Chapter 116
The undecided hung back, working out whether the venture had legs.
Look at the reality, if Soren could come to the Great Desolate Beast Domain and force a choice, he could go anywhere else just as easily.
Run where? Would a new faction somewhere else buy them peace? Not necessarily.
Luminar didn’t press anyone, he shook his head, turned, and got ready to lead the twenty-odd Beast Venerables and the herds under them out.
They made it a few steps.
A massive iron hammer came whistling out of the Imperial Palace.
The purple-gold head slammed into the center of Luminar’s back.
Already critically injured, he vomited a fountain of blood and went forward like a shot from a cannon.
He hit a green mountain opposite the palace, and the impact sheared the whole peak flat.
Crack.
Bruce walked out of the palace entrance, one stomp fractured the void under him, leaving a footprint-shaped dent in space, every terrified eye swung to him.
He sneered and crooked a finger.
The purple-gold hammer tore back into his grip, he swung and sent it at the twenty-odd Beast Venerables.
Purple lightning coiled around the head, scorching the air, spitting sharp crackling sounds.
As the hammer flew, the lightning erupted across the sky and wove into a net there was no getting out of.
Then the sound of bodies coming apart, everything that touched the web of purple lightning went up as red mist.
Nobody survived.
Bruce pulled suction through his palm, reached across the void, and dragged Luminar off the cliffside, fingers closed around the man’s throat.
Crack.
He snapped the neck cleanly.
The sound went through the onlookers like a blade, every one of them turned to stone where they stood.
Bruce spat on the ground.
He tossed the corpse over the ledge with a flick of the wrist, letting it go down the cliff alongside his spit, and swept a flat cold gaze over the remaining beast tribesmen.
"Who else wants to leave?"
"My Master says..."
"...leaving is fine!"
"But..."
"...that depends on whether I feel like letting you walk."
Bruce sneered and jabbed a thumb at his own chest. "My Master has a kind and merciful heart."
"He handed me full authority over what happens to you lot."
"Get past me and you’re free to go."
"There’s your chance."
"Best make sure you take it properly."
"Hehe, who wants to try me first?"
The crowd was speechless
Beat Bruce and we can leave? Let’s not, that’s queuing up to die.
One hammer had erased twenty-odd Beast Venerables and thousands of elite tribesmen underneath them, he said Soren had a kind heart and was giving them a fair shot.
In reality Soren had handed Bruce something violent to play with, to pass the time.
The Beast race ran a little slower than the others, that didn’t make them idiots.
The surviving Beast Venerables changed their tune on the spot.
They swarmed Bruce and buried him in flattery, working hard enough that they’d have licked dirt off his heels if he’d let them.
The Grand Elder of the Sky Sparrow Beast Tribe joined right in, a class above the rest at it.
Inside a few sentences he had Bruce in an outstanding mood, so pleased with himself he was practically off the ground.
Inside the Imperial Palace, Arcturus’s face was a bad color, he knew precisely what had happened out there.
Luminar’s death sat in him like a stone.
A genius the Sky Sparrow Tribe hadn’t produced in ten thousand years, thin, limited Kunpeng bloodline, and he’d still hit Lower-Tier Beast Emperor that young, losing him gutted both the Imperial Palace and the tribe.
The thousands of dead tribesmen were avoidable, all of them.
They just hadn’t read the situation, they’d badly misjudged how fast Soren would move.
In the end there wasn’t a better word for it than a waste.
Arcturus’s chest ached.
If Luminar had understood what he was doing and why, none of this happens, since it had already happened, regret bought nothing, he gathered himself and waited for Soren to speak.
Soren was efficient about it, he said plainly that he wanted the spatial coordinates to the entrance of the Kun-Heaven Nether Sea, handed over now.
The instant the words left his mouth, Arcturus’s face changed.
The teacup he’d been holding slipped from his fingers and shattered on the floor.
This was the single greatest secret of the Sky Sparrow Beast Tribe.
Not quite, it was the Kunpeng Beast Tribe’s secret, there were many Sky Sparrow branches scattered across the Azure Spirit World, and the entrance coordinates to the Kun-Heaven Nether Sea sat with this one.
Even the Kunpeng knew nothing about it, so how did Soren?
Very few people were let anywhere near this.
Most clansmen in this branch had no idea, only the acting Patriarch and Grand Elders of each generation were told.
Which was why it had never leaked in all those years.
And now Soren walked in and asked for the coordinates, it made no sense, had a traitor come out of the Grand Elders? Impossible, everyone entrusted with it was bound by a specialized restriction.
Try to leak it and the restriction fires that second.
Tongue and throat gone in the same breath, memory wiped, soul shredded.
The tribe’s ancestors had layered fail-safe on fail-safe to keep this shut.
Arcturus turned it over every way he could and got nowhere.
And the mystery mattered less than what was standing right in front of him.
How was he supposed to answer? Soren coming to the Great Desolate Beast Domain in person, finding the Sky Sparrow Patriarch, asking for the coordinates, meant he already had hold of the Kun-Heaven Nether Sea’s secrets.
Deny it? That was offending Soren, one wrong move and the only ending was death.
Confirm it? The restriction fires, and he’s just as dead.
And once it got out through Soren, the fact that the coordinates lived with the Sky Sparrow lineage could never be buried again.
What if the ones who eventually opened the Kun-Heaven Nether Sea were the Kunpeng? If their combat strength climbed further, if they cleansed and evolved their bloodline, that was the last thing the Sky Sparrow Tribe would ever want to watch.
A long time ago, they had been the same race as the Kunpeng, and most of their Kunpeng bloodline had been stripped out to feed the main lineage.