Chapter 53: Silenced Red Silence

Chapter 53: Silenced Red Silence

Across the antechamber, Valerius watched Drask’s lifeless body slump in Rhain’s grip.

Drask. His absolute greatest protector.

Dead. Slaughtered like a helpless chicken.

His legs trembled uncontrollably.

There was no sign of the previous arrogant genius anymore

Standing right beside him, Vespera’s face had drained of all color.

Byron was dead. Drask was dead.

They had lost.

Her only priority now was keeping Dorian’s son alive.

"Young Master, we have to leave! Now!" Vespera grabbed Valerius’s arm and darted toward the exit.

But before she could even take three steps.

Clang!

A heavy broadsword slammed into the stone floor, cutting off their escape route.

Roderick let out a mocking laugh.

"In such a hurry to leave, Vespera?" Roderick sneered, "Don’t worry, I will send you on your way right now!"

He gripped his hilt and swung the massive blade directly at her.

"Roderick, you vile dog!" Vespera screamed in panic, hastily raising her sword to block the heavy strike.

Meanwhile, Vargas forcefully ripped his dagger free from Drask’s spine.

He rapidly stepped backward, putting some distance between himself and Rhain.

Looking at the lifeless corpse of the Drask he had just murdered, Vargas’s scarred face did not show a single shred of remorse or guilt.

But beneath that ruthless exterior, anger and fear was gnawing his heart.

For the first time in decades, the infamous Red Silence felt the shadow of his own death looming directly over him.

"You cowardly bastard!" Vargas roared, trying to use his fury to forcefully suppress his trembling instincts.

He pointed his dripping red dagger straight at Rhain.

"Stop hiding behind cheap tricks! If you have the guts, fight me directly! Face to face!"

The corners of Rhain’s lips slowly curled up.

"Alright."

He casually tossed Drask’s corpse to the side like a piece of discarded trash.

"Let’s do it. Face to face."

The casual, unbothered tone was like a bucket of burning oil poured directly onto Vargas’s raging humiliation.

"You asked for it!"

Vargas let out a guttural roar.

He bit down savagely on his own tongue.

Dark, viscous blood filled his mouth, and he swallowed it back down.

His veins bulged grotesquely across his scarred face and neck, turning a deep, horrifying shade of blackish-red.

The blood-red aura surrounding Vargas exploded.

It broke past the Essence Condensation Realm.

Half a step into the Spirit Manifestation Realm!

Even Roderick and Vespera, clashing in the distance could feel the tension in the air.

Vargas practiced a rare grade martial art - ’Blood Resurgence Art.’

It was a forbidden blood art he had refined over decades of slaughter, forged in the blood of hundreds of victims.

By burning his own lifeblood as fuel, he could temporarily advance his cultivation.

But the cost was severe. Every minute he maintained this state shaved an year off his natural lifespan.

But none of that mattered now.

If he didn’t kill Rhain, he would never leave this palace alive.

"Die!"

Vargas’s voice no longer sounded human, but like the collective shriek of a thousand vengeful ghosts.

He kicked off the ground.

He arrived directly in front of Rhain’s face.

Just as Vargas closed the final few inches, Rhain took a heavy step forward.

He raised his right hand.

Dark essence compressed around his knuckles, forming an infinitesimally small point of pure destruction.

Void Fist!

He punched forward, meeting the blood-red dagger head-on.

A shockwave of essence swept through the vast antechamber.

Those who were in the ten metre radius were violently blasted off.

Bang!

In the center of the explosion, two figures were pushed apart.

Rhain’s body slid backward, stopping five paces away.

He slowly lowered his right arm.

On the other side...

Vargas was launched backward like a fired cannonball, skidding for more than twelve steps before he finally got to stabilize his stance.

A thin rivulet of dark blood trickled from the corner of his scarred lips.

The Void Fist’s compressed essence had fractured his left rib.

"Impossible..." Vargas rasped, staring at the completely unharmed Rhain, "I used the Blood Resurgence Art... I touched the Spirit Manifestation threshold..."

"Yeah, I can feel it in my shoulders." Rhain rolled his shoulders once, loosening the faint tension in his joints.

Vargas’s scarred face twisted with feral rage.

"Shut Up!"

He exploded forward again.

His dagger carved a frenzied arc through the air, leaving a trail of crimson.

Shadow Flicker Step.

He dissolved into a smear of darkness, reappearing at Vargas’s left flank.

Vargas whipped his dagger around with inhuman speed, the blade whistling as it sliced toward Rhain’s throat.

Rhain tilted his head two inches to the right.

The blood-red edge passed close enough to shave the air from his cheek.

In the same motion, Rhain drove his knee upward into Vargas’s already fractured ribs.

CRACK.

The broken bones ground against each other. Vargas’s body jackknifed, a spray of blood erupting from his mouth.

But his survival instincts were razor-sharp.

Even as his body folded, his left hand lashed out in a vicious, underhanded slash aimed at Rhain’s stomach.

Rhain caught the wrist.

He twisted it violently, forcing the dagger’s trajectory away from his body, and simultaneously delivered a devastating elbow strike directly into the bridge of Vargas’s nose.

CRUNCH.

Cartilage shattered.

Vargas’s head snapped backward, and for a brief, terrifying instant, his dead eyes rolled up into his skull.

But he didn’t fall.

The Blood Resurgence Art pumped dark, corrupted vitality through his veins, forcibly keeping his battered body upright and functional.

Vargas staggered, shaking his head vigorously to clear the black spots dancing across his vision.

Blood streamed freely from his ruined nose, making his ugly face even uglier.

"You... won’t... kill me... that easily..." Vargas snarled as he launched forward again.

Swoosh! Swoosh! Swoosh!

The blood-red dagger turned into a storm of crimson light, seeking to shred Rhain into a thousand pieces.

Rhain read every single one of them.

The Eyes of Truth tracked the trajectory of each slash before Vargas’s muscles had even finished contracting.

Every time Vargas overextended, Rhain mercilessly retaliated.

BANG!

A fist wrapped in dark essence slammed into Vargas’s ribs.

CRACK!

An elbow smashed brutally into his jaw.

Rhain utterly dominated the exchange.

He was treating the infamous Red Silence like a living sandbag.

However, the Blood Resurgence Art was indeed a formidable forbidden technique.

The thick, viscous blood aura constantly regenerated, cushioning the blunt force and barely keeping Vargas alive.

Rhain couldn’t kill him in a single strike, but every devastating blow further shattered Vargas’s internal organs.

"Die! Die! DIE!"

Due to intense pain, and the effects of the Blood Resurgence Art, Vargas was slowly losing his mind.

Vargas swung his dagger in a sweeping arc.

Rhain leaned backward, the tip of the blade tracing a harmless red line through the empty air an inch from his chest.

Just as Vargas was trying to retract his overextended arm, Rhain swiftly seized it.

He locked Vargas’s wrist in a grip, stepped inside his guard, and reversed the grip.

Squelch!

The very same blood-red dagger Vargas had used to slaughter countless innocent lives over the decades was now inserted inside his own heart.

"GAAAHK—!"

Vargas shrieked like a dying beast.

Rhain casually released the hilt and took a half-step back.

Vargas’s strength completely gave out, and he collapsed heavily onto his back, blood rapidly pooling beneath him on the floor.

He lay on his back, staring with widened eyes at the ornate golden ceiling of the ancient palace.

He tried to move his arms. They wouldn’t respond.

He tried to circulate his essence. It was now empty.

The feared Red Silence of Greymist Town lay in a spreading pool of his own blood, utterly helpless.

Slow, measured footsteps echoed across the stone floor.

Rhain’s indiffrent face came into his view, as he stared at his dying self.

Vargas stared back at him.

There was no anger or defiance anymore.

What remained was just disbelief.

"Forty... years..." Vargas wheezed, each word bubbling through the blood filling his throat. "Forty years... I terrorized this region. I slaughtered... hundreds. I survived... the pursuit of Spirit Manifestation experts... fled across... three provinces... and rebuilt myself from nothing..."

A bitter, gurgling laugh escaped his mangled lips.

"And I die... here... at the hands of a boy... who hasn’t even stepped into... the Condensation Realm..."

Rhain stood over him, his towering shadow completely enveloping Vargas’s dying, scarred face.

He looked down with the exact same chilling indifference one would show a dead insect.

Then he spoke.

"I will have mercy on you, and end your pathetic life."

He slowly raised his heavy boot, hovering it directly over the hilt of the dagger protruding from Vargas’s shattered chest.

"Be a good person in your next life."

Crunch.

Rhain ruthlessly stomped his boot down.

He drove the blade completely through Vargas’s heart.

Vargas’s body violently convulsed for the last time, and then it stopped moving completely.

The Red Silence of Greymist Town breathed his last, and was silent forever.