Rivers of the Night

Grand Elder Macie came to a violent stop in the air, a rumbling might spreading out in all directions as she wantonly spread her senses as far as they could go.

Unscrupulously, she scanned one disciple she came across after another, checking to see if there were any that seemed out of the ordinary. But to her horror, she found nothing.

She continued to scan, her head shooting back and forth as though it was faster to do so than actually moving her eyes. But even then, she found nothing at all.

Panic began to set in her heart, a wave of discomfort starting to push itself up and out as though bile moving back up the wrong pipes. The anxiety in the very depths of her soul took root akin to wiry tendrils of darkness.

She had grown up in Dark Mana, and it had always made her feel at home. But right now…

She felt like she was choking on it.

BOOM. BOOM.

One powerhouse after another stopped around her, using the skies as though solid platforms of earth and metal. Patriarch Nightingale was about to say some words when he too frowned, seeing Macie's state. If his Grand Elder had found the culprit already, he would have acted.

"I see something," Elder Dezend suddenly said, moving forward.

They all followed after him rapidly. Hoping against hope, Macie pleaded in her heart, but what they saw at the end of their short journey left their hearts sinking to absolute rock bottom.

A bundle of five disciples, wrapped up in a tree like slaughtered pigs. Their throats were slit, and many of them had broken bones or limbs. Even so, for the most part, they would have looked completely unblemished if not for the ghastly wounds opening up their tracheas.

"Another one," Elder Dezend said solemnly, and he led them a few hundred meters away to see a similar scene, and then another, and then another following that.

They appeared in a line that wasn't exactly straight, but was more than close enough. And as they continued following it, their speeds getting faster and faster, they were led toward a gate opposite of the one they had come from.

The worst part?

As they moved to track down these bodies, the messenger with information of where Theron had escaped from was struggling to catch up to them.

But how could a messenger that was not only far weaker, but also restricted to the ground, possibly catch up with them so easily?

Then the forest came to an end and they lost track of Theron entirely.

There was a gate up ahead, so Macie hurriedly rushed to it, picking up the guards by their collars and furiously questioning them. But this only lasted a few seconds before she let them go, realizing they didn't know anything.

"The Demon Soldier didn't come through here?" Grand Elder Macie's chest heaved, her rage billowing out of her lungs like pulsing waves of steam. Her blood ran as though lava through channels of earth, turning her almost entirely red.

She had never felt so suffocated in her life.

Just as she was about to rush out, Patriarch Nightingale stopped her.

"Calm down, Little Macie," he said, having regained some of his own composure as well. "It seems that we've been lured out. If we act so freely and wantonly, we'll only be falling even further into this Demon Soldier's trap."

Macie wanted to slap the hand away, to tell the Patriarch that he didn't care nearly enough about what was going on, but the firm hand seemed to remind her of the difference in their strength.

While the Grand Elder looked like she already had a foot in the grave, Patriarch Nightingale seemed to be a man in his middle ages. And yet… it was the latter that called the former "little."

There was clearly and obviously a reason for this. The seniority of the Patriarch wasn't something that Macie could overcome even with her feverish anger.

"We will go to Little Sadie's grave and see what clues we can unearth. This Demon Soldier doesn't seem like the others. At the very least, they do not move like the usual low-ranked soldier does. We will need to be more cautious."

This Demon Soldier was obviously heavily relying on wit, but when the Demon Corps usually appeared, it was often a matter of carnage and violence. Clans were wiped out, Sects were uprooted, and blood flowed like rivers.

But this Demon Soldier… they skittered around like a rat, cleverly using tactics of misdirection and slipping out from right under their noses.

There was something fishy about this.

Logically, this should mean that this Demon Soldier was quite weak and vulnerable to have to use such tactics. But the problem was that low-level Demon Soldiers didn't often have their mental faculties about them.

The path of the Demon Corps was powerful, but also extremely treacherous. The vast majority ended up little different from actual Demons and zombies, a slave to the power they chased.

That was to say that a low-level Demon Soldier would be incapable of using such clever tactics.

This should have been obvious by the fact they had targeted Sadie to begin with. The patience this Demon Soldier showed was unlike a low-level one. They had even waited for Sadie to die and be buried. If not for the Dark Spirit's warning, they wouldn't have ever known Sadie had her Core and blood stolen at all.

That meant that whoever they were dealing with… they were on another level entirely.

Just because they chose to use these obfuscation tactics, didn't mean they didn't have the strength to wipe out the entire Sect singlehandedly. Maybe they only chose to take this path so as to avoid the targeting of the larger Sects.

Deducing to this point, Patriarch Nightingale felt it was smarter to have Elder Dezend study the grave to see what they could find.

The moment they left, they missed the messenger once again. Unfortunately, this messenger didn't have direct line of communication with the Patriarch and Elders. Without a choice, they could only choose to contact the young woman.