Life Preserving Technique

Lucius had an earpiece that was relaying everything Axolot was saying to Delilah, Julia and Maria. Lucius stood to the side of the room and conversed with them for a while, Axolot sat in silence as he understood that this would be a hard decision to make.

"I don't trust him! He's the leader of these scum, you know? Who's to say he isn't tricking us so he can escape?" questioned Julia

"But Julia, he's telling the truth. I can't explain how but I just know it and he wouldn't be able to escape even if he tried. Delilah and I are strong enough to kill him from miles away. How about if I bind him and disable his cultivation? Would that be enough?" Lucius proposed

"I agree with Lucius, even if he is lying, he is the leader of the Yamir, right? He will be useful in subduing the rest of the Yamir back on Hazmit that are still fighting the war. If we can get the Batak leader as well, then we could effectively end all of the fighting. You heard him anyway right, he's already 780 years old. He won't last much longer anyway. The old mans more useful alive than dead!" Maria explained to Julia to alleviate her worry. She knew her sister well and although Julia was passionate to a fault, she was able to understand things if you took the time to explain it to her properly .

"Okay then, if that's been decided we should finish up here. Lucius bind the old bastard and bring him to me, you aren't powerful enough to destroy someone's cultivation yet. After that, go in and kill that shacked up General. Julia, keep the troops in formation, if the enemy surrender then apprehend them." Delilah commanded, as the person with the highest strength, she was the de facto leader of this operation.

After the commands were given, Lucius turned to Axolot and told him that he would bind him for now and take him to have his cultivation destroyed before he could be let back onto Hazmit soil.

"Haaa.... Fine, it's better if I can end the pointless fighting soon. I only have 40 years left at most anyway. I've lived long enough already." Axolot said as he kneeled down and put his hands forward.

Lucius pulled out some cuffs but then thought against it. The cuffs were standard issue for the Liberated Youths but they were meant for mortals only. Axolot may be a weak old man but he was still a cultivator, he would be able to break out just like the trio could when they arrived at the base. Instead, he pulled out Devils Calling and moved Axolot's arms to his back. He wrapped the chains around and put the sword through the chains to lock it in place. He then used the other sword and chain to lock his legs. The two swords were facing each other as the arms' sword pointed down and the legs' sword pointed upwards. This binding was strong enough to incapacitate Lucius himself as the metal was strong enough to stop most qi attacks below the third tier.

After bringing Axolot to Delilah, Lucius unravelled the chains and linked them to wrist guards he had made for this purpose. After a spar with his dad, he was sent flying when Orion had pulled the sword and chain straight out of Lucius' hands and then whacked him across the face with the back of the chains so Lucius thought it would be good to bind the chains to himself securely. After the chains were linked he started sprinting straight out of the formation of Liberation troops, he was able to pounce about on their heads. He got faster and faster as wind began to make his feet move even faster, he rushed through and soon was seen by the opposing foot soldiers. The Liberation troops watched on in awe as Lucius pounced off of the head of a shield man at the front and bounced high into the air before crashing down in front of the chaotic foot soldiers, creating a crater in the ground with web like cracks.

Lucius looked up from his squatted position and smiled eerily at the men. They saw his face and although it was the face of a 12 year old handsome boy, it terrified the hell out of them. No one knew when but the first person to scream and run backwards started a stampede of men and women running for their lives towards the General's mansion. They pushed the men in front of the mansion into the radius of defence and were consequently mowed down by the machine guns. They didn't even care though as they ran for their lives to end themselves by being shot down instead of being sliced and diced by the scarily shining light of Lucius' swords.

"Hahaha, I guess the Devil really is calling huh?" Delilah laughed as she observed the frantic escapes of the foot men.

"What do you mean by that? Who is this Devil?" asked Julia as she watched in awe all the same.

"You don't know? Lucius' weapon is called Devils Calling! The Devil is an alias of one of the strongest tier 9 experts who rules over hell. Apparently, he's even stronger than Lucius' dad!" Delilah explained.

"Wait what? Tier 9? Lucius' Dad? We're only tier 1 right? So then how much stronger are they to us? And Lucius never talked about his dad before, we had assumed he was dead!" Maria added

"Hahaha, Lucius is reserved in his nature. He might be mischievous and fun but he doesn't talk about himself much. Tier 9 experts are experts that rule entire parts of this universe! There are very few of them and each one would be able to destroy Hazmit and it's two moons without even moving! With a mere thought they could eradicate even tier 4 worlds and with a wave they could destroy tier 5 worlds! Lucius' dad, my mom and the Devil are all tier 9 experts but even among them there are different levels of strength. My mom would be considered the weakest of those three. Actually, the world you guys are in right now isn't even worthy for their butlers and maids to care about you know?" Delilah explained.

Julia and Delilah weren't able to fully understand the scale of power since they had only been in Hazmit before and hadn't even cultivated before until a few months ago. They had a newfound respect for Lucius and Delilah, before they had respected them as strong and clever kids but now they knew that these kids had a background so shocking that they couldn't even begin to understand it right now.

While Delilah was explaining this to the twins, Lucius was thinking about the best way to do this effectively and quickly. He thought about using the bike and going around to execute the General and her servants but that would just lead to the foot soldiers rushing in and occupying the mansion. Another option would be to slaughter his way through and continue to slaughter the General and the rest of the mansions people but that wasn't flashy enough either. In the end he came up with an effective solution and he rushed forward to put it into motion straight away.

Lucius ran through on top of the foot soldiers' heads before dropping down into the range of the machine gun. The foot soldiers started screaming as they ran and clambered backwards. Lucius looked into the eye of the soldier manning the machine gun and raised a brow to taunt him. The soldier looked into Lucius' eyes and saw the ridicule and provocation and screamed 'fuck' as he pulled the trigger and let loose a volley of bullets towards the child in front of him. Lucius looked on and simply raised his hand as a shield of water emerged and absorbed all the bullets into it. Everyone looked on in awe as Lucius just stood there and the bullets just couldn't reach him. The man in the machine gun saw this but didn't stop since the General was screaming at him to keep shooting. After another 10 minutes of shooting constantly, the gun had run out of ammo. It could no longer shoot any bullets. Lucius smiled creepily as he stared straight into the soldiers eyes.

"You done? I guess it's my turn now then?" Lucius spoke rhetorically as he waved his hands.

The water with the bullets spread out around him and slowly started condensing around the bullets as a centre. Within a minute there were thousands of ice shards with a metal centre, the bullets were 13mm but now they were around 20mm. The ice shimmered as a dread they had never felt before surrounded all the people within the Generals mansion. They couldn't even run as they had collapsed to the ground. There was a putrid stink in the air as some of them had pissed their pants, while others had soiled it. The General stood there in shock as she started shouting out at Lucius.

"Why? Why the fuck are you doing this to us? We never hurt you did we? Just leave us alone! Please, please, please!" She screamed.

"Haha, shut up and die! Stupid bitch!" Lucius responded as he waved his arms and sent the ice shards flying straight out.

The ice shards weren't as fast as the laser rifles but they were far more powerful as they blasted straight through the mansions defences and penetrated straight through everyone within the mansion. The mansion collapsed in an instant as the body of it was filled with holes and the foundational pillars were all pierced through and broken. The bodies that now had holes all over them were instantly buried. As the dust began to settle on the demolished mansion Lucius turned around and looked to the remaining foot soldiers.

"We've captured your leader and killed all the other leaders, submit to us now and none of you shall be killed!" Lucius shouted out.

All of the foot soldiers looked at him like he was death itself as they kneeled down and bowed immediately. They didn't even dare to raise their heads anymore as they looked down at the dirt and kept their hands on their heads. They all trembled in fear as the Liberation armies' soldiers all gulped deeply at such a show of power. He had merely raised his hands and waved them and had destroyed an entire mansion! What was power? This was power!

"A show off as always. Now then, since that's taken care of. Lets finish the job people!" Delilah shouted as she woke everyone up from their stupor.

To Delilah, something as simple as that was something she could do without even moving a muscle, and her water element affinity was quite weak too! There was a big difference in technique between the first and second tier. She turned towards Axolot who was kneeling next to her and was surprised by the shock on his face. She was confused as to why he would be astounded by such a rudimentary technique if he was indeed a cultivator.

"Hey, why are you so surprised by his show? It's just a simple water technique." asked Delilah

"Haha, I'm sorry miss but I've never done or seen something like that before." he responded

"So you can't use techniques? Aren't you supposed to be a cultivator?" she asked again

"No, miss, the technique I practice only strengthens my life span mostly, there isn't anything like that in it! At most I have reached the strength of 100 men only."

After that explanation Delilah was curious so she examined Axolot's body by inserting some of her qi into him and analysing his body. After a while of analysing he found that although Axolot had reached tier 2 himself, he was only as strong as someone at the spirit gatherer realm. She asked to see his technique and after he brought it out she started reading through it. It took her longer than when she checked his body since the book was actually quite hard to see through, but with her experience with various techniques, she was soon able to figure it out. The book was mainly a life preservation technique instead of a battle technique. It utilised the Elves' natural vitality and long life to enhance it even further. The book only went up to the peak of the second tier, or in other terms 1000 years of life. That's why those emperors had only lived that long even after completely mastering the technique. That being said though, even though in the end those emperors only reached the strength of Spirit Refiners, they were able to use that strength to unify the continent under their flags.

"This technique is pretty useless when it comes to cultivation but it would be good to study it for the future. This cultivation technique could give one a base understanding of Life energies!" Delilah mumbled to herself. As they had been alone all their lives up until a certain point, both Lucius and Delilah had a habit of talking to themselves.

The life energies Delilah was speaking of were a peak higher ranked energy. Energies were split into 3 categories and even further into different levels within them. The lowest category was the basic energies such as the 5 elements, poison, ice, blood, and other elements that were widespread enough. Within this category, ice was a peak ranked energy which was higher ranked than the water and poison was also a high ranked energy. Blood was a strange one as it depended more on the blood in question, if one were to use phoenix, dragon, spirit turtle or other blood then the energy could evolve to the higher category. The next category above basic was higher energies, these included lightning, sound, gravity, light, darkness, life, death, yin and yang. There were others but these were the most commonly known ones. The life, death, yin and yang were all peak higher ranked energies. Light, darkness, gravity and lightning were all high ranked. Sound was mid ranked. Above even the higher energies were the Supreme energies. The Supreme energies were able to impact the universe greatly! Anyone that was able to utilise these energies would become a legend! The most common example would be the Fate energy, this was utilised in full by the leader of the angels, a woman with the title of Goddess. Another would be the Karma energy which was owned by the Devil instead. These two were both at the same level of strength because of their dominion over Supreme energies. The other commonly known Supreme energies where : space, time, chaos and mind. The chaos and mind energies were low grade Supreme energies while the Karma and Fate energies were mid grade. Thus Orion was weaker than the Devil and the Goddess. Time was a peak ranked energy that no one had ever before controlled, while Space was once controlled by a human genius called Oliver Verdansk. He was able to use the energy to ascend to the emperor grade but he chose not to leave behind his bloodline to the world. He had instead left behind his legacy in the form of the space rings and Verdansk rankings. He did a lot more too, like spreading the common language. He was the reason that even a backwater planet like Bakre had seen space rings before. The impact he left had made him one of the most revered people in all of history. It was actually said that his legacy was even greater than the original Basil and Lazarus founders along with the sun and moon emperors. He was seen as the greatest expert to live by most humans and he was their greatest idol!

It was regardless to say that the level of energies was a key component to ones cultivation. Delilah was thinking about how this would be a good read for Johnny as his affinities, technique and body constitution were all greatly compatible with Life energy!