Chapter 151 - - 151 - Carnage at Midnight

Chapter 151: Chapter - 151 - Carnage at Midnight

Lucien knew that these few remaining days before the Council of Succession were going to be exceptionally critical, especially for Zaria. The local cultivators and faction leaders in this realm possessed nowhere near enough strength to kill him, but with a concentrated, elite force, they could easily take Zaria’s life. If she died, every single effort he had invested into this political play would be completely wasted.

For Lucien, this entire kingdom was a chessboard, and every person within it was merely a piece to be moved, used, or discarded. He didn’t care about the throne of Veylcrest for its own sake—what truly mattered were the ancient treasures locked deep within the royal vaults and the vast cultivation resources that came with placing a loyal puppet on the seat of absolute power. By securing Zaria’s position as Queen, he wasn’t just saving a princess; he was guaranteeing his own unfettered access to the kingdom’s deepest secrets, her absolute devotion, and the endless benefits of their dual cultivation. But to reap those rewards, Zaria had to survive, and Veyra’s last desperate move had to be crushed so thoroughly that no one in the court would ever dare question Zaria’s ascension again.

Guarding her was the word one might use, but for Lucien, standing watch was nothing more than a casual stroll in the dark, a necessary task to secure his ultimate prize.

The assassins came precisely at midnight.

Lucien had been waiting for them. The moment Vex reported that Queen Veyra’s faction had gone completely quiet—with no fresh spies on the streets, no watchers in the alleys, and no subtle probes against his perimeter—he knew what was coming. Absolute silence was always the precursor to extreme violence.

He sat in the pitch-black main hall of the safe house. A single candle flickered on a small wooden table before him, casting long, swaying shadows across the room while he relaxed comfortably in a creaking wooden swinging chair.

Then, the first shadow stretched silently across the ceiling.

There were six of them initially, all powerful masters at the Spirit Forge Realm, their spiritual aura suppressed to near invisibility. They wore fitted black robes free of any family insignia or faction crests, their faces hidden behind cold, featureless masks. It was professional, highly expensive work—the kind of silent killers who left no evidence behind and asked zero questions.

They surrounded the perimeter of the safe house, moving in absolute synchronization as they phased through the walls like ethereal ghosts.

Lucien didn’t even bother to move.

The first assassin died before his brain could register the danger. Lucien’s astral energy and crushing spiritual pressure rippled outward in an invisible, silent wave, catching the killer mid-step. The raw pressure instantly extinguished the man’s consciousness like a tiny candle flame caught in a violent hurricane. He crumpled silently onto the wooden floorboards, his lifeless body still warm.

The second and third assassins reacted with terrifying speed, the faint metallic hiss of their blades singing through the air as they drew their weapons. They were fast, highly disciplined, and had clearly slaughtered cultivators above their own realm before.

They were still far too slow.

Lucien rose casually from his swinging chair, and the atmosphere in the entire chamber shifted instantly. The single candle flame guttered and died, plunging the room into darkness. The surrounding shadows deepened, and the air turned heavy and suffocating, thick with a crushing spiritual weight that turned the assassins movements sluggish and their reflexes painfully slow. Activating his Soul Void, Lucien directly targeted their spiritual essence, consuming their souls in an instant. The two men stiffened mid-stride, their eyes rolling back as their souls were torn from their bodies before their lifeless husks collapsed heavily to the floor.

"You were sent by Queen Veyra," Lucien said, his voice flat, calm, and conversational in the dark room. "You were told Zaria was a severe threat. You were told to eliminate her quickly and quietly. But she didn’t tell you that the person guarding her is not someone ordinary."

The remaining killers hesitated in the shadows, a brief, flickering wave of uncertainty passing between them.

"She didn’t tell you that I’ve been sitting here waiting for you," Lucien continued, a thin, cold smile playing on his lips. "She didn’t tell you that I had already calculated every possible entry, every attack pattern, and every path of escape. She didn’t tell you that I have killed far better cultivators than you in my sleep."

He stepped forward.

Realizing there was no longer any room for stealth or quiet execution, the remaining seventeen assassins concealed in the surrounding darkness abandoned all subtle tactics and attacked simultaneously.

Seeing three of his high-level companions wiped out in seconds without Lucien even lifting a single finger, the fourth assassin lost his nerve entirely. He didn’t bother trying to fight; he immediately pivoted toward the high window to escape, desperately seeking to report the impossibility of their mission. But the moment his feet left the floor toward the sill, a pale, blood-stained hand burst directly through his back, tearing straight through his spine and ribs.

Before the killer could even scream, Lucien’s fingers closed firmly around his beating heart, ripping it straight out of his chest cavity in a shower of thick crimson. The sudden, agonizing pain tore through the man’s nervous system as he collapsed uselessly onto the floorboards, twitching in a pooling puddle of his own blood.

The rest of the elite squad stared at the sight in absolute horror.

"Mo-Monster!" one of the assassins shrieked, his voice breaking behind his mask as blood dripped onto the floor.

Lucien smiled faintly, casually tossing the dripping heart up and down in his palm like a harmless rubber ball. He tossed it aside onto the floor without a care, where it landed with a wet thud. Though his hand was coated in dark crimson, the silver moonlight pouring through the high window illuminated his towering figure, making his golden eyes glow with an unnerving, predatory intensity.

"Kill him! Attack together!" the assassin leader barked, trying to break the growing panic among his men. "We cannot leave this room unless he is dead! It is an absolute order!"

The fifth and sixth assassins lunged at once, their dark blades whistling through the air, aimed directly at Lucien’s throat and spine. He didn’t bother to parry or dodge. He simply vanished from their line of sight. Lucien was in fourth realm, the Abyss Core Realm, his raw speed and physical movement vastly outclassed theirs. Utilizing his Abyss technique, his body reappeared instantly behind the two striking killers.

Snatching a dropped steel sword from the floor, Lucien swung the blade in a single, fluid horizontal arc with savage power. The steel sheared cleanly through cloth, flesh, and bone, severing both assassins at the waist. Torso separated from hip, their upper bodies crashing to the floor as spray and spilled organs covered the wooden planks.

The seventh assassin managed to exploit a split-second gap, his narrow blade grazing Lucien’s forearm—leaving a shallow, thin red cut. It was more of an annoyance than an actual injury. Lucien glanced down at the trace of blood, then looked up at the trembling assassin, his smile widening.

Right before the assassin’s eyes, the shallow wound closed instantly, the flesh stitching itself back together without leaving even a trace of a scar.

"Impressive," Lucien murmured smoothly. "You actually managed to touch me. It seems you are slightly stronger than the rest of these insects. Not that it matters to me—you are still as weak as an ant."

The assassin’s eyes widened in sheer terror behind his mask. He tried to vault backward to gain distance, but Lucien didn’t grant him the chance. Stepping forward, Lucien brought the stolen blade down in a brutal, blinding flash, splitting the man’s skull and carving straight down through his sternum before kicking the cleaved body aside.

Panic fully set into the remaining squad.

’What kind of enemy is this? We can barely touch him, and even when we draw blood, he heals instantly!’ the squad leader thought, his breathing ragged and desperate. ’He slaughters Spirit Forge masters like helpless cattle, ripping hearts and cleaving men in half, and he hasn’t even drawn his own primary weapon!’

Driven by pure survival instincts, the remaining ten assassins stopped trying to preserve their energy. They unleashed their full astral energy simultaneously, combining their elemental affinities—water, fire, wind, earth, alongside their dark demonic cultivation paths—and launched a massive, concentrated strike directly at Lucien’s position. As elite royal killers at the Spirit Forge Realm, their combined elemental assault detonated with devastating force, blowing out the surrounding furniture and filling the chamber with thick, blinding smoke and violent spiritual shockwaves.

Lucien could have easily extinguished them before they finished charging their attack, but he intentionally allowed the blow to land. He wanted Zaria and Vex to witness the sheer scale of the threat he was clearing for them, ensuring they understood the immense debt they owed him. By making himself their sole savior, he bound them to him completely—not just by affection or lust, but through the overwhelming realization that without him, they were already dead.

Hidden behind a reinforced wooden door, Vex watched through a small peephole, her heart hammering wildly against her ribs. She pressed her back against the wall, her hands shaking as the violent shockwaves rumbled through the floorboards. She was a trained bodyguard, but seeing Spirit Forge elites—the deadliest killers in the veylcrest—get torn apart like mindless children left her breathless.

Watching Lucien stand in the center of the dark room, drenched in blood with golden eyes shining, sent an overwhelming surge of heat straight to her core. To Vex, he was no longer just a powerful cultivator or a strategic master; he was an absolute God of carnage and pleasure. Her mind raced back to earlier that night, remembering the massive size of his shaft, the way his heavy hands had claimed her mistress, and the dangerous promise he had made to ruin Vex next.

The sheer contrast between his terrifying, godlike brutality in battle and his intoxicating, dominant touch in the bedroom made her mouth go dry and her knees tremble violently. She realized with a shiver that she was completely hooked on him. She didn’t just revere his power; she craved him with every fiber of her being. An intense ache throbbed between her thighs, and she had to bite her lower lip until it nearly bled to keep from moaning aloud in the dark. She desperately wanted to step out, fall to her knees before him, and surrender her body to his absolute dominion, but Lucien’s strict command kept her pinned in the dark.

Inside the smoke-filled hall, the assassins let out breathless sighs of relief. They were confident that no cultivator could possibly survive a direct, full-power assault from ten Spirit Forge Realm elites at once.

However, as the dust cleared, Lucien stood completely unfazed in the exact same spot, his clothes untorn and his body entirely unblemished.

Lucien raised his hand into the air, activating his Primordial Vein skill. Thick, jagged blood-red veins erupted violently from the floorboards like razor-sharp spears, impaling every remaining assassin straight through their chest and throat. They screamed in agonizing horror as their souls were instantly sucked into Lucien’s Void. In seconds, their flesh withered, their skin turning gray and dry as every drop of blood and vitality was violently drained into the veins.

Within moments, nine of the remaining ten killers fell to the floor as hollow, dried-up husks. Only the assassin leader was left alive, pinned to the ground by a single blood-vein, coughing up dust and trembling uncontrollably.

Seeing that the slaughter was over, Vex slowly pushed the door open and stepped into the room, her eyes wide as she surveyed the crimson-soaked floor covered in severed limbs and dried corpses. Her breath hitched as her gaze locked onto Lucien’s tall frame, her eyes brimming with a mixture of raw terror, total submission, and burning desire.

"Is... is everyone dead?" Vex asked, her voice trembling slightly as she looked up at him, her body still humming with the lingering heat of her desire.

"Yes," Lucien replied casually, wiping a stray drop of blood from his cheek with the back of his hand. "I left this one alive. I need to interrogate him, but I have a far more efficient method than asking questions."

Lucien already knew that once he extracted this information, the final trap would spring. He would turn Queen Veyra’s own desperate strike into the ultimate evidence of her treason, delivering her head on a silver platter right as the Council convened. With Veyra eliminated, Prince Varen discredited, and the King fully under his influence, Zaria’s crown was guaranteed—and the royal vaults would finally be opened wide for his taking.

Without resorting to tedious torture, Lucien stepped forward, pressing his palm flat against the assassin leader’s forehead. He surged his spiritual energy directly into the man’s mind, tearing through his mental defenses to surgically extract every memory, order, and secret plan stored within his brain. It was wildly invasive, brutally painful, and completely merciless.

The assassin leader screamed in agony as his mind was peeled open, his body convulsing wildly until he surrendered every piece of information he possessed, revealing Queen Veyra’s final, desperate plot in full detail.