Rivers of the Night

It didn't look like the work of a cultivator. It felt as though a god had taken action, a deity that descended from the clouds above and imprinted their will onto the world.

Theron breathed, and the clouds thrummed to the beat of his heart. Roaring waves of Water Mana surged toward him in a battering ram so heavy and dense it almost looked more like a concentrated pillar of crystal than the reflective blue liquid it truly was.

Why had he been about to let them live? Why had he thought to focus his rage on just one person? Didn't they all… deserve to die?

BOOM!

The battering ram of water, as heavy as a mountain and as dense as diamond, crashed into the gates of the Imperial Clan's sacred land. It was a location that should have been impervious even to the rage-fueled rampage of a Divine Realm expert. And yet…

The gates shattered like glass, the runes lighting up all at once and then crumbling to ash moments later in a symphony of destruction.

All the underlying formations and matrices that kept the Imperial City running as the beautiful hub of life it was crumbled at the same time.

As though a natural disaster had descended upon them, every light, every warmer, every plumbing fixture—all stopped working in unison.

Theron laid his hand down, and the rain returned.

BADOOM. BADOOM.

Teacher Fern's head finally snapped up, her eyes widening beneath the sheer carnage. The gates she had lowered her head so helplessly before were now nothing more than rubble.

No, it was worse than that. There was nothing left of them to see or experience, the doors having been blown so far back and off their hinges that they spiraled into the tall towers of the palace.

One tower was cut almost too cleanly in half, its top portion vanishing into a distant rain of carnage along with the gate that chopped it down, while the other found itself saved by the main body of the palace itself. Half of the latter gate was lodged into the roof of the palace, while the other half was lodged into the middle of the tower itself—a balancing act of life and death was surely playing out for those unlucky enough to be anywhere in the vicinity of the two.

"Theron? Theron! Stop, it's dan—!"

Teacher Fern's words caught in her throat, her body sinking into a pit as she met those chilling blue eyes.

They weren't the eyes of the student she remembered—the kind little boy who was a little too forgiving to the antics of the little girl who followed him around everywhere, the one with a voice so gentle and soothing you could listen to it forever…

Those were the eyes of a murderer.

She looked back with shaking pupils, her eyes finally seeing the litter of corpses that lay behind them, and then her tears began to fall. Unfortunately…

Theron had already walked in.

His steps calm, one scythe of water after another formed around him. Even the smallest were the height of his body, but the largest of them stretched across dozens of meters.

They reflected more like blue steel than water, their edges concentrated into lines so thin they would have disappeared beneath sunlight.

But there was no sunlight here—just dreary clouds of dense black, hanging like ash and soot in the air and flashing with arcs of lightning.

Like the rage of the heavens was ready to descend at any moment, they churned akin to the belly of a beast.

The large scythes moved. Meters across, they sliced and diced the palace—the core of the Nightingale's pride and joy—to pieces. The beautiful Ebistone it was formed of crumbled before his might as though it was truly made of wet tissue paper.

Large blocks, as heavy as mountains and denser than any easily recognizable stone, boomed down almost as loud as the cracks of thunder above.

He wouldn't just destroy them today… this façade they wanted to hold up, this game of nobility and politics he had been forced to play for the last year, this disgusting, two-faced superiority they wanted to play while tucking their tails between their legs in the face of those they stood not a single chance against—

He would bring it all crumbling down.

Imperial Guards rushed out in droves, but the smaller [Water Scythes] made such short work of them they might as well have not come at all.

Limbs, blood, and flesh became the new decoration of the once-flourishing gardens. The small ponds were painted red, the gorgeous white roses inked in crimson.

Theron had never killed so much in one sitting, never let his fury and rage billow out so uncontrolled…

Or so it seemed.

That chill in his eyes was just the same.

With every kill he claimed, he only seemed to become chillier and chillier. He hadn't truly erupted yet.

That kernel of furious rage was only being compressed further, concentrated onto his soul and surrounded by rings of frost like the orbiting asteroids of a planet.

BOOM! BOOM!

Aetherion came rushing out of the palace. He had been moving as fast as he could, and yet he was still a measure late. The Nightingales were still recovering from the earlier battle they faced when the entire continent's attention seemed focused right here—but never did they expect that they would come to face this sort of vengeance just weeks later.

"You…"

Aetherion's gaze flashed with fury as his father and several ministers of powerful Duke Clans rushed out as well. In fact, the Patriarch of the Zhen Grand Duke Clan and even the Matriarch of the Obsidian Eclipse Sect were both present.

Emperor Nightingale seemed to carry the same face as his son—stern and arrogant, matured by his wrinkles and grayed hair. He didn't even immediately recognize Theron at all. This was the first time they had ever come into contact with one another.

However, Theron didn't need to have seen him before to recognize him. He had already focused on the man.