The auras of the approaching Sect Elders were like two descending suns, burning through the lesser energies of the forest. Lyra's panic was a frantic, buzzing thing in the air, a scent Kael could almost taste.
"We have to run! Now! If they find us…"
"No." Kael's voice was a blade of ice, cutting through her terror. He grabbed her arm, his grip unyielding. "Running is death. They will track us."
His eyes, however, were not on the east. They were locked on the desiccated husk of the Rock Boar. The three dead bandits were a problem. The boar… the boar was a death sentence. The men could be explained away as a simple, if brutal, act of self-defense. But a spirit beast drained of its very essence? That was the signature of a demonic art, a forbidden power that the righteous sects would snuff out with absolute prejudice. That corpse was the one piece of evidence that could not be explained.
The bandits are a nuisance, Kael thought, his mind operating with a chilling, detached clarity. That… that is my execution.
"Help me," he hissed, his voice leaving no room for argument. He was already dragging the boar's corpse, unnaturally light without its life force, toward the darkest part of the thicket at the edge of the clearing.
Lyra was frozen, her mind struggling to keep pace with the boy's monstrous logic. "What are you doing? We have to run!"
He spun on her, his eyes blazing with a cold fire that made her flinch. "Run where? Into their waiting arms? They'll find us in minutes. They'll find this," he gestured furiously at the boar, "and I promise you, they will peel us apart layer by layer to find out how we did it. The bandits were a bandit attack. This… was never here. Now. Help. Me."
The terrifying, inescapable logic of his words broke through her fear. She was already an accomplice. Running now would only brand her a guilty party. With a surge of self-loathing and a primal need to survive, she lunged forward, helping him shove the boar's husk deep under a gnarled tangle of roots and thorns, hiding it from sight. She had just actively conspired to conceal evidence of a forbidden art. A line had been crossed, and she could feel its burning scar on her soul.
With the primary evidence hidden, Kael moved with the terrifying efficiency of a seasoned killer. He dipped two fingers into the still-bleeding wound on his side, his face a mask of indifference to the pain. He strode to Lyra and smeared his own blood on her clothes and cheek.
"You fought bravely," he stated, his voice flat. "You were ambushed by three bandits. You were overwhelmed. I tried to help."
Before she could protest, he was already moving, dragging the bandit corpses into a chaotic tableau of a fight gone wrong. He lay down amongst them, deliberately placing one of their rusty blades just inches from his hand. Then, he closed his eyes and focused inward.
He took the swirling, potent Qi he had just devoured and did something that went against every instinct of a cultivator. He didn't circulate it. He didn't refine it. He suppressed it. He violently crushed its aura, forcing the vibrant energy deep into his core, masking its presence under a thin, pathetic flicker of his own Grey-tier soul. He became the terrified, dying boy he was pretending to be. He became a lamb, hiding amongst the wolves he had just slaughtered.
Moments later, two figures descended into the clearing like ghosts. They were clad in the azure robes of the Azure Moon Sect, their movements silent and graceful. One was a stern-faced man, but it was the woman who commanded the clearing's attention. Her name was Seris Kaeldra, an elder whose reputation for her sharp mind was as renowned as her cultivation.
She saw the scene exactly as Kael had staged it: three dead bandits, one terrified and "injured" girl huddled against a tree, and one "barely conscious" boy lying in a pool of his own blood. It looked… almost right.
The male elder knelt to check the bandits. "Their Qi is scattered. It looks like they were poisoned before the fight."
Seris's eyes, however, narrowed. Her senses were far keener. She could smell the human blood, yes, but underneath it, there was something else. A faint, unnatural, ozonic tang in the air. The lingering scent of a power that didn't belong in this world. It was the residue from the boar, a ghost that Kael couldn't hide.
She glided over to Lyra, her gaze sharp. "Your blade is clean, child. For someone who fought so bravely, you seem remarkably unscathed."
Before Lyra could stammer a reply, Seris turned her attention to the boy on the ground. She knelt beside Kael, her powerful Spiritual Sense—a force Kael could feel like a physical pressure against his soul—sweeping over him. She expected to feel the fading, chaotic energy of a dying mortal.
Instead, she felt… a void. An unnatural emptiness. It was as if his life force, which should have been screaming in agony from such a wound, was simply… gone. Hidden. It was wrong. It was profoundly, fundamentally wrong.
Kael kept his eyes shut, his breathing shallow, forcing his body to remain limp under her terrifying probe. He could feel her suspicion, a cold, sharp point pressing against his deception.
The elder, Seris Kaeldra, leaned in close, her face just inches from his. Her voice was a low, dangerous whisper, a silken thread of steel that cut through his feigned unconsciousness and was meant only for him and the terrified girl a few feet away.
"You have a weak soul, boy. So tell me… how did you kill three poisoned men without drawing your blade?"
OOC – End of Chapter 5
MC Name: Kael Ardyn
Cultivation Realm: Mortal Stage (Early)
Divine Soul Rank: Grey-tier (Trash) - Shadow Serpent Soul (Aura Suppressed)
Bloodline: Ancient Devouring Bloodline (Awakened)
Known Techniques: Devour Essence (Tactical Execution), Aura Suppression (Instinctive)
Items: Black Book of the Devourer (soul-bound)
Lifespan: 80 Years (Standard Human)
Notable Changes: First use of strategic deception against powerful cultivators. Actively conspired with Lyra to hide evidence. Aura suppression used to feign weakness. The lie has been partially seen through by a perceptive and powerful new antagonist, Seris Kaeldra.