Chapter 127 — Old Debts
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The five elders were already in formation when Socrates arrived.
Not the soul extraction array — that has not been forged yet. This was something different. Older. The kind of formation that only Master Realm cultivators can build... It's a spatial formation to bring in their leader...
Two reasons why the Underworld hasn't been cleared yet ..
Only Master Realm Cultivators and below could enter ....
Cultivators at the realm above Grandmaster cannot enter this dungeon ....
That's to say the Guild leader of the Northern Gladiator can't enter this dungeon ...
That's why they want to form a formation that will teleport him in....
So that he can face off against the End Lord of the Dungeon...the one who's above the Master realm.
A pentagon. Each elder at one point. Hestruin at the center.
The frost Socrates had left across the corridor floor trailed behind him as he walked toward them — not running, walking, the white hair settling around his shoulders as he moved. The tattered robe hanging off him. The blue eyes finding each of the five in sequence before settling on Hestruin.
Hestruin looked at him.
At the white hair. The perfect skin. The physique that announced itself without needing to do anything.
"Heavenly Rank Physique." Hestruin said quietly. Not to the others. To himself. Processing.
"Master." Socrates snorted — and the word carried nothing. No respect. No warmth. Just the identification of a relationship that had existed for approximately two hours and was now being formally concluded.
"Why does he look different?." Elder Snyf said from his point of the formation. His voice was the quietest of the five. It always was.
"The poison is gone.." Elder Siphon said — and his eyes narrowed as he said it, the Thousand Venom Ring on his finger turning slowly. "I can't sense a trace of the Web-Plant webs anywhere in his system."
"How?" Elder Zhan said.
Nobody answered that.
Hestruin looked at Socrates for a long moment. Then —
"The treasure." He said. "Whatever is living in your sea of consciousness. Whatever gave you that physique. Whatever refined the Seven Colored Rainbow Poison into an element." He kept his hands behind his back. "Give it up willingly and I'll let you leave this dungeon alive."
Socrates said nothing.
"You're at Foundation Establishment." Hestruin continued. "Peak stage — I can read that much. Against five Master Realm cultivators in a closed formation." A pause. "You're intelligent enough to understand what that means."
"I'm intelligent enough to understand what you want." Socrates said. "That's different from giving it to you."
Hestruin's expression didn't change.
"Formation — first stage." He said.
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Elder Zhan moved first.
The Thunder Chain Bracers on his wrists ignited — the lightning crawling across the metal in contained arcs before Zhan released it outward in a forward burst that split mid-travel into branching bolts. Heaven Splitting Arc. The nine branches spreading to cover the full width of the corridor, the air between them crackling, the temperature rising sharply against the frost Socrates had left on the floor.
Socrates moved sideways — not away from the bolts, along them, tracking the branch closest to his path and moving in the gap between it and the next one. The lightning passed him on both sides close enough to raise his white hair.
He came out the other side and kept moving — forward, toward Zhan, closing the distance before the next release could build.
Zhan's eyes widened slightly.
He raised the bracers for close range discharge — the lightning gathering between his palms — and Socrates raised his right hand.
The frost came out of his palm not as ice but as cold. Directed cold. The temperature at the point of contact between his palm and Zhan's gathered lightning dropping so sharply and so fast that the energy discharge stuttered — the lightning losing coherence as the medium it needed to travel through became something it couldn't travel through.
Zhan pulled back.
Socrates hit him once — the right fist, no technique, just the Heavenly Rank Physique behind a closed hand — and Zhan went sideways into the corridor wall. The stone cracked around the impact. Zhan stayed in it for a moment.
"ZHAN—" Elder Bil's voice.
Zhan pushed off the wall. His face was showing something it hadn't shown before the impact.
"He's fast." Zhan said. "Faster than Foundation Establishment should be."
"The physique." Hestruin said from the center. "Adjust."
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Elder Bil's Absolute Domain activated.
The compressed earth rose from the corridor floor in a perimeter — not walls, a ring, the stone coming up around Socrates' position and closing inward at a pace that was slow enough to seem manageable and fast enough to not be. The Stone King Gauntlets on Bil's hands glowed faintly as he directed the closing.
Socrates looked at the ring closing around him.
Then at the floor beneath his feet.
He drove his hand into it — not a punch, a press, the palm flat against the frost covered stone. The cold went in through his palm and spread outward through the rock — not freezing it, changing it, the molecular structure of the stone shifting under the Yin energy until the compressed earth of Bil's domain found its foundation different from what it had been when the technique was set.
The ring's closing slowed.
Bil frowned. "What—"
Socrates pushed upward — through the ring's compromised section, his body moving through the gap the altered stone had created — and came out the top of the Absolute Domain before it finished closing.
He landed outside it.
Bil stared at the gap in his formation.
"He altered the stone from the inside." Bil said. "While it was closing."
"I see that." Hestruin said.
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Elder Snyf hadn't moved.
He stood at his point of the pentagon and watched. His artifact — the Glacial Mirror Shield — was in his hand but not raised. He was reading. Building the picture of how Socrates moved, how he used the cold, where the physique ended and the technique began.
Internal Frost required contact.
Snyf was patient.
"He favors the right hand for cold projection." Snyf said quietly to the formation. "His left hand is for close range impact. He moves forward rather than away — he's testing distance management."
"He's testing us." Hestruin said.
"Yes." Snyf said. "And we're letting him."
Hestruin looked at the corridor. At the frost Socrates had left on the floor with every step — not intentional, just the residue of what he was now, the cold that came off him the way heat comes off something very hot.
"Formation — second stage." He said
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SOCRATES isn't a genius ... I never portrayed him as one ... From the very start, Socrates harm himself to kill someone . like he kill someone without thinking twice .. he's vicious... reason why I'm explaining is so that these current scenes won't be strange to you . Socrates suddenly killing .... no Socrates has been killing from day one ... his heart turned cold after the death of his father and he only want to protect his sister....