"Ancestor, you can't let him go so easily! He's the mastermind behind the previous attack on our Farell family, and the one who caused Grandpa Damian's demise!"
At this moment, the young wizard who had been lying on the ground immediately shouted.
"Oh?!" Leilin's brow furrowed slightly. A flash of black flame appeared, and he had already teleported directly to the young man's side.
"That wound on your chest — it was given to you by the Soul Slayer Sect, wasn't it?"
With just a brief glance, he knew everything about the other party's condition.
"Yes! I was hit with the Soul Slayer Sect's Soul Plague, and the venom of a Miasma Spider!" The young man's face was somewhat ashen, yet flushed with excitement.
"Nothing more than a minor issue!" Leilin moved his finger, and the bandages on the other's chest unraveled on their own, revealing twisted muscle and gruesome wounds.
"Bear with it for a moment!" Leilin casually opened a tube of crimson potion, letting drops of the liquid fall continuously into the other's wound.
"Ahhh..." Wisps of white smoke rose, causing the young man to cry out in pain.
Immediately after, black currents were driven out from the wound, and tiny threads of flesh grew frantically — the wound was actually healing at remarkable speed.
"Huh?!" Not far away, Darlenlei couldn't help but exclaim in surprise: "This speed is even faster than a Third-level Healing Master! Could it be a legendary ancient healing potion?!"
"Hmm? Still not behaving!"
Leilin had no interest in explaining Darlenlei's question. Instead, Ivick on the other side was making a move again.
Boom!
Countless Holy Church javelins wreathed in white-gold flames materialized around him. Like ten thousand arrows loosed at once, they rained down toward Leilin.
Ivick himself spread his enormous wings and shot straight up into the sky.
"Stay put! Did you not understand me?"
Leilin's expression darkened. A pressure dozens of times more terrifying than what Ivick had unleashed earlier descended. Invisible ripples spread outward, causing the javelins to detonate mid-air, dissolving into points of light.
High in the sky, Ivick saw Leilin's display and let out a strange cry. Spreading his wings, he attempted to flee into the distance.
"Come down!" Leilin's right hand made a pulling motion, and within a beam of white light, Ivick screamed miserably as his entire body crashed to the ground.
Crack! Crack! The two wings on his back were forcibly ripped off by an invisible force, trailing skin, flesh, and blood. Two long, strip-shaped wounds appeared across his back, blood gushing like a spring.
Meanwhile, the pillar of light that had been sealing this area also let out sounds of strain, exploding segment by segment.
"..." The young man, whose chest wound had already healed and who was now standing, watched this scene blankly. It wasn't that he wasn't shocked — it was that everything that had happened today had far exceeded what he could process. He had already gone numb.
First, during his escape, he had constantly heard voices in his mind urging him on, causing him to involuntarily alter his previous escape plan and head straight toward Tristjones City.
Then, he was caught up by the Soul Slayer cultists here. Before they could even act, an even more terrifying Third-level
But it wasn't over. Just when he thought everything was finished, something even more inexplicable happened. The Farell family's ancestor — the genius wizard Leilin, who had vanished for several hundred years — actually reappeared, and upon arrival defeated Ivick with absolute superiority!
The young man stared rigidly at Ivick, who lay on the side like a dead dog. He strongly suspected that this was merely a clone, or perhaps just an outright fraud.
When had the pinnacle wizards of the South Coast, Third-level Wizards, become this weak?
"Perhaps... it's not that the other party is too weak, but that the Ancestor is simply too powerful?"
The young man gazed at Leilin's masked face, reverence filling his eyes. When Ivick had unleashed his full aura earlier, he had been present as well. Having personally felt the other's might, he knew that beneath a Domain, one could only be slaughtered like an ant.
But Leilin had defeated him with a mere wave of his hand. Just how vast was the gap?
"Your injuries are healed now. Also — your name?"
Leilin addressed this descendant, a rare trace of warmth and familiarity on his face.
"I... I am called Krupp! A descendant of Audi..." Krupp knew Leilin certainly wouldn't be interested in his full genealogy, so he jumped straight to Leilin's generation.
"Audi? Was that after I left?" Leilin stroked his chin.
"Yes! He was your younger brother, born two years after you departed..." Krupp cautiously watched Leilin's expression, then pointed at Ivick: "Ancestor! He once sent people to attack our Farell family, nearly uprooting us from the Keli Archipelago entirely. Only a handful of blood descendants escaped under Grandpa Damian's protection. You must avenge us!"
At this, Krupp clenched his fists, tears glistening in his eyes.
"Rest easy." Leilin nodded. Upon hearing that the Farell family had been nearly annihilated, he surprisingly felt little anger — as though he were listening to someone else's story. He himself was somewhat startled by this state.
Then Leilin immediately realized the reason. After all, he was an extraplanetary intelligence that had transmigrated, not the original Leilin Farell.
Moreover, since he possessed the Chip and was a master of the soul, all those melodramatic scenarios — fragmented soul pieces mixing together, retaining the original body's emotions — simply didn't apply.
The original Leilin's soul had long since been annihilated, leaving absolutely no trace, and could exert no influence whatsoever on this Leilin.
Therefore, upon hearing that the Farell family had nearly been destroyed, Leilin merely gave a slight nod of acknowledgment.
However, regardless of emotional fluctuations, as the one who had inherited this body and bloodline, Leilin felt there were certain things he simply had to do.
Thus, Krupp and Darlenlei both felt the surrounding temperature plummet in an instant.
Whoosh!
From Ivick's body, which lay like a dead dog, continuous faint sounds of explosions could be heard. The man seemed to have been seized by an invisible force around the throat, suspended before Leilin.
"I said..."
Leilin blinked lightly. Ivick's face first flushed red, his throat choking and gurgling, then his body convulsed. The color drained rapidly from his face, replaced by an ashen gray.
In that brief instant, Leilin had destroyed Ivick's original Spiritual Power, reducing him to nothing more than a slightly sturdier ordinary person.
"You've got quite the nerve — daring to defy the South Coast's unwritten rules to take revenge on my family!"
Leilin's palm made a grasping motion, and crackling sounds continued to emanate from Ivick's body. His bones shattered inch by inch on their own, yet Ivick remained eerily conscious, forced to face the agony alone. Soon, blood and fragments of teeth spilled from his mouth.
"For something like this, I believe it's very necessary to set a precedent — a warning for the wizards who come after!"
A thin thread of crimson was extracted from Ivick's body, floating before Leilin.
"Let me see!" A faint scarlet glow appeared in Leilin's eyes. Several semi-transparent windows opened before him, each containing vague silhouettes.
"Ughhh..." Upon seeing these silhouettes, Ivick immediately became agitated, his body trembling ceaselessly. His gaze toward Leilin turned to one of desperate pleading.
But Leilin paid this no mind at all: "Hmm. You don't have direct bloodline descendants, but there are quite a few from collateral branches — siblings of yours, are they?"
Ivick gave no reply, for his tongue had long since been crushed. Had Leilin not deliberately kept him alive, he would have died long ago.
But for Ivick, he would have preferred an early death over facing what was to come next.
"You see, I'm the kind of person who rarely uses curse-type spells. It's not that I'm unfamiliar with them — I just find them very troublesome. Not only is the preparation tedious, but more importantly, there's backlash!"
Leilin spoke as though chatting with an ordinary friend. "But here, it's different. First-level and Second-level wizards, even mortals — even if there's backlash, it means nothing to me."
As he spoke, Leilin withdrew a large quantity of materials from his spatial pouch and inscribed them on the ground into a bizarre runic altar.
"By bloodline as the thread, tracing all its branches..."
Leilin chanted the terrifying curse in an ancient cadence.
"Your blood shall become the root of the curse!" After several ritual steps, under Ivick's despairing gaze, Leilin used a wolf-head dagger to directly collect a portion of his blood and cast it onto the altar.
"Auughhh..." Numerous piercing, terrifying screams emanated from the altar. A twisted face faintly appeared — two hollow eyes, howling as it lunged into midair.
"Go!" Leilin snapped his fingers.
Hummm... Invisible ripples spread outward. Then, in a round mirror before Leilin, a male wizard with golden hair suddenly changed expression. Green fleshy tumors erupted across his body, then burst open, spilling copious amounts of corrosive fluid as he howled and was reduced to a pile of white bones.
In another scene, black smoke filled every corner of a castle. Occasionally, severed limbs were hurled out from the dark mist.
"Ughhh..." Ivick lowered his head, but now his eyes held nothing but ashen gray and boundless hatred.
"Did you think that was the end?" Seeing his reaction, Leilin couldn't help but laugh.
"Soul Extraction!"
A semi-transparent specter was drawn from Ivick's forehead by Leilin.