1805 Sneak Attack

"Are you alright?" Alex quickly flew over to Pearl and asked.

Pearl looked at the beasts that had just left for war. He turned toward Alex as he arrived next to him.

"Was I late, brother? I hope everything is alright still," Pearl said as he looked around, searching for people he cared about. He felt a relief when he saw Liz and Graham in the distance, wounded, but safe.

He tried looking for some other people he could recognize, but the war had restarted after his arrival, and everyone had started moving once more.

"We have a lot of losses," Alex said. "The numbers are not fully in yet, but we should have lost nearly 1500 soldiers in total. 3 of our elders have died as well."

Pearl gave a saddened look. "I'm sorry. I should have come earlier," he said.

"You weren't any later than I was," Alex said. "I only just brought the soldiers over from the Central Continent too. So don't think those deaths are because of you. Besides, we all came because we decided to. To do what is right."

Pearl nodded.

Alex looked at the thousands of beasts that moved toward the war and took notice of their aura. Most of them were quite strong, with about 30 or so beasts in the Saint Transformation realm.

'Those are a good addition to the army,' Alex thought. The other soldiers who had turned against the Emperor were also a good addition now. He looked back at Pearl.

"What do you plan to do now?"

Pearl looked at the battlefield and said, "My mother made me promise that I wouldn't go out looking for revenge, but I'm already here. I'm weak and don't have much of a cultivation base, but I must fight no matter what."

"After coming all this way, I cannot hide behind others still," Pearl said.

Alex nodded. "Go fight who you can, but take care of yourself. The moment you know you aren't safe, run away," he said.

Pearl nodded.

"Let's go."

Alex and Pearl went back into the war, joining it as everyone started fighting with full force.

"What is the situation?" Alex asked Yan Yating through Whisker.

"We have the upper hand in number, but the strength of the opposition still dwarfs us in most of the places," he said. "If we are to not suffer many casualties, we should immediately begin attacking the upper echelon of the army and destroying the chain of command from the top."

Alex nodded to himself. "I'll go fight the stronger—"

His words cut off as 3 soldiers came for him, flying past the beasts and other soldiers, specifically targeting him.

Alex pulled out Midnight immediately and attacked back, destroying 2 of the three attacks that flew toward him immediately.

As for the last attack, he simply took it to the face and came out of it with no damage.

They seemed to be ignoring Pearl, thankfully, who had joined the battle in the distance.

"It seems like I have found my opponents for now," Alex sent a message. "Keep me informed about the situation."

"I will be joining the fight soon as well. I will have my subordinates replace me in overseeing the war," Yan Yating said. "Given how strong I am, it makes no sense for me to just sit around and—"

The man's words cut off.

Alex didn't know why he had stopped speaking, but this was no time to give thought to those words. He turned around, swinging his sword as he let out an attack that flew toward one of the two men that were attacking him.

The man was in the Saint Transformation 6th realm and seemed quite strong. What surprised Alex was the fact that the man was in fact the cultivation base he had, and didn't have any sort of aid for him.

It took him only a moment to realize that the man didn't have anyone protecting him.

The attack Alex threw the man's way was so strong that the man was forced to use his strongest attack to protect himself.

A gust of brown wind created sand all around the man, which coalesced into a spike of sorts that immediately flew toward Alex's sword slash.

Alex felt the panic that he felt every time someone attacked with Immortal Qi. Taking the cue, he immediately moved out of the way, making his way toward the woman who was readying an attack.

He took a deep breath and sent out a Yang Palm attack that flew toward the woman. This woman too didn't have any support behind her and had to use a life-saving treasure to save herself.

Just then, Alex felt someone teleport behind him as he felt the aura of teleportation and the fluctuations of space in the air.

Other than that, Alex could not feel anything else about the person that appeared at all.

If not for his ability to recognize manipulations in space, he wouldn't have even known that the man was there. There was absolutely no aura that came out of the man at all.

Alex's senses still caught onto the man and saw that he was already mid-swing with his sword even as he teleported. The attack had been so fast that Alex had no chance of defending himself at all.

Alex sensed the lack of aura and Qi in the attack in everything but the man himself. His sword glowed softly, but that didn't produce any aura at all.

The entire attack landed on the other person not noticing anything. This was an assassin's attack.

Alex saw the sword and the swing with his senses, and even as it was too late to do anything about it, he knew what he had to do in this case.

He let out a strong Intent, not to stop the man, but to stop the defensive energy deep inside him from surfacing. As for the attack itself, he took it head-on without any defenses.

The attacker felt the feedback on his sword as it seamlessly cut through Alex's neck, severing his head in that one single strike.

Blood spurted from Alex's headless torso while the head itself flew into the air to the side.

The man wasn't done just yet. Just to finish the attack, he sent his sword through Alex's chest, driving it into his heart.

As he stabbed, he felt something crunch within Alex's robes, almost like a metal that was very strong but brittle at the same time.

He felt little resistance again until after the sword came out on the other side when it struck something and broke it through Alex's robes on the other side.

Tiny pieces of crystalline ruby seemed to break off from Alex's body, confusing the man. He gave it a closer look and realized that it wasn't ruby at all, but something similar in color and yet perhaps harder than it.

He reached into Alex's back following his sword and took out what his sword had broken into. He pulled it out into the sun and saw the crimson translucent piece of a solid object that he had never seen before.

However, the smell of it told him exactly what it was.

"Is this... blood?"