The Blood-Freezing Mad Dog

"These fucking bastards."

Celas spat out cold curses while standing in a puddle of his own blood.

As he kept on walking, his bloodloss became more and more apparent. In this state, had no chance to heal properly, and stopped for a moment to rethink his decisions.

"In any case, it's not wise to confront the other one at the moment."

The Mad Dog ripped his shirt apart, doffed his shoes and poorly dressed up the wounds with a makeshift bandage.

Celas ascertained the state of his feet in a low voice.

"... Complete pierced through, the bones are broken."

"I'm losing too much blood."

"I'll need to recuperate in the hideout first," he determined before casting a gaze at the bloody streak in the sand, "But they'll easily track me down if I do..."

"I should cover my tracks first."

"...Well", he added with a devilish grin, "It's not too late for a gentleman to act out revenge in ten years. I'll hunt them down when I reach the Qi Realm."

"I'll rush to the hideout, take my things, breakthrough surreptitiously in the Fervent Sand Plains of the South and then... Yes... HAHAHAH. YES, JUST YOU WAIT!"

Celas' laughter ringed and echoed in maddening volumes.

And shortly after, his expression switched from crazed madness to indifferent nonchalance in a split second.

Only his eyes gleamed in a red, dangerous light.

It was truly frightening.

The notorious nickname Mad Dog was really insufficient for this megalomaniacal horror.

He opened the secret manual and peered at its contents, as he paced to the gangster hideout in the slums.

But suddenly, he came to a total halt.

Disbelief was written on his face in horrifying font.

His expression churned to resemble a sanguinary demon. Drooped his head in rigid fixation, he went over the written lines.

An incredulous muttering slowly transformed into an fearsome cacophony of ear-piercing screams.

"No... no no no nONO NON OO NO ... NO!"

Celas gripped the textbook with such force it slowly ripped into halves.

"This... It can't be!"

His shaking hands put the secret manual under great strain and finally, it ripped into loose pages. His face distorted like Munch's 'Scream', but instead of anxiety, it portrayed absolute, frantic madness.

In insanity, he scratched the scar running across his eye bloody. It itched terribly, reminding him of past hatred.

Dozens of notes fluttered and floated onto the arid soil, next to a puddle of blood oozing from his soles.

The first page of the 'Circulation Arts' landed directly in the blood, now slowly being stained in a dark red.

A beautiful, rounded and elegant font wrote:

"Ambition might destroy the chance at a peaceful life, and greed... will certainly devour it.

But Malevolence... malevolence will never give you any chance for it at all.

Karma deals the cards of fate fairly. You get what you give and therefore... therefore morals will always prevail.

Blinded by greed, tainted by evil. You, the Mad Dog, barking at the entire world, are not worthy of Cultivation."

Celas' arms dropped and swayed listlessly next to his legs. His gaze faced the spotless blue heaven.

He knew it in his heart.

He knew what had to be done now.

Never, ever in his life, was he disrespected like that.

"They need to die."

A single sentence escaped his lips.

Urged by dark stimuli, he turned around and didn't lose any more words.

He shook like a brodling ancient volcano, ready to spit out hellish flames and bring about cataclysmic destruction to every being without bias, but not a squeak left his lips.

When anger reached a truly unfathomable level, it transformed into something else entirely.

This state felt like nothing could ever smother it, no placation would work, not the most passionate love in the world would rescind it.

No, this feeling ran far deeper than love ever could.

It was anger directed at himself for his naivité, anger at the world for its cruelty, and pure, deep-running spite for a young man, the face of which burned deeply into his mind.

No matter what was about to happen, there would only be one party to survive this day.

Someone would have to die for the other to continue on living.

Be it Body Foundation Realm or Qi Realm, he swore to eviscerate them all into bloody shreds.

...

As he purposely retraced the bloody footprints left on the sand, two figures faded into vision from afar. Rays of the evening light shone onto their backs as they walked in a slow, unhurried gait.

At the moment, they found themselves on the outmost edge of the slums, somewhere near the start of a barren sandy expanse, The Fervent Sand Plains.

Decrepit buildings stood sporadically in the area, mixing themselves with barely intact houses and abandoned tents, giving the area a forlorn slum atmosphere.

Dusk would arrive in a couple of hours, but at this time, the apartments were drowned in the golden shine of pressing heat waves.

With their hands behind their backs, the two figures talked about something which couldn't be quite made out from this distance, but smiles and grins revealed its apparent light-heartedness.

...

Joey and Spark traced the bloody footprints on the ground to the point they finally saw the target of their hunt in the distance.

Surprisingly, the target they were chasing stopped to run away, and instead approached them, also with slow and unhurried steps.

Being extra careful, they slowly followed the droplets of blood and the reddish footprints, hoping for the prey to fall exhausted by bloodloss before they fought, and certainly didn't expect that sudden change in his behaviour.

Spark grasped the fleeting meaning of it and somberly commented, "It must have been too humiliating to flee after realizing the book is a counterfeit."

'This is not optimal.'

Théo thought inwardly as a gloomy expression formed on his face. Choosing his words, Spark addressed Joey

"It seems he is prepared to stake his life if needed. Joey... it will be far more dangerous than we presumed."

Joey was in a similarly negative mood.

Celas slowed his pace until he came to a halt. His path dragged a bloody streak behind his figure.

But the most shuddering thing about this sight was something else.

A pair of scarlet, widened eyes gazed at the two hunters indifferently.

It seemed almost like they were not the hunters, but instead the prey.

All pain, spite and bloodlust Joey and Spark expected to see wasn't there.

Just two illuminating eyes, glimmering with feral calculation and evil intent.

...

He came to a stop – there were the two ghosts responsible for putting him into his current predicament–

The reason for his disdain.

The reason behind his pain.

Initially his mind would be dead-set on killing them instantenously, ripping them into countless indiscernible pieces...

But now that they were eye to eye, an irrational calm descended upon him, urging him to observe with frightful composure.

He never felt like this before. Usually, it was quite difficult for him to contain his rage once it erupted, but... something inside switched when he made the decision to turn around.

His widened eyes glances at Joey, scanning him from head to toe.

It was easy to deduct that this guy must have been the one to shatter the chains and save the tailor.

An evil glint pulsated more vibrantly in the Mad Dog's cold eyes.

He couldn't tell the Cultivation Realm of Joey accurately without probing his power first, but when he sized him up objectively, he found him to be nothing special.

Just how many necks of men that looked similar to Joey had he already broken?

Just how many hearts had he brought to a standstill, from men bigger, fiercer and more intimadating?

He stopped counting long before he had settled in the slums of Monsoon City.

"You motherfuckers." He calmly spat out.

"Are you ready to die?" Celas added calmly with cruel indifference.

"You know what I'll do after I'm done with you?"

"... I'll need to find your families and friends."

"I'm sure each of you has a lovely family, right?"

"YOU!" Joey popped a vein and shouted in anger.

Celas broke his indifference with a cold smile that crept up his lips.

"Now that you're closer, I see... wait, haha... aren't you... Joey? The Bartender Joey?..."

The smile on his lips curved into a devious arc. Coupled with oblique slant eyes, his face turned into the mask of a devil, malevolent thoughts oozing from it, as he uttered another comment.

"Ah... Ha...Haha... A family man such as you, a family man with an adorable daughter waiting for him at home, dares to

seek trouble with me?"

The devil's mask suddenly lopsided into a frightening frown.

"Have you gone completely insane?"

Creepy silence settled in the distance.

"...Did you really not think about what I will have to do now? You leave me no choice here!"

Joey's eyes ripped open in horror. He knew perfectly well, that it was a provacation to make him lose composure, but just the thought of it sent a cold shiver down his back.

"YOU DARE!!!"

A young voice interfered before he could spit out anything more.

"JOEY! CALM YOURSELF."

Spark looked at him with serious eyes.

"You know that he just wants you to lose composure. Calm yourself. You can't afford to be careless."

Although the emotions and expression of Celas changed from a moment to the next, inwardly he was tranquil as a lake.

The strange composure from before hasn't vanished yet. No... Instead it became even clearer.

He took his first step towards Joey with confidence as he uttered:

"No, No, No... You misundersood, crafty, young schemer... I wasn't lying by any means. And it wasn't just provocation either."

He cast his demonic gaze towards Spark, and while taking another step, his frown distorted into a harrowing grin again.

"I will rip the little girl apart very slowly, meticulously breaking every joint and bone in her body before feeding her bloody scraps to the mother."

A cold chuckle left his lips.

"And believe me when I say that not a bite will be wasted!"

"Ahh~ ... and afterwards I'll rip the mother apart too. Of course I'll honour her by biting on her bones and slurping her marrow, so there will not be any wastage, no vestige..."

Celas raised his gaze, staring at the two with slanted, arrogant eyes.

"Because after all... after all it's not their damn fault...

The temperature seemed to fall by a couple of degrees when Celas uttered the next sentence with cold enunciation.

"It's not their damn fucking fault that their lovely, lovely Joey is such a stupid... sloppy... and ignorant fool."

Cold shudders ran up Spark's spine when he heard Celas giving this calm and articulate description of the most horrifying and cruel threat he heard in his life.

He didn't expect Celas to be vicious and frightening to such an uncanny extent.

"What I will do with you two, though... You don't even want to begin to hear."

Celas took another unbothered step.

His face changed yet again. The playful, arrogant smile from before diminished and turned into a rigid line.

This time he spoke only with two coruscating ruby eyes, emanating a devastating malevolence.

Spark's blood finally froze in his veins, affected by the cold atmosphere. An undescribable intent was hovering in the opponent's eyes.

Spark cast his glance at Joey, who had taken on a fighting stance by now, and seeing the bartender's expression, he knew that he had realized the seriousness of the situation too.

Joey's eyes were unnaturally bloodshot. It seemed that the cruel threat of Celas pushed him infinitely near his limit. Each eye pulsated terribly in its respective socket, and they gave off a glimmer radiating grim determination.

Spark was stunned in place.

He knew that look.

Joey was ready to die.

But not before dragging his opponent back to the deepest layer of hell he escaped from.

A lot of blood would flow in just a couple seconds.

Death was looming in, peering through veils of reality to land its cold, unfeeling stare at Celas, Joey and Spark.

The Grim Reaper was ready to harvest their Souls very... very soon.

Joey took a careful step toward the approaching maniac while leaving him no openings to attack.

Every of his thoughts circled around death.

...Even though his mind irked him to jump at the Dog and devour him directly, after twisting the head off his shoulders, he held back.

Spark wouldn't be of much help in the battle.

So he assumed a position much farther behind.

He had another, crucial purpose for being present and with the current state of Celas' feet, he had nothing much to fear.

...Well, in principle.

Celas indifferent cruelty when he spat out his threats earlier, made Spark's heart beat viciously into his chest.

He generously took a couple more steps back as precaution and wondered if it hadn't been better for Joey to take care of this on his own.

It's like standing in front of a serial killer, just that it was so so much more terrifying.

He had partly accepted the cruel nature of this new planet, and even found himself devising bloody ploys, but with the spicy threat of death lingering in the air, Spark felt that his back had completely turned wet with sweat.

The distance between Joey and Celas narrowed with each step, as they slowly picked up pace and started running until they were face to face.

Death itself chuckled quietly as the clash began.