Beyond the window, the glass greenhouse reflected the pale light of the sun, and the bright roses stood out even in the thin fog.
In the bedroom, Duke Negan seemed to have recovered the feeling of following his father and elders around the vast lands when he was young, riding a horse, using a hound, and chasing a wild beast.
Finally, he climaxed and the surroundings seemed to become abnormally quiet.
At this moment, his mind suddenly buzzed once. He felt as if the pleasure and comfort he was feeling had suddenly exploded one after another. It continued exploding without end or limit, again and again.
Duke Negan's waist kept shaking, and his eyes were blank, his brain having lost its train of thought.
His heart began to beat violently in an unbearable manner, like a steam boiler whose pressure had gone beyond its limits. It could blow up at any time, and hot steam could gush out at any moment.
If it were an ordinary person or a Beyonder who wasn't physically strong, they would've suffered a heart attack, a massive cerebral hemorrhage, and die on the spot. But Duke Negan ultimately managed to ride through the attack. Only his eyes were unfocused, and saliva was flowing out the corner of his mouth before he weakly slumped onto his mistress.
The Wind-blessed and the duke's secretary, who were onguard on both sides of the room, simultaneously sensed the strange and mysterious smell of spirituality. The former's body was suddenly surrounded by a violent wind, sweeping him towards the wall, and with a clang, a large hole was blown through the wall as he stepped into the bedroom.
The secretary went straight to the source of the mystery—the attic of the house!
Along the way, he didn't evade or dodge, but the decorative vases and other objects in the corridor seemed to have found lives of their own and avoided him in ingenious ways.
As he ran up the stairs to the attic, the wooden floorboards seemed to rise, as if to give him a hand.
In just three or four seconds, the refined, handsome, blond young man entered the attic and saw a figure sitting on an old chair.
The figure was covered in a thick black liquid, just like the gathering of all the ugly desires and intense feelings in the depths of a human's heart. It was the greed of willing to sell and hang oneself by the ropes, the hunger that wouldn't even spare one's own kind, and a lust without limits.
This was a devil walking the earth!
The skinny secretary's expression didn't change, nor did he attack directly. Instead, he looked at the other party, reached behind him, and politely closed the door.
Bam!
The wooden door of the attic was closed.
The entire room suddenly felt like it had been completely sealed, as if one could never leave the room unless effort was put in to crack the seal.
At this moment, the concept of "closing the door and sealing the room" seemed to have been changed to "seal this place, isolate the outside from the inside!"
The Desire Apostle moved. His body expanded and grew a pair of huge bat wings that emitted light blue tongues of flames.
One by one, fireballs that exuded a strong sulfurous smell were formed, and they bombarded Duke Negan's blond secretary.
The secretary reached out with his white-gloved left hand and clenched it while half-turning his wrist.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
The fireballs stopped following the principle of straight or parabolic paths as they scattered in every direction in a sudden outburst of chaos, like the irregular movement of tiny particles suggested by a botanist 1 . Some of them hit the wall, some hit the ceiling, some fell beside the weak-looking secretary, and some fell backward, almost wounding the Desire Apostle himself.
The entire attic was a mess, with traces of destruction and char everywhere, and the house even shook a few times.
However, the mysterious power that was "sealed" in here, or the rules that had been tampered with, had yet been destroyed. The surrounding walls, the old wooden door, and the dusty roof appeared to be on the verge of collapsing, but it remained intact.
The Desire Apostle wasn't frustrated by the failure of his previous attempt, nor was he flustered that he couldn't control his enemy or catalyze him into a frenzy, due to his calmness and restrained desires. His coffee-brown eyes suddenly lit up like lava as he took the form of the blond secretary. He spat out a word in the Devil language, one filled with foulness and filth: "Die!"
Almost at the same time, the pupils under the secretary's golden-rimmed glasses constricted. He opened his left fist and aimed at the Desire Apostle with the palm of his hand.
Suddenly, his figure split into two. One was refined and skinny like his actual self. The other was a shadow covered by a black liquid of "desire." The two quickly alternated, overlapping with each other at times.
"Die!"
The words said in the Language of Foulness echoed in the attic as the secretary let out a low grunt and took two steps back.
Following that, the split silhouette dissipated, and large swaths of rusted red marks appeared on his face, as though he had turned into a man of iron that had been left in a humid area for years.
Cough! Cough! Cough! He coughed violently, spitting out blobs of rusted blood that had congealed into clumps.
The marks on his body began to slowly peel off.
Cough! Cough! Cough!
The Desire Apostle was also coughing, coughing out blood that had clumped and turned to rust. The viscous black liquid covering his entire body suddenly became much thinner.
The Language of Foulness seemed to have half of its effects transferred to him by Duke Negan's secretary!
...
In the bedroom.
The Wind-blessed helped Duke Negan up and kicked the beautiful mistress to the other side in case she was an accomplice of the assailant.
The reason why he didn't help the secretary was because he knew he had only one responsibility—to protect Duke Negan!
And in similar situations, one had to be wary of more than one enemy!
At this point, Duke Negan had somewhat recovered a little, he was rather strong, but his limbs still felt weak. His body felt empty and his mind was sluggish. He was completely unable to use his Beyonder powers.
He motioned to the Wind-blessed to remove the conch necklace from his neck and brought the item to his lips.
Duke Negan took a deep breath and blew into the small conch which was covered in strange patterns.
Splash!
The low and deep sound of the tide was heard as it rushed towards the Holy Wind Cathedral.
"With His Grace's speed, he should be able to arrive very soon!" The Wind-blessed first reassured him, and then with Duke Negan on his back, he went to the window and leaped down.
He wanted to meet up with the duke's guards outside; there were two or three Low-Sequence Beyonders among them.
Duke Negan gasped for breath and said, "Catch him, make sure to catch him alive, or with a Spirit Body...
"I want to know who it is!"
He had suffered an assassination attempt from Pirate Admiral Qilangos the last time, and now, it was an unknown Sequence 5 expert. Duke Negan was very aware that he hadn't developed any irredeemable grudges with anyone recently, as such, he was especially angry and resentful.
He wanted to find the mastermind and use all the resources at his disposal to tear the mastermind apart!
The premise of all this was that he could find clues from the assassin.
Seven or eight seconds later, most of the duke's guards surged forward, surrounding Pallas Negan and the Wind-blessed in the middle as they gathered in front of the garden.
"Wait here and be on guard against the enemy," the Wind-blessed gave the order.
Under normal circumstances, he had to protect the duke and evacuate from the assassination grounds as quickly as possible and rush to the safety of the Holy Wind Cathedral. However, he wasn't sure if there were any other enemies, and he was afraid of being ambushed en route. He was afraid of missing the reinforcements from Spellsinger of God, Ace Snake, and ending up being placed in a more perilous situation.
One second, two seconds, three seconds... Time kept flowing by as the house shook from time to time, and the battle inside seemed to have reached its climax.
"Why is the Archbishop not here yet?" the panting Duke Negan asked in a slightly panicked voice.
With the archbishop's flying speed, he should've arrived very quickly. However, there weren't any signs of the thin fog being scattered in the direction of the Holy Wind Cathedral.
On high alert, the Wind-blessed hesitantly said, "Perhaps, perhaps the Archbishop, the Archbishop..."
He eventually failed to mention the possibility that the Archbishop wasn't in the Holy Wind Cathedral.
At that moment, the beautiful mistress of Duke Negan came to the window of the bedroom on the second floor, her eyes filled with a lost and beautiful smile.
Then, she jumped down, deliberately hitting her head on the concrete floor.
Bam!
After producing a jarring sound, there were quite a few cracks on her beautiful head, and blood began to flow out.
She rolled a few times, weakly, until she was facing up.
Her eyes had lost all focus, and her frozen expression was one of madness and fear.
Seeing this scene, many members of the duke's guards couldn't help but feel horrified.
Even Duke Negan himself felt that his emotions were on the verge of collapse when Archbishop Snake didn't arrive.
"Let's go! Let's get out of here!" he weakly called out on instinct.
Just as the Wind-blessed was rejoicing over not being soft-hearted when kicking the mistress away—otherwise, the duke would've been killed on the spot—he heard a command filled with horror. His heart suddenly skipped a beat.
Inside the attic, the Desire Apostle, who was in the middle of a fierce battle, suddenly liquefied and turned into countless black shadows, jumping up and down on the ground.
After dodging the blond secretary's attack, he rematerialized in another direction.
Then, he looked at the enemy, raised his right arm, and slightly curled the corners of his mouth.
"No!" The blond secretary's eyes reddened.
All of a sudden, the Desire Apostle clenched his fist.
Outside the luxurious house, Duke Negan's horror erupted. It shot straight to his brain and into his veins, blanketing all his nerves.
He heard the sound of something shattering and felt a warm sensation at the back of his head.
At the same time, several members of the duke's guards became flustered and panicked. They all raised their custom revolvers or rifles in their hands and started shooting randomly towards the center.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
The Wind-blessed was the first to reach out and grab Duke Negan. He rolled to the ground, and a formless wind as sharp as knives appeared out of thin air, slicing through the throats of the guards.
Splat. Splat. The guards clutched at their throats, slowly falling to the ground in a pool of fresh blood. Duke Negan's body twitched a few times, but then it stopped moving.
He was robbed of his life by his own horror.
If he hadn't been a Sequence 6 Beyonder, then his horror might've even dismembered him.
Of course, if he hadn't become extremely weak, then he wouldn't have possessed such intense emotions. And even if he had these emotions, then he wouldn't have directly died as a result of this.
But there were no "ifs" in this world, Pallas Negan—the leader of the Conservative Party, the noble with the largest land apart from the king, the elder brother of the current Prime Minister, a Sequence 6 Beyonder, and a truly important figure— was dead.
The roses in the nearby glass greenhouse were still in full bloom.
In the attic, the blond secretary seemed to sense something and could no longer control his emotions.
As a result, his mind went blank, and he anxiously ran outside, automatically opening the door to the sealed room.
Two seconds later, he snapped to his senses and turned around again. However, the figure that was covered by the black liquid and the suitcase in the corner had disappeared.
...
The Desire Apostle quickly left the villa, evacuating from the scene based on a predetermined route.
It was at this moment that a thick sea of blood seemed to appear before his eyes.
