Chapter 411: The Hunt Continues

Liam pursued the two fleeing assassins through the sky, maintaining a precise distance that kept them perpetually within his sight but never quite catching them.It was deliberate stalking, the patient method of a predator who knew his prey had nowhere to go and that no sanctuary that could protect them from what was coming.

The assassins flew at their maximum speed, their movement techniques burning through spiritual energy at an unsustainable rate. They wove through the air in desperate patterns, employing every evasion tactic they’d learned through years of assassination work.

None of it mattered.

No matter which technique they activated, no matter how much spiritual energy they poured into their desperate flight, Liam remained exactly where he wanted to be.

The psychological effect was devastating. The assassins could feel him back there, his presence like a weight pressing against their spiritual senses. Every glance over their shoulders confirmed the nightmare, that he was still there, chasing after them with ease while they burned through their reserves in frantic desperation.

After more than an hour of this torture, with Blackstone City long behind them and another small city passed in a blur, frustration finally overwhelmed their fear. They’d crossed into the territory of a major city now, its walls and towers visible on the horizon, and still the Mad Demon God maintained his relentless pursuit.

The assassins exchanged a glance, an entire conversation compressed into a single look. They nodded in silent agreement and split, each veering sharply in opposite directions with enough force that spiritual energy flared visibly in their wakes.

Liam’s smile widened as he watched them separate. For more than an hour, he’d followed patiently, curious to see if they would simply lead him directly to their headquarters like frightened rabbits running home. Apparently, they’d retained enough presence of mind to avoid that particular mistake.

Not that it would save them.

He paused in mid-air, hovering effortlessly as his gaze tracked both fleeing figures. Which one to follow? The choice mattered less than they probably hoped. One would die now. The other would die shortly after, once Liam extracted the headquarters’ location from whichever unfortunate soul he caught first.

After a moment of casual contemplation, he randomly selected the assassin fleeing northwest and adjusted his trajectory to pursue.

The assassin heading southeast felt Liam’s presence shift away from him and nearly sobbed with relief. His gambit had worked. His companion had drawn the monster’s attention, buying him precious time.

He poured every remaining drop of spiritual energy into his movement technique, pushing him beyond his limit.

He had to reach headquarters. Had to warn them. The Devouring Petal Pavilion needed to know that the Mad Demon God wasn’t just strong—he was a catastrophe given human form, something that operated on a completely different level than anything their intelligence reports had suggested.

The assassin Liam had chosen to pursue felt a similar wave of relief mixed with grim determination. He and his companion had communicated through a whisperless technique during their flight, formulating this exact plan. One would lure the monster away. The other would escape to warn headquarters.

He’d drawn the short straw, but he accepted his role without hesitation. His death would have meaning if his companion escaped. The organization would be warned. They would prepare. Perhaps they would even avenge him.

The thought brought a bitter smile to his face.

His first companion’s death had taught him exactly what kind of power the Mad Demon God wielded. There would be no victory here, no heroic last stand that turned the tide. But he could buy time. He could make his death serve a purpose.

Once he’d opened enough distance from his fleeing companion—enough to ensure the other man’s escape regardless of what happened next—the assassin stopped running. He turned in mid-air, his movement technique dissipating as he drew his sword from spatial storage with a flourish that would have looked impressive under different circumstances.

"Come then!" he shouted, his voice carrying across the distance. "Let’s end this like warriors instead of prey fleeing from a predator!"

Liam’s smile never wavered and he didn’t bother with a response. Words served no purpose here. Instead, he simply moved.

The distance between them, vanished in an instant, his fist was already mid-swing, aimed directly at the assassin’s chest with devastating precision.

The assassin’s eyes widened in shock. He’d known the Mad Demon God was fast, had watched his companion die while unable to even mount a defense, but seeing that kind of speed and experiencing it were entirely different things.

His sword came up reflexively, spiritual energy flooding the blade as he attempted to parry. The masterwork weapon met Liam’s fist and for a fraction of a heartbeat, then shattered like glass struck by a hammer, fragments of metal and spiritual energy exploding outward as Liam’s fist continued through the blade’s remnants and connected with the assassin’s chest.

The impact launched him downward like a stone from a catapult. He hurtled toward the ground below, his body spinning helplessly, the air ripped from his lungs by the force of the blow. Buildings rushed up to meet him, rooftops that would break his body if he hit them at this speed, and he couldn’t even activate a movement technique to slow himself, as the impact had disrupted his spiritual energy circulation completely.

But he never reached the ground.

Liam appeared beneath him with that same impossible speed, positioned perfectly to intercept his falling trajectory. Another punch, this one angled upward, caught him in the small of the back and reversed his momentum entirely.

The assassin shot back up into the sky like a ball rebounding from a wall, his spine screaming in agony where Liam’s fist had connected. Blood filled his mouth, some of it from internal injuries, some from where he’d bitten through his tongue during the first impact.

Before he could even process what was happening, before his body could decide whether it was falling or rising, Liam was there again. This time the hand that caught him closed around his throat, fingers tightening with inexorable force as Liam’s flight brought them both to a stable hover several hundred meters above the city.

The assassin hung limply in Liam’s grip, his body broken in multiple places, his spiritual energy scattered and chaotic. He could feel the pressure on his windpipe, just enough to make breathing difficult but not impossible. Liam wanted him conscious. Wanted him able to answer questions.

"Where is your headquarters located?" Liam asked with a causal tone.

The assassin coughed, blood spattering from his lips to trail down his chin. When he opened his mouth, his voice came out wet and ragged. "Go... to hell."

Liam’s expression didn’t change. "Wrong answer."

The assassin’s face twisted into something between a grimace and a smile. His hands, which had been hanging uselessly at his sides, suddenly moved to press against his own chest. "See you there."

Spiritual energy flooded inward, rushing toward his dantian in a pattern Liam recognized immediately. Core detonation.

Under normal circumstances, it would have been a legitimate threat. A Golden Core detonation released enough energy to level entire city blocks, the equivalent of a small bomb packed with decades of accumulated spiritual power.

But these weren’t normal circumstances.

Liam said nothing. He simply extended his telekinetic sense around the assassin’s body, creating an invisible sphere of force that sealed the man inside like a butterfly in amber.

And the assassin’s body exploded, disintegrating into a cloud of blood, bone fragments, and scattered spiritual energy that would have painted the sky red and rained destruction on the city below.

Except none of it escaped the telekinetic sphere.

Liam held the explosion contained like a star captured in a bottle, all that devastating force compressed into a space no larger than a man. The sphere’s surface rippled as the energy tried desperately to expand, to fulfill its destructive purpose, but Liam’s will was absolute.

Liam studied the contained explosion for a moment and once he was certain nothing remained that could threaten the civilians below, he released his telekinetic grip.

The remnants of the explosion dissipated harmlessly into the atmosphere, leaving nothing behind to mark the assassin’s passing.

Liam descended toward the major city below, his expression cold now that the practical work of hunting had resumed.

The crowd reacted immediately. Civilians and low-level cultivators alike scattered from his path, pressing themselves against buildings or ducking into shops and alleys.

Liam was genuinely disappointed as he walked. The assassins had been Golden Core realm experts, professionals who’d survived years in one of the most dangerous professions in the cultivation world. He’d expected... not a challenge, perhaps, but at least something that required thought. Some small display of the skills that had kept them alive this long.

Instead, they’d been nothing. Insects. Barely worth the effort of swatting.

He wondered if all the Devouring Petal Pavilion’s operatives would prove this weak, or if perhaps the real talent was being held in reserve at their headquarters.

The thought of actual resistance, of opponents who might require him to use more than the barest fraction of his capabilities, brought a slight uptick to his mood.

As he walked, Liam became aware of the attention focused on him. Dozens of spiritual senses probed in his direction, some curious, most fearful. But among them, scattered like weeds in a garden, were presences that carried distinct hostility, but they weren’t from the assassin.

Liam marked each hostile presence in his awareness but made no immediate move toward them.

He’d walked perhaps twenty meters into the city proper when both his senses caught a small object flying toward him. His hand snapped out, fingers closing around the object mid-flight. It was a dagger.

Liam turned slowly, his gaze tracking back along the weapon’s trajectory to its source. There, perched on a rooftop three buildings away, stood the final assassin and the man was smiling.

Liam was about to take a step forward, to close the distance and finish this final interruption to his hunt, when he felt the change.

The dagger in his hand grew suddenly warm and the weapon exploded.

The dagger’s metal housing shattered, releasing a cloud of purple gas that expanded rapidly around Liam’s position. It was poison.

On the rooftop, the assassin laughed. It was a short, sharp sound of triumph. But his laughter died in his throat.

"What’s funny?"

The voice came from directly behind him, carrying just a hint of genuine curiosity.

The assassin’s blood turned to ice. Slowly and with absolute terror, he turned his head.

Liam stood less than an arm’s length away, completely unaffected by the poison cloud that still swirled in the street below. His expression held mild interest, the way someone might look at an unusual insect.

"I asked you a question," Liam said patiently. "What was funny? I’d genuinely like to know what about that situation seemed amusing to you."

The assassin’s mouth opened and closed soundlessly, his mind unable to process how the Mad Demon God had moved from street level to rooftop between one heartbeat and the next. The poison should have at least slowed him down, given some reaction time, created an opening for escape.

Instead, it had accomplished exactly nothing. He wondered what sort of monster they had offended.