The laughing and bantering atmosphere came to a sudden halt.
Everyone shut their mouths at once.
Alberto lowered his crossed leg, Valentin froze with his wine glass halfway to his lips, and even the few guards who had been chatting instinctively lowered their voices.
Marcus quickly wiped the relaxed expression from his face and made a shushing gesture.
Taking a deep breath, he pulled the Transmission Stone from his waist. His pupils shrank slightly as he glanced at the identifier on it.
"It's... it's a communication from the sanctuary."
Someone whispered in a low voice.
"Didn't it just cut off?"
Marcus didn't answer and pressed the call button.
"Lord Laine, is there something you forgot to instruct us on?"
He did his best to keep his voice sounding steady and respectful.
The Transmission Stone fell silent for a moment before a deep male voice came through.
"Yes."
The voice was unhurried, carrying a condescending composure.
"Tell your people that Lord Edwin says there's a slight problem with the perception veil."
Marcus froze for a second.
"A problem with the perception veil?"
The male voice continued.
"It might cause errors in displaying the half-demons' tracks inside."
"If you see red dots moving on the perception compass, ignore them."
"It's expected to return to normal in two hours."
Marcus's fingers tightened slightly around the Transmission Stone, his brow furrowing.
He didn't speak, but the people around him had already heard the contents.
Valentin's brow creased even deeper. Setting down his wine glass, he stood up, walked over to Marcus, and asked in a low voice.
"The magic perception veil is maintained by the joint casting of the various scattered magic families; Lord Edwin isn't involved in it."
"How does he know there's a problem with the perception veil?"
Though his voice was kept very low, the Transmission Stone hadn't been hung up.
The other end fell silent.
Immediately after, the deep male voice sounded once more, its tone several degrees colder.
"Are you questioning Lord Edwin's judgment?"
Valentin's expression changed. His lips moved slightly, but no sound came out.
Marcus hastily tried to smooth things over, speaking with an apologetic smile.
"No, no, Lord Laine. We understand. Don't worry, we won't make any unnecessary moves."
There was no response from the other side.
Marcus waited a few breaths, and after confirming that the other side had no intention of speaking further, he carefully disconnected the Transmission Stone.
The moment the Transmission Stone went dark, he exhaled a long breath, then spun around sharply to glare at Valentin in dissatisfaction.
"Are you insane?! If the family finds out you talked back to Lord Edwin, you'll pay dearly for it!"
Valentin's expression was equally grim. He pressed his lips into a tight line, remaining silent.
At that moment, a young guard nearby couldn't help but mutter in a low voice.
"What's there to be afraid of... I heard Lord Edwin has already resigned as Master of the Concealment Tower."
The surrounding crowd fell quiet for a moment.
Seeing that no one interrupted him, the guard grew a bit bolder and continued.
"Many people say he might have already been discarded as a pawn by the Sage. Since that's the case, do we really still need to be so terrified of him?"
The expressions of several people shifted as they exchanged subtle glances with one another.
Alberto, who had been leaning back in his chair playing with his ring the entire time, suddenly let out a chuckle.
The laugh was light, but everyone heard it.
He slowly straightened up from his chair, dusted off nonexistent lint from his sleeve, and looked at the guard with a slight curve at the corner of his mouth.
"A discarded pawn?"
He repeated the phrase, his tone as if telling a joke.
"Do you know why Lord Edwin resigned from his position as Tower Master?"
No one answered.
Alberto's gaze swept over every face present, carrying a condescending pity.
"Because the Sage gave him a far better position."
He paused.
"Captain of the vacant Title Rank transport team."
"That transport team has twenty seats."
"Twenty."
He held up two fingers and wiggled them in the air.
"The authority of a transport team captain holding twenty seats is far higher than that of a newly appointed Master of the Concealment Tower, no matter how you look at it."
"Tower Master is merely an empty title; the transport team captain holds real power."
Having said his piece, he leaned back into his chair, picked up his wine glass, and took a leisurely sip.
The young guard opened his mouth, unable to squeeze out a single word, and hung his head in embarrassment.
Standing nearby, the mage responsible for monitoring the perception compass, Gladys, watched all of this unfold and couldn't help but let out a mocking laugh.
"Indeed, even if Lord Edwin had nothing left, he is still a High-tier Legendary entity."
His voice was not loud, but every word carried a thorn.
"How many High-tier Legendaries are there in the entire City of a Thousand Towers?"
He looked at Valentin, an unhidden smirk resting on his lips.
"What is your strength that you dare question Lord Edwin?"
Valentin's face turned ash-pale, his lips pressed into a tight line as he remained silent.
Gladys raised a finger to point at the perception magic pillar behind him, his tone light and flippant.
"Look, hasn't the compass already started glitching?"
Everyone's gaze was drawn over.
Valentin frowned and walked up to the perception compass.
On the giant crystal screen, the largest red cluster at the very center—representing the position of the sanctuary—was moving.
Not slowly or intermittently, but advancing straight south at an incredible speed.
That red cluster was the core area of the sanctuary, where over four thousand half-demon commoners were gathered.
At this speed, it wouldn't even take half an hour for them to charge out of the Withered Wood Wasteland's bounds.
Gladys pointed at the red cluster and said with a laugh:
"See that? At a speed like that, the perception veil has definitely glitched."
"Lord Edwin was right, there's no need to pay any mind to it."
Valentin stared at the red cluster, his brow knitting even tighter.
He didn't speak, but the doubt on his face gradually faded a bit.
Indeed, that speed couldn't possibly be real.
Let alone in the wasteland, even in the City of a Thousand Towers where there were no demons, an Epic assassin likely couldn't achieve such speed.
It was definitely a perception error.
Reassured, he turned around and walked back to his seat.
But right at that moment, another guard responsible for monitoring, Cole, pointed at a position on the compass near their camp, his voice carrying a trace of uncertainty.
"Those two red dots... are they errors as well?"
He pointed at two light dots moving at high speed, heading straight toward the camp.
"They're moving pretty fast too. It looks like they're about to collide with us."
Gladys glanced over and waved his hand dismissively.
"Of course it's an error. Lord Edwin already said it would take two hours to recover, so stop worrying blindly."
Cole stared at the compass, hesitating for a moment as his lips trembled slightly.
"B-But... those two red dots... look like... look like the two that left the sanctuary two hours ago."
His voice was not loud, yet it sounded exceptionally clear amidst the quiet crowd.
Gladys froze for a second, leaning in close to the compass to inspect it carefully.
"Left the sanctuary?"
He repeated, the flippancy in his tone lessening slightly, replaced by a thread of uncertainty.
The people around them gathered close as well, their eyes falling onto those two light dots.
The light dots drew closer and closer.
Speed undiminished, direction unchanged.
Valentin's face abruptly changed, and he shot to his feet.
"Something's wrong..."
Before his words could even finish falling, a sharp, brief scream echoed from the direction of the watchtower on the east side of the camp.
The sound cut off as soon as it began, looking as if someone had sliced through the throat in one stroke.
Everyone's eyes turned toward that direction simultaneously.
In the next second, two figures glided out silently from the darkness.
One lunged straight for the perception magic pillar in the center of the camp, while the other charged into the densest crowd of people.
Under cover of night, their speed was so fast that the human eye could barely catch it.
A greyish-white ponytail dragged an afterimage through the air.
Lia materialized from the shadows.
Her target was clear, heading straight for Gladys.
Gladys was a High-tier Transcendent mage.
The instant he spotted that greyish-white figure, his pupils shrank abruptly, and he instinctively tried to erect a magic shield.
But it was too late.
Lia's dagger had already slit across his throat.
It wasn't that the shield didn't have time to expand; rather, his brain had just issued the command, and before mana could be gathered from his magic core, the blade had already sliced open his skin.
The gap between a High-tier Transcendent and a Low-tier Legendary was just that fast.
So fast it didn't even allow time for a single spell chant.
Gladys's eyes bulged wide, his mouth agape, wanting to scream but unable to produce a sound.
Blood gushed from the cut, flowing down his neck and soaking the collar of his mage robes.
His body swayed twice before collapsing straight onto the ground like a sawed-off log.
The light of the perception magic pillar flickered violently several times before going completely dark.
At the same time, chaos erupted where the crowd was densest.
Cedric's figure darted through the crowd.
Wherever his short blade passed, blood splattered.
A High-tier Transcendent mage had just stood up from his chair, a thread of mana light barely gathering at his fingertips, when Cedric's dagger thrust into his heart.
The mage couldn't even let out a grunt before slumping down dead.
Another mage desperately erected a shield, but just as it materialized, Cedric slipped behind him, his short blade piercing through the back of the neck and penetrating the throat.
The shield remained, but the person was dead.
This was the absolute crushing dominance of a Legendary Assassin over Transcendent mages.
It was not a battle; it was a harvest.
But Alberto was different.
Alberto was a warrior, a High-tier Transcendent.
The instant he heard the scream, he drew the longsword at his waist, channeling battle force through his whole body, his muscles tensing.
When Cedric's short blade struck toward him, he barely managed to raise his sword to parry.
Blade met blade, sparking wildly.
Alberto was knocked back three steps by the impact, the web of his thumb numbed, his sword nearly slipping from his grip.
But he survived.
Cedric creased his brow slightly, and a second strike followed immediately, faster and at a trickier angle.
Alberto swung his longsword with all his strength, parrying three strikes in succession.
Every blow rattled his blood and qi, making his bones creak.
On the fourth strike, he finally failed to block.
Cedric's short blade stabbed into his shoulder—not a fatal spot, but it crippled the right arm he used to hold his sword.
Alberto shrieked, his longsword clattering to the ground.
Cedric didn't deliver a follow-up blow, because he had already turned toward his next target.
Alberto sat paralyzed on the ground, clutching his shoulder, his face pale as paper, trembling all over.
He had lived.
Not because Cedric couldn't kill him, but because a Legendary Assassin required four strikes to kill a Transcendent warrior, while killing a Transcendent mage required only one.
In the time it took for those four strikes, Cedric had already slain three mages.
Valentin was a mage.
He was somewhat stronger than Gladys, at the peak of High-tier Transcendent, and his reaction was faster.
At the exact moment Lia lunged at Gladys, Valentin had already erected a magic shield.
A pale blue light barrier enveloped him.
He breathed a sigh of relief and turned to run deeper into the camp.
But Lia's figure appeared from the side of the shield, her dagger slipping through a gap at the shield's edge.
It wasn't an actual gap, but a fluctuating fluctuation interval lasting less than a tenth of a breath as the shield rotated.
A Legendary Assassin could see it, and could seize it.
The blade precisely plunged into Valentin's lower back, passing between his ribs to pierce his kidney.
Valentin grunted softly and collapsed to his knees, his shield shattering instantaneously.
Clutching his wound, blood gushed between his fingers, his face filled with utter disbelief.
His shield had clearly been up.
But raising it was useless.
Lia didn't spare him a second glance; her figure flickered and vanished into the darkness once more.
Screams, cries for help, and the clashing of metal erupted incessantly throughout the camp.
The Transcendent mages were practically powerless to fight back, falling one after another into pools of blood.
Occasionally, a few warriors managed to raise their weapons to block a blow, but only just once.
Twice, three times, four times at most.
And then they fell.
In less than three minutes, the perception magic pillar in the center of the camp collapsed, and the perception compass crashed onto the ground, shattering into countless tiny fragments.
Over by the temporary cages, the sound of dragging chains came to a halt.
The half-demon warriors curled up in the corners raised their heads, their blood-red eyes gazing through the gaps of the wooden fence at the slaughter outside.
The corners of their mouths slowly curled upward, revealing ferocious and satisfying grins.
Meanwhile, on the other side.
At the Ross family gathering site.
A thick scent of blood filled the air.
The corpses of the young Ross family mages lay scattered haphazardly across the ground.
O'Brien was pinned to the ground, his knees kneeling in rubble and mud, his face covered in blood.
His eyes bulged round, his voice raspy, carrying extreme bewilderment and rage.
"Why... why are you attacking our Ross family?!"
He looked up, glaring intently at the young man standing before him.
The young man wore deep-colored mage robes, his expression cold and stern, holding a short blade in his hand whose tip was still dripping blood.
"We really don't know anything!"
O'Brien's voice trembled.
"Someone from the Wall of Sighs... we've never even heard of that name!"
"You have the wrong person... you have the wrong person!"
His voice grew louder and louder, until he was practically bellowing at the end.
The young man didn't answer.
He merely tilted his head slightly, as if judging whether an object was worth wasting more words on.
Then, he moved.
The short blade sliced across O'Brien's throat, clean and decisive, without a single shred of hesitation.
O'Brien's eyes widened sharply; his mouth opened and closed a few times, letting out several muffled gasps.
His body swayed before collapsing heavily to the ground, blood gushing from the cut in his throat and soaking into the soil beneath him.
Arthur withdrew his short blade, wiped the bloodstains on his sleeve, and turned around expressionlessly.
Behind him, the Ross family gathering site had been reduced to complete dead silence.
Meanwhile, elsewhere.
Edwin stood in front of the perception compass, his brow deeply furrowed.
His gaze landed on the giant crystal screen.
The location that should have been showing the core area of the sanctuary was now completely blank.
The massive red cluster formed by over four thousand half-demons had disappeared.
Not slowly moving somewhere else, but disappearing entirely.
As if it had never existed at all.
Edwin's fingers tapped lightly twice against the edge of the compass.
He drew out a Transmission Stone from his breast pocket and pressed the call button.
"This is Edwin. Report status."
The Transmission Stone fell quiet for a moment.
Then static rustled.
No reply.
He pressed it once more.
Still only static.
A third time.
Nothing at all.
The corner of Edwin's mouth twitched slightly.
His fingers slowly tightened, his knuckles turning pale.
The Transmission Stone emitted a sharp snap in his palm, crumbling into fine powder that trickled down between his fingers.
"A decoy tactic."
His voice was soft, but every word sounded as though squeezed from between his teeth.
Behind him, a black shadow materialized silently.
Cass stepped out from the shadows, dropping to one knee with his head bowed.
"Lord Edwin, we searched a radius of ten li around the area."
His voice was very low.
"We didn't spot a single person."
The corners of Edwin's mouth curled up slightly into a smile as cold as ice.
"Avalon of the Wall of Sighs..."
He slowly turned around, gazing up at the collapsed corner of the perception veil in the sky.
"The cowardly turtle actually crawled out."
Cass raised his head.
"Lord Edwin, what should we do?"
Edwin's gaze returned to the ground, his voice regaining its condescending composure.
"Notify all Legendary mages stationed in the city-states around the Withered Wood Wasteland."
"Begin surrounding the hunting ground."
Cass's brow creased slightly. Hesitating for a moment, he spoke up anyway.
"Lord Edwin... what if the interloper really detonate the Sovereign of the Wasteland..."
He didn't finish his sentence, but the meaning was crystal clear.
A twenty-kilometer death zone devoid of life.
Edwin sneered cold.
"Then let them detonate it."
His voice was as flat as if discussing something completely trivial.
"Since they want to die together, we'll oblige them."
Having spoken, he looked up, turning his eyes back to the sky.
On that giant perception veil, the collapsed gap was still slowly expanding, resembling an unhealable wound.
Edwin's eyes gradually chilled, killing intent surging from him like a tidal wave.
"However, before that..."
His voice sank low, every word sounding like a poisoned blade.
"We must properly teach a lesson to these lowly creatures who treat my mercy as a joke."
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