The Story Never Ends

"Oh! You are quite smart." The Lord exclaimed and said, "I want you to become one of my subordinates."

"Do you have to take the devil's essence?" Davion asked as he had already faced this similar incident with Conard previously.

"Eh! you already know about it?" The Lord was surprised.

"So, it seems to be true," Davion replied.

"Since you understand it, you should be willing to join me, shouldn't you?" The Lord smiled.

"Hehe, why do you think so?" Davion gripped his halberd and smiled.

"Humph, why do you look so confident? Do you still think you can escape?" The Lord was annoyed.

"Why should I escape when I can beat you here?" Davion immediately jumped and neared him in the air in an instant. Then he hacked his halberd straight at his head. 

"You sure talk big for a weakling." The Lord scoffed and easily caught the blade of the halberd with his right hand.

Seeing this Davion didn't panic as he was already prepared for this. He pulled back his halberd and jumped to the wall on the side. There he used his Thunder Stomp Art and dashed along the walls. In this way, he sped up and only his afterimages could be seen.

During this moment, he was observing the Lord keenly and waiting for a perfect chance to strike in his blind spot. Seeing that he was not moving, he took this opportunity and immediately leaped behind his back; and like previously he swung his halberd.

When he reached a few centimeters behind him, the Lord suddenly reacted. The Lord easily blocked his halberd with one of his wings without turning back. So, Davion didn't continue and leaped back to the walls and continued speeding up hoping to catch him by surprise.

"I thought that you were trying to do something interesting. But it was just a childish trick. You cannot escape from my Divine Sense." The Lord glanced at him with disdain and fired small orbs of devil essence towards his direction.

However, Davion with his Mind-Eye easily dodged every single one of them. Thus, the orb could only hit the walls, the pillars supporting the ceiling, and the large statues standing in the corners.

"BOOM..BOOM.."

Frequent explosions took place and the walls, the pillars, and the statues started crumbling. As a result, the ceiling above fell to the ground and the whole hall was destroyed.

*** 

"Eh! how are we already here?"

"I thought that we were in the church."

"No! Where is my child?"

"What? Now you said it, I also noticed that my child is missing."

Indeed, they were the people coming out from the church. They didn't even remember why they were already returning back to their homes. It seemed like they had come back to their senses much earlier as the statues in the hall were destroyed.

Suddenly one of them pointed towards the back and yelled, "Look!"

The people had their mouths wide open with what they saw.

"What?"

"The church is collapsing."

"How could it be?"

"Who dares to be so bold there?"

"Let's go there and check it."

"But what about our children?"

"I don't think we should go there. I can feel some powerful auras coming from there. Let's just try to search for the children."

"I think we should go there. Our children went missing after coming out of the hall."

"Do you mean that there is something suspicious about this church?"

"Of course. I think what that man said made sense."

The people discussed these things and proceeded towards the church cautiously.

***

The Lord was flying in the air and looking at the smoke infront of him. He could clearly see Davion hiding in there and thus was waiting for him to make a move.

Seeing that he was not coming out, he got irritated and fired an orb towards him "Kid, I can see you there."

However, Davion dodged it as usual and still didn't come out.

"Damn, trying to waste my time. Or are you buying some time for someone to come and rescue you?" The Lord scoffed.

He saw that the kid didn't reply to him. So, he lost his patience.

"It means I can only force you out." The Lord gathered his devil essence and tried to form a big black orb that could destroy everything over here.

Before it could get larger, Davion came ahead of him and swung his halberd. As a result, he got interrupted.

"Haha, I knew that you would come out," He had estimated that this would happen. So, he immediately transformed his fingers into a sharp claw, like that of a beast, and easily gripped his halberd.

"Is that so?" Davion smiled as he was also waiting for this moment.

"Humm" The Lord didn't understand what he wanted to do. But the next thing made his eyes wide open as he saw a terrifying tri-colored aura emerging out of him. It was black with a tinge of red and blue inside it.

Not only that, destructive black-colored lightning came out of the halberd that even made his soul tremble.

"How?" he couldn't believe that someone in the Golden Core Stage could be powerful enough to affect his soul. Indeed, only a soul Qi was capable enough of hurting someone's soul. This was the reason why the Golden Core Stage cultivators could never hurt the Nascent Soul Cultivators.

Since he was gripping the halberd, he couldn't dodge it and could only confront it head-on. 

"Bang."

He got hurled down and smashed deep into the ground. 

"Haha, you were getting quite cocky earlier, weren't you?" Davion laughed and dived straight into the ground.

He didn't want to give him the chance to recover. Nonetheless, this move also consumed a lot of his spiritual energy. Thus, he wanted to end this as fast as he could.

Inside the ground, Davion hacked his halberd as fast as he could. He didn't even bother whether the Lord had died or not. He kept swinging it like a woodcutter cutting a tree. Even though this looked shameful, this was the only thing he could do. 

"If only I had halberd arts," he sighed while going at it.

"Bang..Bang.." 

The ground shook and the hole got deeper with his every move. Only after a few minutes did he stop.

"It's finally over." He caught his breath and looked at the body of the Lord below. The halberd was still stuck in the chest. There were burnt marks everywhere on the body and the face had already become disfigured. There were deep cuts on his body and the wings had already fallen. Thus, the body looked totally unrecognizable.

"Eh! This?" Davion found a strange black colored bead inside the body.

He dug it out and looked at it carefully with his Mind-Eye. He felt a pure devil essence inside it.

"This is a devil core that could only be obtained from the devils above the Nascent Soul Stage. Although it appears to be smaller than usual, why did I find it in the body of the Pope who was in the Golden Core Stage?"

"Is this due to the projection of the Lord," he thought. He knew about these things from the library in the sect. However, there was not much information on such cases.

He was about to put it in his spirit ring when suddenly the orb lit up and a soul came out of it. 

"Lord?" He was astonished when he saw this.

He tried to catch him but he immediately flew to the sky in the blink of an eye.

"Damn, it's too fast when compared to the other souls. Not only that, it flies too high in the sky," Davion cursed as he couldn't fly that high. With the thunder stomp, the best he could do was stay in the air for a few seconds.

"Kid, how dare you put me in this state? I will definitely remember you." The Lord yelled while he was running away.

Davion looked at him leaving and got disappointed, "I cannot catch up to him. Let's forget about it for now."

He kept the core inside his spirit ring and thought, "It's time to return. Although I couldn't save those children, no children will go missing from now. The missing disciple has also been rescued. This should be considered as a successful mission." 

This somewhat made him at ease. He turned back and saw the halberd which was inside the dead body of the Pope. He was about to put it back when he suddenly remembered something.

"Shit! How could I forget this move?" Davion laughed and pulled out the halberd. Then he again looked in the direction where the Lord was escaping. Seeing that he was still in his range, he mustered all his tri-colored energy and injected it into the halberd.

The halberd sucked all of his spiritual energy and released a very dangerous aura. This aura was so strong that even the Lord who was hundreds of meters away in the air felt it.

"Did someone come to ambush me?" he turned back and didn't see anyone chasing him. However, he heard a familiar shout coming from the ground far away from him.

"Phoenix Arises"