Dyon watched as Meiying fell into another trance like state… he wanted to save her, but he knew having someone close to the Daiyu family was for the best.

Suddenly, Dyon started violently coughing, blood seeping out of his mouth.

“Dyon! Release your manifestation you idiot!” Ri’s eyes glistened with worry as she propped Dyon up.

Aeson watched quietly as Ri tended to Dyon lovingly. He hadn’t said a word since appearing, but it was clear he was hurt. But, what could Dyon and Ri do about it? 𝘪𝑎.

But, Aeson could hardly focus on those feelings for too long… because behind where the four of them stood, Chenglei’s screams of agony had finally ceased… but, they couldn’t see through the dust.

“We need to bring Meiying back to them without them noticing or else she’ll be suspected…” Dyon said through coughs.

Aeson nodded faintly, vanishing with Meiying.

Ri blushed as she slowly created a striking blue array for them to sit on. She was slightly embarrassed about being so slow compared to Dyon, but, there wasn’t much she could do about that.

Soon, they looked up to see a raging battle still going on… the worst part was that Grand Elder Deryth and Sinaht were in sorry states, and yet, other than his pale face, Elder Daiyu looked untouched.

Suddenly, their attentions became focused on the finally dispersing dust cloud…

“Ri… what happened to Jade?” Dyon said leaning against her.

Ri shrugged, “I attacked her face with the best will combinations I have… she’ll be hard-pressed to heal herself. You can say she’s quite the ugly duckling now,” she said proudly.

Dyon chuckled, “I guess that’s all we can do for now…”

A pensive look surfaced on Ri’s face, “she’s superficial and her personality is shallow. This is the best way to hurt her right now.”

Dyon nodded… but, neither of them knew just how right they were.

Within the dust cloud, Jade had paused her search for Chenglei, suddenly realizing that her medicinal pills weren’t working.

‘What’s going on?’ She thought.

Then, a realization hit her. ‘THAT BITCH!’

Jade was truly absolutely revolting now.

Her arm hung awkwardly to side. Her face had deep and unhealing claw marks on them. Her hair was nonexistent except for a few strands that made her look absolutely ridiculous.

The worst part was that Ri hadn’t stopped there. Jade’s once flawless body was riddled with blood and was now scarring over instead of healing properly.

Jade screeched in agitation, clawing at her skin to open her wounds again to try and heal them properly.

But, nothing she did worked… Ri’s will was too powerful for her to handle and the Elvin Kingdom’s alchemy wasn’t advanced enough…

She raged in the dust cloud, clawing at her face and body again and again… but all she succeeded in doing was deepening her scars…

Her fingernails became bloody and torn… tears streamed down her face as she dug into her skin again and again, unwilling to accept this.

“No, no, no. THIS WAS ALL PEOPLE EVER LIKED ABOUT ME!”

Jade fell to the ground, banging her fists into the marble again and again and again.

“AAAGGGHHHHHHH!”

Suddenly, Jade’s screeches became maniacal laughter. She had clawed at her face so much that her tears were indecipherable from the blood that streaked down. Every time her nails hooked into her flesh, a sickening sound that could grate on the soul would resonate. Many had to look away, unable to continue watching.

Not bothering to clean herself up, Jade stood, muttering nonsensical things to herself.

“Good, good,” she said, “very good.”

The thing was that healing within the martial world was very complex… if your body was weak, healing yourself was quite simple because the building blocks of your body were simple… however, the more powerful you became, the harder it was to heal yourself… and the more powerful those who attacked you were… and the less they wanted you to heal yourself… the less likely you would succeed.

Maybe if Jade had been patient, waiting for a better pill or a better expert to heal her, her appearance could be saved… but her obsession with the thoughts of others didn’t allow her to want to exist in a world where she was anything other than perfect for even a second…

And thus, a monster was born… without feelings… without beauty… and with just a single sole purpose: Kill.

**

The elders, noticing the situation was already in hand, finally let Elder Daiyu go. They could faintly understand that Dyon was allowing the Daiyu clan off easy for the benefit of the Elvin Kingdom… if the Daiyu clan’s plans were truly thwarted here, all of their wrath would be directed towards them… and although their king was very powerful, he was not only missing, they also had no way of knowing how powerful the Daiyu clan was… For all they knew, King Acacia was nothing in the face other their best experts.

Elder Deryth finally touched down to the center of square, and what he saw, made the rage within him boil.

Jade sat on her knees beside Chenglei who was clearly incapacitated. The last remaining bits of clothing on him were only the last fragments of his silver pants.

His pale face caused the scarlet blood running from his cracked lips to look like the last vestiges of his life.

Elder Deryth only spared the disheveled Jade a single glance before crouching down and raising a trembling hand to his grandson.

His anger was palpable. It wasn’t that he thought the 25th White Mother would pick a bad successor… but he had had confidence in his grandson, and now it had backfired… What if he had attacked himself instead? What if he had just forgotten about his role as an elder? He turned a sharp gaze toward Dyon, prepared to kill him before leaving… but then, he suddenly remembered the elders in the sky… he didn’t have time to deal with them and minimize damage to Chenglei…

Dyon suddenly coughed, looking towards Elder Daiyu. “You know this situation as well as I do, Elder Daiyu… I also know what you came her for… but let me tell you now: find another way.”

Elder Daiyu’s eyes sharpened. “Why shouldn’t I just return with a larger army?”

Dyon wanted to laugh, but he was in too much pain… the strain of pushing himself so hard was definitely getting to him.

“For one, if the Daiyu clan wanted to move on such a large scale, they would have already… but, it’s clear you don’t want anyone to know how powerful you are just yet…

“Secondly, if you had dao formation experts to use, you wouldn’t have a need to be covert in such a weak universe. Plus, my master’s memories make it quite clear that they erased all of your dao formation experts from existence… or at the very least, crippled them like you…” Dyon spoke slowly, gauging Elder Daiyu’s reaction to this.

His master’s memories had no such thing because even if they existed, they would be locked, but he was hoping that Elder Daiyu would reveal something in his emotions… maybe if his judgement wasn’t clouded by Chenglei’s situation he wouldn’t have… but the sharpening in his eyes told Dyon all he needed to know.

With a smile, Dyon continued, “thirdly, it wouldn’t be in your best interest to attack a kingdom under my protection… especially with how much you rely on soul techniques and how that’s very easily countered by Devour… no? Can you afford for more to end up like Chenglei? What would happen if I taught Sinaht and Grand Elder Daiyu that technique? Would your fight with them have ended so simply?”

Elder Daiyu said nothing, instead looking toward Jade. “Will you be of use? Or should I kill you now?”

Jade said nothing for a long while before speaking. “You’re the only one I have any worth to.”

Elder Daiyu nodded, waving his hand to take her along with Chenglei and Meiying.

Dyon sighed in relief, happy he didn’t have to reveal his stone puppet trump cards.

But before Elder Daiyu left, he said one last thing that made Dyon furrow his eyebrows.

“You’re from the mortal realm of this planet, yet you protect those of the martial realm… I wonder if you’ll do the same once you know the truth…”

What Dyon didn’t see was that as soon as those words left Elder Daiyu’s mouth, he aged by another century…

Updated from 𝘪.𝘤𝑜𝘮