Chapter 44: Horror.

"Hey teacher," the still little, but not as emaciated boy asked, "is that a village?

I looked in the direction in which the boy was pointing, and there was indeed a village over there, but I had been sensing that for a while, along with a very creepy realization.

It was completely silent.

I pondered the situation. This area was relatively beast-free; that was probably the reason someone managed to create a village here, so it was relatively safe. Yes, it is. Wait over here. I'll take a look and be back in a minute, alright?

"Teacher, wait," the girl asked for my attention, "that village has a bad feeling."

At that, I raised an eyebrow and asked, "What kind of feeling?

Zhu seemed to hesitate on how to continue, internally debating something: I don't know, it's dark and ugly.

I was confused, but I figured that one could never be too careful in a magical world, so I disappeared after leaving a few words: "Alright, I'll be careful."

After seeing their master disappear, Xue waited a few seconds before finally whispering to his sister, "Don't you think it may be time you told him?

Maybe, the girl said, clearly hesitant in her reply. "I still want to wait until we are safe in a city."

"You still think this might be a trap? The boy asked with an arched eyebrow, not seeming to understand his sister's preoccupations.

No, the girl replied, her tone sure, "there would be no point to it; if it was a trap, he would have acted on it already, and someone that strong wouldn't need one in the first place; I just want to be cautious.

"You're probably right," the boy said, before the two fell into a comfortable silence, before he broke it himself. "I still think that those runes are a bigger deal than your ability."

"What!?" She semi-yelled in outrage, seemingly forgetting to keep her bearings for a moment. "There is no way; we wouldn't have survived so long without my ability! Remember that time that thug wanted to use us as errand rats for his drugs? Or when that old man wanted to bring us to his house to give us candy? He seemed nice, but I knew that he was evil.

"To be fair," the boy replied nonchalantly, while showing his sister his now-toned and healthy arms. "We wouldn't have had to worry about either of them if we had Teacher's Absorption Runes, just a punch and pshaw! Shoot them through the air like the teacher did that ugly thing the other day.

The girl narrowed her eyes at him, but she knew that he was right; most of the time she was completely unbelieving of the monstrous speed they were progressing at, and she knew that it wasn't because of their own talent but solely because of their teacher and nothing else.

She was almost at the fourth stage of the Elementary Profound realm in a couple of months; in a year, they would probably reach the next realm, at fourteen years old.

She didn't know much, but she at least knew that was the benchmark of the best geniuses of the big sects, and their teachers made them like that with almost no effort on their part.

"Okay, you might be right, but my ability is still useful! She half shouted back, unwilling to let her secret ace be diminished to a merely somewhat useful ability.

"Okay, okay, it might still be useful," he trailed off before his mind came back to something else. Hey, do you think that the thing died?

"Which thing?"

"The one that felt more dangerous than the teacher was that he swung away in the sky after freezing it in the air. The boy specified

Oh, that thing," the girl muttered with realization. "No, I asked him, and the teacher said that there was no way that it died."

"Really? He threw it really high up in the sky, though. I commented back to the boy.

"I thought so too, but then he showed me how a leaf and a steel cube fall at different speeds, obviously, and said that nothing at that cultivation can possibly die from a fall, no matter how high. She shrugged; she had long since decided that when the man said something, he was probably right.

Her brother chuckled in reply, "I told you he knows everything.

"He doesn't; he said so. She fought back, fighting for them to trust their teacher's words over her brother's very unlikely conjecture.

Just because the man had never failed to answer one of their questions, it didn't mean that he knew everything; it just meant that they were too stupid to ask the right questions.

That realization irritated her, but she couldn't do much about it.

"He also said to doubt everything, even his own words, when he doesn't have any proof; think about it," the boy replied with a conspiratorial tone. "If you were an all-knowing being, would you tell everyone that you are?

No, she replied tentatively.

He continued, explaining his conspiracy: "Exactly, not even two disciples that you've known for a couple of months; he's probably incredibly old anyway; what are two months to him?

"When you put it that way...

"And have you ever seen him not understand something? Even his supposed master, who keeps appearing and disappearing, doesn't seem to know as many things as he does." He replied in a hushed voice, hoping that the incredibly scary and powerful girl wouldn't hear their blasphemy.

"I can't really say why, but I have the feeling that you're very wrong. She replied after a bit of thought.

He raised a finger and asked, "But do you have proof that I'm wrong?

"No, but you don't have proof that you're right either; it's your word against the teacher's, and I trust him more. She replied.

"What?!"

Meanwhile, their supposedly all-knowing teacher was walking through the streets of the city while on the verge of vomiting.

Bodies—so many bodies laid on the streets, their internal organs on the ground, ripped from them while alive—were often the only wounds on the entire body.

Everyone—men, women, and children—had been massacred in the most disgusting and gory spectacle that the doctor had ever seen in his life.

"What the fuck? was the only thing that I managed to say without giving free passage for the acid in his stomach to leave.

By his side, his master appeared, unperturbed. "It looks like a bandit raid—pretty common stuff.

I looked at her horrified, my eyes wide, before settling in a more defeated silence.

I closed my eyes.

But I knew that I couldn't just ignore the horror that I had seen.

I opened my eyes.

And I got to work.

I started gathering the bodies inside my green realm, putting the organs back inside those that needed them, and trying to figure out which limb to use with which body for those that I had to.

It was a long and incredibly awful process.

Hundreds of people.

When I got into one of the houses, I couldn't handle it anymore and let my stomach empty itself, for in the house there was a scene that I couldn't even describe as monstrous. I just disappeared everything and moved to the next house.

By the time I was done, I was numb to everything I had to be and had collapsed on the wall of a random house, covering my face with my hands.

"Are you alright? I heard Jasmine's voice but didn't move from my position.

"No." I replied, my voice rough, "Go and take the kids in; they need to rest on a real bed for a few days.

"Are you sure? She asked with an arched eyebrow. After everything that I'd seen, she probably thought that I wanted to get as far away as possible from this place as I could.

"I need to give those people a final rest; it will probably take days to take care of all of them. Do you know what people do with their dead in this world? I asked.

She thought for a second and replied, "Normally either cremated or buried, but they held the phoenix bloodline, so I think that cremation would be more suited.

"Bloodline?" I asked, unaware of what that exactly meant.

"They had the bloodline of the ancient Phoenix, one of the most powerful gods of ancient times. I don't know why a clan like that lived in this place, but it's not important anymore.

"Yeah, I guess you're right. I figured that it might be something important to research—how humans could hold the bloodline of gods.

But I just really wanted to rest right now.

"Could you go take the kids now? Settle them in one of the houses that didn't have bodies in them. I weakly gave my directions before taking out one of the cold bags of food that I kept in my green realm. "And give them this; for the day, I'm in no condition to take care of them right now; tell them to study or something.

She took the bag but didn't move for a few seconds. She just looked at me, then sighed, "If you wish to thrive in this world, then you better get used to bloodshed."

I gritted my teeth, knowing that she was likely right.

Even before I had only seen the posh society, even their nobles, those that should hold themselves to a higher standard than the masses, were people who loved seeing children almost kill each other on a ring.

What could I expect from their criminals?

Not that I ever held any belief that the rich would somehow be better than the poor, but they would probably clean up after causing a genocide like this, just to save their image, if they worried about such a thing in the first place.

I had the striking suspicion that public opinion didn't hold much sway here, in a world where the weak didn't have any strength and where their numbers didn't matter in the face of a single guy who could fly and cause a cataclysm on his own.

It probably would have been the same in my old world, had we had superpowers. Of that, I was sure.

So I stood up, finally over my autocommitment, and was ready to go for a second round, hoping to find at least a single hidden room or something where there were at least some survivors.

I went on for hours, searching every single corner over and over again.

I searched the biggest house, the one that was likely reserved for their leader, where I found a lot of things, mainly diaries that I would have to check later, to get an idea of what happened in this place.

From what I gathered, they didn't try fighting; there were no signs of that, so they tried fleeing, but not away from the village.

The density of the corpses got higher the closer we got to a specific location, and I couldn't believe that was a statistic that I had to keep track of, but apparently it was, and it was horrifying.

I found a place with a high concentration of profound energy—energy with intent—so this definitely wasn't natural.

It might have been what the invaders had come for, or it might have been for something else entirely, but from my point of view, there was only one thing that mattered over this whole situation.

No survivors.