Dracia shot off another volley of energy blades at the fleeing youths, and took note of the blood that the black-haired girl coughed up after blocking this second attack. She wasn’t very interested in the young ones anymore, however, for a dark and disturbing aura was seeping off of the woman that had blocked Jaren’s attack without so much as a slight burn or blemish. This didn’t bode well for her and her clansmen, since only Tems or Tegan would have been able to do such a thing, and unfortunately the latter was dead and the former was nowhere in sight.

The group that the Hatten clan had originally been chasing had just slowed to a stop, though Dracia didn’t have the mind to subdue them. Nobody did.

Long hair the shade of icy snow, thin, pale eyebrows and a beautiful, doll-like face gave this woman a conspicuous appearance that was further accentuated by her white robes and milky skin. Dracia had never seen such a beautiful person before, nor had she ever laid eyes on somebody whose appearance was so contradictory to their aura and disposition. It was as if an innocent princess had been possessed by an evil demon, whose aura tainted her body like a parasite within a virgin flower.

This woman was here for no other purpose than to take lives.

“That appearance,” came Kaya’s nervous voice. “Don’t tell me…the White Rogue is one of the intruders?”

As soon as Dracia heard the infamous name, it all made sense. The woman before them was known throughout the continent for her many misdeeds. She was one of the most powerful people alive today, and was a person that didn’t care about giving face to any of the powers that be. Whether it was the Easterly Kingdoms, the kingdoms of the southern steppes, the middle kingdoms in the continent’s central regions, or even the Thebes Empire to the west, she had offended all of them in the pursuit of sating her avaricious nature.

Dracia cursed in her mind. Tems, damn you! How could you occupy all of the great elders when you knew who it was that we’re up against? This was a person that had directly murdered the fifth prince of the Thebes Empire for the sake of obtaining his sacred sword, somebody that had killed and stolen from high-profiled people all across the world without suffering so much as a minor setback.

Before she had any time to order her thoughts, a familiar voice carried across the landscape, loud, haughty and domineering. The storm seemed to quiet as May’s words caused the air to shake, her tones as loud as any of nature’s thunderous cries.

“Members of the Falling Rain Sect. I’ve left the sect for my own reasons, but it doesn’t mean that I want to kill you. Stay your hands and let us be on our way, and we can all leave here today with our lives. If you still want to get in our way, then don’t blame us for being merciless!”

The forces of the sect had just finished the constriction of their vast encirclement, which provided a grand sight with each line of lightning that streaked across the sky. Tens of thousands of people now stood within a thousand paces of those that they had been chasing, though those with authority had yet to order an attack. Like Dracia, they were waiting for Tems to give the command now that they had finally come face to face with the traitor and her accomplices.

Almost as if in spite of May’s exclamation, a massive, unnatural flash of light suddenly lit up the sky in such proportions that it momentarily gave off the illusion of day. Without a sound, this blinding light disappeared as fast as it came, though it evidently provoked a strange reaction from the elements at play. It abruptly stopped raining, and very gradually the sky began to clear, as if all of the pent-up precipitation were being directed somewhere else.

Tems and the top elders had just activated the great defensive formation that had been passed down by the sect’s predecessors, the ones that had originally set up the preventative structure. Nobody could leave the island now that the formation had been activated, no matter how powerful they were. Unless they wanted to risk an almost surefire death in the deadly waters that walled in the island.

Dracia cast a worried glance at the young ones from her family, and then quickly prepared for the fight of her life. May, the White Rogue and their accomplices were now trapped within the sect’s territory, but it was also accurate to say that Dracia and her allies now had no choice but to enter into an incredibly dangerous battle with their cornered targets.

Hold them there, no matter the cost!

Hearing Tems’s voice, Dracia wanted to scream at him. She couldn’t sense the White Rogue’s cultivation level, which meant that the glaring woman was at least four levels above her. Within the Genesis stage, a difference in one level was enough to determine the course of battle in most cases, aside from the rare cultivators that possessed odd constitutions.

Tingles shot through Dracia’s body as Kaya’s aura fluctuated in an alarming manner. Wheeling around in midair, her soul shook as she saw her cousin falling to the ground below while clutching at her abdomen, robes soaked through with enough blood to show that she had been mortally wounded. She had unexpectedly been stabbed in the back by an unknown individual that had quickly disappeared after fully impaling her. What was worse, nearly a hundred young people from her clan were quick to follow, all of them screaming as they clutched at random spots on their bodies. They had been poisoned.

Seeing Katrin among them, the young, innocent-eyed girl flailing in the air with anguished screams as her skin quickly took on a series of sickly colours, it felt as if a hammer of the coldest ice had just crushed Dracia’s heart into pieces. More and more of her clansmen continued to fall, as hundreds of dense, sharpened needles prickled at their skin as if a swarm of thin-bodied bugs were biting away at everyone in the area.

“Who did this!” screamed Dracia, seeing no obvious culprit. It took her a moment to notice an unfamiliar face among the crowd of surviving youths that had just retreated into their ranks under the cover of Jaren’s initial attack. These weren’t members of the clan, so she didn’t recognize any of them. She did, however, notice that one of them had a far weaker cultivation level than the others—only being at the first level of the Integration stage and thus too weak to become an inner disciple of the sect as his bloodied uniform described. Finding this strange, she focused on the boy for a moment, and even as he ducked and dodged in a dramatic and convincing manner, none of the poisoned needles came closer than a pace away from any part of his body.

Dracia screamed and punched out at the air with all of her strength, having dropped her sword so that she could focus all of her inner essence into a single, rage-driven punch. A torrential gale scattered the needles in all directions, opening up a path for her to charge forward so that she could attempt to directly kill the young man that had disguised himself as a disciple of the sect. The conniving rat had blended in with those from the inner court that had recently fled into the ranks of her clansmen, and used that opportunity to kill as many of her relatives as possible.

Only a couple hundred of the clan’s initial force remained in the air, all protected by individual shields of spiritual energy that Dracia’s husband and his brother had enveloped them with. Without delay, all of the disciples were carried off into the distance by these two, whose sentiments Dracia completely understood. The Hatten clan had lost enough members today—most of its cultivators and arrayment practitioners. With so many other members of the sect present, what need was there to throw away the lives of the last of their bloodline?

Dracia gave the boy a wary look and then began to draw out the same attack arrayment that Jaren had used earlier, a technique that shot off a deadly beam of light that didn’t dissipate until it came into contact with its target. Kaya was still alive, having eaten a series of medicinal pellets just in time to help her stave off whatever substance she had been poisoned with, and she was now in the midst of repairing the hole that had nearly hollowed out her chest. Thankfully, the attack had missed her heart and dantian, so not only had she survived but so had her cultivation.

Seeing that Jaren was still trapped in a nervous staredown with the White Rogue, Dracia decided that it would be best to subdue the strange youth that had just killed countless members of her clan, after which she would team up with her cousins to face the dangerous young woman whose name spread far and wide across the continent.

You’ll pay for what you did to the young ones.

Raising her hand, Dracia activated her attack arrayment and then rushed forward with vengeance on her mind.