Chapter 788 The Great Rescue
Kael remained concealed within the void, his anxiety mounting with every passing second.
Leave. Just leave already!
If Valerius lingered much longer, the puppet would reach the central teleportation array and discover the four dead guards.
The entire Sunlance Academy would immediately go into lockdown.
If that happened, Kael might not be able to escape.
“I know many of you are unhappy with me,” Valerius said, “but that doesn’t matter. I will continue killing humans until Rhazorn has been avenged.”
With that final remark, he vanished.
Kael released a long breath.
He cautiously extended his Spiritual Sense and confirmed that Valerius had returned to the depths of Sunlance Academy.
Only then did Kael reveal himself.
“You are—?”
The thousand-plus Heavenly Dragon cultivators barely had time to react before gray light swept over them.
A moment later, every one of them vanished.
Kael had dragged them into his Inner Cosmos and sealed their cultivation.
He had succeeded so easily only because his cultivation surpassed theirs by an overwhelming margin and he had caught them completely off guard.
Had they sensed him in advance and actively resisted, dragging so many cultivators into his Inner Cosmos would have required considerably more effort.
“Kael! What are you planning?”
The Heavenly Dragon elder threw back his head and roared.
Kael laughed without humor and ignored him.
He immediately flew toward the center of the servant quarters.
Panic had already spread among the human population.
They wanted to flee, but the Soul-Locking Collars around their necks made escape impossible. The moment they left the region covered by Sunlance Academy’s spiritual energy, the collars would destroy both their bodies and souls.
They had no choice but to remain where they were and wait to die.
All they could do was pray that their names would not be among the next three thousand selected for execution.
Then a voice sounded in the ears of every human servant.
“Gather at Servant Compound Five. Move quickly. You have fifteen minutes.”
It was Kael.
The humans had already fallen into complete despair.
The instant they heard his voice, they rushed toward Servant Compound Five without hesitation.
Those with higher cultivation voluntarily carried the weaker cultivators along with them.
After living at Sunlance Academy for so many years, they had seen enough of the wider cultivation world to understand what Kael was most likely planning.
He intended to take them into his Inner Cosmos and escape with them.
Fifteen minutes passed quickly.
By then, Servant Compound Five was packed far beyond capacity.
Humans stood shoulder to shoulder, pressed together so tightly that there was barely room to move. Some had even climbed onto tree branches simply to find somewhere to stand.
“Suppress your auras. I’m going to bring all of you into my Inner Cosmos.”
Kael transmitted the message directly through Spiritual Sense, ensuring that only the humans could hear him.
At that moment, he sensed three figures materialize behind him.
They were the Head Elder, Second Elder, and Third Elder of Sunlance Academy’s External Affairs Hall.
“Who ordered all of you to gather here?” the Head Elder demanded. “Do none of you have work today?”
His hostile gaze swept across the crowd—
Then stopped.
He had spotted a familiar figure among them.
“Head Elder. It’s been a long time.”
Kael smiled at him.
“Run—”
The Head Elder never finished the word.
Gray light flashed.
He and the other two elders vanished simultaneously, dragged into Kael’s Inner Cosmos before their cultivation was sealed.
Kael stopped holding back.
Layer after layer of gray light spread outward until it enveloped every human gathered throughout Servant Compound Five.
They numbered in the trillions.
Under ordinary circumstances, drawing so many living beings into an Inner Cosmos would have been unimaginable.
But Kael’s Inner Cosmos had already expanded to a staggering scale.
Housing this many people would place a considerable strain on him, but he could just barely manage it.
Beneath the enveloping gray light, entire sections of the human population began disappearing one after another.
The instant they entered Kael’s Inner Cosmos, the Soul-Locking Collars around their necks cracked apart on their own.
Kael did not seal the humans’ cultivation.
Strictly speaking, he probably should have.
If trillions of cultivators began fighting inside his Inner Cosmos, leveling mountains and overturning seas with their techniques, the resulting damage could kill Kael along with them.
Even so, he chose to let them move freely.
And if they happened to vent some of their anger on the Heavenly Dragon cultivators and the three External Affairs Hall elders whose cultivation he had sealed...
Kael had no intention of stopping them.
“Isn’t that the Head Elder of the External Affairs Hall?”
“It is. Senior Lin seems to have sealed his cultivation.”
“What?”
“Hahahaha!”
An enormous crowd of humans immediately converged on the three elders, their earlier despair replaced by fierce excitement.
“Stand back!”
The Head Elder’s voice shook with rage.
“I am a member of the Golden Dragon Race! If any of you dare harm me, the Golden Dragon Race will kill Kael first, then torture every last one of you to death!”
A moment later, the crowd swallowed all three elders.
Heavy impacts and explosive booms erupted from within.
Although Kael had sealed their cultivation, the three old men still possessed the extraordinarily resilient bodies of Stellar Realm cultivators.
Their vitality was immense.
That meant they could withstand a tremendous amount of punishment without dying.
“Ahhh!”
“That hurts!”
“Kael! Let me out! I know a secret!”
The Third Elder finally broke under the assault and screamed toward the sky.
“What secret?”
Kael’s voice rolled across the Inner Cosmos.
Outside, Kael was already racing through space at tremendous speed, putting as much distance as possible between himself and Sunlance Academy.
Once he escaped the region covered by the academy’s spiritual energy, even the Dean himself would have difficulty trapping him.
“I know which planets Valerius’s descendants live on!” the Third Elder shouted. “He’s the real mastermind behind all of this. He ordered us to kill three thousand humans every day to retaliate against you!”
“Oh?”
With a thought, Kael pulled the Third Elder out of his Inner Cosmos.
The man appeared beside him in the cold darkness of space.
He released a long, unsteady breath and gingerly touched his nose and eyes.
Both had clearly suffered during the beating.
“You know where Valerius’s descendants live?”
Kael handed him an Astral Compass.
“Then enter every coordinate into this. And remember—if you try to deceive me, you’ll regret it.”
“Yes!”
The Third Elder immediately obeyed.
Kael had released the seal on his cultivation, but the beating he had just endured had already knocked him from the Stellar Realm all the way down to the Planetary Realm.
He no longer had any possibility of escaping from Kael.
Some time later, he finished entering every coordinate.
Kael examined the list.
There were more than seven hundred.
“Valerius has certainly been busy. More than seven hundred branches of descendants?”
He compared the coordinates with the pale-gold planets marked on his Galaxy Map.
Every one of them matched.
The Third Elder had not lied.
“Kael,” the elder said carefully, “the Heavenly Dragon Race and Valerius are no longer on particularly good terms. He forced Rhazorn into what was practically a suicide mission, then refused to avenge him personally. Strictly speaking, the grudge between you and us isn’t that serious anymore.”
He spoke with such earnestness that one might almost have believed him.
Kael regarded him with open amusement.
“So the grudge ends simply because you say it does?”
The Third Elder went rigid.
“You... don’t intend to let me go?”
“Of course not.”
Kael laughed without humor.
“Have you forgotten the Sunlance Tournament? Have you forgotten how the four of you targeted humanity?”
“We were only acting in our own interests. Those orders came from above. You can’t place all the blame on me.”
The Third Elder hurried to defend himself.
“In fact, I’ve always had some compassion for humans. Years ago, I often took unmarried human girls into my household as concubines. That spared them from being used as blood food, so really, I—”
Kael threw him back into the Inner Cosmos before he could finish.
A moment later, the Third Elder’s screams joined those of the Head Elder and Second Elder.
The three voices rose and fell in turn.
After listening for a few seconds, Kael realized that their alternating cries had developed an almost percussive rhythm.