Chapter 646 Is chaos better than order? (part 1)
646 Is chaos better than order? (part 1) n/o/vel/b//in dot c//om
The two female protectors from the group of the Redheart or more accurately Blazeheart family as Aster has directly said, who managed to listen to a part of the previous conversation between Aster and the girls, gritted their teeth.
'That bastard, from the very beginning knew what we were doing and provoked us so that the young masters would attack he without justification in the open, could it be that the Fey know…', said the younger protector through a spirit transmission.
'Don't overthink, let alone the young masters, only a couple of people know about the young lady's orders, it costed us a life and death soul oath just to be assigned to bring the little bitch back, that fraudulent contract and him getting in our way was probably instilled by young miss Layla who recently had a fall out with the young lady', said the older female protector.
She thought so, because according to the rules of the Redheart family, only the law enforcers of the respective branch to which one's belong can touch a direct descendant and unfortunately for them, Iris left the family with permission from the ancestor of her family.
So, no one from her own family could force her to leave the Myriad Occupation sect if she didn't want to, however, if she took the initiative to attack the members of the other branches openly without a proper reason like her life being threatened by them, she could be taken into custody by the representatives of the respective family.
Of course, Aster didn't know any of it and he didn't care, even if the red-haired sword obsessed girl would have beheaded those two, he wouldn't have let the Redheart family take her back against her will.
Speaking of Aster, he ignored the fact that a certain mischievous dragon mother, blocked the two female protectors from listening to anything that wasn't insulting to them, causing them to get the wrong impression.
'Let's give them a little push in the right direction~', she amusingly thought as she gazed at both Aster and Iris's group.
Unaware of Lilia moving the "strings" behind scenes, Aster's attention was drawn towards the area where the spaceships from the sect were stationed, since a portal had just opened.
At this point, practically all the members of the sect that were supposed to be here, had already arrived, so let alone Aster, even Valentina and William didn't expect any other spaceships to appear.
What's more while that spaceship had the emblem of the Myriad Occupation, unlike the others, this one was in a pretty rough state, with scratches and cracks all over its surface, clear signs of having participated in a fierce battle not too long ago.
Since Lilia didn't pay any attention to the spaceship, Aster knew there wasn't anything fishy going on, but the other representatives of the sect immediately raised their guards and William took the initiative to fly towards the spaceship, which had stopped moving already.
The main gate opened and an interestingly diverse group of disciples came out, but Aster's attention wasn't initially drawn towards them but towards the one leading the group, which was the core elder of the Green Lotus faction that Aster had met a few times before, Ophelia.
William's frown further deepened the moment he saw the current state in which the green and brown-haired Ophelia was, her skin looked a bit pale and she had light but still noticeable dark circles under her eyes.
Now the previous might not sound like anything too concerning, just maybe fatigue or a bad result while meditating, however Ophelia is a nature attributed Void Manipulation realm energy cultivator.
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In other words, her vitality and thus recovery rate is way above her peers and she is also an alchemist, meaning that she has access to a lot of elixirs and pills, so the fact that she is in this emaciated state is something worth of attention, not to mention that she isn't supposed to be here too.
"What happened, I thought you were almost finished with your task and on your way back to the sect by the time we left?", asked William, his usual carefree expression nowhere to be seen.
"We were ambushed when we were about to pick up the last batch of disciples, had it not been because sister Amanda joined with me along the group she was in charge of, one day before, none of us would have made it out alive due to the damn distortions messing up everything rule related", she said, referring to the glasses wearing core elder from the Silver Cauldron faction, who is also related to William.
William looked around and couldn't find Amanda, which gave him a bad premonition but he still asked.
"How is she?", he said with the calmest voice he could pull off, to which Ophelia seriously answered.
"As you know I'm not focused on combat so sister Amanda took the vanguard and working together we managed to break through the encirclement but she suffered heavy wounds in the process, I treated her while piloting the spaceship to escape so her life is not in danger but… some of her meridians ruptured and she woken up yet", said Ophelia with a tinge of guilt behind her voice.
That explained why she was in this state, she probably also participated in the fight and had little to no time to recover properly but had to use her spirit energy and other resources to apply emergency measures to
"I see…", William's voice was calm, however the space trembled around him as his spirit pressure seeped out of his body, however he managed to regain his cool to then say.
"Who were they?", Ophelia shook her head in response.
"They were all wearing masks, disguises and used non-exclusive techniques, which is a shame because I would have loved to see their expressions when sister Amanda appeared in the battlefield and killed two of the three people leading them, so it's obvious that they didn't take her presence into account", she said with a serious voice.
Based on the fact that the enemies all had attributed that directly countered hers and that she was ambushed, meant that someone informed them beforehand, luckily Amanda became an unknown factor which resulted in them being able to escape.
"Your better not let me learn if you were involved or knew about this, otherwise whether you participated or simply kept your mouth shut, you are dead meat", said William to all the ones who were watching the drama, making them grit their teeth.
All the other people who were gloating on the disgrace of the Myriad Occupation sect, had a change of face, while the treaties prevent all the tier one forces and their direct affiliates from openly kill each other without a proper justification.
In fact, besides death and other circumstances that are considered at the same level like permanently crippling a relevant direct descendant, an all-out fight won't even be brought to the table, because that would mean weakening one's forces, thus giving others the chance to surpass them.
But the Talis are a special case for two reasons, first and formal, while they have inner conflict like the other three ruler families, any bad blood is left for later when dealing with outsiders, not because of familiarity but because they believe in killing their enemies with their own hands so in a strange turn, having an enemy within your own family had advantages if you were a Talis and second, they are… crazy.
So, no one here doubted that William won't give a damn about statuses and will aim for the kill, if needed.
"Stay in the spaceship and accompany Amanda in the meantime, sis will heal her later, so there is nothing to worry about", said William, to which Ophelia nodded, not without looking at the group of disciples to then say.
"You all can go participate, elder Riley will be in charge of you for the time being", after saying that, Ophelia returned to the spaceship, while the group of disciples which consisted in fifteen people, flew towards the area where the distortions were in plain bloom.
As they passed through the area where Aster and the girls were, one of those girls, who was wearing a familiar badge that consisted in a purple lotus flower, gazed at Aster for less than a second before continuing her way.
Seeing Aster's confusion, given that all the members of the Purple Lotus had already left the sect, after Julia died and he killed Edward, Lieze took the initiative to explain.
"While at the main branch of the sect, the guys from the Purple Lotus faction were practically either related or worked for the Purple Mist family of the Poison Valley from which Julia came, there are a few who refused to follow them and chose to reside at secondary branches or take missions that require long times of absence, I have met them a few times before", she said to which Aster nodded, that also explained why he didn't recognize them, even after having dealt with practically all the members of the Purple Lotus and Red Sword factions at least once before.
Besides the ten girls from the Purple Lotus, there were also five girls wearing the badge of the Silver Cauldron faction, which are rarer to see outside of their respective workshops at the Rune Mastering peak, since not many rune masters become combatants, below the latter half of the Transcending realms, except those extremely talented like Eris of course.
Anyway, Aster finally found what he was looking for so he stopped paying attention to others and instead turned to see the members of the group that could participate, something that they of course noticed.
"I found the best distortions out of the bunch, let's make teams of two for safety reasons", he said, then before Alice whose eyes sparkled the moment, she heard the words "teams of two", could jump onto him, he directly assigned the teams.
"Alice and Aria, Vivian and Kana, Tiana and Dahlia, Iris with Nerissa, Eric and Sofia, Nina and Lieze, Mina and Nina, any questions?", though some were surprised of who they were paired with, none objected, Aster never did something without a good reason and at this point they decided not to question his decisions.
And they were right, Aster formed the pairs based on compatibility given the current situation.
Alice and Aria were probably the best team below the Transcending realms within the family, they perfectly complemented each other's fighting style, despite how much they argued they were practically sisters at this point.
Besides Aria, the only one who could carelessly interact with Vivian is Kana and they became closer since Esmeralda helped Vivian to control her body constitution, also despite her fragile and delicate appearance, Vivian is probably the most dangerous among the girls, also her senses are second only to Aster below the Transcending realm, so she is perfect to supervise the little girl.
For Tiana and Dahlia, the first fully focuses on offensive while the second is support oriented, so they make a good team, also Aster wanted to see how Dahlia fared in battle, given that she only recently joined the training sessions with the others.
Iris and Nerissa were in a similar situation as Alice and Aria, they are opposites and complement each other, not to mention they pretty much know the fighting style of the other, given how much they have battled each other.
Eric and Sofia had gone to many missions alone, they are a couple and she has somewhat "tamed" the blunt and clueless Eric, so she was the perfect choice.
For Nina, she is the youngest among the three Redheart sisters and only recently recovered, so she is still rather stiff after being bedridden for quite some time, he paired her with Lieze who is supposedly as strong as Iris and Nerissa, to balance things out.
Last but not least, the remaining two Redheart sisters, since Aster doesn't know much about them, he left them together, also Lina is a peak Star Tribulation realm energy path cultivator and has started her secondary path as well, though she is a couple of years older than Iris, who has a similar realm, she isn't worse than descendants from high ranked families, she isn't known because she hadn't joined the sect until after the mission at Esmeralda's realm, so she doesn't figure in the Heavenly Ranking.
"That's not fair, I want to participate too, darling", mumbled Lilia as she pouted and tightly hugged Aster from behind, earning a bitterly smile from practically all the girls in the Transcending realms.
'That would be too much of an overkill', they all thought, after all they saw Lilia destroying spaceships with her bare fists earlier.
"Don't be too selfish", said the motherly blond Sarina, while hiding the jealous light in her eyes, she cursed the main distortion for not activating already, since given the rules of the lesser ones, people in the Transcending realms should be allowed to participate in that one.
"Ahem, I have to go too, good luck, if anything happens you know what to do", said Aster as he left in a hurry, worried that those two would cling onto him.
Ignoring Alice's complains over being left with the ice princess, when she wanted to team up with him, as well as Kana and Espi giving him puppy eyes to convince him to team and let them tag along, respectively, Aster gave each team their destination and then left flying to do his own thing.
"The team who obtains the best treasure, gets to go first on the next round of dating~", said Alice before she flashed towards her assigned distortion.
The other girls started at each other before they immediately followed after Alice, well all of them besides the ones that didn't know what she was talking about, namely the three Redheart sisters and Lieze, Eric and Sofia didn't count of course.
"They compete to go on a date with him?", asked Lieze who was the one in a much more lost state, to which the oldest sister Lina shook her head.
"It's the first time I hear about it, but I do know that the girls from the Black Sword faction fight each other to then challenge one of them to get a chance to go out with the Lord of the Twin Sword Valley".
"It seems that it doesn't need to be a romantic thing, since even Dahlia was eager to participate", added Mina.
"And it must be something really nice, if sister Iris has taken an interest to it", mumbled the youngest, Nina before soaring towards her assigned area, forcing Lieze to come out of her daze to follow her.
"She's become quite lively, lately", said Mina as she saw her younger sister taking the initiative to leave before them.
"Yeah, the pill that sister Layla mentioned was used to cure her, contained a lot of fire spirit energy, so it's understandable, I'll ask for one for each of us, I can feel it… my tribulation", said Lina.
Leaving the fierce competition that Alice purposedly caused to get back at Aster for not teaming up with her, the latter kept flying until he reached a point high enough to have a great view of all the vicinity.
Aster could feel the wronged gaze of the little wyrm who wanted to come out and play, but couldn't due to the rules of the distortions, as long as she stayed inside the space within the beast space, she could still accompany Aster but was limited to only watch.
'Hisss', the obviously feigned pitiful hissing sound from Espi, made Aster chuckle to himself.
'If you are good, I will let you come out for the real mission late, so be just wait a bit', he said, to which the little wyrm cutely hissed back.
'Hisss~', the answer was something along the lines of "I'll listen to big brother Aster~", this of course wasn't something Aster decided just to bribe the little wyrm, after seeing the effects that the distortions caused in the area, including suppressing even half step heavenly realm cultivators, he concluded that it was the perfect time to let Espi go out in public.
Outsiders will be inclined to believe that she is just a new snake species of spirit beast that came out of one of the countless distortions, which is better than letting them think she is a dragon.
Aster who was amused to see the little wyrm frolicking and smiling within the beast space, whole looking for a distortion with a blur that surpassed the one from which he obtained the corpse earlier, suddenly frowned as he saw an interesting situation developing from afar.
…
A couple of kilometers away at south from Aster's current position, a group of young girls with black sword emblems on the backs of their clothes, were happily lookin