CHAPTER I: THE FALL OF THE SMITH FAMILY (1)

" swoosh! swoosh"

It is night time and the moon shines bright in the sky.

In the Greenwood Forest, four people can be seeing running through the forest at breathtaking speed. To be more precise, there are three people all wearing black suits and red masks with blades in their hands chasing a young woman. That woman has dark silver hair that falls down to her shoulders. She is wearing a long red chinese dress with a cut on the side which reveals her beautiful legs. Looking at her from the back, you can see her curvy waists and plump buttocks. If one could look at her front features, only word would fill most people thoughts: beautiful. She has perfect features. Eyes not too small not too big which make people feel as if they have their souls stolen by looking in them, pretty lips which make people want to on them badly, all this complemented by her small and cute nose. She has a full chest, probably D-cups. Talking about her height, she definitely can be considered as a tall woman with her 1.78 meters tall. She is so beautiful that the blood covering her body and the anger in her eyes only add more to her beauty.

The hunters and their "prey" keep dashing at full speed through the forest until they reach a dead end. The woman stops at the edge of a cliff. It's a few tens of meters deep. At the bottom of the cliff flows a torrential river. Looking at the cliff in front her she knows that she won't survive if she were to fall down from where she is in her current state. She turns around only to find that her pursuers have already caught up to her. In front of her stand three men in black suits and red mask on their faces. The one on her left side is bit on the short side, he looks to be at most 1.70 meters tall. The one on the right is the tallest among them. One look and you can tell that he's more than 2 meters tall. He is thin with unusually thin and long arms which almost reach his knees. The one in the middle of the group is about 1.9 meters tall. He has a large built. The mask he is wearing is slightly different to the other two. While the other two are wearing masks that cover half of their faces, his completely covers his face.

Seeing that the woman has stopped and turned around, he starts to laugh while taking off his mask.

"ha! ha! ha! How are you doing miss Lia? It's been a while. Do you remember me?"

While laughing the man removes his mask. What is revealed is a face belonging to a middle-aged man with a large scar on his face which seem to have been made by a blade. Seeing the face, the woman called Lia reveals no change of expression on her face as if she already expected it.

"You don't seem to be that surprised to see me. As expected of the young miss of the Holylands Group who is also recognized as a great business and management genius."

Looking at her expressionless face, his anger seemed to be aroused.

"seeing that you're not surprised, you should know why I'm doing this, right?"

"…" Lia seems to still have nothing to tell him. Seeing that, the man's anger flares up.

"Five years ago, you had to be meddlesome. Just because my brother tried to push down a servant in an alleyway, you castrated him and left me this scar. All this time, I could have healed it but I refrained from doing so because it represented my goal which is to trample over you and kill you. Who would have known that your brother would dare to offend the Seven Sword Sect. Ha! Ha! Ha! Now they've send a few of their elders to settle you guys. Ha! Ha! Ha!"

Hearing this Lia showed a change of expression for the first time. She gritted her teeth knowing that not only her family, but everybody related the Holylands Group would meet their end tonight. In her heart she started lamenting and cursing her brother.

Her brother is called Brayton Smith. He is her step-brother, the son of her father's second wife. Because he is the youngest of the family, he has been pampered from his young age by his parents which turned him into a good for nothing silk-pants with no other talent than to chase skirts and create troubles. Now it seems he had created not a mere trouble but a disaster for the whole family. When she had left her family's land a week ago she never would have thought that the day she returned she would witness her family's destruction. Thinking about her father, her mother, her husband who were currently facing a tribulation and thinking about the little being growing in her womb, about how she was planning to tell the good news to her husband tonight, she could not help but let tears run down her face.

Her husband, Ray Maye, is the current right-hand man of her father the President of the Holylands Group. He was known as the greatest talent in martial arts the kingdom had seen in the last thousand years by stepping in the 5th stage of the martial arts cultivation namely the Martial Prince Stage at the age of 18 making him the youngest powerhouse in a kingdom where the strongest human was at peak 7th stage-the Martial Emperor Stage while most of his peers were still at the 3rd stage and the most talented of them were at the early and middle 4th stage, the Martial Scholar Stage. In the whole kingdom only people of the previous generation could barely be worthy opponents for him. The people of the Maldàn Kingdom considered him as the hope to take the kingdom on higher battlefields as their mightiest general. But not everyone likes outstanding people. So some ambitious and narrow minded people schemed against him and severely wounded him. Although they couldn't kill him, they still managed to hurt his meridians, which halted his cultivation. After many years of suffering she finally bought a medicine a 1000 years old Ginseng during an auction in the previous city she visited which could heal him. She was attacked by the Silver Wolf Mercenary Group. At first she thought that they were trying to steal the medicine but it seems the situation is much more dangerous than she thought.

"So the Silver Wolf Mercenary and the Seven Sword Sect have ganged up on my Holylands Group. Ha! Ha! Ha! I know what you guys are looking for. You're looking for the blood of the rank 9 Demonic Beast that our family has been hiding for decades, right?" saying that, she took out a vial containing a red liquid in it and waved it in front of her attackers.

Seeing the vial, the three men became hysteric and greed filled their minds. With this vial, anyone at the 7th stage or higher could rapidly increase their cultivation to at least the peak 8th stage. Just a single diluted drop could change the fate of even a pig, gifting him with the possibility to become a peerless existence as it is the blood of an existence at the top of this world comparable to a human Saint, able to change the laws of the world. If they could get this vial, this wouldn't be a mere fortune, no they would be able allowed to change their fates and rule a part of this world. There would be no bottlenecks in their cultivation at least until the Saint Realm. That's why when they saw the vial, they lost control of themselves and started breathing heavily.

"Little Lady, hand over the vial and I promise that I will at the very least keep you alive at my side. Huh? What do you say?"

"Ha! Ha! Ha! You guys are funny, you destroyed my family and every that matters to me and you want to negotiate with me? Dream on!"

Hearing her answer, his expression became dark.

"Don't push your luck too far. You have no way out so you'd better surrender and give me the blood vial"

"You want it, come and fetch it" she drew her sword and prepared for the battle.

Suddenly a small shadow flashed in front of them. Looking at the direction it went to, they saw a little white lion sitting underneath a three playing with the vial as if Lia and and the others weren't around. Looking at the tiger they were dumbfounded.

'How could such a young tiger cub come around us and steal something under our nose without us being able to react?'

Regaining his consciousness, the leader of the three men became enraged, looking at his two men, he yelled out "what are you doing? Go capture that beast. Such a young cub with such abilities will certainly be a king among the beast in the future. This is definitely a great windfall". But what he didn't think about was the fact that for a young cub such as this one to be here means that its parents could be nearby. Overcame with greed at the idea of gaining the vial and a cub possessing such abilities, his abilities to analyze his environment became compromised.

At that time, about a few kilometers from where Lia, the young lion cub and her attackers were, at the very center of the Greenwood forest, was a wide and tall tree at the feet of which lied a white small beast. To be more precise, it was a small lion a bit bigger than the one Lia and co just met; just that this one had a small horn sprouting on its forehead. At first sight this scene wasn't anything out of the ordinary. But if one looked from above, one would be shocked to death because they would realize that there was no beast in the100 meters around the cub. But after that there were lot of powerful beasts resting. Each of them could bring disasters in a region. There were beasts like the Flaming Lion King, the Golden Furred Bear, the Golden Feathered Eagle, all Rank 8 beasts and stronger. If any of these beasts was let loose in the Maldàn Kingdom, the causalities would be serious and a few powerhouses might even lose their lives. And now hundreds of such beasts were seen lying peacefully around a small cub as if they were with their closest kin.

As if sensing something, the small lion opened its eyes and looked towards the direction Lia and co were at, it abruptly rose up to its feet and left towards that direction. When it rose up, all the beasts, even those mighty rank 8 beasts bowed their heads, not daring to lift up their heads until it left.