Upon escaping from the horrifying independent space where Actius and the other Neomen had imprisoned that maniacal woman, Jason had vowed not to rely on the secondary core cultivation method that he’d obtained from her. This was a promise that he broke almost immediately after he arrived at the kingdom of Hauss, which was in the midst of an invasion at the hands of the Bloodhand Sect. He’d never have imagined that the sect was such a large-scale organization, a sentiment that even his reluctant companion shared.

He’d originally planned to seek out some locals and ask about his current location, so that he could cross-reference any notable settlements with the map of the continent that he’d obtained from the deceased Aelia’s spatial bag. Instead he’d found hordes of disciples roaming the hilly countryside in groups ranging from as small as a handful to as large as a hundred, most of them far stronger than the boys that he had encountered back in Redfox Village.

He’d never been to this land, so he didn’t know whether they were embroiled in some longstanding conflict, or if the chaos within the kingdom was a new development. Was it just Hauss that was having these troubles? What about Verdure?

There were many settlements strewn all throughout the region, most of them conquered with only a few razed to the ground. It was as if the disciples were taking special care not to damage the existing infrastructure. He also found it odd that some towns remained untouched, the inhabitants doubtlessly waiting out the days with a terrible sense of dread as one by one the other communities in the area continued to fall.

Brud, the beady-eyed boy that had attempted to enslave him and instead wound up as his eternal servant, had no idea why the sect had suddenly decided to focus on these foreign fields. As the boy couldn’t lie while subjected to the master-slave contract, Jason had dug every bit of information out of him in the hours after they met. For the most part, the sect’s territory was divided up between the seated elders and the great elders, apparent bigshots of the organization. Each one ruled over at least one domain, some as many as three or four.

Unfortunately, Brud was clueless about what went on outside of the domain where he was raised, which was ruled over by the grandfather of the boy that Nolan had killed in Redfox Village. Jason finally knew why those bastards had followed him and his friends into the kingdom of Verdure, and why they’d made it a point to capture the others.

Since Brud had no idea why Hauss was being invaded, Jason decided to force the information from a group of disciples that noticed their small camp, which was situated close to the treeline of a large forest. It came as no surprise that they proved less than willing, though the youngest one eventually cracked after he refined the others in a matter of minutes. She was just a little thing, maybe eleven or twelve, with a cultivation at the third level of the Profound Entry stage.

He found it incredibly disturbing that kids so young were involved in all of the twisted things that the sect was doing to the people of this kingdom. He realized that the disciples were raised to be a certain way from a young age, to view all non-members as sub-humans, as simple resources for cultivation. That was why every member that he encountered appeared evil and insane, most of them lost in cultivation highs brought on by their core cultivation method’s side effects.

Ironically, he nearly lost control of his mind when he used the same skill to refine the disciples that refused to talk. It required all of his willpower to stay his hand as he regarded both Brud and the girl with ravenous hunger in his narrowing gaze, as the devilish whispers of his warped conscience urged him to steal away their energies and then seek out another person to refine.

He sighed as he stared down at the frightened girl. At least there’re still things I can’t do.

“You told me what you knew, so I’ll give you a chance. If you leave within five seconds, I won’t kill you.”

She ran out of the forest, her voice shaking as she let out a whiny sob.

He was very much aware that she had attained her current strength at the expense of countless innocent lives, but in the end she was just a little girl.

Brud dashed after her in an instant and killed her with a cowardly thrust of his sword, which effectively severed her tiny spinal cord with a quiet, sickly crunch. He bent down to refine her, but Jason kicked him into a nearby tree and stabbed the girl in the neck to give her a quick death.

“Who the fuck are you to kill someone I let go?” He gave Brud a few heavy-handed slaps. “Don’t do that shit again.”

Apparently hundreds of thousands of disciples had swarmed into Hauss in order to carry out what they called an ‘Acquisition.’ If what that girl had said was true, then the woeful scenes he’d witnessed since arriving in the region were also taking place all throughout the kingdom.

If that’s the case then I shouldn’t go too far into the kingdom.

He decided to remain in the foothills around the Dragon’s Tail until he gained a better understanding of the situation further south. The disciples might have been stronger than he anticipated, but they still didn’t pose much of a threat to him.

Later that evening they were forced to abandon their camp when a pair of powerful young men suddenly attacked them during supper. Their black robes were made of fine materials, the image of a bloody hand stitched onto the breasts of the outfits. One was a tall man with an ugly face, the other a slim, ordinary-looking youth. Both were at the second level of the Integration stage. They would have killed Brud immediately with abrupt stabs of their longswords, but Jason had rushed in and deflected both attacks with the azure sword he’d taken from Aelia’s corpse.

Brud ran off into the forest. Meanwhile, the attackers were murmuring amongst themselves.

“How did he block us?” said the younger one.

“I knew it. He’s the one we were sent for. Can’t you sense it? He must have refined someone recently.”

These guys are strong. He raised his arm and activated the martial skill that the chained woman had taught him, the Life-Severing Spear.

“What’s wrong?”

“That technique, it's…”

Jason had practiced the skill for hundreds of hours within that alternate dimension, and was proficient enough to completely activate the skill within two seconds. He lunged forward and stabbed the spear of dark red energy toward the ugly man, whose sword broke in an attempt to parry the strike. Jason stabbed him in the chest before he could react, which spooked the nondescript teenager into jumping backward out of instinct.

“What’s your true cultivation level?”

Jason hurled the spear at him, and the youth looked down to see a palm-sized hole in his chest where the projectile had punched through. The throw had lasted a fraction of a second, fast enough to kill the young man without notice.

“I’ll be taking these.”

With two more spatial bags in his possession, he was about to set off in search of Brud when another aura appeared on the periphery of his perceptions.

Seriously? Can’t I ever get a break?

“You killed them, with your cultivation?”

Another black-robed disciple had appeared, a young woman with short blonde hair.

The girl was strong enough to give him a bit of a fright, since he’d never faced off against someone so powerful. I’m only at the fourth level of Profound Entry. Will I be alright?

“Not going to answer?”

The girl conjured up a massive hand of scarlet energy and clapped it downward to crush him to death. Her energy gave off a devious aura that reminded him of the chained woman, of the energy that now existed within his dantian. He instinctively responded with the most powerful Life-Severing Spear that he could create, which he hurled upwards at the oncoming hand. The strikes collided and cancelled one another out, though a second spear emerged from the resultant shockwave and clipped the young woman on her left shoulder. About two centimetres of the flesh around the afflicted area had been eaten away by the spear’s deadly energy, which inflicted a temporary paralysis that prevented her from avoiding a third spear, which Jason wasted no time in hurling straight into her abdomen.

The more he relied on the Life-Severing Spear, the more he appreciated the temporary paralysis that it inflicted upon its victims. He originally thought that it was just a secondary effect to the skill’s destructive power, but now he felt that the opposite case might be true.

“Now…”

Although his opponent was mortally wounded, the energy that Jason harvested from her corpse not only refilled his dantian to capacity, but allowed him to make a minor breakthrough directly to the peak of Profound Entry’s fourth level.

“Now then,” he mumbled to himself. “Time to go find that asshole.”

When Jason had killed those black-robed disciples, he had no idea that those deaths would mark the beginning of a relentless manhunt to catch and kill him. Every time he set up a camp, a fresh wave of disgruntled disciples appeared within hours and forced him into a fight for his life. First there were twenty people in the attacking party, then forty, then eighty, etc. With such numbers, he didn’t want to risk fighting more than a dozen or so at a time, no matter how strong he’d become after refining so many of them. He ordered Brud to flee to designated locations every time this happened, the master-slave contract ensuring that he didn’t scamper off like the first time they were attacked.

He wound up in an endless game of cat and mouse that resulted in the deaths of hundreds of disciples by the end of the day.

Will they at least leave us alone for the night?

Jason shook his head as he saw Brud greedily eyeing the pile of spatial bags that he’d just dumped out beside the campfire. That he’d been able to loot eighty-five of them while fighting for his life was quite impressive.

“You want one of these?”

Brud’s beady eyes took on a guarded look. “Really?”

“No.”

He willed them all to return back into his primary spatial bag. Just like when he’d taken Aelia’s spatial bag and also those of the people from the Nightshadow Sect that she’d killed, Jason obtained a large amount of spirit stones, food, medicinal pellets, miscellaneous weapons and equipment, along with items taken from unfortunate Haussians. He now had thousands of spirit stones and an arsenal of weapons and armour.