Chapter 156 - The Aura and Force of a Combat Artist

Cassius had originally wanted to rest for a day, but the representatives from the northern Covert Martial Arts world had a different idea in mind. As soon as everyone arrived at Cassius's house in the suburbs, they quickly regrouped and followed him to a small path near the Anta Mountains. They also brought along an unusually heavy armored carriage with various weapon marks scarring its metallic surface.

Cassius didn't need to be the one to personally handle it this time; two burly men from the northern Covert Martial Arts world took on the task of pulling the carriage. Despite its tremendous weight, it posed no difficulty for these two representatives.

Somehow, they seemed to have an easier time pulling it than the two robust black horses last time, as they kept pace with the group effortlessly, barely breaking a sweat.

A pugilist who had reached the major culmination stage could create an autonomous cycle of accelerated blood flow through the three nodes in their body. This allowed them to generate abundant strength continuously, and their stamina would multiply several times over. If this were what the major culmination stage offered, the next realms would surely be even more extraordinary.

The wheels rumbled as the dark iron carriage was pushed into a desolate wilderness. Weeds and scattered rocks surrounded them, a small, nearly overgrown path cutting through.

A silver moon hung high in the sky, with a few wisps of clouds drifting between the stars. A thin, white veil of moonlight spread over the earth.

"Stop. We're here," Cassius abruptly announced. The two elders from the northern Covert Martial Arts sects who had been pulling the carriage also came to a halt, and everyone turned to look at Cassius.

"Have we arrived?" Mi An, still in a gentleman's attire, looked on with a faintly curious expression on his gaunt face.

"Yes, the anchor point I mentioned earlier is right here." Cassius reached out and grasped an old bronze pillar nearby, its surface marred by the wear and tear of time and weather.

Mi An gazed deeply at the bronze pillar, waiting for Cassius's next move. He was still quite interested in this mysterious manor that had operated in a circle separate from the Covert Martial Arts circle. Whatever information Mi An had all came from Cassius.

"Distribute these pills." Cassius took out a bottle from his pocket and poured out several black pills. These were the fake-death elixirs he had found in the ruins of Ao Yin.

Duomo took one, sniffing it. It didn't smell too bad, just the faint scent of decay, as if it had been stored for a long, long time. He clicked his tongue and looked at the others.

The old man with the goatee, Hardy, immediately swallowed his pill, smacking his lips a few times. "No poison."

His declaration reassured everyone else as they then took their pills.

Hardy was once the sect master of the Winged Serpent Fist sect in the northern Covert Martial Arts community. After stepping down, he became fervently interested in herbal medicine and health, becoming quite knowledgeable in pharmacology. If he said there was no poison, then there was definitely no issue.

Seeing everyone else take their pills, Duomo also swallowed his. A salty, sour taste immediately spread in his mouth, like eating a dried sour plum.

Once everyone had taken the pills, Cassius nodded. He waited three more minutes before pulling out a small bell. With a flick of his right hand, he began shaking it.

The bell made no sound, but the once clear and vast night sky suddenly darkened. It was as if a large cloud had appeared out of nowhere, gathering thickly and blocking out the starlight and moonlight.

In the blink of an eye, the sky above was covered with clouds. A light drizzle began to fall.

Pop.

A few of them had come prepared with black umbrellas. Mi An lowered his head slightly, narrowing his eyes. The narrow, weed-filled path had somehow expanded into a wide, flat road as if the weeds and rocks on either side had parted on their own. An eerie and mysterious feeling arose within him.

Ding... Ding... Ding...

Sound began emitting out of the once silent bell in Cassius's hand.

In the distance, at the edge of their sight, a carriage was moving swiftly toward them, before finally coming to a stop beside the slender bronze pillar.

Mi An watched coldly from the side, his aura hadn't detected any of the changes that had just occurred. Everything had happened without a sound, the transition completed in an instant, pulling them from the original world into another Rainy World. He stretched out a hand slowly, letting a few drops of rain fall into his palm.

Mi An quickly retracted his hand. "This rain is strange. There's a cold aura trying to penetrate under the skin."

Upon hearing this, the others began to test it for themselves. Most of them came to the same conclusion as Mi An, though Duomo looked puzzled. From the side, Cassius narrowed his eyes.

"Why can't I feel it?" Duomo shook the water from his hand.

"You haven't reached the level of a combat artist yet, so you can't use your own aura to envelop your hand," Mi An said, pausing slightly. "This rain coming down from the sky is dangerous. Prolonged exposure might have some serious effects on a person's mental state, like amplifying negative emotions. A few times might not do much harm, but if it happens for a long period of time... Well, it's best to avoid it."

The other Covert Martial Arts experts nodded in agreement.

Cassius felt his heart jolt. What shocked him wasn't the fact that he'd been rained on several times, but rather the method by which the Baptism Chapel granted Soul Power! The continuous drizzle of black rain in that private room... Could it be that the rainwater not only contained the beneficial Soul Power but also carried a cold aura that could make people go mad?

So, Black Rain Manor had no good intentions after all. It seemed that every path the Hellsings would take would have been tampered with.

Cassius had originally believed that Soul Power carried the fewest side effects among all the paths, but now he had to put that assumption under scrutiny!

He stood there, quickly recalling his recent behavior. His temper had seemed more volatile as of late; he was more bloodthirsty toward his enemies, and easily provoked by the most minor things. And his methods of killing had grown increasingly brutal. His choices had oscillated between crushing his enemy’s head or tearing them in half.

So this was the reason! Damn that Black Rain Manor! They had twisted his once gentle and cheerful personality into this. Their actions were truly unforgivable!

Cassius immediately shared his experience.

Mi An shook his head and comforted him. "Even if you've been affected, it doesn't matter. As long as you can break through to the level of a combat artist, all the side effects will naturally disappear. The force of one's aura will solidify and strengthen the spirit."

Cassius listened intently. Half a minute later, a loud bang came from the back of the carriage.

Mi An and Cassius turned to look, only to see that the bald, muscular sect master from the Raging Sea Sect, Xuan Jing, was pulling with his iron-like black arms, his muscles bulging. He seemed to be wrestling with the stationary carriage.

"It's useless, Mr. Xuan Jing. This carriage is bound by certain rules," Cassius began, but his words were suddenly cut off.

The black carriage shook violently, the cast iron wheels being dragged back half a meter by a tremendous force. The ground behind the carriage cracked, the surface of the solid black soil spreading out in a web of spider-like fissures.

It's not a simple setup. The aura of the carriage is connected to the entire ground, and some mysterious force is at work...

Xuan Jing dusted off his hands and exchanged looks with the other northern Covert Martial Arts elders, a silent understanding passing between them.

On the grass, Cassius held back the second half of his sentence. The level beyond pugilism, a combat artist, seemed to involve mysterious mental aspects. It was no wonder these northern Covert Martial Arts experts could detect things that Cassius could not.

Although envious, Casius wasn’t discouraged. He firmly believed that he, too, could reach the combat expert level, its many wonders simply waiting for him to experience them personally.

Cassius collected his thoughts once more and immediately began making arrangements.

Just like what he did before when they had smuggled themselves into the Rainy World, he attached the armored carriage to the back of the black carriage and had all the northern Covert Martial Arts experts enter the carriage, while he himself boarded the black carriage.

As the vehicle moved along the road, it gradually accelerated, passing through various bizarre scenes: a hill half-charred and half-covered in white flowers; windmills with human arms instead of blades; a group of worshippers dancing around a tree struck by lightning and fire; people devouring each other...

𝒇𝒓𝒆𝒆𝙬𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝒎

Strange and twisted sights appeared before everyone’s eyes. They included elements of occultism, spirit and flesh, death and life, ancient decay, vivid madness—like a series of absurd dreams without any discernible pattern.

As Cassius watched these scenes, he couldn't help but recall what Mi An had said about the rain affecting one's mental state. Were these surreal scenes deliberately designed to work with the rain, creating multiple mental shocks that made it hard to distinguish between dream and reality, confusing the mind, seducing the heart, and drawing out the darkness within?

He remembered the first time he entered the Rainy World and how he instinctively sensed something was wrong. At that time, Cassius had been very vigilant, quickly shaking off the disorientation caused by the psychological darkness.

Half an hour later, the carriage arrived near the platform. This time, the armored carriage didn't face any attacks, clearly indicating that the fake-death pills had done its job.

The group quickly disembarked, turning to look at a narrow road on the right. Sparse trees lined both sides, and they could faintly see the black, moss-covered walls of Black Rain Manor in the distance. If they tilted their heads slightly, they could see the ancient-style spires and domes. The roof tiles glistened wetly in the rain.

The surrounding light was dim, the night and rain adding to the gloom. If Cassius and his group hadn't been trained in Covert Martial Arts which granted them extraordinary vision, they wouldn't have been able to see the road five meters ahead.

"Is that Black Rain Manor?" Mi An looked up into the distance, his expression shifting slightly.

"Yes, the entire manor is quite large, but only a portion of it is safe for marked-ones to live in. The rest of the area is quite mysterious, with occasional dangerous and eerie phenomena," Cassius reiterated the information about the manor.

Mi An nodded slightly. "Let's tread cautiously."

With that, the group pushed the armored carriage along the path and toward the gates of Black Rain Manor. A few minutes later, the wheels finally rolled onto a gray-white stone road.

At night, the street was empty with no marked-ones in sight. Only the sound of rain splashing in the cracks between the street bricks could be heard. Suddenly, Duomo was walking ahead, stopped in his tracks. "Did you hear that? Someone is singing. It’s like they're right beside me!"

The others paused slightly, then shook their heads. None of them heard the supposed singing, as if only Duomo had been blessed with it. Mi An glanced at Cassius, who nodded.

"Don't worry, just describe what you heard."

Duomo's eyes were somewhat dazed. "It's a melodious, sorrowful female voice singing, but I can't make out the lyrics. It’s right beside me, like an invisible ghost, sometimes running ahead, sometimes behind. Near and far..." Duomo turned his head. "There it is again! I hear her singing again; it's very close this time."

Whoosh!!!

Suddenly, Mi An struck, his skinny right hand slicing through the air like a roaring black battle axe as it cut into the wall.

Clang!

The thick, solid wall was sliced diagonally as if slashed by a sharp sword. The wall slid and collapsed, revealing an alley on the other side, where a woman in white stood motionless. A breeze blew past, and the upper half of her body fell, smashing into the ground, and turning into a cloud of black mist.

The power of that hand strike!

Cassius was shocked. An outsider would have claimed to have witnessed a spectacle, but those in the know perceived the deeper skill behind that action. As a fellow expert in Covert Martial Arts, he could tell just how ferocious and concentrated Mi An's power had been in that strike. If that had hit him...

Beside him, Mi An withdrew his arm and gently patted Duomo's shoulder. "Can you still hear the woman’s voice?"

Duomo shook his head.

"Good. Let's keep moving."

Without further delay, the group continued toward the Bolt Sect.

The next day, at the Bolt Sect base, Jiri left the dining hall, carrying a bundle of food wrapped in black cloth. As he walked through the wide corridors, he greeted everyone he met.

The night before, Jiri had helped Darkblade welcome Cassius and his group. With such a large number of them, they had decided to use the small, unused building two hundred meters outside the Bolt Sect base as their accommodations. Jiri was currently on his way to deliver breakfast to them.

Opening the door and raising his umbrella, he saw someone walking down the road. Jiri turned to go the other way. A few seconds later, a man with a mohawk and a scarred face pounded on the Bolt Sect's door, the mark of the Werebeast Sect on the back of his hand.

Meanwhile, Jiri walked under his umbrella to a gray two-story building. He knocked gently on the door.

"Who is it?" came Cassius's voice from inside.

"Twilight, it's me, Jiri."

The door clicked open, and Cassius gazed down at Jiri's delicate face before nodding and pulling the door wide. "Come in."

Jiri closed his umbrella and stepped inside. He glanced around the room and felt a little intimidated.

To his left, two muscular middle-aged men with bulging veins were arm wrestling, the table underneath them groaning. On another side of the room, an old man sat cross-legged on the floor, practicing his skills. A white mist enveloped him, and with each breath, vortexes swirled within the mist.

Near the wall, another old man with a white beard was doing push-ups on a single finger, his body moving up and down effortlessly. Between the two old men, a one-eyed man repeatedly slashed at the air with an invisible sword. With each swing, a sharp whistle echoed through the room.

Behind Cassius, two shirtless, muscular men in the living room were punching each other with heavy, drum-like thuds. Heavy footsteps could be heard coming from upstairs, as if several elephants were running across the ceiling.

"..." Jiri took a deep breath and was about to speak when a hand suddenly shoved him aside. The scar-faced man with the mohawk barged in, his expression arrogant.

"Who the fuck is this so-called 'Twilight'? Tell him to get out here!"