Chapter 138 — Not me
.
He was standing in the air above the battlefield.
Not flying — standing, the cultivation that had crystallized during approximately a year of unconscious recovery having settled into something that expressed itself in the specific way of power that had stopped needing to announce itself because it was simply present.
The golden jade floated above him — turning slowly, its light falling across the battlefield in a warm even wash that made no distinction between the sides it illuminated. His robe was golden — not dyed or sewn but constructed from condensed spiritual energy, his cultivation expressing itself outward into fabric and light. His white hair moved in the morning air without wind to move it.
He looked down at the battlefield.
At the formations. At the bodies on the ground that the fighting had already produced. At the Northern Gladiator giving ground below him with a cracked Dantian and an earth sword and everything he had committed because a boy had gone into the underworld and come back with something worth protecting.
At Judas — golden fan in hand, his cultivation blazing at the edge of a Master Realm exchange, his eyes finding Socrates in the air above and doing something they didn't usually do.
Widening.
'This—' Judas processed the aura pressing down from above — reading the cultivation signature the way he read everything, quickly and accurately. 'Peak stage Master Realm.' His fan lowered slightly. 'Nine months of recuperating and he's at peak stage Master Realm.' He looked at the battlefield. At the Imperial alliance. At everything arrayed against the side he was on.
And felt something that wasn't quite relief but lived in the same neighborhood.
'This MF.' He thought. And smiled behind his fan. 'That same months.. I managed to breakthrough to the Master realm but there's still a lot of gap between us.'
Kamira was at the edge of the formation.
She felt the aura before she saw him — the cold quality of it, the specific Yin temperature that she had last felt in the underworld standing in the inner city's snow. She looked up.
White hair. Blue eyes. The jade floating above him like it had always been there.
She looked at him for a long moment.
At the cultivation pressing outward from his body — peak stage Master Realm, the gap between where he was and where she was real and significant and growing in a direction that showed no sign of stopping.
'He won't look at me the same way anymore.' The thought arrived before she could decide whether to have it. 'He's not—' she stopped the thought. Pressed her lips together. Turned back to the formation she was supposed to be holding.
'at my level... He's gone far..'
---
The Imperial family's Grandmaster looked up at the figure in the air.
At the jade.
At the golden robe and the white hair and the aura that pressed against his own cultivation from above with the specific quality of something that hadn't been there before and was undeniably there now.
"Socrates Trueblood." He said. Identifying. Confirming.
"Hand over the Imperial token." He said it clearly — the voice of someone who had been making statements in this register for decades and expected them to land with the appropriate weight. "Hand it over and I'll spare you and your clan."
The battlefield had gone almost completely quiet.
Socrates looked down at him.
His blue eyes found the Grandmaster across the distance between them and held him there — not with hostility, with the specific quality of attention that belongs to someone who has already processed the situation and arrived at their position and is simply looking at what's in front of them.
"You should stop this now." Socrates said. "And I might pardon you."
The Grandmaster stared at him.
"Pardon." He said. The word arriving in his mouth like something unexpected. "You—" He looked at the figure in the air. At the peak stage Master Realm cultivation. At the jade. At the golden robe. "A little boy is going to pardon me."
"I'm giving you the opportunity." Socrates said. "Peak stage or not — you're still Master Realm. I'm Grandmaster. I'll kill you, your family, and everyone standing behind you."
The air on the battlefield changed.
"Oh." Socrates said.
His voice dropped.
"You dare." He said. Not loudly. The specific quiet of something that has stopped managing itself. "You dare threaten my family." His eyes found the formation below — the Trueblood clan members, the Guild disciples, the people who had chosen his side and were bleeding for it. "My friends."
"You dare."
He grabbed the jade.
The sky darkened.
Not clouds — the light itself changing quality, the morning going somewhere else, what replaced it carrying the deep gold of the jade's authority expressed at full output for the first time since it had recognized its holder. The darkness spread across the battlefield in a silence that had nothing peaceful about it.
Then it split.
From the split — silhouettes. Falling from the space above the darkness in coordinated formation, the specific coordination of things that had been waiting for exactly this call and had been ready since before the call came. Golden armor. Golden weapons. The quality of their presence pressing against the battlefield air with the weight of a hundred Master Realm cultivators arriving simultaneously.
The Golden Knights.
They arranged themselves in the air above the battlefield in perfect formation — a hundred of them, first stage Master Realm, the jade's authority expressed in bodies built from the same ancient power that had made the token what it was.
The Imperial family's Grandmaster looked at them.
His cultivation read them. Processed what they were. His jaw tightened.
"You've learned the jade's secret." He said.
"HAHAHA—" The Northern Gladiator's laugh came from below — full, genuine, the laugh of a man watching a variable he had gambled on express itself exactly as he had hoped it would. He knew. Lady Achillia had told him during the two years while Socrates recovered — the jade's function, its history, the authority it contained. He had watched the boy absorb the knowledge while his body rebuilt itself.
"Very good boy." He said.
The Grandmaster looked at the knights. Then at Socrates.
"Master Realm knights." He said — and his voice recovered some of what it had lost. "I can kill a hundred first stage Masters. It will take time but the outcome—"
"They're not your opponents." Socrates said.
The Grandmaster stopped.
"The knights maintain order." Socrates said. "They're not for you."
He pointed at himself.
"Your opponent is him."
"You?" The Grandmaster laughed out loud but then something came out of Socrates....