Chapter 540: Stranded

’Oh!’ Liam exclaimed internally, understanding finally dawning upon him.

Liam’s hand had snapped at the woman’s throat as soon as he had smelled the ploy, but he hadn’t really understood its nature. His brain had needed a few seconds to catch up.

’So, you can do that, too,’ Liam realized. The rooting expert had basically tried to involve him in her mess, pretending they were a team of sorts.

Liam couldn’t remain immersed in his thoughts for long. The two men soon caught up, but addressed the woman he had lifted above his head by her throat, disregarding him completely.

"I’ll teach you the difference between men and pigs!" The first to arrive, a rather handsome man in his thirties, shouted. "When I’m done with you, we’ll see who’s desperate!"

"Do you think your parents will save you this time?" The second man, also in his thirties, but thinner and more average, snorted. "You’ll be lucky if you end up as part of the Young Master’s harem!"

’Do they not see me?’ Liam wondered. He didn’t care about what the three were fighting about, but it had taken him until the afternoon to find traces of life, and the buzzing in his brain told him that his adorable, always-composed partner had gone into scolding mode.

"Fellow Daoists, I’m looking for directions," Liam announced, and the two men finally seemed to realize that he was there, albeit not in the way he had hoped.

"Release her at once!" The first man ordered. "She is our prisoner!"

"Hand her to us," The second man followed. "Unless you also want a taste-"

The second man couldn’t finish his threat since blood filled his vision. He hadn’t even seen the attack. Liam’s palm was simply on his companion’s forehead, and everything inside his skull had erupted from his orifices.

Before the second man could add anything else, a sharp pain flooded his brain. His right eye was on fire, and something covered his left one. A specific pressure also descended on his skull, telling him that the newcomer had grabbed his face.

"H-how dare you?!" The second man gasped. "Do y-you even realize who-?"

Once again, the man didn’t finish his line. Liam crushed his skull before he could.

The woman didn’t have the best point of view, but she could catch the two corpses falling off the swords from the corner of her eye. Still, she barely had the time to feel any shock before something far worse arrived.

Black eyes looked back at the woman, becoming the entirety of her world. The fear she had felt earlier returned heavier than ever, filling every inch of her being, making her a prisoner of her own terror.

The woman’s initial evaluation couldn’t have been more on point. That man was a beast, a predator that would crush her neck at the first sign of enmity. Statuses and other aspects of the cultivation world had no value in his eyes. The only rules he followed were his own.

It was exactly because of that enlightening fear that the woman didn’t try anything. She couldn’t reason with that man. She could only obey or die.

"This is the Aetacia region," The woman forced out of her squeezed throat. "O-of the Great Quiet Desert."

The first name didn’t ring a bell, and the second didn’t, either. However, the latter still had something Liam couldn’t deny, almost making the conclusion he had tried to suppress burst forth.

"Which Circle?" Liam questioned, not letting his internal turmoil show.

The Kingdom had six Outer Circles, becoming a total of seven with the Inner Circles, mimicking the number of Ancestral Beasts. Even the Church’s heptagons probably fell in that category.

Liam had been born in the sixth Outer Circle, the outermost. He had moved to the fifth after leaving the Sect, eventually entering the fourth after the inheritance’s events. That was where he and Grace had been in the northern region, too.

"The third," The woman answered, her gaze glued to Liam’s, pieces of the puzzle coming together in her mind.

Liam’s clothes had already been a glaring clue. No one wore black there, let alone a robe with two layers. One usually was already too much, and it had to be thin and loose. Men even tended to keep it open at the chest area, at the very least.

The questions were the nail in the coffin. For whatever reason, that terrifying man had ended up very far away from home.

A curse resounded in Liam’s mind. His target obviously was deeper in the Kingdom, but he hadn’t planned to get closer to it so soon.

After all, being closer to the Inner Circles meant more and stronger cultivators. There were better systems and resources, too, but that was a double-edged sword for a criminal. People might recognize Liam sooner.

Also, the Dragons were a huge variable, one that became more likely the closer Liam got to their home, and he knew he wasn’t ready to face them.

’At least I didn’t have to face the Enforcement Guild when crossing the border,’ Liam thought, finding a silver lining in that mess. Avoiding that Guild had been easy in the past, but that also would become more troublesome as he got closer to the Inner Circles.

Liam sighed at that point. He knew the answer. He had known it ever since he first gazed at the endless sea of sand. There was only one place in the Kingdom with deserts, but he asked anyway.

"Which region?" Liam questioned.

The answer Liam didn’t want to hear arrived, together with all its complications.

"The southern region," The woman revealed, not showing any confusion since she had understood Liam’s predicament.

’And I even destroyed the teleport,’ Liam cursed, but still summoned his black jade tablet. Of all the things he couldn’t be anymore, a coward was at the top of his list.

Liam let the barrage of questions that had accumulated throughout the day resound in his mind before sending the communication that would answer them all. ’I’m in the southern region, third Outer Circle, and I might be stranded.’