Unsealing Emptiness

Chapter 379: Breathtaking.

“... this was definitely worth it... Hahahaha...”

Cass openly mocked Ember as he entered the gate and disappeared from the estate.

No one tried to stop him as Ember stood quietly with grave expressions on her face.

She was irritated with herself, not with his insults or taunting. She was frustrated that it took a man like Cass to remind her of how low her dignity had sunk.

Her first reaction when hearing the name of Night Walkers wasn’t that of anger or rage but worry. She was suddenly ready to lose the key to her to regain her powers! How pathetic was that?

She was The Ember of Destruction!

And yet she had fallen so low.

.....

Cass, even though an absolute eyesore, had managed to shake her.

Having reached a decision, Ember finally looked up from the ground with a resolute heart.

‘I can’t lose that child. I can’t let him die before I get what I need!’

With the number of tools in her possession, even if she was only half a step into the Origin Realm, killing an expert in that Realm wouldn’t be a problem for her.

. . .

Chen was having fun chasing the rabbit who had bitten his hand. He had finally caught him as the ‘rabbit’ lay beneath his feat, unmoving.

Before he could do anything to Ozul, he felt an aura not less than his approaching him from behind him.

Turning around in a panic, he jumped back and readied his stance.

The speed at which the other party was approaching him wasn’t giving him friendly vibes.

Feeling the rising intensity of Spiritual Essence and the tingling sensation all over his skin, Chen’s eyes widened.

He clenched his fist and before wasting any time, he punched straight ahead.

From a commoner’s eyes, it looked like he was simply punching the air, but they only needed to blink once to come across the sight of another punch about to meet that of his.

Chen was confident in his ability to push back the attack with his fist alone, but he seemed to have been overconfident since before he could smirk in victory, the fist that was about to collide with his suddenly shifted, changing its trajectory towards his adam’s apple instead.

Not having anticipated that such a fast attack could change its trajectory so quickly, Chen wasn’t able to avoid the punch.

As his adam’s apple shook, the vibrations and the force behind the attack were strong enough to shake his whole body.

Chen’s world spun as he struggled to keep his consciousness. If his effort to reinforce his brain with the Spiritual Essence had failed in the last second, he would have most likely been dead already.

“W-who are you? Do you underst-tand who you are messing w-with?”

In his blurry vision was only a single person whose features were hidden behind their hood.

“Night Walkers, hm? Unlucky for you, I do understand. But do you?”

Ember questioned back, but she didn’t wait for the answer as she straightened her palm. Before it was just a hand, but now it released a cold chill like that of a seasoned blade.

Slashing her hand as if it was a sword, Ember didn’t wait to finish off the man.

However, the man was also in the Origin Realm. he jumped back again. This time, Chen knew that direct confrontation wasn’t ideal. ‘I have to run away,’ he thought before quickly retreating.

Ember shook her head. She couldn’t let him go since he had not only seen Ozul but even her.

Sadly for Chen, he had lost the moment Ember’s fist had collided with his adam’s apple.

As he turned his back towards her, ready to escape at full speed, a cannon of flames surrounded him. Flames filled his vision. It was red and orange. Mixed in such an arrangement that it almost looked beautiful.

But something was melting.

He looked down at his skin and couldn’t even express the horror of absolute death as his face distorted in a grotesque sight.

A few seconds later, the fire disappeared into thin air, leaving the entire area scorched in black.

Even the man’s bones weren’t recognizable from dirt.

“Very few have seen these embers and lived to tell the tale. Rejoice in the afterlife, for you were able to witness the true beauty of flames.” Ember muttered before she brought a red seed to her mouth and swallowed it in one go.

She turned around and noticed the unconscious Ozul before sighing deeply.

“I shouldn’t have sent you here,”

. . .

Sometime later, Ozul opened his eyes to see a familiar roof.

“You never cease to amaze me, kiddo.”

The voice came from behind him.

Ozul recognized Ember without turning his head in her direction.

“You saved me? Isn’t that more surprising?”

The quick retort made Ember smile wryly. It was indeed surprising that she willingly saved someone else’s life.

“You are too important to lose for now.”

“For now, huh. Well, at least you are honest.”

Without blinking, he kept his stare on the roof.

“How much time has passed?”

“That is what astonishes me, kid. It’s barely been two hours and I am sure you were on the brink of death before.”

Ozul didn’t look at her, but Ember’s gaze on his face was intense enough to drill a hole in a wall.

Before she knew that he was special, different than others. But there were too many people and so there were bound to be people who stood out from the others in strange ways.

However, when she brought him back to the estate, she couldn’t help but check the condition of his body.

What she found had given her quite a shock.

The two large cuts on his back were so deep that from a perspective, his back looked like a grassland with two unexpected ravines going deeper than light could reach.

Yet, what did she see? No blood.

There was not a smudge of blood on his clothes, from his wounds, or anywhere near him!

A few moments passed in silence when Ember finally decided to be upfront about it,

“Are you a human?”

Silence again.

Ember felt as though she had posed a dumb question. He wasn’t an ethereal species with no physical body, as she would have discovered the instant she examined him with her Scarlet Eyes.

“I... don’t think so?” Ozul’s lips stretched to form a smile as he chuckled to himself.

For Ember, however, it wasn’t just a simple smile.

Looking at that smile, that innocent chuckle, seemed to have paused her world.

That bewitching smile seemed so full of beauty, a beauty that maybe seemed incomparable to any she had ever seen before.

However, mixed in between this artistic sight was... sadness?

Why was her heart throbbing in pain?

She had lived for thousands of years! What hadn’t she seen before? How many people’s misery hadn’t she seen and ignored without even sparing them another glance? Yet here she was.

Unknowingly, her eyes felt a little heavy.

“...emptiness could be so breathtaking...” she muttered to herself.

That laugh devoid of any emotions implicitly spoke volumes of how tired his soul was.

‘He shouldn’t even be a hundred years old... What might have happened to this kid for it to feel like an ancient man who has been helpless for an entire eternity?’

Shaking her head out of this stupor, Ember couldn’t help but think, ‘I must be out of my mind...’

She was so easily distracted by that smile, had age really caught up to her?

The kid obviously had his issues, but it didn’t mean that he was really not a human. Maybe it was some sort of curse that she had never heard about, or maybe some strange ancient arts that he was practicing.

“Whatever it is that you are hiding, I don’t care. Just don’t die before returning me that favor.”

She was talking about that time when she had given the Scarlet Eyes to Raven.

Sighing, Ozul finally turned towards her.

.....

“What happened to that guy?”

“Don’t worry, that man is dead.”

Ozul hummed in response, lost deep in his thoughts.

“What are you still thinking about? You should be happy. On the way, I confirmed that you were able to kill the captives successfully as well. It was simply unlucky for you that that man appeared.”

Ignoring her praise, he looked back at her. She seemed to know who that person was.

“I don’t understand how he was able to find me. Was it simply because he was in the Origin Realm?”

“That and the fact that he had gone through Soul Materialization,” Ember replied calmly.

“Soul Materialization?”

Realizing he hadn’t bothered to read up on the cultivation stages, Ember decided to explain, “The last stage of Nascent Soul Realm. It’s a deciding point in every cultivator’s journey.”

“The reason is simple; as the name suggests, cultivators learn to manifest their soul and gain special abilities which solely belong to them.”

Seeing that he was interested in the name of special abilities, Ember added, “There can be different types of soul manifestations; tools, concepts, or even animals.”

“For example, that man who was about to kill you was someone famous. His soul had manifested into an owl. The reason you couldn’t escape despite not having Spiritual Essence was simply because... owls have good hearing in compensation for their bad sense of smell.1”

Ozul raised his eyebrows in realization. The claw marks on his back also looked similar to the claws of an owl. In a frenzy, he didn’t think why instead of a punch or a blade, an animal’s claw had slashed at him.

“I observed that man who was at the Soul Materialization was also dead when passing by; Chen was known for having an erratic temper, but I didn’t imagine he would kill his own subordinate.”

Ozul noticed her shaking her head and decided against correcting her conclusion.

“You wouldn’t have had a chance against that man at the Soul Materialization stage, let alone Chen,” Ember said back.

Ozul sighed and returned his gaze to the ceiling.

He wasn’t going to tell her he was the one who killed that man at the pinnacle of the Nascent Soul Realm...