Chapter 372: Nightrose City
Ashlock watched as Diana helped lug Stella onto the bench under his canopy and set her down while bundled in a cloak. She seemed utterly exhausted, both mentally and physically. Supplying the void shield with Qi had drained a significant amount of her reserves, and by how ferocious Stella had been while stabbing Vincent, he assumed the murder had let her vent a lot of pent-up frustrations.
They had made sure to burn her maid outfit to a crisp to avoid any risk of tracking from the Nightrose family, as it had been soaked with blood,
"Tree, are you sure Vincent is dead?" Stella muttered. The warm glow from the fire-affinity trees lining Red Vine Peak illuminated her concerned expression, which was partially buried in the oversized hood of her cult cloak. The sun had long set, and Ashlock was starting to feel the call of sleep himself.
"Yes. You destroyed Vincent Nightrose's body. A spiritual heart that appeared to be his infant soul floated up from the coffin, but you were too preoccupied, so I destroyed it myself with spatial blades. It's why the Nightrose guardians charged into the room—I had to overwhelm the defensive formations before I could attack the room with my Qi."
"It just felt so... easy." Stella didn't sound so sure, and Ashlock couldn't blame her. For a near Monarch Realm cultivator that had ruled the lands for centuries, it felt like a more straightforward victory than many of their other hard-fought battles. Like the Lunarshade Grand Elder, for example.
"You think it was easy?" Ashlock chuckled, "Vincent is an almost Monarch Realm cultivator in a room surrounded by five layers of defensive formations and guarded by three half-step Nascent Soul Realm cultivators. You could only get so close to him because Valandor broke his mind control by being given World Tree sap and switched sides. Furthermore, you had an artifact crafted from the blood of a divine being that totally masked your cultivation level. That isn't even including the void fruit that shouldn't exist within heaven's carefully woven reality, my cursed blood, and your high cultivation level for your age. Vincent may be a cautious man who has lived for a long time, but there is a limit. He never cared much for the sect's destruction around him because he believed himself to be the strongest."
Stella bit her lip, "When you put it like that, I guess you just made it seem easy with all the nonsense you can accomplish."
Ashlock had to admit he had expected a little more of a fight. It had felt a little too easy, even with all the bullshit he was capable of that surpassed the known possibilities to those on the 9th layer of creation. But he had seen Vincent's body collapse and dissolve into the coffin of blood that Stella had gathered and safely stored away in a ring, and he had killed what appeared to be Vincent's infant soul.
"I can track people through my cursed sap, and while it has leaked throughout the castle, I can't detect anyone having absorbed it." Ashlock added, "Though I also can't detect the cursed blood inside your spatial ring, so it's not foolproof."