“So there has been a change in the Blood Star sect’s leadership and the new leader is someone called Chloe.”

Zoemi glanced back towards the faint light of the entrance and spoke to Alan without slowing down his advance through solid rock.

“How do you…? Wait, are Rhodes and Aaron talking about it right now? How good is your hearing?”

The younger man gasped, glancing back over his shoulder and shaking his head.

“Better than average.”

“Even with ears full of debris?”

The black-haired man answered with a smirk and his words prompted an immediate snappy response.

“Getting anxious I see. Relax, man. Even if there will be a cave-in, I will protect you.”

Zoemi chuckled and said in a soothing voice while waving his hand, breaking through the surrounding rocks as if they were seafoam to demonstrate his point.

“Don’t even say that! I would very much prefer not to require being saved!”

Alan cried out, huddling close to Zoemi’s back and squinting his eyes to make sure that the ceiling and walls aren’t crumbling down on them.

The black-haired man didn’t add anything on top of that and just continued moving forward, enlarging the passage for the young man,

It continued for a while and Alan was getting more and more anxious.

“Say… you would tell me if something was wrong, right? We aren’t walking in circles under some mountain or something, are we?”

The reddish-brown-haired man asked tugging on Zoemi’s apparel with a pitiful expression.

“Be not afraid, youngster. We are almost out.”

“Wait… we are?!”

Zoemi assured him, and Alan gasped with some color returning to his previously ghastly pale face.

For a moment Zoemi felt the urge to be mean and tease the vulnerable Alan by saying that he wasn’t serious, but with one more step, his feet broke through the rocks as he reached the other side of the cliffside.

“Oh, thank the…! G-Guide…?!”

As he did so, Alan burst from behind him, breathing out in relief before sucking the air back in once he realized that the passage lead to a massive cave.

“Did you expect the area to be open?”

Zoemi raised his brow and motioned at the younger man with his chin, asking him with a concerned expression.

“Nnngh…”

“Law of Aries, huh… it’s my first time seeing another martial artist on a supernova level.”

Alan flinched and let out a rather funny sound but right after him another person joined the conversation, and it wasn’t either Rhodes or Aaron but rather someone waiting for them on that side of the cliff.

“…?!”

Alan flinched and jumped behind Zoemi without a moment of hesitation, and only from the safety of his bodyguard, he tried to check and see who has talked to them.

“By any chance are you Chloe, the new leader of the Blood Star sect, young lady?”

Zoemi didn’t lose his cool seeing a girl that must have been the same age as Aaron.

The young miss had dark-blond hair with a faint powder-pink hue to it – for the clothes, she wore a martial artist uniform very similar to the design that the Raging Bull sect members would wear, only with a few expensive accessories added on top of it.

Her piercing pale-blue eyes were staring straight at the black-haired man who bowed his head the slightest bit.

“That’s right. It’s me. I sensed mister Rhodes’s spiritual energy, but you showed up. Seeing that you aren’t actually hostile, care to explain what is going on, mister stranger?”

Chloe nodded her head in confirmation, before crossing her arms and unintentionally causing the stones underneath her feet to break into a fine dust.

“My name is Zoemi Benevi Banemor and this is my employer, Alan. Mister Rhodes agreed to take us here after we reunited him with his son. They should be here soon too.”

The black-haired man introduced himself and the young man took cover behind him, before pointing at the passage with his thumb.

“…you… you brought Aaron back from the Heavenly Archer sect…? KYAAAH…?!”

The young girl gasped, taking a step back and falling knee-deep into the rocks as even that small movement became a showcase of her strength.

*WHOOSH* *BOOOM* *WHOOOOOOOOSH*

“UWAAH…?!”

In the next few short moments, a few interesting things happened.

Zoemi reached out his hand with great speed to catch the falling girl, who in turn panicked and tried to move away, causing even more damage to the ground and unfortunately the walls to the point of the passage beginning to crumble apart. The black-haired man wasn’t scared by that and ended up grabbing her hand and pulling the insanely strong girl back upright.

…all while Alan fell back on his butt, pushed aside by the power of the shockwave generated by the movement of the two…

“…eh…? You aren’t getting torn to shreds…?”

Chloe gasped staring in disbelief at the hand holding her own.

Although the line could be misunderstood as the girl being upset, the reality was quite different.

“Yeah, so, there exists a whole deate about what would happen if an unstoppable force met a movable object… thankfully we don’t have to bother with it at all. You aren’t unstoppable.”

Zoemi smirked mischievously before letting go of the dark-blond-haired girl’s hand and turning back to Alan to help him get back up now.

“Miss Chloe, you can turn off your star power, right?”

Seeing that the girl can not shake off the shock of somebody surviving physical contact with her, Zoemi raised his brow and asked in a hesitant voice.

“…sometimes I can… Bu-but that’s beside the point!”

The leader of the Blood Star sect who was most definitely too young for ruling over a dark sect blushed and murmured while looking to the side before realizing how she was acting.

Once she did, she deactivated her star power and backed off normally without causing any more destruction.

“Sect leader. I see you already meet with Zoemi.”

Her actions were timed perfectly with Rhodes walking out of the passage with Aaron following him.

“Unfortunately I cannot say that he is on our side without it weighing down on my conscience. But in my defense, trying to go against his intentions would bring far more trouble than it would solve.”

The man declared with conviction, keenly waiting for the last member of the group to join them.𝑜𝑣𝓵xt.𝗇𝓔t