“No, we should do this now. He’s clearly one of the weaker ones in his group, just take him hostage and force the other ones to surrender.” Standing up and leaping out of the pool, he landed behind the line of cultivators, all silent in their electric blue robes. “You all, subdue him! Break his limbs or sever a couple, but don’t kill him.”

Also leaving the pool and retreating behind his own guards, Daren said, “Make sure that girl doesn’t interfere.”

Other people at the party began to notice the burning auras of the nine masters, who likely cost tens of millions of spirit stones to hire. Sensing a coming conflict, all of the guests in the area quickly fled from the scene, including the women that had been keeping the chamberlains company.

Lyra, make sure nothing happens to those four.

The girl in question looked from him to the others, nodding before she took out a bottle of Divine Spirit Fountain water and drank away her drunkenness.

Nolan mirrored her actions, the special water drawing the eyes of the two chamberlains along with those of their guards. In the time that the elite CMA cultivators were standing idly, they had been activating their own respective defensive martial skills, some slipping unknown medicinal pellets into their mouths before all of them took out high-quality swords that were similar in value to the serrated long sword of black halmite and pestilent demonic beast bone that sat in Nolan’s spatial bag.

They don’t take any chances, huh?

Nolan let out a derisive laugh. “You’re really going to have five Genesis-staged cultivators attack me?” he said loudly, voice infused with inner essence. “I’m just at the sixth level of Integration. And all because I asked for the money that I won at the arrayment practitioner competition from earlier?”

“Say whatever you want,” said Connick, broad shoulders shaking as he let out a short laugh of his own. “It doesn’t matter. You’ve been an eyesore for too long, so you can only blame yourself for what’s about to happen.”

Nolan activated the Emerald Skin defensive martial skill within a matter of seconds, his body covered in a thin yet dense layer of light green energy. Seeing this, distant onlookers pitied the young arrayment practitioner from the earlier competition for not knowing when to take a step back and all but walking into a disaster.

Pulling out his long sword, the eyes of everyone that could see it immediately contracted in surprise, their well-trained gazes easily able to distinguish a priceless essence fusion weapon that could effortlessly cut through even the strongest experts. Looking over at Melissa, Katerina, Welson and the auction girl Ava, he gave them all a thumbs up.

“Stop Nolan!” yelled Melissa, who had suddenly acknowledged the scene within her inebriated fright. “Just surrender. Your life is more important!” Turning around, she berated Lyra for being complacent.

Nolan leapt up into the air with an explosion of water, moving so fast that none of those below could do a thing to him. Connick’s bodyguards quickly flew upwards at their fastest speeds, all of them looking a bit thrown off by the scale of Nolan’s jump. He didn’t stop his upward ascent until he was about a kilometre above the ground, a planned action that allotted him a perfect window of time to draw out the same attack arrayment that Esteban had used in the earlier competition. He conjured a platform of spiritual energy just as he began to fall from the sky, looking downward before jumping on the white-handled flying sword that he had taken from Delia. Locking his feet in place with inner essence, he activated its essence fusion effects and took off at a downward arch, drawing a parabola to navigate around the oncoming cultivators.

His pursuers were likely under the impression that he couldn’t sense their locations, though he was well aware of their every move. Spiritual sense unbound, he continued on his current trajectory as he soared through the blackness of night. Below him the villa looked much smaller, the large, well-lit city of Tallgate spreading out in all directions.

As expected, the oncoming cultivators changed course to account for his actions, which was exactly what he’d been waiting for. He couldn’t exactly unload a powerful attack arrayment on everyone that was attending the party, so he had created a situation where nobody but his opponents would be implicated.

Dressed only in his swimming trunks and wielding his deadly sword that was black as the surrounding night, Nolan held out his left hand and activated his arrayment diagram with a blinding flash of light that doubtlessly drew the attention of countless people in the city below. Over a thousand golden swords appeared in the air like a giant swarm of glistening bees, their two-metre-long blades pointing in the direction of the startled cultivators and then rocketing off with such rapid speed that a large windstorm was left in their wake.

Three of the five died from the intense, wide-covering volley, one losing his head while the other two were pierced through their hearts. They died almost immediately, much of their torsos bursting apart from the force of the attack. Their lower bodies fell down to the city below along with the bits and pieces that had been torn off in that instant, doubtlessly frightening a decent amount of people.

The remaining two fled immediately from a mixture of fear and shock. Seeing this, Nolan stowed away his flying sword, created an instant platform of spiritual energy at just the right angle and then activated the Tranquil Void Step. Kicking off with calculated strength, he shot across the sky in a blur of motion, the halmite-bone sword bisecting one of the men a moment later while simultaneously severing both of his arms just beneath the elbows. Nolan cut off his head for good measure as he ignored the last of Connick’s guards and summoned his flying sword once again. Down below, a momentary flash of light preceded a three-metre long, half-metre wide blade that looked a bit more elegant than Nolan’s, a projectile that Nyla had fired from over two kilometres away with perfect precision. This energy blade struck the remaining man in the centre of his torso, tilted so that its edges were vertical. The cultivator’s upper body simply exploded into a mist of gore as the weapon burst apart into thousands of pieces of shrapnel, a deliberate tweak to the attack arrayment that he and the rest of the group relied on.

Nolan was a bit intimidated by the unexpected intervention, since even someone at the fifth level of Genesis would have been killed by that attack were it to strike them head on before they could attempt to boost their defenses. Nyla was only at the second level of that stage, and yet she was so proficient with her skills as an arrayment practitioner that it would be foolish for even someone like Tems or his grand elders to underestimate her.

Sensing that the situation down below had already been settled, Nolan put his weapon away, straightened his trousers and then folded his hands behind his back. He wanted to make it seem as if the fight just now had been as easy as possible, which it surprisingly had been. Those cultivators had clearly not been arrayment practitioners before their ascendance to the Genesis stage, which had ultimately cost them their lives. Not only had they been unable to hamper his maneuvers with attack arrayments of their own, but they hadn’t been able to conjure any barriers to protect themselves from the deadly blades that had claimed their lives.

Thinking back to when Uncle Grey had first tried to convince Nolan to become his disciple, he couldn’t help but smile. The old ghost wasn’t lying when he said that arrayments were where it was at. No wonder ordinary cultivators were looked down upon when he was alive.

Nolan came to a stop about fifty metres above the pool, where Connick and Daren were in the midst of begging Ian for their lives. All of Daren’s bodyguards lay motionless on the ground, necks broken as their listless eyes stared unseeing at the feet of May and Delia. Both of the young women had adopted the appearances that they’d had in their late teens, wearing the same beautiful sleeveless dresses that made it difficult for many of the surrounding men to ignore their beauty despite the violent deaths that they had just introduced to the party.

Seeing Nolan’s arrival, Delia gave Nolan a digging glare and then hurled the corpse of one of the bodyguards at him before flying off into the night at her fastest speed. He’d felt a chill as her silver eyes had settled on him, a killing intent to her gaze that he hadn’t been faced with since he had first become acquainted with her. It was a very strange thing to feel so alarmingly threatened by such a uniquely gorgeous person, as if an adorable puppy ran the risk of ripping out your throat.