Chapter 128: Vengeance

The massive blue eagle descended from the clouds like a falling star, its enormous shadow sweeping across the fortified walls of the Iron-Blood Valley.

BOOM!

Kiki landed heavily directly atop the towering main gates of the Iron-Blood Sect.

The force of the late-stage Core Formation beast crushed the gate into thousands of pieces, and sent them flying everywhere.

"ENEMY ATTACK!"

Panicked screams immediately erupted throughout the sect.

Swoosh! Swoosh! Swoosh!

Elders in blood-red robes appeared one after another, their faces looking as pale as paper as they stared at the giant beast now perched atop the ruins of their front gate.

Within minutes, the full might of the Iron-Blood Valley was mustered. Dozens of Spirit Manifestation Realm experts burst out from the inner halls.

Leading them was a man with broad face and short white hair.

Malakor. Tyrant of the Iron-Blood Valley

He glared at the massive blue eagle, and the four figures standing before it, with murderous eyes.

"To dare stepping into my valley, and destroy my gates... I will refine every single drop of your blood!" Malakor roared.

Declan stepped forward from behind Rhain.

For a long moment, he simply stood there, staring directly at Malakor.

"Malakor," Declan spoke through gritted teeth, "Do you recognize me?"

Malakor narrowed his eyes, studying the figure before him with growing irritation.

A few seconds passed.

Then his eyebrows knitted together.

A flicker of recognition sparked in his cruel eyes.

"You..." Malakor muttered in disbelief. "Declan? Is that you?"

Declan’s expression turned ferocious as he roared at the top of his lungs, "SO YOU DO REMEMBER ME. YOU KILLED MY WIFE. YOU MURDERED MY CHILDREN. YOU DESTROYED MY ENTIRE SECT, BUTCHERING THEM LIKE LIVESTOCK! I HAVE LIVED EVERY SINGLE DAY Of MY PATHETIC LIFE FOR THIS EXACT MOMENT. I HAVE COME BACK TO GET MY REVENGE! TO WATCH YOU ALL DIE!"

Malakor stared at Declan for several seconds.

Then, a grin split his broad face.

"HAHAHAHA!" Malakor threw his head back, and a booming, unrestrained laugh erupted from the depths of his chest.

"So it’s really you! The coward who fled with his tail between his legs!" Malakor’s voice dripped with mockery and amusement, "I thought you had crawled into some forgotten hole and died of shame! Yet here you are, decades later on my front door. You even brought these fools to die with you! How touching. A fugitive who couldn’t handle me twenty years ago thinks a few people will change the outcome."

Malakor sneered, his killing intent flooding the entire valley.

"Let me show you how utterly foolish you are! I am no longer at the first level of the Core Formation Realm!"

His aura surged rapidly.

Third level of the Core Formation Realm!

Beside Malakor, a sinister-looking elder stepped forward, unleashing the dense pressure of the first level of the Core Formation Realm.

Behind them, over a dozen Spirit Manifestation experts drew their weapons, their faces filled with condescending smirks.

The first-level Core Formation elder beside Malakor stepped forward with a confident sneer. "Sect Master, allow me to handle this trash’s friends. You don’t need to dirty your hands."

Malakor waved a dismissive hand. "Fine. But leave Declan alive. I want to break every bone in his body personally, just like I did to his people before they—"

"Vulcan."

A single word descended from above.

It was quiet. Calm. Utterly devoid of emotion.

"Don’t kill them," Rhain ordered, his dark grey eyes looking down at the Iron-Blood Valley’s leaders with the indifference of a god gazing upon insects. "Cripple them."

Vulcan grinned.

"With pleasure, Master."

Swoosh!

Vulcan vanished from Kiki’s back.

Malakor’s eyes barely had time to widen before a titan’s fist materialized directly before his face.

Vulcan’s massive hand, reinforced by the newly reforged skeleton of the Titan Bone Tempering Elixir and fueled by the might of his late-stage Core Formation cultivation, slammed onto Malakor with the force of a falling mountain.

Wha—"

CRACK!

A single punch connected with Malakor’s ungaurded abdomen.

Malakor’s Level 3 Core Formation defense shattered like fragile glass.

The devastating punch drove straight into his internal organs, instantly obliterating his crystalised essence core and snapping all his major meridians.

Malakor spat out a massive mouthful of blood and was launched backward, crashing into the stone steps.

He twitched violently, his cultivation completely and utterly crippled in a single move.

"SECT MASTER!" the first-level Core Formation elder screamed, spinning around.

But Vulcan was already there.

Bam!

A casual backhand sent the elder spinning through the air, his essence core likewise shattered into pieces.

Then, Vulcan turned his gaze to the dozens of Spirit Manifestation experts.

His massive frame blurred like a phantom, appearing before one elder, then the next, then the next.

Crack! Snap! BOOM!

Bones shattered. Dantians ruptured.

Bodies crashed onto the ground, groaning and wailing like dying pigs.

Within sixty seconds, every single Spirit Manifestation Realm expert in the Iron-Blood Valley lay broken on the ground.

Not a single one was dead.

Every single one wished they were.

Vulcan straightened up, casually pulling back his fist.

The surviving Essence Condensation disciples and the weaker sect members stared at the carnage with terror-filled eyes.

They looked at the towering giant standing amidst the broken bodies of their leaders, and every shred of fighting spirit in their souls evaporated into nothingness.

Vulcan looked at Rhain, "It’s done, master."

High atop Kiki’s back, Rhain nodded.

He then turned and looked at Declan.

"They’re all yours."

Declan stood motionless for a long moment, his sharp eyes sweeping across the broken, whimpering figures.

Then, without a word, he descended from the eagle.

His feet touched the blood-stained stone.

He walked slowly, deliberately toward the rubble where Malakor’s lay buried.

With a single hand, Declan dragged the broken Malakor out by his hair.

"D-Declan..." Malakor coughed blood, his eyes wild with fear of imminent death "W-wait... S-spare me... I’ll give you anything... everything..."

Declan stared down at him.

Twenty years of suppressed grief. Twenty years of sleepless nights haunted by the screams of his wife, by the small, lifeless bodies of his children.

Twenty years of hiding.

"My wife’s name was Liora," Declan whispered, his voice cracking for the first time. "My son was named Zane. My daughter was Nyla. They were seven and four."

He raised a blade.

"SAY THEIR NAMES." 𝒻𝑟𝘦𝘦𝘸ℯ𝒷𝑛𝘰𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝘤𝘰𝘮

Rhain turned away.

He gently took Seris’s hand. "Let’s go wait outside."

Seris nodded obediently, her pale purple eyes avoiding the bloody scene as she followed Rhain back out of the ruined gates.

For the next hour, Rhain and Seris sat quietly on Kiki’s broad back, parked a short distance away from the valley.

From the distance, the sounds of screams echoed incessantly.

They were not normal screams.

They were the guttural, mind-shattering shrieks of men begging for a death that simply would not come.

The horrifying sounds lasted for more than an hour.

Finally, the screams died down.

A figure slowly walked out of the ruined gates of the Iron-Blood Valley.

Declan walked toward them.

Seris felt suffocated just by a single glance.

The man who stepped through the rubble bore almost no resemblance to the composed, elegant teahouse master she had come to know.

He was drenched from head to toe in blood.

It matted his hair, streaked across his face, pooled in the creases of his robes, and ran in thick rivulets down his arms and fingers, dripping steadily onto the stone beneath his boots.

His eyes, usually so sharp and calculating, were hollow and distant, as if the man standing before them had walked through the gates of hell itself and emerged fundamentally changed.

He looked exactly like a Shura who had just crawled out of hell.

Seeing his horrifying appearance, Seris instinctively shifted half a step closer to Rhain.

Declan walked forward, his boots leaving bloody footprints on the stone with every step.

He stopped before Rhain.

Thud.

He dropped heavily to his knees, and bowed his head.

"Rhain," Declan’s voice was heavy from hours of screaming. "I owe you a debt that transcends life and death. You have given me the one thing I never believed I would have, justice."

He raised his head, and despite the blood and the hollow exhaustion in his eyes, there burned an absolute, unwavering conviction.

"My life belongs to you," Declan declared. "From this day forward, whatever you command, I obey. If you tell me to die, I will die without a single complaint."

Rhain stepped forward, and helped Declan to his feet, not caring about the blood at all.

Then he shook his head.

"You helped me when I needed it," Rhain said, his tone carrying no pretense of superiority. "I helped you destroy the people who murdered your family. We are even now. You don’t owe me anything, and I don’t owe you anything."

Declan opened his mouth to protest, but Rhain raised a hand, cutting him off.

"If you still wish to follow me after hearing that, then it is your own choice, not a debt."

"Then it is my choice," Declan said quietly. "And I choose to follow you."

Rhain gave a single nod.

At that moment, Vulcan’s massive frame appeared from behind the destroyed valley.

"Master, I found this while going through their sect treasury," Vulcan rumbled, his expression carrying an unusual trace of disgust.

Rhain caught the object — an ancient, weathered scroll bound in dark leather.

He unfurled it, his dark grey eyes scanning the dense, ancient text inscribed within.

His expression didn’t change, but his eyes turned several degrees colder.