Paying Back.

Xiao Zie looked lost. 'What kind of answer was that?' But Kayson didn't let her question him further.

"Princess Zhang Wei Feng is it not the time you, pay me back? So we can be on our way."

"Ah, all right. Can you give us a few moments to discuss this?"

Kayson gave them time to discuss his demands with them and continued studying the Book of Destruction.

'What a jock! Complete garbage.' He thought in disappointment. The moment the princess told him the way the golden ship's defensive formation corroded he suspected the involvement of this artifact. He was looking forward to acquiring the most sort after artifact within the lower mortal realm.

But what a disappointment it was! It was not even the complete artifact. Most of its capabilities were limited. And the sloppy way it was forged made him feel disgusted to use it. Even though he wasn't willing to use it himself he could still use it to cause some chaos. He thought grinning.

Meanwhile princess Weiwei told everything that happened from the moment she met Kayson. When she voiced his demands commander Wu strongly disagreed with them. There were too many valuable treasures inside the ship. Now they were supposed to let this masked figure walk away with all of them? No way he would let him do that.

But then again it was true the masked man saved him and his daughter along with the princess. Even the person helped him, this was the cultivation world. There no one would bow down to your conditions if you weren't strong enough.

So he wanted to test the waters. If this person who was acting haughty, was capable as he seemed to be, they would think about agreeing to his conditions. If not forget about paying back, he won't let the rude person leave the place in one piece.

Commander Wu's aura suddenly increased. He directed all his spiritual pressure at the leader of the two masked men. The spiritual pressure of a seventh-level True Spirit cultivator was nothing to scoff about. Kayson felt an unbelievable amount of spiritual pressure gathering around him. But he did do anything. He let his opponent to do as he wished.

Commander Wu was surprised. The spiritual pressure of a True Spirit realm expert was not something an ordinary cultivator could withstand. But this person didn't even try to defend himself. He thought Kayson was so shocked even to circulate his qi energy. He felt smug.

With added courage, he pushed his spiritual energy further. Just as it contacted Kayson's figure his smug expression changed into horror. All his spiritual energy started to be sucked into the masked figure like a black hole. It went on and on without stopping. There seemed to be no limit.

He quickly tried to withdraw his energy but, then he met with another horrifying fact. He couldn't control his spiritual energy at all! All of his spiritual energy was just free flowing out of him even though he wanted to stop it.

While he was panicking he saw the masked man observing him as if he was a bug caught up in a spider's web, struggling to get free yet getting entangled more and more. And the sickening thing was, the masked man seemed to entertain by his struggle.

Just as his spirit energy was about to run dry, his consciousness was pulled into an illusion world. A world filled with dense killing intent. The Killing intent in the surrounding was so heavy he fell on his knees before its pressure. As he looked up to see a black-clad figure standing on top of a massive mountain.

The figure looked identical to the one he attacked with his spiritual pressure a moment ago. The only difference was his clothes. They were damped. A red viscous liquid was dripping from them. Blood! An endless river of blood was flowing around him. It was at that moment he realized the mountain was not an ordinary mountain at all. It was a mountain created from corpses! Each and every corpse had a horrifying expression written on their faces. Then he was rudely woken up.

"Pfff…" Blood sprayed out of his mouth from commander Wu's kneeling figure.

"Father…"

"Uncle Wu…! What did you do to him?" Princess Weiwei was the first to realize it was Kayson who harmed commander Wu.

"Nothing. Why do you think I did anything? And why don't you ask him before accusing an innocent fellow cultivator?" Kayson sounded like a child who was wronged by his parents. Princess was at a loss for words.

"Father what happened?" Xiao Zie asked in concern. Commander Wu didn't answer, instead, he deeply bowed in Kayson's direction.

"Fellow cultivator, please forgive me for my rude behavior. I failed to recognize greatness."

"Good, at least you have some sensibility left. So you agree to my conditions?" He asked while rubbing his hands like a real money grabber.

"We will agree." This time commander Wu's tone was low and respectful, princess Weiwei and Zhang Xiaozie had their jaws dropped. As a commander of the crimson empire, Zhang Wu had massive pride. It was so strange to see him act in such a manner towards an outsider.

"Good. But that rudeness going to cost you. I cannot think of something right now… Well… I see to hold you accountable in the future" Zhang Wu said nothing just nodded.

Kayson was secretly relieved. He might be able to confront commander Wu's spiritual energy and leave him breathless. But if it really come to a real confrontation he would be killed without a doubt. So from the beginning of his attack, he was careful to be aggressive and precise to intimidate everyone to a degree not to confront him directly.

Obviously, his method worked. Seeing all the dead bodies of his enemies and the mysterious way he approached them, commander Wu thought not to antagonize him too much and only used spiritual pressure to gauge his cultivation. Which was what Kayson exactly wanted.

They got into the first ship and found its storage room easily. Kayson immediately got to work and collected items.

To everyone's surprise, Kayson only took expendable items such as pills, herbs, and talismans. As for more valuable weapons and artifacts, he didn't even look at them.

As the talkative teenager, Xiao Zie couldn't keep help but questioned him.

"Why don't you want them?"

"You can take them if you want. I don't need them. They attract unwanted attention."

Everyone understood what he implied. Of course, if he used these weapons and artifacts publically someone could notice them and the Ice Castle would start creating trouble for him.

Even if that was the case for Kayson, it was not for commander Wu. After this incident, he was already thinking about ways to pick a fight with the commanders of Ice Castle. And he didn't want to let the chance slip away.

"Since you didn't want them, let me keep them. I will auction them off in the next upcoming major auction and make those bastards puke blood in anger."

"Suit yourself." Kayson just waved him off. After he collected all the things he wanted he waved his hand and all the items disappeared.

"Spatial storage!" Princess Weiwei and Xiao zie shout out loud.

Kayson shook his head while ignoring both of them completely.

Their excitement was justifiable since spatial storages were so rare in this part of the universe. Especially, in the lower mortal realm. Only cultivators who had the same level of influence as sect elders of a Great Sect, were eligible enough to own a spatial storage artifact. Even a princess like Zhang Weifeng only had a common rank storage artifact.

Within half an hour they managed to clean all the storage of enemy ships.

After collecting all of them they entered the half-destroyed golden ship at the end. In there also Kayson stuck to his usual routine.

"How come it's big enough to store all of those items? Is it a unique grade?"

After going through all the ships Kayson collected many items inside his space storage. Except for Eric, all three others kept track of how many items he was storing in his storage. According to the massive amount of items, he put into his storage space, they guessed it should be at least a unique grade one. Where they came only the emperor was able to afford a such spacious space storage artifact.

The spatial storages were artifacts that utilize space elements to store items. Their storage capacity increased with their grades. Common grade spatial storage had space size of a traveling bad, unique grade had room-sized storage and rare ones had storage size of a hall.

But epic and legendary ones not only had huge storage capacities they also had the ability to add qi energy into their storage. Such storage artifacts were called spatial environments. It was said they were so rare not even High Immortal Realm had any.

"Aren't you asking a bit too confidential information from a cultivator?" Kayson teased her.

Xiao zie's face turned red. In her excitement, she forgot that asking for information about cultivators' personal items was taboo.

After a while, they came outside. Since he completed his task Kayson decided to leave before other people get involved. Especially the reinforcements of the Crimson Empire. But before that, he had one important task.

"Princess Wei Feng, why did you catch this fellow?" He asked nudging at the blue thunderbird.

"Arhm… It's actually to present my elder sister for her coming of age ceremony." She nervously answered. It was clear this masked man had a way with spirit animals. If he took away the thunderbird, they painstakingly caught, they had to find another one which was not an easy task.

"If you promise me to take good care of them and not try to tame them in any manner, I'll tell them to go with you."

"Both of them?"

"Yes. These two fellows getting to know each other rather well already. It'll be sad to separate them." Then he took the violet bird into his hand.

"And this fellow is a lazy idiot. She needs a place to stay safe. Places I go simply not suitable for her." The bird started to make noises of displeasure. "Don't worry little fellow, these people will take care of you until I come back to collect you. I'll make sure they do."

Saying that he took the dark book that was emitting black smoke and threw it at commander Wu to catch it. "Take this as payment and take care of them."

His voice sounded serious. But commander Wu couldn't believe him for a few seconds. He stared back and forth at Kayson and the book lay in his hands like an idiot.

"This… this… is this!? You're giving this to us?!? As payment??" Commander shouted in disbelief. That was an artifact that had countless legends written about it. And most of all he couldn't fathom the masked person who casually give away such a valuable artifact just as a payment to look after two birds! Is he insane!?

"Of course, the Book of Destruction. Well, at least a part of it. If you want the other parts you probably have to dive into the dark abyss." Kayson said so casually which surprised them even more.

"Dive into the dark abyss? That's suicide." Princess Weiwei shouted in horror.

Dark abyss was another one of the forbidden grounds located near the Ice Castles territory. It was not an abyss as the name said. A collection of a few galaxies that were engulfed with darkness and dark elements. It was harder for normal cultivators to explore it. Even for a Martial Lord, it was a challenge to explore that horrifying abyss without being fatally injured.

"It's true that it's a bit dangerous," Kayson uttered lost in his thoughts. "But if you use the book as the guidance you'll be fine. If you want more details meet that one-eyed fellow staying at artificers' tower. He'll know what to do."

All three of their expressions turned hard. The 'one-eyed fellow' Kayson spoke so casually was a guest from the Middle Martial Realm. As members related to the royal family they were privileged to get to know 'this fellow' in person. Only a few people even knew about his existence. It was puzzling how many secrets Kayson knew about the four empires.

That further confirmed their assumption, that Kayson was from an unfathomably powerful and mysterious background way above their grasp. Commander Wu even suspected he could be a young master of a Legendary level sect in the Middle Martial Realm.

"All right, then you two fellows, off you go." He chased the two birds away. They circled around him a few times and landed on a nearby rock.

"Be nice to these people." He signaled toward three people to which the two birds stared at curtly. All three felt an ominous feeling.

"I'll be back to get you two. Until then" With that Kayson signaled Eric to follow him and they got onboard the ship through the circular door. Nobody felt anything different about Kayson's behavior but Eric felt different. It was like a built-up tension inside a bow. You could not see it but it was there.

Before the circular door closed princess Weiwei shouted.

"Savior, can you please tell me your name?"

"You can call me Kayder."

She heard just as the door closed. Then dust started stirring up.

Commander Wu felt some object accelerate away from them at an unbelievable speed.

Within a few moments. There was nothing. The mysterious masked man named Kayder vanished along with his servant and the ferocious ship.

"Hff..." Commander Wu sighed. "That was really dangerous."

"Father, what happened? What did that rude man do?"

"I thought about gauging his strength before going along his conditions. So I used spiritual pressure on him. But I didn't expect… it was my mistake." Commander Wu didn't want to speak further and scare the two girls. He shivered again recalling the scene that took place in that illusion world. He could still feel the metallic taste of bloodiness in that illusion. "He struck back and I lost." He kept his explanation to fewer words.

"So he was a True Spirit Realm cultivator. No wonder he was so arrogant." Said Xiao zei.

"But I think it was higher than that." Princess Weiwei uttered thoughtfully, other two looked at her waiting for an explanation.

"Uncle Wu do you know anyone who could block the tribulation with spiritual energy."

"Impossible. It's true that some powerful soul cultivators could block qi energy attacks purely from their spiritual energy. But to do that soul cultivator should be in a higher cultivation realm than the attacker. And to block the tribulation from pure spiritual energy is nothing but a pipe dream. Tribulation lightning will rip apart and cremate the soul."

Then he looked at the princess puzzled. "Your highness why did you ask such a question?"

Princess was silent for some moments. Her face was solemn.

"It's because I saw the man named Kayder, did just that."

There was a deafening silence. After giving enough time for her words to sink in she started her narration and described the unbelievable scene she witnessed before meeting Kayson. When she described how a corporal spiritual energy figure seemed to absorb the tribulation Commander Wu abruptly told her not to talk about that to anyone. Some things were better to keep to themselves.

They hardly had to wait any time, the reinforcements arrived to collect them. A sudden thought flashed across commander Wu's mind. The masked man's departure was perfectly timed to avoid any confrontation with their troops. It was like he knew exactly when they would arrive.