“You want to see it again?”

She nodded.

Once he’d conjured a similar scene to the one that he’d just dismissed, the two of them spent over ten minutes staring up at the lightshow in an odd sort of silence. Sersa eventually broke the quiet with an earnest question.

“What is it you’re after? Not just fighting against the sect, but truly.”

“What about you? It’s a bit rich to ask that when you’re always so secretive about everything.”

“I already told you, I want to bring down the sect for what they did to my family. For what my former master made me do to my brothers.”

Hearing this, he raised an eyebrow. She’d said that her family had been killed by the Bloodhand Sect and that she and dozens of other children had been taken to their territory in the former kingdom of Mour where the vast majority of them had wound up as cultivation resources for the sect’s members.

“What happened with your brothers?” he asked, knowing that it was uncouth to do so. “And what about life in the sect? I’ve heard a bit from Brud about how things are there, but he didn’t know much.”

She stared up at the rainbows and the rotating lily that they had formed, quiet for nearly a minute. “My master made me refine them. We…we were all supposed to die in those dungeons, and if I didn’t do it then he’d have killed me. I knew that if that happened then I’d never be able to avenge them and my parents, so I did what he asked of me.”

Wow, he thought to himself. That’s a lot more fucked up than I was expecting.

“As for life in the sect, it was anything but enjoyable. The surrogates could only create so many cultivation resources each year, so it was acceptable to challenge your sect mates to duels in order to win their resources from them. Only, it was customary to kill your opponents in such situations, for if you didn’t then you could only blame yourself when they came around to exact revenge upon you.”

“When you say surrogates, you mean…?”

Sersa frowned at his question, disgust creeping into her expression. “When Mour fell, all women of high status were spared, as were any with high cultivations. The same went for any Mourish men that fit the same criteria.” Upper lip curling, she said, “Those people were exempt from becoming cultivation resources. Instead, they were tasked with the job of creating a constant stream of new resources. Like me and the other kids that were abducted and locked up in the sect’s dungeons, all of the resources—the people that they refine within their territories—are produced by the surrogates. A lot of disciples are birthed by them as well, when some elder or other desires an heir. In Castle Blackrock alone, there were over five thousand such people that were forced to constantly procreate.”

Jason’s stomach turned. “That’s the most twisted and sickening thing I’ve ever heard, which is saying something considering the shit that I’ve been through.”

“I’ve only ever been to a couple other domains, but based on what I’ve seen I estimate that there are about a million surrogates within the sect.” In a darker voice, she added, “Just another reason why those scums need to disappear.”

Jason’s mind was reeling from what he’d just learned. Under threat of death, over a million people were forced to constantly have children knowing that their offspring would grow up in terrible conditions only to be refined alive as if they were living spirit stones?

That’s…that’s Hitler-level evil.

“Alright,” she said, voice telling of impatience and slight discomfort. “I was honest with you, so tell me how you became such a proficient arrayment practitioner.”

Although he found himself second guessing his decision to show her a bit of honesty, he couldn’t just say nothing. She had been sincere, after all, and to a question that he’d asked in poor taste at that.

“If I said I’ve been to another world, would you believe me?”

“No.”

“Well, I have. But if you don’t believe that, then you definitely won’t believe—”

Havel’s aura slipped out of the camp and quickly closed in on the clearing that they had been practicing in. Sensing this, Jason subconsciously dismissed the beautiful display of light that was still rotating above them. When Sersa gave him a questioning look, he said, “I didn’t want him misunderstanding anything.”

“Like what?”

“What do you think?”

Her eyes flashed with understanding as Havel showed up in their midst, standing at attention with his hands resting behind his back.

“Master, the disciples from before have returned. The war band is moving.”

“Are they moving as one group?”

Havel shook his head. “About seven thousand are heading for the city you mentioned. The rest are moving in on the nearby towns, as Rose said they would.”

“Which towns?”

“Summertide, Talenshire, and Alleybrook.”

The towns in question were the closest of the smaller settlements to the city of Calmer. “How many?”

“About two thousand for two groups, and one thousand for the other.”

He and Sersa traded glances.

“Alright,” he said, immediately walking towards the camp. “We’ll target those three groups then.” Glancing at Sersa, he said, “You take everyone and go after one of the larger groups. Try to keep as many of them alive as possible.”

“To refine, or to recruit?”

“Both.”

“And you?”

He put on a greedy smile. “I’ll be cultivating.”

“We’ll continue our talk later. That is, if you don’t go die some meaningless death.”

“You really know how to encourage a guy, huh?”

Rolling his eyes, he dashed through the forest in a rapid series of precise jumps, clearing fringes a few moments later as he emerged into a vast stretch of hill-pocked farmland. Before the invasion he would likely have seen the lights of many villages and small towns spread out before him, as this had been one of the most densely populated regions of the kingdom prior to the Acquisition. Now, however, everything was dark and still, the only movements coming from swaying foliage whenever a cool breeze happened to roll through.

Expanding his spiritual sense to its limits, Jason sensed the towns in question several kilometres away from his current location, the nearest one being four kilometres out.

That should be Alleybrook. Sensing over 1,100 life signals heading toward the town, Jason leapt over three hundred metres to the crown of a distant hill, jumping to the next nearest one as soon as he landed. He repeated this process until Alleybrook came into sight, not a single source of light visible in the entire town. This was likely an effort by the inhabitants to make it seem as if it was just another deserted settlement, a desperate tactic used by many hopeful Haussians that had been unfortunate enough to become trapped within their hometowns when hoards of roaming disciples had come pouring into the area.

Jason counted 2,237 people within the settlement, the vast majority of which were in the Profound Entry stage. About two hundred of them were gathered together at a small square at Alleybrook’s centre, with another eighty or so standing sentinel at the many watch towers that had been erected around the wall-less town. Based on what he’d been seeing throughout the invasion, these were a mix of militiamen and retainers of the local lord. Still, the strongest in their midst was at the fourth level of Integration, with only two others of that stage idling within the plaza. Meanwhile, aside from the three Genesis-staged auras that he sensed amongst the moving mass of disciples, every other person in their ranks was at the Integration stage. Thinking on it, he hadn’t seen a disciple in the Profound Entry stage for weeks.

How am I going to do this? Pondering his options, he decided to attempt to incapacitate as many of the disciples as possible before their leaders could intervene, thus ensuring a large number of people to refine. Tracking the stronger disciples as they led the others across the final stretch between them and the town, he rushed after the war band under the cover of night until he was only a hundred metres away from those at the back of the pack.

The little slivers of moonlight that were poking through the thick curtain of clouds above suddenly disappeared with perfect timing, darkening the last stretch between him and the disciples in the blink of an eye.

Not yet, he thought, careful to mute his footfalls with calculated steps. Running a hand through his short hair to wipe away some sweat, he found comfort in the fact that he still grew nervous in the face of an oncoming fight. After all of the changes that he had undergone, it was reassuring that he could still show the proper reactions to such solemn things.