Corrupt Creations

"Be grateful for being able to witness the last moments of your beloved sanctuary, before you die. I didn't have that chance when you took my parents and my grandmother away from me." Lan Xue's words were as cold as the ice shard that was piercing the Sanctuary Master's heart.

However, instead of granting him a quick death, she made sure her energy would not instantly cut his lifeline, but would slowly freeze him from the inside out.

"Aahh... Argh... AHHH!"

The Sanctuary Master looked down towards his chest area, where he could see an ice blue object piercing him from the other side. There seemed to be no blood coming out of that wound, since it had been frozen already. The way he was expressing his reaction to what was happening, was as if he was just witnessing a nightmare.

But rather than focusing on what was happening to his body and the excruciating pain he was feeling, from having his life slowly be taken away from him, what he could not bear and what his mind could not believe, was the fact that his goddess may have lost.

He knew that the only way for him to lose the contact with the ethereal formation, was in the case scenario that someone had destroyed it or the goddess herself denied him the access. However, due to his loyalty and usefulness, the latter was highly improbable. So, inside his mind, his beliefs were quickly crumbling.

"No... No!" As he shouted while extending his hand towards the epicenter of all that disturbance, a sharp pain took over his mind and body, making him realize the cold truth of the facts. At that moment, with his vital signs decreasing, the wounds of his body had surpassed the wounds on his mind, making him finally feel the coldness brought by death.

Plop!

His arms and legs were already purple and he couldn't feel them anymore. With the loss of mobility, he was forced down to his knees, before his torso hit the ground with a thud. However, at that moment, he was still not dead yet.

Lan Xue was perfectly controlling her Mana and making it do its job slowly. She was so absorbed into making him feel every process of his death, that her cold aura was practically emulating the properties of time laws. It made the process as slow as a snail and especially painful.

Unfortunately for the unlucky Sanctuary Master, he couldn't even let his voice out, so he could mitigate a bit of that pain, since his vocal cords were getting frozen. From purple, his limbs were turning blue, before shattering into many pieces, like they were cracked ice cubes.

The last parts to suffer that same process, were the middle of his torso and his head. But they eventually did get frozen, fracturing right after and severing his life once and for all.

That whole process didn't even last for five minutes, but while being affected by her energy, the Sanctuary Master's perception felt like it had taken twenty times more time, than what it really took for him to perish.

A gust of wind blew near her and Arwen suddenly reappeared close to Lan Xue.

"Tell me... Do you know what is that?" She was looking towards the horizon, where crimson clouds were spreading towards everywhere. From the looks of it, it was roughly located where the core of the Illusive Ethereal Sanctuary stood.

The ice doll was still staring down to where her hateful enemy's broken frozen body was, silently feeling the aftermath of concluding her cold vengeance; however, Arwen's question brought her back to the world, since it was related to a topic of her interest.

"It's him."

"You mean Seth? How can this be?" Arwen felt anxious, even though she couldn't believe that crimson ominous energy belonged to Seth. But after a few seconds, she had crossed a few memories she had, from where she had felt that strange energy before and came to terms that whatever was happening, could be because of him.

She had felt that energy briefly, when Seth touched the World Tree's replica, back then when she was fighting against Allannia and she had also felt those fluctuations at the massive battle inside the Lion's Pride Golden Palace. However, whenever she looked at that crimson area deep inside the Illusive Ethereal Sanctuary, all she could feel was despair.

"We must go there right now!" Arwen said those words while preparing to use her full power in order to reach the epicenter of that disturbance as fast as she could.

Lan Xue didn't say anything to stop her, since she was also adamant on going there. Seth was there after all and somehow, he was the only one that could melt her coldness and make her act.

And although none of them said anything about it to the other, they were sure that by entering that area, their chances of coming back alive would be less than ten percent. The overbearingness of the energy fluctuations hitting them at that distance away from the center, was already making them feel smothered. Imagine how powerful and how tyrannical it was there...

Just as they were about to depart though, they saw a figure flying towards them. Actually, it wasn't only one person that was coming their way, but three. An old man was barely hanging to his consciousness, while carrying an unconscious old lady and a disabled middle-aged man on each of his arms.

When that old man saw those two women, he used the last bits of Mana that were flowing inside his energy veins, to safely land beside them. On first sight, one could see he had spent most of his power to protect those two people on his arms, since they were perfectly fine, compared to the sorry figure of that old man.

"Please, help my family please!"

However, just as he landed, he felt a cold aura envelop his surroundings, sealing every single route he could take to escape.