Unsealing Emptiness

Chapter 407  Mayhem.

Previously, Ozul was thinking of creating a scenario where they were seen valiantly protecting the princess but failing in the end.

However, that plan required too many things to happen on their own.

And after waiting for a month, he realized it was all wishful thinking.

With three people who could deal with Origin cultivators, they could only lose realistically if there was someone at the middle stages of the Origin cultivator or at least more than two initial stage Origin cultivators.

No neighboring kingdom was risking such an attack. It would be too obvious on their part and they wouldn't be able to erase their link after hiring people of that caliber.

Having little more than a month left before the ten fortnights given by Ember passed, he would have to give up on waiting on such an unlikely opportunity.

'This will be a pain...' he sighed as he planned what he would do.

'If I just sneak inside the palace and kill the princess, even if I don't become the prime suspect, I will definitely be on their list.

Since even the King and the Imperial Prince don't sense any Spiritual Essence from me, they will have no choice but to look at me when all their defensive mechanisms fail to detect an intruder inside the palace.'

Having given it enough thought, he realized that he needed a substitute. A person who could be there, and get caught inside the palace.

'Kumaou?... He won't willingly go inside the palace,' shaking his head, he went through possible candidates to become the sacrifices.

It was quite easy for him to bring someone inside the palace without them being caught either. He just had to coat their entire body with Purity and that was it!

'It will have to be one of the prisoners.'

Behind the royal estate, there was a prison which was also managed by the royal soldiers.

While surveying the estate so many times, he had come across those prisoners occasionally brought to do manual labor.

While those prisoners starved and were held in chains that blocked their Spiritual Essence, he could still sense their powers.

He would occasionally come across those whose Spiritual Cores felt that of peak Nascent Soul cultivators.

'Maybe... just maybe if there is anyone of the Origin realm, that would be perfect.'

With that thought in mind, he lazily stood up from the bed and walked out of the room. Kumaou and Rose had also grown accustomed to him leaving in the middle of the night, so they didn't pay it any heed.

Just as he stepped into the shadows, the Purity enveloped him like a black sticky sheet, rendering it useless to make any distinction between him and the darkness.

In the middle of the night, a shadow leapt out of their room, quietly shifting through the sky in a certain direction.

As he arrived outside the prison, Ozul stopped in his tracks around fifty meters away.

While he had no Spiritual Essence, the physical movement still left countless ways for him to be felt by experienced scouts.

After all, he couldn't stop the air from shifting when he moved.

With a little more caution, he approached the prison and entered the cave-like entrance, unbeknownst to the two guards standing erect like statues.

It was an underground prison, and he could already feel an Origin Realm cultivator at the lowest level.

'That is the guy who manages everything in the prison.'

That was not it. He needed to find any prisoner who exuded roughly the same pressure as that prison warden.

It wasn't as easy as he thought it to be since there were around a thousand prisoners, and all of them had their Spiritual Essence blocked by the stone-like collar that hung around their necks.

As he searched through the rows of cells one by one, it became apparent that the deeper the prisoners were held, the stronger they previously were.

The cells on the ground level barely had any cultivators at all. That too in the initial stage of the Core Formation.

'That saves me time,' he thought while skipping all the cells and focusing his senses on the deepest level of the prison.

That was the level where the man he thought to be the 'prison warden' was on.

Spreading his senses further around him, he could feel the segregated areas surrounded by walls, and in those walls were people. People that interested him deeply.

'Nice... two Origin cultivators,' if he wasn't a certified stoic, there would have been a smirk etched on his face at this time.

Those two were weak. So weak that even if they were freed from the chains that blocked their Spiritual Essence, they would barely be able to defeat the warden if they fought together.

'Even a weakened Origin cultivator is beyond the limits of Nascent Soul cultivators.'

He wouldn't take both of them. There could be more complications later on if he were to bring both inside the palace.

'Instead, I will use you to light a fire and attract all the moths...'

Having confirmed the existence of two prisoners at the Origin Realm, he leapt out of the prison as swiftly as he had entered.

It wasn't a good time to do this.

The Imperial Prince was in the palace; he had confirmed it earlier.

Having two peak Origin cultivators inside the palace could mess up everything.

There was no need to rush things. There would be some sort of emergency and the Prince would be forced out of the estate sooner or later.

...

Ozul didn't need to wait long.

Only two days later, the Imperial Prince headed out of the royal estate with his entourage.

He had already hinted at Raven and Blaze to be ready.

This night, as he walked out of the room, Rose was cultivating while Kumaou only spared him a passing glance.

Covering himself from head to foot in the Purity, he willed it to have folds such that it looked like he had black clothes on instead.

He couldn't have people recognizing Purity and linking that soon-to-be incident with him.

Following the same route, he arrived at the prison and sneaked past the two guards at the cave-like entrance.

He would have killed the two right now, but he risked letting the warden sense something was off the moment their Spiritual Essence traces disappeared.

On the way, he could have killed several other prison guards, but they would be taken care of once he reached the bottom floor anyway.

As he reached the bottom floor, he could see a guy with an exposed belly sitting inside a room in a daze with the smell of alcohol lingering in the air.

'I was worried for nothing,' Ozul sighed, once again thanking his luck that he wouldn't have to put too much effort into this now.

The prison warden, although an Origin cultivator, wasn't as vigilant as he assumed him to be.

With a single thought, a drop of Purity separated from him and sharpened into two identical shards.

He took a deep breath, 'Huu....'

And pushed the shards with full force, aiming at the eyes of the prison warden.

The eyelids of the warden shot open as he heard the sound of air being pierced through, but alas, it only made the attack more effective as two black shards were embedded into his eyes, reaching the back of his head.

Not that it would have made any difference if he hadn't opened his eyelids.

*Tip! Tip!*

Now, only the sound of blood hitting the ground could be heard on the deepest floor of the prison as Ozul made his way to the two cells beside the warden's room.

He opened the cell of the prisoner whose aura felt more powerful and stepped inside.

The man, sitting on the cold floor curiously looked at his visitor who was clad in dark clothes, and couldn't help but think that his time had come.

"Do you want to be free?" Ozul asked in a deepened voice. There might be problems for him later on if this man was left alive and interrogated with unusual means.

That is why he went to such lengths to hide his identity as much as possible.

For the first few seconds, his question didn't elicit any response from the man.

Thinking that he might have already lost hope or something, Ozul was about to move to the other cell when the man hurdled from the ground with apparent madness in his eyes.

"Yes! Get me out! Please!"

If it weren't for the chains keeping him held at the exact center of the cell, he would have already pounced on Ozul.

'This attitude is exactly what I need...'

Once confronted while running inside the palace, this man would most probably lay his life down instead of getting caught again.

Under the dark of the room, the Purity cut off the chains from the walls, keeping only the stone-like collar on the man's neck that kept his Spiritual Essence in check.

"I will remove that, but you have to follow me quietly. One squeak and I will leave you rotting by yourself."

Since he couldn't go against his words while wearing the collar anyway, the man obediently nodded his head when Ozul's Purity began to slowly cover his body as well.

The man mistaking it for some poisonous miasma, was about to jump back when Ozul motioned with his hand to stay shush.

The man obliged and was now covered completely in a sheet of black.

And not being able to use Spiritual Essence had left his strength almost useless so Ozul could freely manipulate his body however he wanted to.

Taking control of him, he made him float out of the cell before using the leftover Purity to cut through the other cell.

There was an old man in that cell who seemed to have given up on his life.

He looked shocked at seeing the walls break down, and that shock only got worse when he saw the hollow-eyed warden lying dead in his room.

Before he could mutter even a sound of shock, his chains and the collar around his neck were cut into little pieces, giving him his freedom back!

The old man wasn't allowed to thank his savior as Ozul disappeared, running at insane speeds out of the prison together with the wrapped-up human by his side.

While on his way out, he cut open all the prison cells and freed as many prisoners as he could!

In a matter of two short minutes, the prison was turned upside down as a peal of hysterical laughter could be heard at the deepest part of the prison now, "HahahaHaha!!"

However, Ozul didn't slow down or wait for the royal guards to take note of the matter.

Taking advantage of the night, he sneaked back inside the royal estate and headed straight toward the palace.

'They better start a war after all of this,' Ozul mumbled in his mind, dodging all the corners where he would encounter patrolling guards.

It was mentally draining to keep track of so much in his mind, but he had already prepared himself by sleeping an entire day beforehand.

As he made his way toward the princess's chambers, the prison mayhem finally reached its peak, alerting the guards outside who informed their superiors in the royal estate.