Nightmare's Call

The remaining half of Khadula’s body was unceremoniously tossed on the ground.

“Is this how you treat the person who once saved you?” While Khadula struggled to pull himself to sit up, the Steel Lord held his double ax and came to his side. The double ax suddenly broke up, dispersed like flying wings before transforming into the shape of a fan. Following immediately, a vibration that sounded as if the roar of the engine was heard in the air as four columns of dark-red fire rose and surrounded Khadula.

“What are you doing?” A gut feeling told Khadula that something was wrong. But before he could figure it out, the Steel Lord had swung down his ax and slit his lower body with blood quickly oozing out of the wound.

“You...” Khadula was as furious just as he was shocked. Just before he could react further, the giant ax in the Steel Lord’s hand melted and rose up in the form of dark-red flames, from which a semi-transparent skull of a dragon emerged.

“Where is the offering?” The dragon hissed, its long red jaws growing with spikes drew close to Khadula.

“It is before you.” The Steel Lord pointed at Khadula. “But I need to bring him back to the master. His body is too massive and cumbersome to carry. So you can eat him and just leave me a leg.”

“Great.” The evil dragon opened its mouth, gnawing Khadula into pieces with its saw-like teeth. Khadula’s cry of pain could be heard from the far-flung corners of the island.

“Steel Lord, I will kill you sooner or later!” Soon, Khadula’s cry stopped, followed by the horrific sound of the crushing and crackling of the bones.

...

Three days later. In the forest behind Yinglu Private Academy, Xylond. Lin Sheng’s face was grim as he looked at the Steel Lord, who kneeled on one knee before him with a leg on his back.

“So, are you telling me that this is the Khadula you have brought back?” Lin Sheng looked at the leg and could not believe what he saw. Earlier, due to Khadula’s condition and that he had difficulty in concentrating on his meditation, he did not check with the Steel Lord through his mental connection to see what happened. This slip of the mind had caused Khadula’s an arm and a leg—actually his entire body. Now, Lin Sheng was unsure who to express his anger.

“I’m sorry,” said the Steel Lord.

By merely taking a short mental tour, it was not difficult for Lin Sheng to find out what the Steel Lord had done during the mission. After all, the Steel Lord was only an avatar, and mental exchanges with an avatar could be done in a snap of his fingers. But Lin Sheng had never intervened in the combat actions of his avatars. All he did was just injecting his command into the avatars and forget about it. This was because if he were to intervene and take control of every avatar’s actions, the combat strength of the summoned creatures would be significantly reduced. But then, even if he wanted to, he could not.

Lin Sheng had figured it out without needing the Steel Lord to tell him. The Steel Lord had a fervently destructive zeal against anything evil. His double ax and armor existed and feasted on the evils. On the other hand, as a being that had devoured a thousand souls, Khadula was an unforgivable devil in the eyes of the Steel Lord. The fact that he had not eaten Khadula entirely in the absence of Lin Sheng’s intervention spoke volumes about his self-control ability.

As the leg squirmed and dissolved, it slowly reshaped and regrew into the body of a white-haired, beautiful boy. Now, Khadula, critically wounded, kneeled on one knee before Lin Sheng. Being one of Lin Sheng’s avatars did not prevent Khadula from having a strong sense of hatred and hostility toward the Steel Lord.

“Perhaps I shouldn’t have sent these two guys on the same mission,” Lin Sheng said to himself helplessly. The two summoned creatures had returned, but the outcome was not what he had expected. The evil-abhorring Steel Lord and the bloodthirsty Khadula were very different creatures that belonged to two opposing camps. In frustration, Lin Sheng made up his mind to conduct a review of the independent actions of the two during their mission.

The body of the Steel Lord had magnified his disgust and hate toward evil to the extreme level. Although he had only a fragment of his memories left, the Steel Lord was destined to be the cleanser and destroyer of evils. On the other hand, Khadula was at the other extreme. He devoured the living, stopping at nothing at making himself stronger, which made him the recognized leading figure in the evil camp.

So Lin Sheng came to a decision and willed in his mind. Immediately, the Steel Lord nodded, rose to his feet and took a few steps back before turning around and leaving at once. The Steel Lord would replace Khadula in setting up a new branch of Ironfist Society in the outside world. Meanwhile, Khadula would be grounded and staying under Lin Sheng’s scrutiny until he fully recovered his strength. Right now, Khadula was so feeble that even a regular One Winger could easily defeat him.

Lin Sheng was silent for a while after the Steel Lord left, while Khadula transformed into plumes of black smoke and hid in the surroundings.

“The Heaven’s Spire...” Lin Sheng recalled the strong man who wielded a staff to fight the Steel Lord. “The power had been revealed. It now depends on how you make a choice.”

The latest news came that Redwin forces had clashed with troops from Xilin and Miga at the same time. It looked like the tension between Redwin and Miga arose due to the conflict of interest in Xilin. But it was also because of the undeniable fact that Redwin’s aggression was unsettling the nations surrounding Xilin. These countries had started talks of a possible military alliance to counter Redwin, and because of this, the international relations had become extremely complicated.

On the other hand, Lin Sheng did not believe that there were only six wings in Heaven’s Spire. For sure, the Six Wings were rivals to the Darksiders, which were also the Transcendents. But this did not mean that all Transcendents were Darksiders, just like the one Lin Sheng dad encountered the night before.

After staying silently in the forest for a while, Lin Sheng left and returned to his dorm.

...

The snow was falling from the sky onto the forest of spires and covering the earth in a thick blanket of white. On the staircase to the Heaven’s Spire in the middle of the white-stone spires, a group of tall figures, all draped in a cloak, was hustling up the ram to the highest point. The snow squeaked under their leather boots, leaving behind pairs of footprints in the shape of a line of gray marks, which was then quickly buried by the falling snowflakes. The leading figure was a burly man with short, white hair. He held a white metal staff, eyes grim as he occasionally raised his head, looking up into the distance.

“Teacher, I don’t want to put you in the situation for the sake of me.” A frail voice of a male came from behind the white-haired man. The male dropped his hoodie, revealing the pale face of Maham.

“Shut up! You are my student! All you need to do is to obey my instructions!” Vanyi, the white-haired man chided.