Outworld Liberators-Chapter 146: A Show of Benevolence with Fast-Seizing Hands

Chapter 146: A Show of Benevolence with Fast-Seizing Hands

People gathered as Theo and Corneal were escorted away.

Their faces were tight. Their bodies trembled. Both were in the middle stages of Nascent Embryo, yet neither dared to run or make a fuss.

The five peak forces gave them a little face. Different uniforms. Different crests. No ropes on their wrists. It looked almost civil.

Behind them, lines of other men were marched out as well, heads lowered, hands empty.

Everyone knew these were not false accusations. The evidence was strong.

There were no treasures in their treasuries, and no emergency stashes in their warehouses.

They were at a loss for words. Who would believe they did not know where it went? No one.

What’s more, slavery was not illegal in Goldkeep Crownmarkets. It became illegal when there was no documentation, no chain of ownership, no record of how a person became a slave.

Without that paper, wouldn’t it be better to just run human farms and sell them like cattle at a market? People always followed the bottom line.

Other than that, kidnapping would be the most lucrative job, if that was the case.

Theo and Corneal were not afraid of these allegations. Their stances were even set, ready to go for a guilty plea right now.

It was another case entirely that made two men over three hundred years old shiver uncontrollably.

Collusion with the Aberrant.

Petrus had been seen with them, multiple witnesses before the calamity. Being close to an anomalistic creature was not just bad optics. It was a death sentence with procedure behind it.

Silent Severance did not do leniency.

They could be locked up for a hundred years. Worse, their souls could be extracted and read like an open book.

Most men who survived that came back with their bodies intact and their minds crippled, unable to hold comprehension the way it used to hold.

It was the end of a cultivation journey, the kind of end that left you breathing just to prove you still lived. After that, there was nothing else.

As the prisoners were dragged out, Spendworth Hills and Silvertoll Summits turned anarchic.

Looting began. Arson followed. Wood was ripped from walls. Tiles pried loose.

Even grass was torn up in clumps, because in a land with no owner, everything looked like free meat.

Towns hungry for expansion circled the peaks like hawks.

It did not last long. Eldric stepped of Cairnlight Barterhold’s gates with a scroll in hand.

He raised a land reclamation and seizure warrant and channeled qi into the words until they carried.

Blood congregated above Cairnlight Barterhold, a crimson crown forming in the sky. Mortals stared and panicked.

Cultivators who knew the law simply watched, faces flat. This was standard procedure.

"I, City Lord Eldric, do hereby lay claim to Spendworth Hills, Silvertoll Summits, Ledgegrove Bazaar, and Wordsworth Shortspires. Should any man hold objection, let him speak now."

Jekyll could only shake his head and chuckle.

Wordsworth Shortspires had been their cover base. He was not against handing it over.

He owed the old man for help that had saved lives, so he sent his words and told the city lord to forfeit the peak.

Donne did not resist. His face brightened, almost indecently.

Relief loosened something in him, and his cultivation stirred as if a chain had been cut from his own heart.

"I, City Lord Donne, do hereby forfeit my office and surrender all lands held under my seal to Cairnlight Barterhold, freely, wholly, and with a glad heart."

Gasps rippled through the crowd.

The land areas were not small. Each emperor peak covered over one thousand five hundred square kilometers, not counting elevation and the hidden holdings carved into the rock.

Add four cities to Cairnlight Barterhold and the new span surpassed the usual emperor holdings by another margin.

Two hundred square kilometers more, enough to make Cairnlight the largest city by land.

The five emperor peaks lit green.

They all knew Ossuary Necropolis Court. The emperors themselves had been there. One thing swayed them most.

People who cultivated in that place were smart.

Smart in relations. Smart on the battlefield. Smart enough to claim what they needed and share what they did not.

They had fought calamities like this before. That history made trust too easy to buy.

City lords who had been eyeing those peaks went quiet. Every one of them had a right hand ready to move in.

Every one of them also understood who they would be facing if they tried.

If the five emperor peaks had already nodded, no other local power could push back without tearing itself apart.

And this was the westernmost stretch of Goldkeep Crownmarkets, a gateway ridge where merchants and pilgrims and armies passed to reach other peaks for other needs.

Now sixty percent of that gateway belonged to Cairnlight Barterhold alone.

Eldric was not unreasonable. He saw the desperate faces in the rubble, men tearing tiles loose with bleeding fingers, women stuffing broken copper into their bosoms.

He saw hunger doing what hunger always did, making thieves out of people who had never stolen when their roofs still stood.

His voice boomed again. This time it did not sound like a warrant being read. It sounded like a man deciding where mercy could fit.

"Let it be so. those upon Spendworth Hills, Silvertoll Summits, and Ledgegrove Bazaar may take what salvage they can from the rubble. Do so until the reclaiming comes this afternoon."

"Yet those who have lost their families shall go first. And I will not have a single man lingering on these peaks by dusk."

The words had barely settled before the fog of Cairnlight Barterhold stirred.

Ghostly green clouds gathered and thickened. They swelled into shapes, and the shapes became eyes.

Hundreds at first. Thousands. Tens of thousands.

Then so many that counting became pointless, a field of watching orbs hanging over the peaks like a second, sickly firmament.

Each eye moved with a jittery human focus, the way a man’s gaze moved after he had gone berserk and could no longer decide what mattered most.

Threat lived in them. So did madness. Eldric chuckled, almost kindly, and waved one hand as if shooing flies.

"I’m watching."

People who had been ready to mock the old man swallowed hard. The thought of laughter died in their throats.

Some actually struck their own heads with their palms, as if they could knock the insult out before it became a sin.

Who would slight him for meager scrap, when a million eyes were already choosing where to land.