Death... and me
chapter-158

The cleaning didn't take long to finish. With Lovak's escapade, the rest of the bandits simply had no chance to resist. Without any other choice, they all spread and tried to flee as well. Too bad, though. Cultivators at the level of Reabar and Laxin were few. Rean and Roan only had to pay attention to those. As for the weaker ones, Sister Orb was more than enough to get rid of them with the formation.

After the last one of them fall, Luina and the rest gathered together once more.

"Well, although Lovak escaped, we still concluded our mission. In fact, any other group would probably have failed, so we should feel satisfied. Oritis, Rolim, what about the hostages?"

The two Lagan Sect guys nodded.

"They were all locked up. Although the hostages' conditions were not that good, the fact they were behind bars made things a lot easier. We were even able to prevent anyone from trying to use them as shields or anything like that."

Luina sighed in relief. She knew that there would loads of women there, so she was happy that they didn't get involved during the assault.

"Nice, let's go take a look at them."

Oritis and Rolim looked at each other and then back at Luina.

"Senior Luina should stay here while we treat them. You definitely won't like to see how they look at the moment."

Luina was taken aback.

Roan, on the other hand, couldn't care less.

"Stop wasting time with sentimentalism. Dr. Wilson is here, so he can take care of their injuries, let's go there."

Oritis and Rolin didn't know what Roan meant with Dr. Wilson, but they guided everyone into the cells anyway. Sure enough, Luina's expression went extremely dark. Most of the women weren't too bad. Some were even clean, showing that the bandits that got them liked their appearance. But there were a few exceptions. Their conditions were too gruesome for her to even look at. Not to mention the ones who were clearly dead. Not having any clothes was the least of their problems.

Of course, they could also see a few kids here and there, which were probably children of the bandits themselves. A few of the women were pregnant too.

Roan looked at all of that as well before commenting.

"Well, that's to be expected. When you gather a high number of scums, there is bound to be one or another that is far worse than the rest. That's the world we live in. Regardless, they are already lucky enough that we have Rean in this group. Otherwise, I believe that some might even die before we could bring any help."

Luina then took a deep breath and immediately began to release all these women. Of course, there weren't only women. They found a few men who most likely had good backgrounds, which could be used for ransom. Nonetheless, they didn't make up for even 1/10 of the total of the hostages.

Oritis and Rolim quickly left to look for a few clothes to cover those without. Rean also stepped forward and began to heal the women who were in the worst condition. Just as he had mentioned before, the majority wasn't even at the Energy Gathering Realm, so it was relatively easy for him to heal them with his actual cultivation. Too bad that some had already lost limbs, so he couldn't do anything about that.

Of course, Rean wasn't able to heal everyone at once. He had just finished a tough battle and had little Spiritual Energy left. He only stabilized them and sat down to recover his Spiritual Energy. Fortunately, Spirit Stones were the least of his problems.

Several kilometers away, Lovak was still running without stop. Although he turned off his Rumbling Core ability, he was still an Initial Stage Core Formation Realm cultivator. No one in Rean's group would be able to catch him anymore. Around one hour later, he finally stopped to rest. He sat down and regulated his breath, thinking about his next step after here. However...

"You don't really think you can escape after what you did to all those women, do you?"

Lovak's heart skipped a bit. He promptly spread his Spiritual Sense, but he couldn't find anyone. Suddenly, he noticed a shadow of a person coming walking in his direction. Immediately, he began to sweat cold. The person was definitely inside his Spiritual Sense range, but he couldn't feel at all. That could only mean one thing, that person's cultivation far surpassed his own.

Finally, he was able to see who it was. It was a woman using a black robe, long black hair, and eyes. She looked to be in her late twenties or so, but Lovak was sure that that appearance didn't represent her real age at all.

'Rumbling Core!'

Lovak didn't even care about the side effects of reusing this skill so early again. All he knew was that he would die if he didn't run straight away. Unfortunately, the very moment he tried to give the first step forward, his body froze in place.

Lovak's expression showed horror. That woman was holding him in place with the power of her Spiritual Energy alone!

"Na-Nascent Soul Realm!"

The woman smiled after hearing that.

"Aren't you a smart kid?"

Lovak felt like the pressure was crushing his bones, but he still did his best to squeeze a few words.

"Se-Senior, spare... me! I'll do... anything!"

The woman showed some surprise on her face.

"Anything?"

"Y-Yes!"

She approached him before touching his heart with her finger. It was nothing more than a light touch, but Lovak's expression showed despair at that moment. His body began to freeze from that point onwards. The woman then whispered in his ear.

"Then die for me."

Lovak's body completely froze up after that. The woman then retreated her hand and snapped her fingers.

*Crack, crack...*

Lovak's frozen body cracked all over before crumbling down. Right after, it began to turn into specs of frozen dust that drifted away with the wind. It didn't take long for his body to completely disappear.

Suddenly, another voice appeared in the surroundings.

"So scary... As expected of one of the Core Elders of the Dalamu Sect."

A man then appeared on a nearby tree as he looked at the woman.

"Long time no see, Tiria."

Sure enough, that woman was the same one that Rean healed back then, Tiria Yinsan. She didn't seem surprised seeing that man. She just smiled back at him before saying.

"Long time indeed. How have you been, Galios?"

"Not too bad. Still, I didn't expect the Dalamu Sect to sent someone like you to watch over those kids."

Tiria laughed a little before answering back in the same coin.

"Are you the one to talk? How come you are watching over a few kids? Is there someone special in your Lagan Sect's group?"

Galios shrugged his shoulders.

"You could say that. Well, I guess we both have our reasons to not let anything happen to our kids. By the way, I heard you had been hit by elder Furen's Umbral Energy attack a while ago. How come you are fine already? "

Tiria's expression turned dark after hearing that name.

"Hmph! As if he could really do that with me."

Galios laughed after that.

"Alright, alright. Let's leave that aside. My sect doesn't want anyone to know that our little girl is going out to train. After all, it would make things complicated if certain people were to know about it. I believe that Dalamu also doesn't want anyone to look into those twins either. How about we pretend that neither of us saw anything?"

Tiria took a deep breath and nodded.

"That sounds good for me."

The two Nascent Soul experts seemed to have an agreement. There was nothing else to be said after that, so they both left.

Tiria's eyes flashed with a cold light on her way back. She reached her pocket and took off a small black token. This token had nothing to do with her talk with Galios. Instead, she found it on the body of a Middle Stage Core and Fusion Realm assassin that followed Rean and Roan after they left the sect. She had killed that guy way before the twins met with Luina's group.

That token had a scythe picture being held by a shadow. Other than that, there was only a number, nothing more.

'The Shadow Reapers... Sect Master was right.'

She then put the token away before disappearing into the night.