Chapter 613: The Purge of Ashwick
Elder Alen Voss had already taken a step down the stairs when those words reached his ears. He stopped, turned back with a frown, and climbed back up again.
"What do you mean by that?"
The old man was sharp, and the hint in the fat man’s tone hadn’t escaped him.
"Uh..." The fat man’s face went blank, his mouth working but no words coming out.
"Your mouth really is foul," Emery Shaw muttered, shaking his head before throwing the fat man a glare. Then he turned toward Voss. "Don’t worry, old man. Look at this. We found it under the sofa in Kane’s room earlier."
Alen Voss accepted the item and raised it to the light. It was a small porcelain bottle. His brow creased with suspicion as he worked the stopper loose, taking his time.
"Lust Serpent core..." he whispered. He brought the bottle close, caught a whiff, and immediately recoiled, his face flushing red.
"Hah! The old man knows his stuff!" The fat man’s laughter rang out.
"Could it be that Amber, she..." Alen Voss froze, his eyes darting toward the distant room.
"Most likely," Emery said, his expression shifting into something unreadable.
At that, Alen Voss’s face darkened.
"This is terrible... something big is about to happen!" He slapped his thigh and looked ready to storm across the hall. His gaze lingered on the suite’s closed door, flickering with unease. He knew exactly what the Lust Serpent core meant.
Without detoxification, there was only one end: death.
A heavy silence stretched between them before Alen Voss let out a long sigh. "Forget it. This isn’t something I can interfere with."
Even as he spoke, his eyes slid back to the porcelain bottle in Emery’s hand. His cheeks reddened, and after an awkward pause he muttered, "Could you spare me a little of that? Just a tiny amount would do."
The room fell silent. Both Emery and the fat man stared at him in disbelief.
"You shameless old goat! How old are you?" the fat man barked, half laughing, half scolding.
Alen Voss’s face turned crimson, as red as a monkey’s backside. He drew in a deep breath and spoke with uncharacteristic candor.
"In my youth, I injured myself practicing Energy Circulation. Since then I’ve been childless, and I’ve spent my life searching for the Lust Serpent core. I had already resigned myself to dying without heirs, but now that I’ve seen it with my own eyes... I can’t help but... sigh. Shameful, truly shameful. The Voss family has always passed its legacy down through a single heir. I fear it will end with me."
Hearing this, both Emery and the fat man grew serious. The old man wasn’t lusting after forbidden medicine—he was desperate, and sick.
"For an Energy user, sixty isn’t old," Emery said at last. "As long as your body holds up, having a child is still possible. Take it all. But, old man, if you’re serious about this, you’ll need a younger wife. Tell me, do you even have a spouse?"
Before Voss could answer, the fat man snatched the porcelain bottle from Emery’s hand and shoved it at him as if it had belonged to him all along. Voss blinked, startled, while Emery rolled his eyes.
...
By the time the sun sank, the sea was dark and still, the only light coming from the brilliant glow of the Dragon’s Pride cruise ship. From a distance, it shone like a floating palace on the water.
But the city of Ashwick had been far from peaceful that afternoon. It had only just settled in the last half hour, and even now many were still rattled by what had happened.
These weren’t ordinary townsfolk. They were members of Ashwick’s hidden world: envoys of the eight great families, representatives of the capital’s supernatural offices, and disciples of the secret societies that kept watch in the city.
Only hours ago, a squad had appeared from nowhere, calling themselves the Ninth Division, M Squad, on official elimination duty. Every Dissenter they found was killed on sight.
At first, everyone believed the Originalists had finally struck, wiping the Dissenters out in one sweep. It seemed, to all eyes, that the Ninth Division had come to purge the city and settle old factional disputes once and for all.
However, news soon spread that this mysterious squad wasn’t only hunting Dissenters. They were also striking at Originalist personnel.
The revelation left everyone in turmoil. Before they could even begin to make sense of it, another shock followed: the Originalist Council of Nine had been attacked. Six were killed instantly, two were captured, and one managed to escape—though not for long.
His flight was dramatic. A Serpent Isle ninja squad swooped in to extract him, but ten minutes later the truth spread like wildfire. The so-called "escapee" wasn’t an Originalist at all. He was a Serpent Islander planted within their council.
The man’s escape techniques were formidable, but they failed him when a youth descended from the skies, flying on talismans and wielding runic arts. In a single battle, the traitor was slain, and the thirty-two Serpent Isle elites who had rushed to his aid were completely annihilated.
The entire supernatural community buzzed with awe and disdain. To flaunt Serpent Isle trickery before grandmasters was folly; their end had been deserved.
The nine council members of the Originalist faction had been revered as supreme experts, each a Transcendent-rank powerhouse. And yet this so-called M Squad of the Ninth Division had wiped them out.
At first, people scoffed at the name. By rank, "M Squad" sounded like the lowest tier—after all, squads were usually labeled from A downward. But this division’s teams were arranged differently: by the rows of a typewriter’s keys. From QWE to BNM, M marked the very end.
What made it stranger was their claim that they weren’t from Ashwick headquarters at all, but from distant Ember City.
Resistance came quickly. Ashwick’s own Ninth Division deployed its Q Squad, supposedly one of their elite forces, to intercept them. But the fight was laughably one-sided. According to eyewitnesses, only one youth in black took action. With a single lightning orb, he reduced the entire Q Squad to helpless wreckage.
It became clear this M Squad was not indiscriminate in their slaughter. They moved with surgical precision, eliminating specific targets while ignoring the rest. That alone unsettled the great families and secret societies more than if the squad had simply gone on a rampage. No one dared to act rashly. They could only wait and see.
Then came the final revelation, the one that left the entire supernatural world reeling. Ashwick hadn’t been the beginning of the purge. It was the end. Across the nation, the Dissenters had already been wiped out, their strongholds broken. Originalist personnel, too, had fallen in scattered purges. Ashwick was simply where the campaign had concluded.
The message was clear: the world was changing, and its powers were shifting.
...
Far away in the eastern seas, on Crescent Isle, lay a small hidden island. Its ancient-style buildings stood in quiet seclusion, wrapped in mist. From within, one could see the sea and sky clearly, but from outside, the island vanished as if it belonged to another realm altogether.
Inside, a woman in modern dress bowed before a young man seated at a desk. He wore the attire of another era—something medieval, austere, and foreign.
"Lord Alaric," she said firmly, "what I’ve told you is the truth."
"Amber Zane," Alaric muttered, his voice low and edged with cold amusement. "She dared to board a ship with another man, even booking a lovers’ suite with him. Hah. The Zane family has grown bold indeed, allowing such disgrace. Perhaps... the Zane family no longer deserves to exist."
The man called Alaric was strikingly handsome, his features sharply defined, his presence magnetic. But beneath that beauty lay a shadow, a gloom that clung to him like a second skin.
His hand rested lightly on a longbow laid across the desk, and a thin smile curled his lips.
"I have no ties to your Ninth Division or your Dissenter faction," he said, finally lifting his gaze to hers. "You come to me with this news. Surely it isn’t for free. What do you want?"
The woman’s smile sharpened, though her eyes were hard with hatred. "Lord Alaric is perceptive. We’re being purged by forces we cannot resist. We only ask that you grant us temporary refuge here on Crescent Isle."