Seren was pinned against the wall by Lute, unable to move a muscle. But she showed defiance. However on the inside she was fuming.

‘This bastard dares call himself superior and me a whelp! If I weren’t already void of any strength, I would’ve slit out your tongue for such remarks.’

But even so, there was nothing she could do in this situation, even if Lute was only in the Foundational Qi Realm. She was the powerless one at the moment, and it was true that he had saved her life, that much she was able to understand.

Weakly struggling a bit, Seren finally gave in slightly, Lute despite his cultivation had an overbearing and baleful aura, and it made her feel like she would suffocate. For now, she’d have to abide by what he wanted, at least until she regained her strength.

“L…let me go; I won’t try to kill you again as long as you don’t try to do anything illicit.”

Lutes eyes narrowed, his bone chilling gaze piercing into Seren once more. But finally he let go of her, sitting back down and starting to carve out a cask again. But not before he stepped on her pride, “Fine, I’ll let you go, but it’s not like you’d be able to kill me anyway with that paltry strength.”

Seren’s eyes were fuming with rage at that remark, but she quietly let it pass as she could do nothing. She didn’t know where she was or anything about the person before her. All she knew was that she was safe and this was the subject of her request.

Crimson hair, sky blue eyes that were cold as ice and murderous, scars all over his chest, shoulders and back, as well as dressing like a barbarian and living like one as well. These were all true, but she also realized Glen had falsified information. He’d portrayed Lute as an insane savage that lived for nothing but killing. From the baleful aura she felt, he’d certainly done his fair share of killing, but he was nowhere near insane like Glen made him out to be, otherwise, why would he save her life?

The more she thought of it, the dots began to connect. Glen probably picked a fight with this person, but instead of losing his life, he sacrificed his friends instead.

'Pfft, so much for valiantly fighting a Nascent Cultivator, you sacrificed the twins because you couldn’t fight your own battles that you picked. How much more of a scumbag could you be?’

The real question though was how Lute could fight one versus four by himself. Or even live out here alone with all the Vicious Beasts. Anyone of them should be able to kill him easily. After all the strength of a Vicious Beast and a Cultivator in the same realm was fundamentally different, the Vicious Beast would always have the advantage.

If she was going to stay here for an awhile then it was of the utmost importance to find out Lute’s strengths and weaknesses. Even though she was confident he could be beaten once she was at full strength.

Returning to the pile of pelts, Seren wrinkled her nose in disgust. The pelts smelled disgusting, as a matter of fact, everything in here was disgusting. The hygiene that she had high standards for was nonexistent here. She couldn’t help but voice her disgust, “How do you live like this… in this filth.”

Lute momentarily paused his carving, not even bothering to turn and look at Seren, then he once again began his work, but not before Seren heard him mutter under his breath, “Humans really have no appreciation for anything, no matter how trivial. Perhaps our kind should really go extinct and let the beasts rule the universe.”

Such a sentence, never did she expect such a sentence to come out of Lutes mouth. What did he mean by that? Was it wrong to care about your hygiene?

But slowly an understanding dawned upon Seren, she may appear cold and arrogant but she wasn’t unintelligent when it mattered. Perhaps Lute had always lived like this, with a lifestyle centered on such a dangerous area, perhaps all of this filth was treasures that helped him survive day to day. If that was the case, despite them being trivial, he cherished them none the less.

An unknown feeling struck Seren, Lute was completely different from any other person, especially guys that she’d met. They all had ulterior motives, and yet here with Lute, he wasn’t sparing her even a glance, not even paying attention to her existence unless she talked to him, but even then he only muttered to himself. Unknowingly she began to feel the need to talk to him and have a conversation, something she usually disdained doing. She wanted to figure out just who Lute was if she was to live with him in this…dirt home...

“Name, what is your name. If we’re going to live together for a while then we might as well know each other’s names.” Seren asked with seriousness, wanting to earnestly have a conversation without the hostility from before.

At first Lute didn’t respond, but after a moment, he decided that he would have to talk eventually even if he didn’t want to, and if he wanted to ask the questions he needed.

Lute stopped carving and turned around, “Lute, the names Lute, and yours?”

“Seren Windcross is my name. I am from the Windcross House. What is your family name?”

Lute grew quiet once again; this girl had a given family name already, meaning her family didn’t come from a small village like his. In smaller villages, at the age of fifteen when you officially became an adult, the males were given their own family name with the name based off of what your occupation and talents were. The females would get one when they married off into a family. But Lute was only fourteen and didn’t have a family name.

But such names were false, they weren’t officially registered. Only people who lived in cities and had the money and status were allowed to have family names. This meant the girl before him had some money or background behind her. Clearly she should know that people of lesser status like him didn’t have a family name, or maybe she did know and knew that commoners gave themselves unregistered family names.

Lute was slightly distressed, he had never bothered to ask his father what the family name was since his would be different when he became fifteen, and in the village everyone was on a first name basis, so he never knew anyone else’s family names either.

Sensing his distress through their connection, Isla sighed. Sending her voice to Lute’s mind, she gave him a bailout, something that he wouldn’t know the significance of until the far off future.

“You can use my family name of Ravenshadow, don’t you dare disgrace it or I will beat you to death when I regain my body. The only reason I dare let you use it is because you are my direct disciple and as such our relationship is not only Master and Disciple, even once we part ways, you will still have had learned many things from me that I would never teach others, that is the equivalent of a parent passing on everything they know to their offspring, that is how heavily weighted a Master-Disciple relationship is in the Divine Realm, the two basically become family. But understand this…you and I will never have a parent child relationship although I said that’s how heavily it is regarded, I will not dote on you or care for you and we will part ways once I have my body.”

Lute quickly sighed with relief on the inside, while he could just say he didn’t have one, he always did want his own, to feel like he belonged somewhere instead of being a nameless nobody. But this was the next best thing, although it wasn’t his own name, to be allowed to carry Isla’s family name, despite what she said, to him that was an honor he couldn’t possibly tarnish. He would uphold it and protect that honor unto death.

However before he spoke, Isla once again mentioned something before going back to sleep, but it seemed like a bad omen to Lute, “Never mention that you carry my family name in the Divine Realm unless I permit you too. Lest you be killed by my family or anyone that knows of me. It is tantamount to suicide for you to carry it until you have sufficient power to protect yourself from harm.”

This declaration terrified Lute to the bone, but he didn’t have time to think upon it, Seren was still waiting expectantly so he hurriedly spoke, “Ravenshadow, my family name is Ravenshadow.”

Seren angled her head sideways; Lute was becoming more intriguing by the minute. “What a peculiar family name, even by commoner standards, I would’ve thought it’d be something along the lines of your father’s first name and son connected to it to make a family name.”

“It’s just something simple, nothing as grandiose as yours.”

“I see, then Lute, now that we know each other, and I will be in your care for the next few days, let’s get straight to the point, my plight was caused by yours. So what’s the real reason that Glen wanted to kill you? You are similar but different to how he described you. He made you out to be a berserker.”

At mere mentioning of Glen’s name, Lute’s Slaughter Aura began to emit. It wasn’t all of it, but Lute couldn’t completely control it as the pricks name pissed him off. He should’ve killed Glen when he had the chance and he wouldn’t have to worry about people being sent after him.

Although it was only a portion of his Slaughter Aura, Seren was able to feel the terror it could inspire. Through that alone she could tell the gist of what went on between Lute and Glen.

“That piece of shit disturbed me while I was cultivating and started mouthing off as if he doesn’t know the difference between heaven and earth. When he threatened to cripple me that was the last straw, he wasn’t getting out unscathed. He attacked and failed so he shamelessly asked his so-called friends to help after saying he was enough.”

“So you ended up killing the twins instead? Pray tell, why didn’t you spare them and just kill Glen then?”

This was the determining factor for Seren whether or not Lute was truly a savage, depending on his answer; she would contemplate killing Lute once she recovered.

“At first I only knocked out one of the twins, injuring his arm a bit, but that was all, I didn’t kill him. Until the other one seriously came at me with the intent to kill. I am never light handed with those who want to cripple me or kill me. If they want to then they should be prepared to suffer the consequences. I killed one and the other was eaten by a Vicious Beast.”

To Seren that seemed reasonable in her mind she was thinking, ‘They reap what they sow’, but that was because she didn’t understand Lutes’ words. To him the light injury to an arm was completely shattering the boys arm to the point it wouldn’t be fully healed. With a physique such as his, that could be considered light. As for the Vicious Beasts, Lute left the unconscious twin to die by fangs of a wolf. He could’ve prevented it but didn’t feel it was his problem. He tried to kill Lute, so why shouldn’t he die.

“That is fine then, that is the law of the cultivation world, if you wish to kill, prepare to be killed instead.”

After reciting his part, Lute stoked the fire before asking Seren her part, as she mentioned that her problem stemmed from him. “Then what was your reason for coming here how’s your betrayal tie to me?”

Seren didn’t have strong aura of killing like Lute, especially since she was weakened. But that didn’t prevent Lute from seeing her eyes filled with murder, after all his eyes were the same; it was easy to spot those traits in someone else.

“It all started when Glen sent a request to kill you, saying you were an insane savage who did nothing but kill for no reason other than killing.”

To Lute, this wasn’t too far from the truth. ‘Well, I do tend to lose myself in combat. I keep rational, but the closer I am to death, the more alive I feel.’

“I took up the request because he said you’re a stronger than average Nascent Qi cultivator. As for the betrayal, I wasn’t allowed to take this request without two sect mates because of the area that is surrounded by Vicious Beasts. I ended up with Ley and Halsten. Notorious killers for hire in the Sect, but nothing has ever been proved against them, there is probably and Elder backing their actions. There are many people who would feel they’d be better off with me dead. So even knowing this I took the request thinking I’d be fine if I remained vigilant, I was wrong.”

Lute was smirking inwardly at her words, she was intelligent, he’d admit that, but she was utterly stupid as well. To take a request with people you knew wanted to kill you and when you couldn’t fight even one of them by yourself. Why would you ever do that? If it were him, it’d be different; he would either not take the request or just kill them before they tried to kill him, therefore preventing the situation that Seren got into.

“That wasn’t very intelligent, in fact I find you doing that very cocky, has no one ever told you not to bite off more than you can chew. First off, you know nothing about the mountains and second you took a request despite knowing how dangerous the risks were.”

Lute wasn’t the slightest bit sympathetic, let alone fighting him, she went about going in the Crimson Tide Mountains all wrong. Not matter how dangerous the predicament, you always save your strength, and find time to rebuild it whenever possible. Instead she ran until she couldn’t stand anymore, thus leading her to a sure death situation had Lute decided not to help.

Seren had no choice but to bite her words, Lute’s words, although painful, had certain wisdom to them, or rather than wisdom it was just common sense, don’t do something if you can’t handle it or know enough about it.

Before Seren could reply, the atmosphere changed, a loud roar could be heard in the distance. Coming towards the lake, Lute judged it was another beast not from this area coming to claim it as its own. But right now, Lute was the overlord of this place, as long as he was here, it was peaceful, he didn’t have to fight every day and could focus on recuperating because of the unspoken agreement he and the beasts had.

Standing up, Lute began to leave the shelter, an extremely baleful Slaughter Aura released at full strength in the direction of the roar. Seren actually was somewhat shocked, she thought earlier the pressure he released was full strength, but that wasn’t even a shadow of what he was emitting at this moment. Lute seemed like an entirely different person now.

Although she thought he was quite a bit eccentric, not showing many emotions other than anger towards Glen. He seemed like a quiet and reserved normal person, she thought that maybe he was just a bit shy. But his entire personality seemed to change in an instant. He suddenly became far more vicious and closer to the depiction that Glen had described.

Seren actually unknowingly shivered when Lute glanced at her and said in an extremely cold and evil mannerism, “Stay here unless you want to die a painful death.”

Then he left to face his challenger. Seren didn’t even move for nearly five minutes.

‘What was that…? He suddenly seemed to become a different person, no; he became the most dangerous of Vicious Beasts. This is probably his true nature that he keeps hidden. When someone is coming to kill him, he will become like this. I don’t think Glen knows the true monster he picked a fight with.’

As much as she hated to admit it, Seren actually felt that she might even lose to Lute at full strength. But this was a chance to see his fighting capabilities and learn his weaknesses if their relationship took a sour turn, they were only acquaintances at the moment.