affected her control over Space Energy, and the sphere became unstable.

Still, this had been a great harvest for Alys. The damage to her soul was a natural growth injury, like a growing child's knee. Her soul would not only heal over time, it would also end up strengthened. By going beyond her mental limitations, Alys ended up increasing both her potential and her actual power.

Aaron looked at Lana one last time and sighed again. Alys hadn't been able to probe Logan, so Aaron would have to attack without all the information he wanted. But attack he would.

He turned to Logan and said, "Time to die."

"Brother!" shouted Lana.

Qi Martial Arts: Elusive Steps!

Aaron used his standard movement technique and was about to release his death aura to give himself an extra edge in the fight, in case Logan had a card up his sleeve, when he was interrupted.

"Stop!" shouted a deep voice of an old man.

It was not a normal voice, but one that exhaled power. A voice that filled the entire cave and made everything tremble. A voice that demanded immediate obedience and warned of the terrible consequences of rebelling against it with a single word.

And Aaron obeyed.

The most fundamental rule in the universe was "might makes right." The traces of Arcane Energy that came with the voice revealed to Aaron that it belonged to someone at the Champion level. That was someone he couldn't beat, someone he would have to run from if they fought against each other.

If he were alone, he would kill Logan and flee. But he wasn't, and he didn't want Alys and Lana to become collateral damage.

This forced submission was humiliating, but it was nothing new to him. No one reached the top of the universe without slowly climbing each step of the ladder of power, and dealing with stronger cultivators was part of the reality of each step. The only thing he could do was to remember those who stood between him and his goals and make them pay for it in the future.

That didn't demand a price in blood. The speaker was forcing Aaron to stop by using his superior power and threat of violence, just like Aaron had warned others before. Albeit humiliating, it was considered a civilized manner of stopping bloodshed without preemptively killing the attacking party. Aaron had even forgiven some people for that because it would be a chore to go after them just for that. Yet, if given the chance, he would repay the humiliation.

The forced interruption of any energetic ability had negative repercussions on a cultivator. Although Aaron's skills were as perfect as possible, there was still a limit he could reach, especially at the Three Star level.

As he obeyed the voice and stopped, he felt the muscles in his legs tear and some bones break. He almost tripped and fell, but stayed upright by twisting his legs, which caused the bones of his left knee to break and his right knee to crack. His breaking bones popped loudly in the silence just after the cry of the voice.

Aaron ground his teeth as blood ran down his legs. But he barely noticed the pain or the liquid.

His attention was entirely focused on the unknown man entering the room.