After getting in the wardrobe, he observed the room more attentively. In his head he measured the distance to the bed and prayed that the grand elder would not decide to change his clothes first and find him in the process. Also there was a risk that even though no one seemed to care about him lately, there might be some Qi master watching from the side in secret. But in that case Nick could not do anything and was doomed from the start, therefore he decided to not worry about it too much. He still had around two hours till dinner and Elsa shouldn't look for him either.

He realized very well that this all ‘plan’ depended mostly on luck. In fact, it was almost one year since he came to this world and the luck was the magical power that pulled him through most situations. Obviously his knowledge, wit and ever-improving acting skills played their part as well. Of course, one could debate about his luck, since he had body full of steroid toxins, few old freaks who wanted to seal or kill him and he was basically a prisoner with no chance to escape.

Nick’s thoughts were interrupted with the sound of an opening door.

‘Ok, calm down, breathe slowly.’ He felt like his beating heart could be heard at the other side of the room.

Then Nick saw grand elder coming in, taking his black robe off and throwing it on the bed. Afterwards he walked towards the cupboard and took out a green bottle of some mixture.

Smiling his ugly smile he went towards the girls, one by one opened their mouths and poured the contents of the green bottle in. Girls made some choking sounds, but soon went silent again.

“Now you should be happy and see the sunshine and rainbows. Hahaha!” Grand elder laughed happily and sat on the bed in front of the girls.

“May be I should try it out?” Grand elder started to touch their faces like he was enjoying some piece of art, “But my yin is still unstable. Damn, the old witch also could notice!”

‘Oh my God! He is thinking of raping them! Why don’t you just finally die, you old pervert!?’ Nick screamed inwardly. He already knew there were no limits to the degradation of this person, bet despite that the grand elder managed to surprise him again.

“No. Not yet. I will try one of them next time and see how it goes. If I really can get a hundred fifty more years … hehehe!”

The grand elder positioned himself more comfortably, stretched his both hands and put them on the first girl’s head. The girl was with her back to Nick, so he could not see her face. But he saw her stature becoming thinner, like a part of her was evaporating. The few clothes she had on suddenly turned too large and then her corpse fell on the floor with a soft thud. Nick saw the thin mummy on the floor and blanked out again.

A moan of delight woke him up.

‘Why isn’t it working? The poison should be able to enter even through Qi master’s skin. Was he so lucky to not touch any droplet?’

Despite getting shocked again and again, Nick still attentively was observing the grand elder who at this moment was already sitting in front of the next girl. The same procedure followed – he placed both palms on the girl’s head and literally sucked her life out.

This time it took him around two minutes to stop moaning and come out of his ecstasy.

Nick was starting to panic. He questioned himself if he had stolen the correct poison, or if the grand elder is immune to it or may be was just too lucky. Thoughts of what to do in the case he failed started to overcrowd his mind.

Grand elder, on the other hand, already was sitting in front of the last girl. He looked at her with eyes full of love and said, “You’re the last one, my dear, thank you for your gift.” And then started to gently caress her face and hair. Suddenly the grand elder’s body shook and froze.

If up until this moment there was a flock of butterflies in Nick’s belly, now all of them took off at the same time and created a huge twister. For this moment he was preparing during the last two months and played it over and over in his mind, envisioning different scenarios, circumstances and possibilities. Therefore, even if his mind was blanked out, he instinctively sprung the wardrobe’s doors open, got out and like a cat jumped in grand elder’s face. Nick saw his pupils shrinking as he stabbed an awl in to one of them.

Then he quickly put his both hands in each of his pockets and took out two small pebbles in a size of peanut that were attached to almost one meter long strip of paper. He put each of those pebbles in the respective ears of grand elder, grabbed the ends of those long strips and crouched behind the grand elder’s back.

‘Thud’, a muffled sound like that of a chair falling reverberated through the room.

Nick immediately jumped back up while grabbing two more little stones with same long paper strips from his pockets. These ones were almost in the size of a walnut. He saw the grand elder still sitting in the same position, but because Nick was behind him, he could not see the face. What he saw were two small bloody holes at the each side of the grand elder’s head. There were even some pieces of skin dangling at the spots where the ears were located a moment ago.

Nick pressed both walnut sized stones into the bloody openings and, just to be sure that the stones went in, slapped both sides of the Grand elder’s with his small palms at the same time. Then crouched behind the grand elder’s back again while holding the paper strips.

‘Boom!’

This time the sound of explosion was distinctively louder and was accompanied with a smaller one like watermelon exploding. Blood and brain matter covered the walls and ceiling. Small pieces of skull flew everywhere. There were flickers of electricity-like lights on the door and the arch that brightened up the room for a few seconds.

Nick grunted in pain. The blast hit him as well, although not as bad as the grand elder. When he looked up he saw headless corpse still sitting on the bed.

‘Huh? That easy?’ was Nick’s last thought as he passed out.

In fact, it was not easy at all. It took all the Qi he had to trigger those four formations and activating two at the same time was even more challenging.

Nick started to draw different plans a long time ago, but the one he executed just now was inspired by discovery of the paralytic poison which was meant for the rank six beast. Nick knew that Qi masters, especially as strong as this old freak, had strong resistances and it would be impossible to paralyze him just by spraying something on. Moreover they could use their Qi to protect themselves and also to remove the paralysis.

Nick needed grand elder to be relaxed and willingly touch the paralytic poison to freeze for at least two, maximum three seconds. The replenishment procedure grand elder was doing was a perfect moment, especially because he used his Qi to absorb the lifeforce from the poor girls – this way he even ‘sucked’ in some of the poison through the skin of his palms. The hair of these girls was perfect place to hide the substance. Of course, there was a risk that one of the apprentices who brought the girls in would get paralyzed by mistake, but Nick couldn’t think of a way around it.

Thus, when grand elder got immobilized for a split moment, Nick did not know how long it would hold. The best option was to paralyze grand elder for real. And the awl covered with more of the same poison did the trick when stabbed in most vulnerable place – the eye.

Obviously it was not enough to kill him. In fact, Nick could poke the grand elder with a knife the whole day long and he would not be able to hurt the old bastard. Despite being paralyzed, Qi masters could still use their Qi for protection – it was only their muscles that were immobile.

The idea on how to deal with it was presented by the grand elder himself when he told Nick about the unstable runes and formations containing beast cores. That led Nick to the idea of inventing a real bomb, may be even the first one in this world.

He was testing out rank two beast core explosions and he could not come up with idea how to trigger the blast from a distance. Until he used a strip of rune paper as a fuse to guide Qi that will destabilize the beast core. As such, weird looking bombs like small pebbles with paper strips attached to them, were invented. The downside was that Nick had to hold in the hand the end of those strips to guide his Qi. At the same time those paper strips could not be too long, otherwise he could not hide several ‘bombs’ in his pockets and his Qi might be insufficient for activation as well. In the end he decided on one meter long strips.

The detonation spot was also easily thought of. He couldn’t make himself to cut out the eyes to put bombs in the eye sockets. He also was not certain if he could open the mouth of a paralyzed Qi master. That left ears as the only option.

Nick already figured out that a rank two beast core could not blow up grand elder’s resilient skull, therefore he wanted to make holes big enough so it was possible to put in and detonate two rank three cores at the same time. He was not sure if two were enough, so he prepared two more pairs of bombs.

What he didn’t expect was for rank three beast core explosion to be many times stronger than rank two and not only remove the head of the grand elder with a colorful sparkling rain, but also seriously hurt him.

Nick was not a stranger to excruciating pain and passed out not because of it, but because of Qi exhaustion. His small body barely managed to complete the task.

The most important aspect of this plan was speed and surprise effect. He had to almost instantly paralyze the grand elder after jumping out the wardrobe and trigger the ‘bombs’ immediately after that. The victim’s ecstatic state obviously contributed greatly as well as incredulity of the whole situation – no one had ever fought like this before. Grand elder did not even manage to guard himself with Qi when his head was blown off.

There was another aspect Nick was worried about – the senses of a Qi master were extremely sharp and it was highly likely for him to get discovered while hiding in the wardrobe, but he had no other option than to risk it all and pray for the grand elder to be careless or weakened.

Nick came to his senses when a drop of brain matter fell from the ceiling on his cheek. The view covered in gray and red appeared in front of his eyes. He blinked a couple of times, then jumped up despite the burning pain on his back.

‘Ok, ok. The old freak is dead. But how long was I out?’ Nick looked around and touched some of the blood, ‘It seems still fresh.’

Then he got out of the bed, opened the wardrobe and took out a piece of random clothing. While cleaning up himself he was wondering, ‘I just killed a person, why don’t I feel anything? Is it because he killed my second mom and my baby brother, and many other people? Shouldn't I feel happy then? May be I am just still in a state of shock. I need to get out of here before anyone starts looking for me!’

He cleaned up as much as he could, wore his white-red ‘Stanford’ robes inside out and quickly left the room.

On the way out he thought, ‘I think I saw something like electricity flickering. It was probably some guarding formation and it was most likely unlocked by that freak’s blood. At least now I can freely enter the grand elder’s bedroom without fear of formations.’