Rivers of the Night - Chapter 651
Chapter 651: Clouds
They couldn’t believe what they were seeing. It wasn’t because of the dozenth time Theron had been completely frozen, only to break free. Instead, it was because clouds were accumulating again…
Tribulation Clouds.
The roof of the Pavilion creaked, crumbled, and then shattered completely.
The Pavilion was nothing more than a canopy held up by pillars to protect the courtyard. Its structure itself had little to do with the function of the region.
Instead, the core of it all was deep underground—a Vein of Ice and Soul Mana so flourishing that it could attack the very soul directly.
The moment this canopy shattered, the Tribulation Clouds above had a straight line of sight right to Theron.
For the first time since his first Tribulation, Theron looked up with some focus. His eyes were no longer glazed over, nor were they suppressing a hidden fury. They were as fiery as they had ever been, flickering with hints of violet as his hair danced in the wild winds.
He could feel the roaring of his bloodline responding to the vein beneath him.
But so was the Tribulation.
Orin and the other disciples hurried to rush back, their expressions changing. Not a single one of them wanted to be in the range of this Tribulation.
Any one of them with the slightest bit of intelligence could tell what was happening, though not why it was happening.
They knew that Theron’s Tribulation was actually registering all the trapped souls of their former disciple brothers and sisters as individual entities and responding in kind.
The skies darkened, black cumulonimbus clouds beginning to swirl like cyclones as their cores flashed with golden lightning.
The lightning twisted in relation to one another, intertwining, growing thicker and thicker until they formed the open maw of a roaring beast.
At the bottom of it all, even separated from the sky by countless kilometers, Theron looked so… small. He was like an ant beneath the rising foot of an elephant, a minor breeze crashing against a brick wall.
The maw of the lightning opened wide, sparking outward with light and lining the rising tide of horns that pierced through the skies.
A Dragon took shape—and in a flash, it vanished.
BOOM.
In one moment, it was in the skies. In the next, it had swallowed Theron whole, its body snaking across the distance with speed that could be called little other than teleportation.
The ground shook, and even the Elders covered their eyes with their forearms. The brightness threatened to burn away their pupils and irises, the power threatening to peel them off the ground and send them flying into the distance.
It was a devastating strike that ended as quickly as it began.
The world fell into an eerie silence.
The Heart Pavilion that had been the core of their Sect for so very long was little more than a hole in the ground. But at that moment, before things could even settle down, waves of Ice Mana began to radiate out.
Lyrah’s eyes opened wide. “RETREAT. NOW!”
She waved a sleeve and large swaths of disciples were blown back. Many had their ribs broken and inner organs stirred, but there was no time for softer methods.
If they stayed here, they would all freeze to ice.
The Pavilion was completely destroyed, revealing the vein beneath. There was no one in the Sect other than the Matriarch who could withstand something like that directly.
As everyone was rushing back, they barely registered the fact that there was a youth standing in the midst of it all.
Theron’s robes were tattered, his flesh covered in injuries once more. He stood there with his spear in his hand, his vulnerable parts barely covered by torn rags.
He was still looking up into the clouds as they circled. As though a predator lurking around its prey, it took its time… and then lightning began to spark once again.
One figure after another descended from the skies, clad in solidified lightning armor.
Theron’s irises only became more and more violet.
He hadn’t fought to vent out this frustration yet. He had so much anger and rage in his chest, and yet the Humanoid Ice Spirit Beast had been so pathetically stupid and inept that it couldn’t even begin to give him a battle.
This… this was what he needed.
The image of his little sister’s broken neck, her body limply hanging in the air, filled him with such an irrational amount of rage it made him deathly calm.
It was all because of him. It was because he thought things could be solved with peace, with diplomacy, with brains alone.
What had his brains gotten him?
No parents. No little sister. No wife. No place to call home.
Just one continuous streak of enemies after another. His life didn’t have a single moment of peace. This brain of his couldn’t even buy him that.
“Just die.”
Theron’s voice carried not the slightest hint of gentleness it had before. It was gruff, as though someone had clawed his throat clean of its flesh lining.
When he took a step, the very air itself trembled, and when he thrust, the skies were split in two.
[Shadow Extend] seemed to cast blackness over the world, a thrumming might shattering everything in its path, sundering the clouds and ripping the Mandate of the Heavens apart.
Theron’s spear seemed to be its own response to the Heavens—its own roaring dragon and open maw, its own furious assault—so fast it seemed to teleport across time and space.
The Tribulation Clouds shook and then shattered.
**
A pair of eyes snapped open.
In the depths of the Hall of Ice and Heart, a woman who could only be called the Goddess of a Nation sat in silence. Her body was nude, sitting peacefully in a pool of water so cold it could freeze any Mana it came into contact with. And yet, it glided across her amber skin as though it were normal dew.
The Matriarch of the Hall of Ice and Heart looked up into the skies.