Elder Silvio immediately ended the marketplace atmosphere that was created by his disciples and the deputy elders, and ordered each squad to report in order. All of the squad leaders described their experiences almost as if the judgment day really was coming and elder Silvio nodded repeatedly in satisfaction.

But when the guys from ‘Nick’s’ group spoke, everyone else gasped and stood up in shock. They even described how the river of fire opened beneath their feet and the heat that was coming from it burned off their hair and the eyebrows.

Nick beckoned YunYun to follow and, when they were in safe distance, he spoke anxiously, “I didn’t know it was that bad. We have to kill these and leave as soon as possible. Any proposals on our strategy?”

“The only risk factor seems to be the Qi sword master. We need to assassinate him first, silently and then clear up the rest.” YunYun saw it quite simple, but Nick was not so confident.

“The old man is psycho, but he is not stupid. There could be defensive formations we might have overlooked or may be they will set up new ones before going to sleep. What would you say if we attack from above?”

YunYun’s eyes shone at this idea because they had never tried this before.

After getting close to the camp again they both could enjoy another two hours of nonsense about the Hell’s gate opening until finally the group decided to go to sleep wile two people kept watch.

Nick and YunYun focused on their breathing, silently scaled the nearby trees and then carefully positioned themselves above the group. They patiently blended in the night for another hour and only then silently dropped from above both cutting their primary targets in halves.

While others were opening their eyes trying to comprehend the situation, five more Qi masters were slain and, when Nick and YunYun darted in the opposite directions in order to get to the two pairs that were positioned a bit further away, they finally met some resistance. After another minute only two youths stood in the middle of mutilated bodies, but this time both of them were dissatisfied with their own performance.

Nick positioned himself poorly when attacking the last two and had to block one of the attacks with his hand, or rather, wristband. To him this was a big mistake, since long ago he already decided to not rely on any foreign objects to defend himself but only on his reflexes. If he didn’t have this magical item, he would’ve probably lost an arm or got a deep cut on his shoulder.

YunYun, on the other hand, killed one of the last two cleanly, but the ‘final boss’ bravely decided to depart in a mutual destruction. While at the very last moment YunYun managed to evade the final swing that took away some of her hair, it was still too close for her comfort and now she and Nick looked at each other intending to analyze and discuss their experiences as they usually did when another strong tremor almost threw them off their legs.

“Quickly, let’s check the bodies and leave.” Nick instructed, “My guess is that we are too close to the point where the eruption will take place.”

He went towards to what was left from elder Silvio, but another tremor shook the land. Nick didn’t think much anymore and just swept all the bodies inside his wristbands that were almost empty after ‘gifting’ the materials from the Holy Order’s archive to his majesty.

YunYun understood his intention and as soon as the last body disappeared, they dashed towards the south-west where the base with evacuated people should be.

They didn’t even manage to run for two minutes when with another strong tremor a wide and long fissure opened in the ground and the trees at the sides instantly caught fire from the heat that came from it. Under the stupefied eyes of the both youths a fiery red river of lava formed right in front of them.

Nick reacted first, grabbed YunYun’s hand and pulled her away in the opposite direction. Now it didn’t matter anymore where their friends were – the only thing that mattered was for them to stay alive and escape from the current disaster.

While running through the night, they had to change their directions multiple times, but after another hour tremors seemed to calm down and they could catch their breaths as well.

“Are we safe?” YunYun barely managed to ask when a thunderous boom resounded behind them and earth shook with even bigger tremor.

They didn’t even look back but charged straight ahead while putting on their masks. If this was anything but a mountainous jungle area, they would have been relatively safe already for some time, but now their run at full speed felt like crawling.

After the next loud blast, both of them couldn’t resist anymore and looked back over their shoulders or, to be more precise, looked back up as the sky suddenly was colored bright red. Long distinct tongues of fire were cutting the clouds and falling back down on the earth.

“The color that we see is not reflected on clouds, but huge amounts of the volcanic ash! And that fire is pure lava! I bet soon we will experience rain of stones or something similar! Let’s run, we are not even close to being safe!” Nick shouted and woke YunYun up from stupor.

They continued to run and to their big regret Nick turned out to be correct. Indeed, soon steaming hot stones started to fall from the sky all over the place, but luckily they managed to avoid the bigger ones. Even though small pieces of gravel and stones hit their shoulders and backs from time to time, they covered their heads and didn’t take much damage because of the Qi protection as well.

The crazy run continued for a long time and they were not even clear in which direction they ran, but the main thing was that the erupted volcano was behind them and somewhere straight ahead was safe. They ran without stopping while avoiding looking back until they reached a wide river. The sky was still dark, but it was hard to tell if it was dark because of the previous volcano eruption or there was still some time till dawn.

“How far did we actually run?” YunYun went over to the water, but Nick stopped her.

“Wait, just don’t drink it. We can’t be certain whether it is polluted from what just transpired.”

“Mhm.” She agreed, “Let’s wait here for the sunrise, then at least we should be able to wash ourselves.”

“I don’t know how did we manage to do it, but it looks like we arrived at the Eternal river. That, on the other side, is Lori kingdom.” Nick pointed at the jungle across the river.

“I thought it was wider.” YunYun sounded disappointed.

“It is, but we are not far from where it starts its journey to the sea. After we return to the others, maybe we can check out how it looks thousand kilometers to the west, closer to the sea, what do you think? We did complete our mission after all.” Nick finally realized and immediately voiced it out loud.

“You do understand that all this stress was for naught? Those people would have died anyway.” YunYun laughed.

“Probably, but not guaranteed.” Nick smiled as well, “But now we know for sure that another one of my mother’s murderers has been slain. Three more to go and then the rest of the sect as well.”

“What about the ‘Trinity’?” YunYun suddenly became serious.

They only had bits and pieces of information on it and even the king Alexander Maxwell with his intelligence force didn’t know much. It was even highly possible there was no such thing as ‘Trinity’.

“We’ll see after we get into the Holy Order. No need to think about it for now. It is a marathon and we have to go step by step without rush.” Nick sat down while watching the water in the river slowly flow in front of them, “There is an expression – ‘to sit on the riverbank and wait for the bodies of your enemies to float by’ ... for some reason I just can’t wait knowing those bastards are killing tens and may be hundreds of people daily. The event with the poison paste in Ravi was another proof we have to eliminate that sect as soon as possible.”

“Don’t worry, we will.” YunYun sat next to him and rested her head on his shoulder.

They sat like this for some time. Nick took out fresh water to clench their thirst and they ate few snacks as well.

“Why does the moon look so weird?” YunYun suddenly said after looking up to the sky.

Nick looked up as well and furrowed his brows. Something was not quite right – it shouldn’t be a full moon yet!

“What the hell!” He cursed while standing up, “It’s not a moon, it’s the sun!”

“What?” YunYun found that statement beyond unbelievable. It was obviously still dark, why would …

Nick didn’t let her think for too long, “The clouds from eruption are so thick the sunlight can’t even penetrate and we barely can see the sun’s disc. No wonder we reached the Eternal river – because of the adrenaline pumping in our veins while escaping we didn’t notice the passage of time, even though it is hard to accept.”

“Then, what should we do now?” YunYun was lost. She had never heard or read of situation like this before.

“We should get going. From what I understand this situation can continue for days, except if there are sudden strong winds or precipitation. Let’s hope Zia and Andrew got to a safe distance, because we still have no idea what kind of damage this eruption caused.” Nick sighed and shared his thoughts.

“Good thing we have a lot of water and provisions. Even though our previous experiences are not all pleasant, we did learn quite a lot and prepared ourselves well.” YunYun said and they left towards north west.

It was not that hard to point out the direction as the Eternal river flowed straight to the west during all its course and even though the thick clouds made it feel like it was night, the sky got brighter with time. Both youths decided to not rush anymore since they finally started to feel exhaustion from the previous escape, but they still were not tired enough to stop because of it.

After some time the sky became darker and it was obvious the sun has set. The pair was still on the move until a heavy rainfall made it literally impossible to take any step further. The disgusting part was that the rain felt like a wet filth was falling on their heads, but at least the nature tried to ‘clean up’ after it threw a tantrum last night.

Nick quickly erected a small tent and under its cover they washed up. It was a bit paradoxical to take a shower to wash off the rain, but even if both of them found it funny, there were risks that, besides the clean water and dirt, the rain consisted of toxins or heavy metals.

There was nowhere to go for now and it was not convenient to sleep either, thus both of them meditated until the rain stopped the next morning and to their pleasant surprise real rays of sun painted the eastern sky.

Both had light breakfast and continued on their way. Any other person would have cursed out in displeasure seeing the muddy ground, but the two immediately decided this was another training and jumped around the slippery tree branches almost reaching their regular speed. Few hours later they came over a small jungle town and finally could pinpoint their exact location.

As soon as locals found out they were from the Andrew’s crew, they wanted to show their hospitality and offered lunch and place to stay until the situation ‘outside’ normalized, but Nick and YunYun smiled, thanked and ran towards the most likely spot where Andrew had his camp with thousands of evacuated people. Under the sunlight it went much quicker and in the late afternoon they finally arrived.