Outworld Liberators-Chapter 144: The People’s Hearts in the Aftermath

The cultivators did not let the lull of victory turn into sleep.

Hybrids were rounded up first. Those that still twitched were pinned to stone posts while elemental conjurers locked them within stones.

No one trusted the quiet. Not after what they had seen.

It would not even have been a mystery if the Aberrant had simply popped up behind a stranger’s eyes.

Too many infections. Too many wrong miracles. So they treated every body like a trap until it proved otherwise.

The dead were gathered by mortals with cracked hands and blank faces. 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝙬𝙚𝓫𝒏𝓸𝓿𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝙤𝓶

Everyone took initiative. Some carried stretchers. Some carried nothing but a blanket and a will to lift.

Names rose from the devastated peaks.

A son. A sister. A husband who had run ahead and never come back.

The Silent Severance worked beside them without speaking. They collected hybrid corpses and fed them to fire.

Not pyres meant for ceremony. Incineration meant for prevention. Not even dust remained.

Medical practitioners arrived like carrion birds in clean robes, eyes bright with hunger for answers.

They pushed toward the bodies with knives already in hand, talking too fast, too eager, as if the dead were a library they longed for.

A masked man from Silent Severance stepped in front of them and raised one hand.

"Medical Professionals with gilded core cultivation and above only."

The weaker ones protested. The mask did not move. The rule held.

The line stayed, and the eager were forced to watch while the strong did the cutting.

Blood samples were drawn. Qi was circulated through tissue. Small incisions opened to show what the infection had built inside.

The first practitioner who looked properly went quiet. The second frowned. The third swore under his breath.

The organs were folded and refolded, layered like metal worked too many times, dense in the wrong places and hollow where life should have been.

A heart that was more knot than pump. Lungs that were more lattice than sponge.

"They are technically dead at this point," one of the practitioners said. "No man would have body functions at this rate."

The words spread. A few people in the crowd broke on the spot.

They had been clinging to the simplest hope, that a loved one might be brought back with a pill, a prayer, a knife, anything.

Hearing that the bodies were already dead in every way that mattered made knees buckle and mouths open in silent sobs.

But this was only a small part of the scene. The larger part was the people gossiping, spinning stories of their own.

"Did you see that man robed with the staff. Wasn’t that too fucking awesome. With one blow he obliterated a dozen mountains I tell you."

"When that pill exploded, I thought we were all goners. Good think those masked had those chains."

Each stories on the street become more exaggerated than the last.

Far from the rubble, Radeon sat with goods stacked in front of him as if the world were paying rent.

Crates of herbs. Bundles of weapons. Ores in rough blocks. The bulk of it smelled like dirt and iron and crushed leaves.

Then the gold arrived in every form people could carry. Coins, bars, even statues.

Nine hundred sixty-seven million gold coins’ worth, counted and weighed and recorded by ghost hands that saw it as nothing more than ore.

Spirit stones followed. Seventy million low grade. Two hundred thousand middle grade. Nineteen high grade, each one bright enough to make a poor man swallow hard.

For a normal cultivator, it was the kind of haul that could stretch a millennium.

Radeon did not look the way a normal cultivator looked.

The biggest prize was not the coin. It was not even the stones. It was the sealing javelin and the steel throne.

Calyx stood near him and stared like he was watching a man eat a village.

In Calyx’s eyes, Radeon looked like a bigger villain than the Aberrant ever had.

Not because he killed more, but because he profited too cleanly through the commotion.

The man only had sweat and spittle as capital, while ghosts and wraiths did the digging, the carrying, the ugly work in the dark.

Radeon gave him a look. The system carried thoughts the way wind carried ash. He could hear Calyx’s judgment without needing Calyx to speak it.

Calyx answered with a wry smile that meant he understood the danger of offending the wrong man.

Radeon lifted a hand and pointed toward the evacuees who still lay outside Cairnlight Barterhold walls.

All sleeping in the thick fog’s aftertaste, piled where they had been dropped during the rush.

"Throw those people outside. Gently."

Calyx scratched his head, then nodded. The Tiyanak followed. Rolling around and pinching the faces of the men as they did the task.

After each man, woman, and children were outside the gates.

Calyx appeared behind a robust masked man, over ten feet of frame.

"Good day, sir. Might I presume it was you who saw those people put out of Cairnlight Barterhold—am I correct?"

The masked man nodded once. He moved without argument.

Silent Severance did not delay. They carried the sleeping evacuees away by qi and by arm.

They were not afraid of Calyx. They simply understood that power came with pride, and pride could turn petty if you let it.

At the gates, the slaves and slave pretenders arrived next, leading the freed people from Spendworth Hills and Silvertoll Summits.

They knocked, not like beggars, but like men who expected a door to open because they had already paid for it in suffering.

A small gate opened. Pills were handed out for the lingering fog. Water followed. People swallowed and blinked and found their legs again.

Those who wanted to learn to read and write were separated and led to a chamber where miners waited. Not as guards.

As guides. They gave tours of the workspaces, the sleeping quarters, the rules, the booklet that explained how Cairnlight Barterhold intended to run its new influx of bodies.

The rules were simple.

Do what you are tasked to do. Do not steal. Do not quarrel with your fellow laborers.

If you wished to leave, you submitted a reason and still worked one season before you could go.

Most of the freed wanted stay. Some disagreed with the rules. Those people were let out without question.

There were also people who feared any door that opened too easily, still torn over their decision.

Radeon only gave them some bread and half a day to decide what to do. Cairnlight Barterhold could survive without them.