Pleasant Surprise or Pure Shock?

"Very well, my lord. I abide by your arrangements." "Say, why is Vic in your squad?" Karen knew full well that Rasma was stalling for time regarding the matter on the other side, deliberately fishing for conversation topics. Before this, Rasma had likely wanted to see Karen beaten black and blue, preferably bedridden for a while, clearly harboring a desire for petty payback. However, because Karen had brought up Vic, Rasma had begun worrying that Karen would take out whatever he suffered today twice over on his disciple. At the very least, this showed that Rasma still cared about his student. It was just that Vic truly was pitiful—he was practically someone who had joined the losing faction on the very eve of victory. "My lord, I have a feeling you must know a few things about me." "I read newspapers," Rasma explained. "Though my knowledge of the outside world is limited to reading the papers. I cannot actively contact the outside to obtain information—not entirely because of your grandfather, but because I also require an environment that is completely quiet and undisturbed." Pausing, Rasma continued, "At times, for instance, something like this..." Rasma opened his palm, and a beam of black light shot toward Karen, coiling around Karen's wrist. "Any connection established is reciprocal. Such relationships aren't limited to what the naked eye can see or consciousness can perceive; acquiring information works the exact same way. Whatever I wish to know from in here could certainly be sensed by observant individuals out there. "Heh, do you understand what I'm saying?" "Something akin to the perception of faith, yet far from reaching the level of actual faith?" Rasma's brows furrowed tightly. He had originally intended to use ambiguous, high-level jargon to brush Karen off while running out the clock. Yet to his surprise, this kid before him actually understood a good deal of it. This was definitely not something someone at his level should be able to grasp... Looking at the young man now, Rasma inexplicably began to superimpose him over the image of another man in his youth. *This is his grandson, after all.* Rasma had met other members of the Inmeles family. He could sense that although they carried the Inmeles name, the soil for the power of faith no longer existed within them. They were ordinary people, and could only ever be ordinary people. Yet even if one treated the Inmeles family as a pure Inquisitor lineage, descendants of that name should have found walking the path of faith far simpler and easier through their bloodline; there was no way so many extreme cases of complete ordinariness would emerge. Therefore, this could mean only one thing: Diss had sacrificed the family's bloodline of faith, sparing only a single person—the young man standing right here. Rasma could not help but feel a headache coming on. Though Diss was slumbering, he was not dead, after all. And if this descendant whom Diss valued so dearly truly possessed a talent akin to his grandfather's, then before many years had passed, the Inmeles family would produce another figure capable of giving the Church a massive headache. Although Diss had only officially condensed godhead fragments during the ambush half a year ago, according to Rasma's own observations, Diss had already reached a state of transcendence back when he was twenty-five to thirty years old. This could also be corroborated by the youthful avatar among Diss's three godhead fragment avatars. How old was this young man before him again? Seventeen? With these thoughts swirling through his mind, Rasma suddenly felt a burst of genuine indignation! In any other church, the emergence of such a genius family bloodline would have been an occasion for celebration so immense they would want to proclaim it to the entire religious circle. Even the Church of Order—which strictly required a clean background for its High Priests and maintained constant vigilance against internal families monopolizing power within the church—would have made no exception. Had Diss been willing, with his personal prowess in condensing three godhead fragments, upon entering the Temple of Order he could have immediately surpassed those so-called seniors who had resided in the Temple for one or two centuries, directly becoming middle management in the Temple and perhaps even contending for higher ranks in the future. And his grandson, Karen, if he truly inherited that talent, would inevitably have received the full cultivation of the Church, enjoying treatment rivaling that of the successors to those exalted figures. In the future, if he could walk in his grandfather's footsteps, it was not impossible that the Church might make an exception for him, allowing him to serve as High Priest for a period before entering the Temple of Order! Bloodlines were of great importance. The lineages of many families could be traced back to the distant past, and there were even bloodlines within the Church passed down from the previous era. However, older was not necessarily better; on the contrary, bloodlines grew more diluted the older they were. Thus, the most ancient was not guaranteed to be the finest, and it was entirely possible for a potent bloodline inheritance to be born in the present era and passed down. Yet this old man bearing that surname had sneered at the Temple's summons. When three Temple Elders were dispatched to invite him into the Temple of Order, he had displayed the most blunt, brazen sacrilege against the God of Order. *He said we are all rations for the God of Order; he said the God of Order is hungry!* What should have been a great blessing for the Church had now become one of the most volatile factors within it... Then was there still a chance to save the young man before him? If he could strip away the grandfather's corrupting influence and guide him back onto the righteous path, wouldn't everything be resolved perfectly? Yet here lay a logical dead end: if Rasma dared to leak Karen's identity, Diss would dare to wake up immediately and detonate his two remaining godhead fragments. Still, perhaps there was another way. For instance... Rasma's eye instantly lit up. Indeed, his eye literally gleamed with light, clearly visible to Karen standing right in front of him. "I'll use this opportunity to gauge your actual strength and talent first, and then—" Before he could finish, Augie's figure appeared beside Rasma once more. By now, her clothes were tattered and disheveled, and blazing flames billowed across her body. "Who on earth are you?! Tell me right now, who are you?!" Augie let out a furious roar and slammed her entire body toward Rasma. A barrier resembling a prism materialized around Rasma's body. Augie's terrifying collision failed to produce even the slightest tremor upon it. Next, Rasma opened his hand. A ring on his finger emitted a faint glow before transforming into a sphere of purple lightning. "Did you think I wouldn't notice? You are a frost dragon. Earlier, you tried to spew dragon breath and melt me with lava—I'll let that slide. But this time, you've gone so far as to cloak your entire body in flames. "Are you deliberately channeling power that contradicts your own elemental attribute, hoping to use my strike against you to shatter the seal placed inside you by the Whip-Wielder himself and win your freedom? "Hah. It isn't that you're so intensely curious to know who I am; you just know I belong to this Church and won't actually kill you, so you planned to use me as the key to unlock your shackles." Rasma's words brought Lady Augie, who had been hammering relentlessly at the prism barrier, to a dead halt. Her ferocious expression gradually faded, giving way to profound embarrassment. She raised her hands, shaking her head with an innocent look. "What on earth are you talking about? I don't understand a single word!" Beside them, Karen found it somewhat amusing. Lady Augie truly was just as she had described herself—she had focused every scrap of her scarce wit entirely on critical matters. It was just that her little scheme had been directed at the wrong target. Of course, had Rasma not concealed his identity, she wouldn't have dared attempt it in the first place. "You don't understand?" A smile crept onto the corner of Rasma's mouth. "That's right, I really don't understand at all! I just think you're talking so strangely." "When you behave obediently as a pet of the Church of Order, I acknowledge your status and can tolerate your antics within reasonable limits. "However, the moment you decide not to maintain that status and attempt to break away from the Church of Order for so-called freedom, in my eyes, your very existence violates Order. "Therefore, pursuant to the *Code of Order*, I shall now administer your punishment." Augie: "..." Rasma's figure vanished. Immediately afterward, Augie's hands were wrenched backward by an invisible force, and her legs were dragged back as well. The flames in front of her were extinguished in an instant, though she swiftly summoned a thick layer of ice for protection. Yet no sooner had the ice formed than it began to fracture and disintegrate. The person she faced was, after all, the former High Priest. Though Rasma seemed somewhat dim and even rather pitiful in the brilliance of Diss's shadow, that other man was Diss, after all. Setting Diss aside, Rasma was a true genius of his generation. Moreover, unlike Lord Theisen, Rasma was exceptionally skilled in combat. Every defense Lady Augie mounted was utterly dismantled in that breath. Rasma materialized directly before her, thrusting the purple lightning sphere in his hand straight into her chest. Taking into account Lady Augie's curvaceous figure, Rasma's gesture might have seemed suggestive under different circumstances. Yet in the next instant, as the sphere of lightning sank in and Augie's flesh and blood erupted in violent sprays, any such notions vanished without a trace. At any rate, as a bystander, Karen felt only profound shock—because Rasma was, right before his eyes, disemboweling a dragon. So a dragon's formidable physique could be this fragile; Augie's shrieks were laced with raw horror and despair. An absolute disparity in power could truly erase any racial advantage. "My lord, I was wrong! My lord, I was wrong!" Augie began begging for mercy, but Rasma ignored her. Only after stubbornly shoving the entire lightning sphere into Augie's body did he step back two paces and dust off his hands with complete indifference. "Aaaagh—!" Wretched screams ripped continuously from Augie's throat. Her skin kept rupturing, her blood kept splattering, and her bones fractured again and again. This was not an instantaneous injury; as long as that sphere of lightning remained within her, she would continue to endure this torment. Her draconic constitution ensured she wouldn't die immediately, but at times, a living death was an agony far surpassing death itself. "Nothing more for you to do for now. Let's find you a quiet place to reflect." Rasma extended his arm and swung it downward. Lady Augie plunged downward once more, crashing into a small lake below. The lake rapidly froze over, but once the ice reached a certain thickness, it shattered into pieces, a cycle repeating over and over again. The only difference was that the water was turning a deeper, darker crimson with each passing moment. Karen had to admit that Rasma's fighting style... was indeed more thrilling to watch than his grandfather's. This visceral, bone-crunching impact rose to the level of a violent aesthetic. "Kid, do you know what frustrates me the most?" "Please enlighten me, my lord." "I'm very good at fighting. I'm confident that within the same realm, I can be the strongest." At this point, Rasma let out a deep sigh. "Yet your grandfather has always suppressed me by an entire realm." Karen echoed along, "Grandfather really is too much." "Indeed. While I was still laboring away for a single godhead fragment, he had already condensed three, as if he were deliberately humiliating me." "My lord, I'm sure my grandfather had no such intention..." "Right, he couldn't even be bothered to humiliate me." Karen: "..." Rasma glanced down toward the lake and said, "This dragon won't die, but she needed to be taught a lesson. Besides, while I know how to erase someone's relevant memories, a dragon's brain—though small relative to its body—is still massive in terms of pure size. Erasing her memories would be far too exhausting. "So, I've simply arranged it so that whenever she recalls today's events, her soul will suffer a lightning strike. That should effectively seal away the memories. "If anyone dares to read her memories, her soul will perish in the lightning." "I see." "Don't worry, I won't erase your memories. After all, your grandfather might be watching this very spot right now." "Um... I wasn't worried about that." "Heh..." Rasma's expression cooled slightly. Karen felt somewhat helpless. Whenever his grandfather was involved, this former High Priest had an ingrained habit of acting fragile-hearted. Rasma shifted to Karen's side, grabbed his shoulder, and applied a slight amount of force. "Huh? Your physical constitution is unusually robust. How did you manage that?" "Perhaps because I usually pay close attention to a balanced diet..." "You certainly are much braver than that dragon. Tsk, if Vic weren't with you, I would have thoroughly tortured Diss's grandson right in front of him today." "As long as there's progress and gains to be made, I am quite willing, my lord." "Not bad. Now then, give a good performance. Consider this an assessment from me." "An assessment?" "If you pass, I'll take you as my student." Karen: "..." *Being your student is hardly a good thing.* Karen's future and career had already been meticulously mapped out by himself and Neo. If he were saddled with the title of Rasma's student, it wouldn't just mean tearing down all his plans and starting over—his new starting point would become negative. Like Vic, he would have lost before the race even began. "Hm?" Rasma seemed to deduce something from Karen's reaction and quickly added, "Fine, I didn't think it through. How about this: for the upcoming trial, if you perform poorly or aren't exceptional enough, I'll take you as my student—and I'll make a public announcement so everyone knows. "If you perform exceptionally well, so brilliantly that I'd be too ashamed to shamelessly claim to be your teacher, then I won't make any announcement. "Though the reward sounds a bit strange, an evaluation always needs some incentive, doesn't it? "If a positive incentive doesn't work, we'll use a reverse incentive. Heh." "My lord..." "Come now, time's up. We can begin." ... *Boom!* *Boom!* *Boom!* "Little Rasma, yes, just like that! Beat him, beat him, beat him senseless, meow!" Perched on Rasma's shoulder, Purr waved her paws wildly, directing Rasma's avatar to continue battering Valoti. Valoti was powerful; had he not been, he wouldn't have dared assassinate the Chief Bishop's entire household alone, let alone inflict an unhealable, grievous wound upon the Chief Bishop himself. Yet now, he felt like a complete joke. First, his body had been inexplicably frozen in place. By the time he snapped to his senses and broke the binding, the cat he had held in his grasp had somehow ended up in that man's hands. After that, the man had launched an onslaught. The defenses Valoti had painstakingly erected were like building blocks stacked by a child before this opponent, collapsing at the slightest nudge. Every single one of the man's strikes landed hard, while Valoti's attacks were casually dodged every time. From the very beginning, the battle had been a one-sided slaughter. But after beating him to a certain point, the man had visibly begun holding back, as if deliberately aggravating Valoti's injuries without intending to kill him. Or rather, he had never intended to kill him quickly in the first place; he had struck harder at first only out of confidence that Valoti wouldn't die so easily, and now he was carefully calibrating the degree of punishment. This sensation of being toyed with from start to finish left Valoti seething with frustration. *Boom!* Valoti staggered up from the rubble, white bone exposed in multiple places across his body. At this point, Rasma ceased his attacks. "Little Rasma, why don't you just kill him?" Purr asked. Rasma didn't answer. "Can this avatar of yours not speak? Where's the one who can talk?" "Right here." A second Rasma appeared, and beside him stood Karen. "Oh, my little Karen, you must have been frightened! Kitty is here, don't be afraid!" Purr immediately leaped forward, trying to dive into Karen's embrace, but Rasma intercepted her midair, catching her and stepping back to the perimeter. Rasma looked at Valoti and said, "Defeat him, and I'll grant you a chance to live." Valoti asked, "You give your word?" Rasma nodded. "Of course. I, Theisen, have honored my promises all my life." "Fine, I accept," Valoti said with a cold laugh. "I'll make sure to take one of you down with me." Clearly, he didn't believe the man would actually let him go. "You may begin." Rasma carried Purr down to a hillside. From his sleeve, he produced a notebook and a quill pen, looking like an examiner preparing to grade a test. Purr asked in confusion, "Little Rasma, have you gone mad from boredom? Why insist on playing this game?" "What's wrong with it? At family gatherings, there's always a staple program: the junior steps up to show off their talents." Purr blinked and immediately replied, "Then the elders prepare gifts for the junior as well." "Of course. I've prepared one: taking Karen as my student." "Um... are you sure that's a reward?" "I'll only take him as my student if he performs poorly on the assessment." "Then who determines whether his performance is good or bad?" Purr immediately seized upon the crux of the matter. "Me, of course," Rasma said as if it were the most natural thing in the world. This was a clever solution Rasma had devised. Giving Karen the status of his disciple wouldn't reveal Karen's true background, yet it would allow the Church to genuinely take notice of him. In Rasma's eyes, this was vastly better than letting Karen grow wild in secret on his own, and it was the best turning point he could conceive to gradually pull Karen away from his grandfather's influence. As for whether being his student was a misfortune, or that Vic had lived a miserable life before—Rasma didn't care. He didn't feel he truly owed Vic anything; all the grievances the boy had suffered would be repaid twofold in the future. After all, Rasma had decisively stepped down from the seat of High Priest, catching not only the other factions within the church off guard, but the Temple as well—and all of it was to clear the way for the one who would follow. In short, regardless of how Karen performed, Rasma was going to take Karen as his student. Rasma couldn't help glancing back over his shoulder toward Rojia City: *Even you wouldn't be able to find a reason to object to this, would you?* "Heh, he is Diss's grandson, after all. I truly hope he brings me a pleasant surprise." Purr replied: "Are you sure it'll be a pleasant surprise... and not pure shock?"