Unfazed by the dark, rushing winds, Jason retrieved all of their spatial bags with extensions of spiritual energy and then promptly stowed them away. Glancing at the youth from earlier, he frowned.

Trying to kill yourself?

The man had tried to bite off his own tongue but Jason had stopped him by increasing the output of his aura, specifically around his mouth. With an exertion of his will, the disciple floated over and settled firmly in his grasp. Seeing the fear in the man’s eyes, Jason hurriedly buried a hand in his chest and begun the process of refining his inner essence with the Blood Burning Heart Technique. He intended to rush through with replenishing his energy stores, as he didn’t enjoy the act of taking lives. His rendition of the core cultivation method was much more effective than the one that the sect used, for his was the original, taught to him by one of the ancient purveyors of the technique.

The other eleven captives watched on as their companion turned deathly pale in a matter of moments, his skin shriveling up as his body lost the majority of its substance. Having refined the energies of a peak Integration-staged cultivator in less than fifteen seconds, he’d left the others dumfounded and deeply shaken.

“I—I’ve changed my mind,” said a boy at the back. “I’ll join you. I’ll be your most loyal servant!”

“Yes, me too!” called the girl at his side. “I will do anything you ask of me! A—anything!”

Jason tossed the emaciated body of the first young man aside, its withered frame disappearing into the ether without a sound. Without wasting any time, Jason summoned the young man that had just spoken up and unhesitatingly stabbed a hand into his chest, flesh tearing with ease beneath his powerful grasp. Clenching the man’s beating heart, he activated his secondary core cultivation method and began to harvest the energies within. The disciple let out one loud, anguished scream before succumbing to his injuries and dying as a dry, tapped-out husk.

Next was the girl, followed by the man beside her and so on, until all twelve of the dissenting youths had been refined into ancient-looking corpses that he casually tossed out into the sky without the slightest twinge of guilt. A part of him felt a numb sort of sickness at what he’d just done, while the larger part of him didn’t care much for their deaths and even wished that there had been more dissenters among the recent captives.

God knows how many more people they would have killed if I didn’t step in, he thought as quiet returned to the skies in the absence of the disciples’ screams. Now, let’s see how things are going in the city.

Willing the serpent to go as fast as possible, he activated the ocular arrayment that he’d used earlier on and began surveying the greater surroundings. There, he thought as a mass of orange, red and yellow lights came to life in the distance, like a dense swarm of fireflies idling in a single spot. From what he could gather, the attack on the city had only been going on for a handful of minutes, though during this time a significant amount of damage had been wrought on the disorganized, jumbled infrastructure.

He changed into a set of robes that he’d looted from a disciple that had been a part of the Bloodhand Sect’s inner court, so as not to draw immediate suspicion upon his arrival at his destination. Almost all of the city’s militiamen, guards, soldiers and other volunteers had already been killed, leaving Calmer’s tens of thousands of residents at the mercy of those that had come to refine them.

I need to hurry.

He arrived in the air above the city to a chorus of screams and frightened shouts, accented by a general commotion of doors, windows and walls being broken down as hundreds of disciples poured into the city by the moment. Although the walls were over thirty metres tall, they did nothing but slow the oncoming pillagers for the few meager seconds that it took to leap over them.

How many more times will I have to see things like this?

Thanks to the light given off by his abiotic summon, those below could see him without much difficulty. Thankfully, the invaders were too preoccupied with the excitement that came with cultivating without restriction to pay him any attention, for on the surface he was an inner court disciple that had managed to reach the seventh level of the Integration stage and thus was not somebody for the sect members to be wary of.

Sersa, he called out with his mind after stimulating the sound transference talisman that was sister to the one that she carried around. I’m outside Calmer, but I don’t see you.

Don’t contact me for the next two hours. I’ve already snatched a hundred disciples, and I’m busy refining them.

Stupid me, thinking you’d try to stop all the evil things they’re doing to these poor people…

She didn’t respond, which told him that she would be ignoring him for the amount of time that she’d mentioned. Even the good disciples could be shitty people, he thought, for although he had begun to warm up to Sersa it was difficult to ignore the difference in the directions that their moral compasses pointed. This was saying something, considering that she was the most agreeable disciple of the sect that he’d met to date.

Turning his gaze upon the globe of swirling grey energy that he’d ferried along with him from camp, he deactivated the arrayment and supported the woman in place with his spiritual energy.

“Fly on your own,” was the first thing he said, dismissing his energy a moment later.

She instinctively caught herself, staring at him with careful, quiet eyes that showcased her awareness of the fact that she was subject to his every wish and whim.

“Not so talkative now, huh?” Drawing out the schematic for a potent defensive arrayment, Jason ran a hand through his short hair and fixed his gaze upon the chaotic city. Without looking over at her, he said, “This is how things are about to go down. When I tell you to”—he produced a sound transference talisman and sent it her way via a small globe of spiritual energy—“you’ll tell them all to stop their attack and to leave the area. There’s a forest about four kilometres to the east—ah right, a bit less than a league—bring them there and have them separate into groups of one hundred. Don’t do anything else until I show up, and don’t let anyone leave.”

Activating the diagram that sat idling in front of him, he and the woman watched on as the entire city of Calmer was entrapped in a circular barrier that formed a translucent dome over its borders. Around fifteen hundred disciples had entered the city at this point, all of whom were now trapped inside of the boundaries that he’d set. The bright flash of light that accompanied the arrayment’s activation drew all sorts of attention in Jason’s direction, marking him as the arrayment practitioner that had just intervened in the invasion and subsequent sacking of the settlement.

Ignoring the gazes of thousands of disciples, Jason willed the crimson serpent to rush toward the barrier at its fastest speed, which was just over 150 kilometres per hour. Passing through its perimeter without any resistance, he summoned four more serpents of similar size to the one that he was riding and immediately set them upon several disciples within his immediate vicinity. He was about a hundred metres above the middle of a central plaza that served as the city’s nucleus, a vantage point from which he could see all sorts of atrocities playing out in the unlit streets below—at this point in the Acquisiton, the citizens of Hauss knew better than to advertise to the countryside that people still dwelled within this town or that.

Seeing scenes that would turn the stomachs of ordinary people, Jason curled his lips in disgust. This, Jason thought, was the reason why he was able to kill countless members of the Bloodhand Sect with impunity. Regardless of age or gender, regardless of the fact that they had been raised to view the world through a skewed lens and thus couldn’t entirely be blamed for their evil habits and distorted dispositions, Jason had no sympathy for them at times like these. Actually seeing the way they tortured innocent people before refining them and the obvious joy they took in it, such sights made him sick to his stomach and eager to make them experience similar sufferings.