14 Fire of Premonition

Three familiar figures that followed the red-haired man as the leader suddenly found themselves in an open field. The bronze dagger earrings dangling on their ears swayed by the wind before the three of them simultaneously held their nose.

"God this place stinks!"

"Ugh! I stepped a dead demonic beast, man, it's mangled."

"G-guys, you are looking at the wrong things, look at, that!"

Their jaws dropped as they saw uncountable numbers of demonic beasts corpses lying on the ground. Hooves, a piece of head, horns, they were all mangled, including their intestines. Though they now knew where the smell came from, what shocked them the most was a towering corpse of demonic beasts. It was almost the same height as a tall tree.

"W-what the hell?"

"What's happening here?"

"Look, there is someone sitting at the top of the tower!"

With its eyes already closed, there was no sign of breathing coming out of the figure sitting on the top. As the three of them approached the figure they realized it was an old man with his hair still fluttering against the wind. His skin had dried up and his clothes were all tattered. They could easily see the wounds and the holes on his body.

"He, he is smiling?"

The old man was smiling on top of the pile of corpses, it was weird that he could still smile despite being not in this world anymore. Not to mention that he sat up straight with his back against a certain direction without falling nor budging by the strong wind at the height.

"Are you kidding me, this old man did this? All of this?"

The three of them gulped as they already too lazy to count the corpses of demonic beasts after exceeding one hundred.

More than one hundred demonic beasts versus one old man. A feat that if one told the other, people would call him crazy or hallucinating. Yet the proves were in front of them. The smell was so bad, it could make an entire village puke. However, the sight was too memorable to erase.

"What's taking you so long?"

The three of them immediately turned rigid as they recognize the voice more than their own mother.

"Sorry!"

They quickly faced the red-haired man before taking a bow. Though the feat the old man did was amazing, the man in front of them was a different kind of amazing, one slightest wrongdoing, they might die without a burial.

"Ah, I see, I don't blame you guys, here carry this kid for me."

The man threw Sein before the three of them picked caught him in panic.

"Surely it was a magnificent fight, I could see it from his body that he gave it all and much more."

Crossing his arms he continued, "I respect you! Whoever you are, fighting to your last breath and win in the end, your will has surpassed what your body could handle, amazing!"

The three of them looked at each other in awe. The man who was dubbed Mad God rarely praised someone, yet here it was. Though the old man in the subject had no way of hearing his praise, it was enough for them to look at the dead old man sitting on his corpse of a throne.

"You three, have you noticed in which direction did he smile?"

"Huh? You mean?!"

"That's right! He was not just gazing in any direction, he is gazing at the direction where the kid fled."

"That is true strength, power is nothing without purpose, and I only know two purposes that gave you such might."

The man turned around and faced the three of them who turned rigid once more. It seemed just his stare alone could petrify them.

"One, is what this old man did, the power to protect his loved ones."

"T-then, what about the other one?"

The man smirked as his red flaming hair fluttered against the wind. His gold dagger earring flashed as he looked at the fainted kid in front of him, "This kid will show you later, the power, of reckoning."

The three of them uttered the word unconsciously as he looked at the fainted kid one of them was holding.

"Burn the corpses, but control it as it wouldn't spread to the entire forest, I will make a proper burial for him."

Meanwhile, in the village.

Hama had put Sana to the villager's care since the physician had not come back from the trip to the kingdom. He was sitting in his room before taking a napkin to cleanse the sword from the blood of his former friend. "Finally it's over, with this I can pass on the title to my son without a worry in the near future."

Suddenly his face had a shade of yellow from the east before he furrowed his eyebrows. He glanced at the nearby window before approaching it. (Some kids probably playing with a firework).

As soon as he stood against the window, his pupils immediately shrunken to see a huge fire ablaze to the sky from what looked like the middle of the forest.

Elsewhere, Nia who was finally done with her self training finally came out from the building she isolated herself. Her eyes immediately fixated on the huge fire that was almost scorching the stars above.

"Whoah, to think a fire would ablaze out of nowhere."

"Can't you believe it? This happened not even a day after Old Jing's and the trash's death."

Nia who overheard a talking passerby immediately patted their shoulders.

"H-hey! Is what you're saying true?"

"O-oh miss Nia, I see you have done your daily training."

"Forget it, tell me if it's true or not."

"Oh it's true, your grandfather himself told us the news after he rescued the injured new teacher from the claw of demonic beasts in the forest."

The news sent a blazing wild of emotions in her heart. She couldn't believe that the young boy she just met within the forest a couple of hours ago was now gone. She quietly closed her eyes before the two villagers she talked to awkwardly excuse themselves. The images of his smiles, his cockiness despite his absurdly weak of cultivation resurfaced in her mind.

"Rest in peace Sein, you're a kind person, though I always hate that smile of yours, you don't deserve that kind of de-."

Suddenly the blazing fire vanished into thin air as if nothing happened. A cold wind immediately breezed through the village as the tree sung its favorite songs. The laundry hanging on the clotheslines were fluttering before the villagers could utter their surprise.

Hama instantly had cold feeling creeping up to his nape as he muttered, "I-it vanished?!"