Chapter 219
Kai had expected Killian to advance before they reached the treant. He had hoped for it, even planned around the possibility. But he hadn't thought it would happen mid-battle—right in the middle of the chaos.
Even after the fighting ended, the image remained vivid in everyone's minds. Soldiers who saw it first started whispering. By nightfall, it had become the story...
Chapter 111
Waking up a severed head wasn’t exactly something that was on Chen Ren’s portfolio.
He’d picked up a lot of strange skills since arriving in this world—talisman, formations, alchemy, the art of dealing with young masters—but "head reanimation" hadn’t made the list. Still, one more skill in his ever-growing portfolio couldn’t hurt.
The only problem...
Chapter 110
Chen Ren had expected a lot of things to be in the vault.
With everything he’d read and the boundless greed that pulsed in his soul—his Dao of Money—his imagination had gone wild. He’d imagined and hoped for ancient manuals, floating swords forged in the era of celestial warlords, maybe even a blade once wielded by a nascent stage cultivator with a kill count h...
Chapter 218
Death was never an easy scene.
Not for the one who met it—and certainly not for the one who had to handle the funeral.
Killian had taken part in far too many of those.
It came with the job, he supposed. Being a knight meant seeing people die. More often than not, during every battle, they lost lives. They were men you trained with, drank with, fought be...
Chapter 217
Once Magus Elias joined them, the atmosphere of the party changed.
Kai could tell that most of his men hadn’t expected the old Magus to actually come along—especially with the deep-rooted rivalry between Vanderfall and Lancephil. Whispers began almost at once, cautious glances thrown toward the Magus riding silently near the front. It got bad enough that Killian ...
Chapter 109
Chen Ren closed his eyes tightly, trying to avoid the light. He had warned Yalan it would happen, a flash triggered by the array. It was part of the plan. But he underestimated the scale of it.
And when the light faded, his vision slowly returned.
Wang Fu was on the ground, one hand over his eyes, groaning. The heat in his voice from before was gone. A pale, se...
Chapter 216
Malden’s eyes snapped open as someone nudged him.
Blinking the remnants of sleep away, he turned his gaze upward and found a man standing stiffly across from him, a sword resting at his hip and crude leather armor strapped across his chest. Before Malden could speak, his guard, Kellen, moved.
It was fast — so fast that the guard who had touched him didn’t...
Chapter 108
Everything stilled when Wang Fu transformed.
There were moments in life when an entire plan unraveled without warning, and this was one of them.
Chen Ren had prepared for many outcomes. He had studied, planned, made contingencies… but none of them accounted for this. For his enemy being a demonic cultivator. How could he have known?
He doubted even Anj...
Chapter 215
As Kai asked that, Magus Elias’s frown deepened. Kai could see the fierceness in his gaze—a predatory look that made his instincts hum with warning. Without thinking, his mana tensed in his core, ready to shield or strike back at the first hint of hostility.
A Fifth Circle Magus might have far larger mana reserves, but Kai had stood at that peak once too. He knew ...
Chapter 107
The effect of his words was immediate. A pause followed, almost as if everyone was holding their breath.
Wang Fu and the two other cultivators stood frozen, their faces painted with shock. It would have been almost funny to anyone who knew the truth— that Chen Ren’s so-called "vault guardian" act was nothing more than smoke and mirrors. But he kept his face calm, p...
Chapter 214
Only two days into the expedition, Kai had seen more than his share of weavers. Hundreds of them—snarling, scrambling, endlessly agitated creatures that attacked anything that moved. Not once had fear so much as touched him.
But now, standing on a rocky hill with the wind tugging at his cloak, he felt it.
Not the heart-racing panic of the untrained. Not hesita...
Chapter 213
Kai sat on one of the stone benches that had somehow remained intact amid the ruins of the corrupted border town. Black vines crept up its sides, and a faint oily sheen was there over the cobbles nearby. The weavers might have been slain, but the corruption hasn't left.
Killian stood in front of him, looking straight without giving away any sort of emotion. That man w...
Chapter 106
The quarters, as expected, didn’t have anything particularly valuable left behind. Chen Ren wasn’t surprised—after all, the two cultivators who had clearly scoured the place. Still, a few battered books remained, scattered among broken crates and half-rotted furniture.
Most of them were in poor condition, their pages water-stained, moldy, or torn, but Chen Ren fl...
Chapter 105
As they walked, Chen Ren slowly realized the place was much larger than he had anticipated.
The narrow stone corridors opened up to wider halls, cracked but still standing after who knew how many decades. He spotted the remains of broken pottery, decayed wooden racks, and shattered tiles—signs of life that had once filled these ruins long ago.
Unable to hide h...
Chapter 212
When Kai heard that an entire town had fallen to weavers, he didn’t even react as little as a flinch. Beside him, Bishop Maurice’s face lost its color like snow melting under sunlight, while Killian stared ahead with a blank expression. But Kai knew that look. He knew that look so well. The knight’s mind was already churning with strategies, counting strengths and weakn...
Chapter 104
As Chen Ren walked through the forest with the others, his heart thrummed like a drum, loud enough that he half-wondered if the others could hear it. But outwardly, his face stayed calm. He couldn’t let any trace of worry slip—especially not with Hong Yi twitching at every rustle of leaves and Anji glancing over his shoulder like a startled hare.
Only Yalan seemed ...
Chapter 211
The earth beneath them throbbed.
Beneath the cracked stone and blackened soil, the roots moved slowly, twitching tendrils that felt more alive than they should have been. For a treant, roots weren’t just anchors. They were eyes. Ears. Nerves stretched deep into the ground like veins. And now, those nerves were twitching wildly.
They had been watching long befo...
Hello everyone, I'm pleased to announce that Book 1 is officially launched by Aethon books!
If you’re on Kindle Unlimited, you can read it for free—and even if you’re not buying, a quick rating helps more than you think. It's completely free to rate. Also if you just have Kindle unlimited, please download it even if you are not reading it as it helps with the algorithm.
We...
Chapter 210
Once Bishop Maurice had realized there was no dodging involvement—not if he still wanted the greatest merit of his life—things began to move fast.
Kai knew he had hit the nail when Bishop agreed to all of his demands.
He hurried once he had gotten the support of the church, knowing he couldn't trust Viscount Redmont’s Mages. Not to keep burning the roots...
Chapter 103
Their journey to Heiwu, the city closest to the vault, had been smooth—almost suspiciously so. Not a single beast had mistaken them for a midday snack, and the skies had remained a calm grey the entire way.
The city itself sat on the eastern edge of the empire, far from the regions Chen Ren was more familiar with. When he first learned the vault was hidden nearby, it...
Chapter 102
The sound of Wang Fu’s footsteps followed him as he walked through the corridor. His eyes trailed at the murals and hanging scrolls that were on the wall, depictions of legendary elders conjuring flames into dragons, phoenixes soaring above burning mountains and lone cultivators tempering themselves in volcanic infernos.
But none of that compared to the qi.
I...
Chapter 209
Bishop Maurice felt a headache blooming behind his eyes.
Count Arzan sat before him—young, powerful, and far too cunning for the bishop’s liking. It wasn’t that the man had done anything wrong, per se. He was just the type Maurice despised dealing with, ambitious, unshakable, and untouchable.
The kind of man who had climbed the noble ladder too quickly. A ...
Chapter 208
In the long-spun history of the world, there had only ever been three great powers.
The first two were well known—Mages and Enforcers. Paths of cultivation etched in blood and wisdom, refined over centuries, both reaching toward the same peak, absolute power. Some even claimed immortality sat at the summit. Their existence was orderly, structured, with steps to ascen...
Chapter 101
There were things in life you thought you'd be good at—really good at. And then, when the time came to actually do them, you realized how terribly, disgustingly wrong you were.
Right now, Chen Ren was wrestling with one such thing—making a decision.
Now, he wasn’t bad at decisions. You couldn’t build a business from the ground up without having some tale...
Chapter 100
The moment the words left her mouth, Chen Ren felt the urge to sit down. He wanted to sit down and slowly process whatever she’d said—if it was any truth.
He didn’t; he didn’t sit down. But the impulse was heavy. His fingers twitched at his side, and he felt his muscles spasming. He looked around the workshop and noticed that this wasn’t the place for this k...
Chapter 207
As Kai entered, Viscount Redmont immediately stood. He gave a curt nod and extended his broad, calloused hand. Kai grasped it without hesitation. It was firm, and was nothing like his physical state.
“When I sent Corwin I hadn't expected him to bring you back with him. But it’s a pleasant surprise,” Redmont said. His voice belied his toughened face. “I’ve be...
Chapter 206
The first thing Kai did after leaving Amyra’s astral realm was tell her to rest. Her soul had handled the strain better than most would, but it was still best to give it time.
Once she was settled, he returned to his chambers and locked the door behind him.
He didn’t even bother changing out of his robes.
Within minutes, his desk was covered in parch...
Chapter 99
The Corpse Lands were exactly as dangerous as Qing He had warned.
It had been a proud home of a powerful sect once and then, the entire region had turned into a cursed wasteland after its mysterious destruction. No one knew the exact cause—only that when the sect fell, the land changed with it. Miasma had crept out like smoke from a smoldering ruin, infecting the very...
Chapter 98
Anji felt her arm shake as the recoil pushed back into her shoulder, a familiar jolt of force echoing through her bones. The bullet tore through the air and carved cleanly into the wooden target ahead.
One. Two. Three. Four. She emptied the entire cartridge (that was what they called it) with a calmness she found in her, each shot finding its mark without deviation. Eve...
Chapter 205
Amyra’s astral soul was very different from Amara’s cold wasteland.
There were no cracked plains, no ice, no silence heavy enough to drown thought. Instead, there was warmth—gentle, constant, and comforting. The ground glowed beneath Kai’s feet, coated in a soft silver sheen that reflected the astral mana like moonlight on calm water.
It gave the realm ...