Rivers of the Night

Theron left the Sect by its gates in the dead of night. This action he knew he wouldn't be able to hide, but he didn't want to in the first place.

By leaving now, the odds he would be accused of murder were less. Even if some suspected the Fourth Elder's death, they wouldn't realize the timing of it.

While it was true that Theron was responsible for the Eighth Elder's death, it was a completely different matter if others knew he had such assassination skills. They would only be more wary of him.

The fact he had entered a stalemate with the Fourth Elder made them confident in still being able to handle him for the time being. Of course, they had no idea how many of his own abilities he had restrained himself from using.

For example, with [Entangling Blood Vein Pupils], he could control Gold Mana instead of being restrained to Silver Mana. The leap his strength would take with the former couldn't be understated.

Plus, there was [Entangling Clouds], which allowed him to display movement abilities and flight only Cloud Realm experts should be capable of.

Theron knew that he wasn't to be underestimated, but there was no need for everyone to know that.

Their underestimation just might save his life.

…

Theron soon slipped into the forest. He moved with greater speed than he had in the Sect, but he remained steady.

After he was a distance away, he began to use [Entangling Silence] again, flickering forward with the help of [Entangling Blood Vein Pupils] and [Shadow Step] to keep his Mana reserves from running on empty.

This was the first time he used [Entangling Blood Vein Pupils] with a technique directly, and to his surprise, the help was actually more shocking than he expected.

[Shadow Step] was more than two and a half times as effective, allowing him to reconstruct his body a full 25 meters away, whereas 10 meters had seemed like a hard limit before.

It seemed 10 meters was only the limit for Silver Mana. But if he generated the Skill with Gold Mana, it was possible to more than double that.

The best part was that with [Entangling Blood Vein Pupils], the amount of Mana he was using was so minor. Because the technique had already grown to the Quasi Cloud level, and he was using it to activate a Silver Resonance technique, it was practically like bringing a sledgehammer to crack an egg.

Thanks to this, Theron's speed was only more exaggerated, and he bet he could lose even an Ascending Cloud Realm expert like this.

This wasn't because of his speed, but instead because [Entangling Silence] made him so difficult to track in a dark forest with so much Dark Mana that their Third Eye would lose track of him by its second activation.

Realizing this, Theron grew more confident and relaxed, though he didn't stop using [Shadow Step]. And soon, he had returned to the Dark River and dove right in.

…

It took seconds for Theron to make it to the bottom this time, the gap between his first entrance and this one being akin to the difference between Heaven and Earth.

He returned to the cabin first and met with the Alpha, feeding it Bylo's Core. Although the improvement wasn't enough to reach the next Gold Resonance, it did still help the Alpha's cultivation progress.

Theron let the Alpha eat the corpse as well. That way, there would certainly be no evidence left behind whatsoever.

**

Theron sat on the cabin floor in meditation, slowly recovering.

The Alpha's large head rested behind him, the heat of its body keeping him warm.

This far beneath the waves above, there was no sunlight and certainly barely any heat at all that made it so far. If he wasn't a cultivator, he would have already frozen to death.

Theron's eyes opened as he felt that he was back to 100% health. He stroked the Alpha's head for a moment, a bit absentminded.

He knew why he had risked coming here. He hoped to find a Dark Resonance he could trigger here.

But he wasn't sure where to target.

At first, he thought that the waves were directing him to the secret of this river, but in the end, it was this cabin.

While it was true that this cabin had a shocking secret linked to it, the more Theron learned about the cultivation tiers, the less he believed that the unnamed cultivator was the reason for the state of this river.

He was too weak.

It was more likely that [Entangling Blood Vein Pupils] had just left the unnamed cultivator in a unique position to take advantage of a river that no one else could, even establishing entrances to enter it.

In that case, there was another secret here.

Mana worked the way it did for a reason. Just because a planet had a particularly large saturation of one type of Mana didn't mean that the fundamental nature of, well… nature, should change.

Rivers should still be made of Water Mana, storms still had Wind Mana, even the trees so saturated by Dark Mana had Wood Mana underlying them.

Mana was Life as it was Power. There was a reason people debated the two so much.

A situation like this one wouldn't be triggered by a natural phenomenon. It had to be that someone interfered, or there was some sort of shocking treasure here.

But where should he look?

The obvious answer was this cabin right here. But Theron had already been around it several times. Plus, the Alpha had been here alone for almost three months now. If there was something to find, with the Alpha's intelligence, it certainly would have already.

The Alpha released a low growl of pleasure as it enjoyed Theron's scratches.

That was when it hit Theron.

The noise.

How were they making noise that traveled so clearly here?

Technically, sound traveled even better in water than it did in air. But traveling was one thing—whether it could be heard was another. Usually, it took an expert Water Mancer to pick up on sound traveling through water so easily.

The easiest secrets to miss were the ones you overlooked after growing used to them.

This entire river was suspended, leaving an air gap between the waves above and the river floor beneath.

How was that?

That was the secret here.