Kill The Old Ones!

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”They’re starting to piss me off.”

Azure Saint groaned as she plopped on the couch near Verdant Matriarch. Her expression was cloudy, and she seemed a complaint away from blowing up something nearby just to relieve her stress.

”They’re still insisting we somehow capture that secret realm for them?” the Verdant Matriarch guessed.

”Yes.” Azure Saint nodded in frustration. ”They no longer care about the safety of the children. They want profit now. They want to bind those trial grounds to the human civilization and milk them for every bit of worth they have.”

”Are you really surprised, though?” the Verdant Matriarch sighed. ”They’ve always been like that. Didn’t they used to do the same to us? Isn’t this why we preferred to be on the frontlines instead of here?”

Azure Saint cannot refute that because the other party was right.

Disappointed, but not surprised. That’s what Azure Saint really felt about this whole situation.

The worst part is that she completely understands where they’re coming from.

The Sky Archon’s Trial Grounds was truly an immense opportunity for the human race. As one of the Martial Gods, how can she not know the demise of the Sky Archons?

Of course, she knew about them. She knew exactly why they went extinct. She knew who did it and how they did it. She also knew that the Sky Archons were just one of the many, many victims.

She recognized the secret realm the moment she saw it from afar. It’s for this reason that she told everybody not to panic. To be fair, she could’ve done better and also told them that it’s connected to the world system. It just honestly slipped past her mind.

Since she recognized the Sky Archons, she also knew the things they left behind. It was never meant for her or her fellow martial gods; it’s for the fortunate youth who qualified.

She had seen records of the Godly Sky Archon before, and if any of those texts were real, then yes, that person was indeed as strong as the Martial Gods themselves.

But again, that opportunity wasn’t meant for her or her fellow martial gods. It’s not for the public either. It’s only reserved for those with potential.

There is, after all, a good reason why Vordt set up the requirements like that. Although it’s unfinished, it’s well thought out.

More importantly, though, it’s not like she or the Verdant Matriarch hasn’t tried to refine that secret realm. They did. Numerous times since it claimed the geniuses of the human race. They’ve trying again and again but to no avail.

If others could recognize the impact of those trial grounds for humanity, how could she not? Hell, she’s way ahead of them!

But the fact is that she can’t. They—the Martial Gods—can’t even approach that place without risking its collapse.

She tried sending other experts, some people that are weaker than her. She equipped them with means to refine the trial grounds from the outside. She brought them close and protected them well while they tried to refine it, but they failed.

They even suffered a harsh backlash from what they did. At least 90% of the people she sent to do this will be bedridden for the rest of the year. There’s one who wasn’t put in a coma, but he too was nearly gravely injured from that.

So, yes, there was no lack of attempts on their part. Not from the GMU, not from the Imperial Court, either. Both parties have tried and failed.

The worst part is that they told them this. They revealed their failure to the concerned people.

But they didn’t believe them.

They were called liars, instead. The public were up to their conspiracy theories again. Saying that either GMU, the Imperial Court, or both have already claimed the trial grounds, they just didn’t want to open it to the public because they wanted the godly martial arts for themselves.

It was them monopolizing resources again...

A lot of people believed in this. They even dug up past events to support their claim. The more ’proof’ they show, the more believable they became.

It has gotten to the point where even their own personnel are starting to doubt them.

This is the most annoying part. Azure Saint never lied when it comes to important things like this. The proof that others used to support their claims? None of it came from her or her fellow martial gods. They were plots and schemes of the corrupt people who went too far and were exposed.

Try as they may, having a full staff of loyal and honest people was impossible. It’s inevitable that few bad apples will get mixed up and slip past the screening.

The people’s demands are absolute, and politics is a deep and murky swamp with a still surface.

It’s events like these that made her regret ever coming back. If it weren’t for the last shred of love and care for her people, Azure Saint would never bother herself with politics at all. She had so many ways to make better use of her time.

The only saving grace for her is that, at the very least, she knows when the situation was beyond her and when to retreat to stop the inflation of her losses.

The Imperial Court, on the other hand, especially given who runs that place, was a bunch of stubborn fools.

At the very least, she wasn’t the only loser here.

**

Another month passed, and Ren was still thriving in the Sky Archon’s Trial Grounds.

He’s got a good camp and has enough resources to be comfortable for the next year or two. He’s getting enough sleep and rest, and more importantly, he’s flying through his martial practice as if he were attached to a rocket.

In just a few days, he’d reach the mid-Marrow Cleansing Stage, all thanks to 6× training speed, which he could almost guarantee to be permanent for the rest of his stay here.

Beyond that, Ren had been buying the Sky Archon Arts.

He already brought everything priced under thousands of points. Most of them were beginner level, so he understood at first glance, and truly, it wasn’t so different from martial arts at all.

One of the largest differences between a human and a Sky Archon is that the latter has wings, and they involve that part of them in their fighting style.

A lot of Sky Archon Arts involved flying or using wings to generate enough force to basically fly at incredible speeds or send sharp projectiles that could cut through everything in their path. They could even change the attributes of their wings using some of the more advanced Sky Archon Arts.

Though Ren was still unable to fly and cannot completely replicate most of the Sky Archon Arts into martial arts, through his research, Ren was able to discover a way to basically run on air for short bursts.

It wasn’t just limited to that. He learned how to ’double jump,’ ’air hop,’ and ’hover’ through the Sky Archon Arts. All of which he integrated into his movement technique—Flash Steps 1.5.

This gave him so many more mobility options, which, in turn, made him deadlier and more difficult to deal with in this place.

Through the Flash Steps 1.5, he could now evade things that he couldn’t before. Ren became even more elusive and slippery. So long as he has enough chakra to support him, Ren will basically never run out of places he could go.

Flying is for the future; he wasn’t too worried about that just yet. Besides, it’s highly unusual for a Marrow Cleansing martial artist like him to be able to fly anyway.

Of course, Ren wasn’t just limited to mobility. The Sky Archon Arts were great research material for him, even better than the martial arts the clan had.

Well, that comparison wasn’t fair, but still...

Unlike humans, the Sky Archons aren’t too fond of weapons. They don’t pursue the ’path of arms.’ Sky archons are more in tune and in sync with their bodies. Weapon arts are just a means to an end for them—just another way to express how much of their physical power they could control at once and how well they could.

The majority of young Sky Archons wouldn’t even touch any metal with a pointy end before they’re able to fly above all the cloud layers of their world.

Sky Archons lived on mountain tops, and even the smallest mountain on their world could easily tower over the tallest mountain in the human world.

Some of the stronger Sky Archons lived on the clouds. There were nine layers of clouds above the mountaintop where they were born, and it’s a Sky Archon’s rite of passage to fly through those nine layers of clouds to witness the sight beyond.

Only then will they be considered adults.

One could only imagine how difficult that would be. That’s not just about flight anymore. It’s discipline and utter refinement of one’s physique beyond normal means.

That’s why the discipline that the Sky Archons left on this store was of great value to Ren.

He’s just missing the wings. The rest were the same.