“What the hell?” Alex thought. He thought he read it wrong for a second and reread it, but it said the same thing as the first time.

Scarlet City was under attack and the disciples were to stay inside.

Alex’s heart started beating fast. ‘Did the beasts come back?’ he feared. He took a deep breath to calm himself and see if there was the feeling he got when the beasts were agitated.

There wasn’t any.

If the beasts were back, they were either not here for him, or he couldn’t feel the feeling anymore now that he wasn’t with Pearl.

Alex feared it was the latter. That was the only option he could come up with.

Alex swiftly walked out of the room. Luo Mei left at the same time as well. “Yu Ming, what’s going on?” she asked.

“I don’t know, Sister, but I think the beasts are back,” Alex said.

“What? Why would they make us stay back then? They will need our help, let’s go,” Luo Mei said and went towards the front door.

Alex got a weird feeling when he heard that. Yes, it was weird that they didn’t want the help of the disciples to fight off the beasts when in the previous days, they used all the help they could get.

Was he wrong about the situation then?

“Sister, stop!” Alex said.

“What? Why?” Luo Mei asked with a confused face. She was already at the door and had opened it already. “They need our urgent help.”

“Maybe they don’t want our help,” Alex said as he walked towards her. “Look” he pointed to the words on the badge, “they specifically asked for the disciples to stay in their room. This must mean that the beasts that are attacking the Scarlet City must be way stronger than any of the disciples.”

“But…”

“You must trust them, sister. Don’t leave the house,” Alex said as he pulled her inside.

Luo Mei sighed. “Okay, I guess you’re right.” She walked away from the door. Alex let her walk inside and grabbed the door.

Instead of walking in, however, he walked out. Luo Mei noticed him walking out and was taken aback. “What are you doing?” she asked.

“I’m going to check what is happening out there,” Alex said.

“What? You just said we needed to stay inside,” Luo Mei said.

“No, I said the disciples needed to stay inside,” Alex said. He tossed her the badge he was holding and smiled. “Unfortunately, I’m not a disciple anymore.”

“Don’t go! It really could be dangerous,” Luo Mei said.

“Don’t worry sister,” Alex said as he lost all of his aurae and slowly faded into the darkness until nothing of him was visible anymore. “I will be fine.”

Luo Mei had to use her spiritual sense to even locate Alex in front of her. She wanted to tell him that it was dangerous again, but… she couldn’t argue that Alex would be very safe as long as he was careful.

“Alright, but if it’s too dangerous, return immediately. The elders must be fighting outside the wall, so approach there slowly,” Luo Mei said.

Alex nodded and closed the door. He immediately run away from the house and started going uphill towards his master’s manor.

His objective wasn’t to find his master or look for something in the manor. It was just that the manor was at the peak of the mountain, and Alex could see where outside the wall the beasts were attacking.

He had activated his movement technique and could barely feel the air hitting his face. There was absolutely no air resistance and he was moving at almost supersonic speed.

The houses became a blur as in just a single moment he reached the manor. He ran behind the house to the open yard and from there looked out towards the wall.

With the southern forest being there, there should’ve been some people watching around, some guards keeping security, or just maybe some noise.

However, it was all silent. Alex looked down at the crater beneath him and saw the many lights that were still on. However, he couldn’t see a single soul.

The entire sect crater was empty. Something was weird. Alex had never known for the sect crater to be empty. Even at night, there would be some disciples walking to and from the training hall or the library.

However, this was all silent. If there was a fight outside the wall, there should have been people gathered here to help with the beast attack.

That was when Alex heard something. A loud rumbling came from somewhere far away. Alex could tell the location of the sound— it was behind him.

He turned around and walked to the front of the manor. That was when he saw it.

Beyond the small patches of trees and walls of the sect, in the different locations of the city, Alex could see bright locations in the night as well as a lot of loud coherent noises.

Alex focused and listened to the sound carefully. Crackling of fire cries, shouts of people, weapons clashing, and a general sound of destruction.

The attack he had assumed was happening outside was instead already in the city. Alex feared the worst was currently happening— The beasts had invaded the city.

Without a single thought, Alex immediately flew from the mountain and went straight towards the invasion. He was still hiding in his concealment, so he wasn’t really worried about anyone seeing him, but he still sent out his spiritual sense just so he could avoid any stray attacks coming his way.

The closer Alex got towards the front of the sect, the more he realized how bad the situation was.

There were fires breaking out everywhere, many people were terrified, and there were even fights playing out in the sky.

Alex was horrified because of what he was probably going to witness. Scenes of human flesh strewn around as beasts munched on them, that was his prime expectation, something he wasn’t looking forward to.

Still, he had to check and see if he could help.

He soon reached outside the wall and looked around. He could see many people, running around haphazardly, with blinding fires behind them.

Alex looked around, but he didn’t see what he was expecting. There was a lot of terror and destruction, but… not a lot of deaths.

There were barely any human bodies that were clearly dead.

However, what surprised Alex the most about the situation was…

“Where are the beasts?” he looked around in confusion. The many buildings and houses were on fire, people were fighting, but there were no beasts.

All the clashes and the clankings of weapons… it was all coming from the people, with not a single beast involved.

That was when Alex realized he had made a grave mistake in his assumption. This wasn’t a beast attack.

This was a human attack.

The city wasn’t under attack from strong beasts, but rather fellow cultivators themselves.

“What’s going on?” Alex spoke solemnly. He could see the humans attacking each other, some of the soldiers belonged to the City Lord, some of them from the tiger sect, and some, most likely the attackers, were people he didn’t recognize.

Still, he didn’t see a reason for them to attack other humans. The war in this empire was over nearly a millennia ago. The empire was at peace and people were living freely.

So… why was there an attack happening on the city right now? Who would be so bad as to attack other human beings?

Just as the questions formed in his brain, Alex got an answer. Coincidentally, he saw one of the attackers nearby attacking one of the city guards.

The attacker was wearing a black robe from top to bottom, fully tight fitted to their body, and their hair long enough to reach their back.

“Black Venom bandit group,” Alex said quietly. He finally understood clearly what was happening. The city was under attack from the bandits.

This was weird and stupid, but it was happening so Alex couldn’t deny it.

Usually, a city would have stronger fighters and guards than just a normal merchant group, so Alex was a little confused as to what was happening.

If anything, with the bandits daring to leave the forest, their light should’ve been snuffed by now.

Alex didn’t know exactly how strong the Black Venom bandit group was, but he had met their leader who was presumably the strongest, and even she was merely at the True Lord realm.

With his master and many others being at a higher realm than her, Alex couldn’t understand why they would dare attack the city on their own. This was beyond stupid.

Granted that since the bandits were all in the True realms, only the elders would be able to fight against them, but even then it was surely a failure without how many True realm experts the two sects plus the city lord had.

Just as Alex was thinking that he noticed something. An elder from the Tiger sect was currently fighting against another man in the sky. From what Alex could see, the man was wearing a bluish-gray robe and was fighting on equal footing with the elder.

That made Alex pause for a second. “Wait a minute… that guy is not from the Black venom group,” Alex thought. Suddenly, he realized something and turned around to look at the rest of the people fighting.

It wasn’t just black robes he saw that were fighting. Alex could see many different people from presumably many different factions.

That was when his confusion turned into fear as he realized what was happening.

Multiple people, presumably bandit groups, had joined together to attack the city.