Outworld Liberators-Chapter 179: Rot Beneath Cultist Jurisdiction

Not long after, men arrived. No knocking. No bargaining. Just hands on bodies.

Fay first, dragged from his mat like a sack. Thaddeus next, lifted as if his legs were already dead.

Oswin fought and bought himself a bruise for the effort. Lifara bit one man’s wrist hard enough to draw blood.

It did not stop them. It only made them curse.

They carried each of them out, quick and practiced, and left notes behind as if they were leaving blessings.

Ransom. Carefully measured.

Not too large, so the issue would not explode. Something that could be treated as a local squabble. But large enough to dry a family to the bone.

A few hundred middle grade spirit stones. Tens of high grade ones.

The kind of price that made people pay quietly and sow distrust afterward.

The kidnapping victims were brought to toward warehouses, row near the a stream.

Another dipped into a cell, holding under a gambling den.

A third sank deeper, into the old stone dungeons.

Different places. Same hands.

The rest of those being kidnapped, mostly Tiyanak, did not come quietly.

They thrashed against the bindings. They howled like men and beasts at once.

The masked men scowled at them. Their fists drove into jaws, trying to knock them senseless. But the noise had already lingered in the air.

The newcomers saw them when a head popped up from a sack. There he was. The old man who needed healing.

"Help me. This old man does not want to die!"

They checked the photo again, just to make sure they were not seeing things. Bald head. Crooked teeth. Three moles by the cheeks.

They had not greeted all the seniors, their aura still unfamiliar, so they stepped forward with weapons in hand.

They spread their feet, raised their hands, still too clean in the eyes, still thinking courage was enough.

Jekyll played his part better than any of them. He let his shoulders sag. He kept his palms open.

"Let that old man go," Jekyll demanded, voice too young that tried to be deep.

He looked frightened in the right places, harmless in the rest, as if he had never thrown a strike in his life.

"Yeah, Contractcrown of Plunder Alp, you dare offend us?" another one chimed.

The young men tried to gaslight the masked men first, trying to probe, shock them with their statuses.

Then the old men hidden behind fabric moved fast. Sword lights flew. Palm strikes made the air rumble, and bodies flew without delay.

Blade found throats and bellies. Blood came fast and bright, then turned dark in the straw.

Shouts became wet gurgles. Those still standing were pulled down. Those already down were dragged anyway.

No one, not one, made it past the circle of these money hungry dogs of the Alps.

They hauled the shredded bodies out by the ankles. Flesh hung wrong. The stink of opened guts rode the air.

Anyone looking close would have sworn the young were dead. That was the point.

An illusion artifact can make a corpse of a living man if he knows how to hold his breath and keep his soul quiet.

Nascent soul cultivators. Young enough to be taken for lambs. Dangerous enough to fake slaughter with a shimmer that only the trained eye would catch.

The kidnappers did have trained eyes. However, a Gilded Core cultivator couldn’t peer through the secrets of a higher major realm.

They burned the bodies quickly, eager to be rid of the mess, eager to be rid of the memory.

Fat popped. Smoke rolled. They told themselves it was clean, it was done, it was finished.

Tiberius could not look Eldric in the eyes afterward. Younger generations, gone like that, and his stomach turned with something that was not only pity.

Then it struck Tiberius, as if a hammer had hit his skull. 𝚏𝐫𝚎𝗲𝕨𝐞𝐛𝕟𝚘𝐯𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝗺

Too little jobs completed. Too much money made to match.

Then Tiberius heard the story he was too familiar.

They said it was a gift from the client. They said the clients were grateful.

The fund paid to the Alp were three to five times, so he didn’t question it.

Jekyll and the other cultists had their bodies reformed, then slid from the fire’s mouth.

A bead clicked softly in Jekyll’s fingers.

It looked cheap, gray as river stone, the sort of thing a street hawker would sell to gullible pilgrims.

Jekyll held it close, thumb pressed to a shallow groove. The Recording Bead warmed, a steady pulse against the silence.

Half a minute. That was all the Radeon Terraces had promised. Half a minute of truth, if truth could be caught at all.

Proof had always slipped past them. Testimony turned. Oaths broke. Memory soured.

Jekyll used the trinket like a blade. For him, it was beyond genius. He wanted to ask about it once everything was done.

Then he vanished with the rest. Their destination were Radeon Terraces.

The cult’s core disciples filed in with their elders. Their seals flashed and dulled with each breath, and every one of them wore the same pinched anger.

Contractcrown of Plunder Alp lay under his jurisdiction. They all stopped short when they saw Tiberius seated, broad shoulders filling the chair, hands resting on his knees like weights.

For all his size, he felt small.

He kept his gaze lowered, listening to the scrape of cloth, the faint clink of jade. He knew no words could convince this man, as even he couldn’t convince himself either.

Negligence. The word sat in his skull and would not move.

He had been higher in cultivation. He had been placed above this. And still trouble had grown under him like mold in a sealed jar.

Jekyll’s steps were quiet. Tiberius remembered those same steps on stone paths a few hundred years ago, a child with eyes too clear and questions too sharp.

He had spoken then, not as a master with disciples, but as an elder who thought he understood duty. The memory came back as a slap.

"The Sect Master had been in seclusion for a few decades now."

Jekyll’s voice stayed even, but the words landed with weight.

"The Supreme Elder also entered. He said he planned to make a breakthrough. We can’t persecute you, fellow Daoist."

Tiberius did not lift his head.

"You’ll let go of all mercenary jobs temporarily, then re-establish it once all the traitors has been eliminated."

Jekyll spoke like a man reading terms from a contract.

"You’ll need to tank the finances with merchanting alone for now. The Cult’s name had been dragged in Goldkeep Crownmarkets for too long."

A lie, dressed in courtesy. Tiberius’s fingers dug into his own knee until the joint ached.

In his ears, it translated cleanly, without mercy. Fix this now. Fix it before the Supreme Elder smelled rot.

Or spend centuries sealed in the seclusion chambers, alone with the echo of your own failure.