“You dare to laugh in my presence!” Five stomped his staff again, and this time, the earth beneath their feet shook violently. Elijah slowly shifted from his cautious stance and placed his hands calmly behind his back. “Isn’t it necessary to laugh at practitioners who never understand the difference between the physical and spiritual aspects of martial arts? Those who are blind to the distinction between the mystic arts and the arts of witchcraft.” He shook his head slightly. “This world of martial arts is quite confusing, so I never take offense at the confusion.” “You dare to deny your witchcraft as a mystic elder!” Five pointed his staff directly at Elijah. “Do you think you can deceive me today? Those who manipulate the arts of old to their own will are not allowed in our world of martial arts. They must be cleansed.” He stomped the staff once more. “Yet the Seven Calamities wield the mystic arts.” Elijah sniffed the air calmly. “Do I smell hypocrisy...?” Five’s face twisted, a

Elijah coughed out a mouthful of blood and wiped his mouth with his sleeve.“So this is the strength of the Seven Calamities.” He bent his head slightly to the side, and a crackling noise came from his neck. “You are truly worthy of your name in the East.”Five’s face twitched instead of taking any glory in this. “I struck your core. I was certain of it. Precise to the point. How are you still standing? Is this witchcraft?”Striking and destroying a practitioner’s core was a technique that left nothing behind. A dry well with no water to draw from. He had hit that point with complete accuracy. There was no way this man should be on his feet.“Oh, you did.” Elijah raised a brow. “Who said my core is here?” He touched his chest. “You broke my liver and a few ribs, and that hurts really badly.” He spat out more blood.“You shifted your core?! What witchcraft!” Five stomped the staff into the ground in madness.Elijah slid the needle

His internal energy shifted. Not resisting, but opening. It found the current as it moved through him and guided it into his meridian pathways, letting it run through the channels of his cultivation body. His body shook with the force of it, but the shaking steadied, slowed, and became controlled. The current that had been tearing through him began to flow instead.Five watched from outside the cage and this made his eyes narrowed.The man inside was not screaming or convulsing. He was standing with his eyes closed and his hands slightly raised. The current cycling through him was no longer tearing, but flowing.Five’s expression turned dark. There would not be a better opening than this.He came forward at full speed.Swoosh!He hit the wall of the cage and drove straight through it, the lightning parting for him as its master. He closed the remaining distance in the same pace, staff raised high above his head with both hands.Now. Pop the skull like a watermelon and be done with it

A few minutes earlier, inside the great hall of the Stonewell Mansion, a number of people were seated at the vast round oak table that stretched so wide it nearly covered the whole room.On the left side sat the leading members of the Stonewell family, the elders, the heir, and Lila among them. On the right sat the leading members of the Blackwood family, including their heir, Tyler. At the head of the table sat Jared, patriarch of the Stonewells. At the far end, opposite him, sat Theo, patriarch of the Blackwoods.They had just finished their glasses of wine after the toast.A low murmur moved between the family members until Jared clinked a spoon against his glass. Silence settled over the table.He rose to his feet and looked straight down the length of it toward Theo. “Do you know why your great family has been invited to this celebration today, and not the others?”Tyler jumped in quickly before his grandfather could answer. “We have

It took a full minute for the Blackwoods and Stonewells to gather themselves. When they did, it was only to stagger to their feet in fright.Tyler Blackwood was the first to move. He stumbled over the edge of the large oak table, scrambling toward the door, and a glinting silver needle flashed past his eyes in the dark. It buried itself into the wall directly ahead of him.He froze where he stood. His knees nearly gave out completely.Ever since what Elijah had done to him before, he had carried a phobia of needles so severe that the patriarch of his own family had ordered them kept entirely out of his sight. At this point, he could be likened to a male version of Sleeping Beauty. Except his curse had never lifted, not until the exact time Elijah Langston had declared.Now, having just watched the same man reduce the patriarch of the great Stonewell family to barking like a dog, how could he not try to run?Tyler staggered backward a