I know this aura, he thought without budging an inch from the elevated branch that he was sprawled upon. I’m sure of it. That’s a member of the Bloodhand Sect!

Anger filled his stomach as he recalled all of the trouble that that murderous group of lunatics had caused him and his friends, the latter losing their lives to the shady organization in the end. Time to find out where their base is.

The approaching person was sprinting through the forest at a breakneck pace, though they paused about eighty metres away, doubtlessly aware of his presence. At the fourth level of the Profound Entry, the distant silhouette changed its course directly for where he was laying, clearly intent on closing the gap between them before he could react to the sudden intrusion.

Vengeance in his eyes, Jason dropped over a hundred and twenty metres from midway up the tree that he’d been resting in and landed in front of the oncoming person with a crash of snapping brambles. Rather than the black and scarlet garb of their sect, the abrupt aggressor was drabbed in a mud-stained cloak of frayed grey fabric. Rather than withdrew a weapon, they produced an immaculately smooth scroll with edges gilded in gold, a gentle light emitted from both the parchment and the silver bar of metal that it was wrapped around.

Unfurling the scroll, the oncoming disciple tore at their thumb with yellowing canine teeth and then pressed their bloody flesh to the glowing parchment.

What the hell is this guy doing? Jason wondered as he dodged a dagger that would have left a clean cut on his arm had he been of proportional strength to his surface cultivation. He sidestepped another swipe of the dagger and slammed his fist into the shaded face of his attacker, who’s head snapped back with the sound of a solid smack, the hood slipping off as the stunned boy fell onto his ass and stared up at Jason with an incoherent expression.

“You?” He almost couldn’t believe it. The boy that he had just floored was none other than one of the three disciples that had aided the Netherwolf Tribe in assaulting Redfox Village, particularly the one that had begun to kill the residents with an eager smile upon his hairless, unimpressive face.

Confusion filled the boy’s eyes as he tried to recall where he had seen Jason before while still battling the stunning effect of the fist that he’d just eaten.

Jason grabbed the boy’s neck and pressed him to the ground, his sword appearing in his other hand. He pressed the blade of his weapon against his struggling captive’s throat and the boy stilled in an instant.

“What did you just try to do? You have three seconds to answer.”

“C—contract,” the boy sputtered.

Scanning the mass of foreign memories that saturated his mind, the truth donned on him after a momentary inspection of the discarded paper. The boy had just tried to use a master-slave contract on him. The owner of the blood that was first to touch the paper would become the master, while the owner of the second stain would become the slave.

“Do you have any more of them?” When the boy didn’t respond, he drew a bead of scarlet from the his throat and said, “Three seconds.”

Two more master-contracts fell to the ground as the boy willed them free of his spatial bag.

Jason punched him one more time, measuring enough strength to steal away his consciousness for a short while. He unfurled one of the two scrolls that had yet to be marked, bit the tip of his index finger and then pressed the resultant bead of blood atop the glowing parchment, and then pressed the brittle sheet against the crimson stream that he’d just produced from the other’s neck with a prick of his sword.

The boy experienced an evident episode of discomfort as he was pulled back into consciousness with a pained grunt, his eyes expanding in horror as his hands flew to his neck, where a black ring had just appeared and was in the midst of slowly fading.

Willing power into his voice, Jason said, “From now, if I say, ‘I command you’ and tell you to do something, you’ll do it. If you choose not to, then hold your breath until you die.”

The boy didn’t say anything, his expression lifeless and covered in copious amounts of sweat.

“Why do you keep glancing over your shoulder?”

The boy gritted his teeth and said, “I refined an old shopkeeper in the town back there.”

“Why?”

“To obtain those scrolls, and to break through to the fourth level.”

Two life forms appeared on the peripherals of Jason’s perceptions as an anxious silence settled between them, both of the oncoming people at the eighth level of Profound Entry. The youth that he had just captured attempted to sprint away as soon as he became aware of the newcomers, but Jason commanded him to remain by his side.

Two young men emerged a short while later, both red-eyed with rage. They held noble appearances, each dressed in fine black tunics and pricey silver breeches, the bottoms of their leggings matching their upper garb in colour.

“An accomplice?” said the man on the right, who was a bit older than Jason and broad of limb and shoulder. He withdrew a gleaming longsword with a ruby embedded into the circular pommel, an Essence Fusion weapon by the feel of its aura. “That boy just murdered our grandmother. Step aside so that we may take him back to town so that he may meet the end that he deserves.”

“If not, then we shall kill you as well,” the other man hissed. He brandished a sword that was similar to the one that his relative held, his face a touch redder than the other.

The young disciple’s beady eyes darted from one face to another in feral desperation.

“We’re not accomplices,” Jason frowned. “And I agree that this guy is a piece of shit. I totally understand why you want to take him back with you, but I can’t let that happen.”

“Enough words,” spat the younger one, whose complexion was more flushed. “Protecting a murderer means that you’re just as guilty as the man himself!”

Jason’s arm began to burn as he encased it with a thin layer of devious energy, which quickly congealed into a small cylinder that then expanded into a deadly spear of projected inner essence. Both of the young men took subconscious steps back, and even the disciple that he had just captured turned on him with a wild expression. Only cultivators in the upper levels of the Profound Entry stage were capable of using martial skills that manifested inner essence outside of the body, and only those at the Integration stage could manage ones that didn’t require direct contact with the body, and by extension, the dantian.

“Where did you learn that technique?”

“Quiet.” He turned to the other men and hurled the projectile at a tree that was about five metres away from them. The spear punched straight through the heavy trunk and exploded out of the other side, leaving a head-sized hole through the entirety of its nine-metre diameter. The scarlet spear continued on for about forty metres, grazing a few other trees with destructive force before dissipating into a loose mass of disintegrating energy. “I can kill you guys in a heartbeat if I want to, but I won’t.”

After exchanging complicated glances, the older of the two blew out a sad and helpless sigh and then put away his weapon. Turning to the other man, he tugged on his shoulder. “Let’s go back. Mother doesn’t need to lose anyone else today.”

Jason tossed a spatial bag to the young man who was currently seething in front of them, his weapon shaking in the hand that he hadn’t caught the bag with. After inspecting the contents, his eyebrows rose as his shoulders drooped, and he reluctantly stowed away his weapon. The two left without saying another word.

“You sure you weren’t just after grandma’s enslavement scrolls?” Jason muttered to himself as he watched the two youths disappear into the depths of the forest. He’d given him fifty spirit stones out of pity for their grandmother’s passing. Turning to the disciple, who remained still with a look of quiet perturbation, he said, “What was your name again?”

“Brud.”

“Alright, listen here then, Brud. You’re going to lead me to your sect, and you’re going to tell me everything about it on the way. I command you to do so.”

The boy’s limbs shook before he turned on the spot and started forward through the forest with a look of revolted reluctance on his narrow face.

Jason marvelled at the power of compulsion that the master-slave contracts employed, and a discomfited sensation set into his stomach as he followed after the boy. No matter where they existed, it seemed that human beings would always be cruel.

“If you’re looking for your friends,” Brud said after half an hour of quiet travel, “then I would suggest another destination.”

“Are you saying that my friends are alive?” Jason stopped in place, his face frozen in uncertainty. “I command you to tell me the truth.”

“I don’t know if they’re alive, but I know that the boy and the girl managed to escape our—the sect’s forces outside of that city with the vine-covered walls. What was it called again? Greenwall, I think.”

“Do you know where they are?”

“No, but they fled in the same direction as me; North.”

Jason’s mind almost stopped working. He’d thought Nolan and Nyla dead for the past several months and had constantly grieved over their deaths during that time. Was it truly possible that they might still be alive?

He questioned the boy for over an hour, his inquiries broad in topic yet succinct in intent. A nondescript member of the Bloodhand Sect’s outer court, Brud had committed the taboo of refining a fellow disciple of the sect, a mistake that proved disastrous for him once a large company of disciples had been dispatched to seek out the one that had killed the blond-haired boy, the one that he had left alone due to the poison that Nolan had forced into his bloodstream.

He had known that it would come to light that he had been the one to burn the corpses of his companions, which he had initially attributed to Nolan in an effort to erase the evidence of him refining one of the boys. His only hope for survival was to renounce membership to the sect and to flee as far as humanly possible from their territory.

Brud had detached from the group of disciples once they had finally caught up to their target, since it had seemed imminent that the boy would be overwhelmed and taken back to the sect. He’d fled northward with all of his strength, but was both astounded and horrified to find hundreds of thousands of disciples swarming the kingdom that he had been passing through just a handful of days later.

The anxious, unkempt boy also revealed that the sect had invaded several of the easterly kingdoms and that the entire section of the continent was now embroiled in war. Brud was certain that his friends were in Hauss, for he’d recognized Nolan’s aura on a battlefield that he had been forced to cross through several weeks back.

He had encountered many battlefields throughout his frantic journey toward the Dragon’s Tail and every time had risked throwing on his sect uniform and dashing through the furthest, safest ranks of the sect’s armies in order to continue on toward his destination. He had a difficult time believing it, for the youth that he had seen had been far stronger than the one in his memory that had defeated his accomplices back at Redfox Village. He was certain of his identity, however, because of the strangely dense aura that he had possessed, and mainly because of the peculiar explosives that had employed in a bid to clear a large and bloody path through the battlefield.

Jason had helped Nolan create those explosives, so he couldn’t help but believe the rogue disciple’s words. That he had been so much stronger when Brud had seen him only furthered Jason’s belief that Nolan had somehow obtained the ring that had belonged to Actius’s master, the one that the all-powerful Overseer of the Winterlands had been unable to destroy before dying at the hands of the chained woman’s accomplices. With the aid of that ring, Nolan would have been able to reach the Inheritance Grounds that Actius had visited with his master, where he would have obtained the inheritance left behind by the latter. The Origin Energy in Nia’s atmosphere was many times more potent than that of Venara, which would justify his friend’s inexplicable growth in terms of cultivation.

Brud’s greatest misfortune proved to be an unexpected stroke of luck for Jason. While the former had lost all forms of freedom, he had gained a disposable guide that would either help him find his friends or lead him to an area where he might vent his vengeance on the murderous members of that dastardly sect.

“I command you to take me to Hauss,” he said as he finally began to formulate a distinct plan of action in his mind. “Bring me to wherever the disciples are most sparse.” Kidnapping, questioning, killing; he had a lot of work to do in the coming weeks. In the meantime, he would have to try his best to limit his thoughts about Nolan and the ring lest Actius learn that the timeless treasure he so desperately sought was in the hands of one of Jason’s only remaining friends.