IRM Chapter 125

When Ji Chi turned his head, the Wolf King had already separated from behind him. The massive snow wolf stood majestically beside Ji Chi, lowering its head and bringing its long wolf muzzle close to Ji Chi’s ear, conveying a message in a low voice.

Ji Chi’s eyes instantly turned ice-cold. He seemed oblivious to everyone’s shocked gazes as he walked forward several steps, bent down to pick up a damaged battle axe from the ground, and hurled it fiercely toward the rear of the expeditionary army!

The pitted battle axe spun through the air, flying over everyone’s heads like a meteor, stabbing down toward a furtive figure.

The messenger sent by the king’s face had turned pale as paper the instant the fortress collapsed. He swallowed hard, reached up to clutch the amulet at his neck, turned his back, and ran quietly against the flow of people toward the town.

Unfortunately, he had only run a short distance when a battle axe came whistling down from overhead. The curled blade grazed past the back of his head, making his scalp explode with shock!

“Clang!” The battle axe pierced through the luxurious wool coat at the back of the messenger’s neck. The tremendous force caused him to involuntarily lean backward and fall to the ground in a disheveled heap.

The messenger gasped in terror, staring at the steel axe blade less than a finger’s length from the tip of his nose, cold sweat pouring out profusely.

Crunch, crunch—someone walked over, stepping on the snow-covered ground. A black shadow cast by the sunlight fell across the messenger’s face.

That person bent down to pull out the battle axe and looked down at him from above. There wasn’t a trace of warmth in those rare black eyes. “Who instructed you to tamper with the fortress ice wall?”

The messenger’s heart trembled. He turned over shakily and vehemently denied. “What are you talking about? How could I want to destroy the fortress?”

Ji Chi looked at him coldly, then turned back and beckoned to the Wolf King.

The Northland Wolf King was the ruler of ice and snow. It could summon ice and snow, and it could also extract memories from ice and snow.

The Wolf King’s silver-white wolf pupils flashed, and a smooth, transparent ice crystal quickly condensed beside Ji Chi. On the ice crystal was a blurred figure moving, and behind the figure was clearly the frozen fortress wall.

Seeing the scene on the ice crystal, the messenger’s face rapidly turned ashen, and his teeth began to chatter softly.

In the image, the figure looked around furtively, then rummaged through the magic pouch at his waist to pull out a palm-sized red crystal, which he quickly buried in the snowdrift beneath the ice wall.

At this point, his actions were already quite clear.

But the messenger was unwilling to be caught like this. He opened his mouth to try to quibble, never expecting that some people’s rage could no longer be suppressed for even one more second.

Silvia flashed over from within the expeditionary army. She fiercely grabbed the messenger’s collar and used all her strength to slam him back down to the ground. The messenger only felt a sharp pain coming from behind. Dizzy and seeing stars, he cried out once and coughed up a mouthful of fresh blood from his throat.

Silvia couldn’t summon even a shred of sympathy for his pitiful appearance. Her eyes were blood-red, and her steel-like cold and powerful hand clamped around his neck. Gritting her teeth, she asked word by word: “Who. Made. You. Do. This.”

The undisguised killing intent in Silvia’s eyes startled the messenger. As breathing became increasingly difficult, he understood that if he continued to conceal the truth, the enraged woman before him would use torture to make him confess everything.

The messenger choked and coughed several times. His gaze darted toward the direction of the military camp as he said intermittently, “I’ll tell, I’ll tell… It was the Chur—”

Before he finished speaking, his eyeballs suddenly bulged out from their sockets. He let out a series of inhuman, shrill screams from his mouth, and a spray of scalding blood gushed from his chest, splashing onto Silvia’s face!

The blood blurred Silvia’s expression. She stood up silently, turned to look in the direction of the military camp, and veins bulged on the hand clasped around the long sword at her waist.

Ji Chi lowered his eyes to glance at the corpse still steaming with heat. He had many potions that could revive the messenger on the spot, but it was no longer necessary. Among the forces involved in this matter, aside from the Church, the others had no need to target the fortress.

He also looked in the direction Silvia faced. There, a team of monks wearing white holy robes emerged from the military camp.

The Archbishop approached Ji Chi, glanced at the messenger who had died miserably, and smiled at Ji Chi with unclear meaning. “That warrior’s swordsmanship just now truly astonished me. However, even if you saved tens of thousands of people, you shouldn’t casually slaughter an innocent person, should you?”

He gestured with his chin toward the messenger’s corpse.

The corpse lay in a pool of blood, with a damaged battle axe lying beside it, also stained with quite a bit of blood. This scene was set off particularly starkly by the pure white snow, like a cruel murder scene.

This typical case of the thief crying “stop thief” amused Ji Chi, but the smile didn’t reach his eyes. He said softly, “Is that so? Actually, even if you hadn’t acted, he would have met the same fate. Only the order changed—originally, you should have died first.”

The Archbishop wasn’t frightened upon hearing this. He shook his head. “Ascending to heaven in this pure land would be my honor, but we are reinforcements sent by the king. If we disappear inexplicably in the military camp, won’t the king suspect? Won’t the people suspect?”

The Archbishop looked completely fearless. “I think the Snow Plains Expeditionary Army should be the guardian deity of the people, and shouldn’t become a traitor to the empire like the Northland Wolf King, right?”

The Wolf King was aware of some of the rumors about itself. It didn’t care much about these things, but that also didn’t mean it was willing to be casually slandered by others.

The Wolf King bared its gleaming fangs at him and let out a threatening low growl from its throat.

“What exactly do you want?” Silvia calmed down, wiped the bloodstain by her cheek, raised her eyes and asked coldly.

The Archbishop’s gaze moved to the Wolf King, then fell on Ji Chi’s face. He said, “We originally came to kill the Wolf King. As you know, it arrogantly killed the Beast God and created all this disaster. It must receive the Divine Lord’s judgment.”

“However, it saved so many lives in the end, which is enough for us to feel its repentant heart.” The Archbishop pressed his right hand on the blazing gold emblem at his chest, assuming a compassionate appearance. “So we have decided to banish the Northland Wolf King to the land of ice and snow, and to reclaim the weapon capable of slaying it.”

His gaze shifted slightly, finally settling on the demon sword behind Ji Chi.

A pile of high-sounding nonsense made Ji Chi curl up the corners of his mouth. The ice and snow between his brows melted, and a smile suddenly arose. He folded his arms and looked at the Archbishop. “I’ve only been in school for two years, so I really can’t understand. Can you summarize?”

Having finished his act, the Archbishop stopped beating around the bush and demanded forcefully. “Hand over the sword behind you to me.”

The position where Ji Chi stood happened to be next to a weapon rack. He turned his face and casually picked through it. “Speaking of which, I’m quite familiar with the Church. According to your corporate culture, after things are exposed, you’d most likely run away.”

Ji Chi selected a palm-length short blade from the weapon rack and tested its sharpness in his hand. “Yet you’ve persisted until now and are still putting on a brave front… That means there’s only one reason—”

“Tell me, who did you send this time?”

Ji Chi’s words cut through the Archbishop’s disguise like a sharp blade. He cursed inwardly and couldn’t help but glance subtly toward the sky.

Actually, even without the Archbishop saying anything, perceptive people had already sensed the fluctuation of energy around them.

“Heh, your lineup really hasn’t changed at all…” Brandon suddenly laughed coldly. The greatsword in his hand instantly ignited with blood-colored flames, and explosive fire elements clung to the greatsword, making crackling burning sounds. “As an angel, you’ve really done quite a few dirty deeds.”

He raised the greatsword above his head and threw it fiercely toward a patch of illusion in midair. The flames on the greatsword resembled a roaring fire dragon, opening its fangs to bite toward the void!

Just as the fire dragon was about to break through that illusion, a left palm wearing pristine white gloves extended out gracefully and slowly, as if catching a handful of sunlight, effortlessly blocking the greatsword in its palm.

The greatsword lost its power and magic, freezing in midair for an instant before falling like a bird with broken wings, clanging as it smashed onto the ground mixed with broken ice.

Piercing sunlight bloomed from the illusion, and a man entirely white, spotlessly pure, and supremely proud and noble walked out from within, twelve feathered wings spreading behind him.

Archangel Akangie.

At the first sight of him, everyone’s hearts skipped a beat. Without much speculation, they could know his identity.

He was too dazzling—his powerful strength, his supreme appearance, and that expression of overlooking all living beings with cold indifference made him seem more like a deity who had walked out from the dawn’s first light, standing at the continent’s peak.

Behind Akangie followed quite a few angels. These angels had at least eight feathered wings behind them, though they currently kept their wings tightly folded, heads bowed and eyes lowered, standing devoutly behind the Archangel.

Akangie’s eyelashes were also the color of crushed gold. His deep blue pupils, cold and distant, fell on Ji Chi below—or more accurately, on the demon sword behind him.

“Mage, that sword is not something you can possess.” His thin lips moved slightly, his voice coldly penetrating.

Ji Chi fearlessly raised his head to look directly at him, without a trace of compromise. “It’s even less something that false god can possess. This sword has only one master, and I’m merely inheriting Their will.”

Akangie’s brow moved almost imperceptibly. His eyes finally rippled with a trace of emotion, gazing at Ji Chi with scrutinizing intent. “Who are you?”

A pair of cyan wind wings spread behind Ji Chi. He stopped at the same height as Akangie, black eyes meeting blue eyes—both equally cold, but one pair suppressed countless surges and struggles, while the other pair held the desolate stillness of having seen through everything. “Who I am isn’t important. What’s important is, please help me convey this to that person—he doesn’t deserve to be a god.”

As soon as he finished speaking, his entire person instantly vanished from Akangie’s field of vision.

Akangie’s expression didn’t change. He lowered his eyes and sighed softly. His wings beat once, and the boundary of his absolute domain surged out from within his body like a tide, submerging the crowd, submerging the snowy ground, submerging the cold wind, but alone failing to capture another person’s presence.

Akangie finally frowned lightly, a faint crease gathering between his brows. He simply closed his eyes and grasped at the air with his right hand—

The breathing of everyone within the domain stopped for an instant. They stared wide-eyed in shock, wanting to run out of the domain, but discovered their bodies weren’t under their own control. The edge of the domain that was clearly right before their eyes seemed like an endpoint they could never reach in their entire lives.

Their every move was controlled. Inside the domain was like a concluded puppet show, with soulless puppets frozen stiffly on stage, subject to manipulation.

He still hadn’t found him. A trace of confusion showed on Akangie’s exquisite face. He slowly opened his eyes, but in the next second, they widened slightly—

Ji Chi, whom he couldn’t detect no matter what, was right in front of him, no more than ten meters away, calmly watching him with a simple short blade gripped in his hand.

The wind wings behind Ji Chi stirred up a current of air, both cold and warm, sweeping past Akangie. Just as the two brushed past each other, he sent the short blade into the Archangel’s chest.

The short blade, which had been left still in the wind and snow for a long time, was bone-chillingly cold. When it entered the warm flesh, it stirred up a pain that penetrated to the soul.

Akangie let out a low, muffled groan. He turned his head in disbelief to look, then fell into a pair of black pupils. At such close distance, he could actually see a trace of tenderness within them.

Ji Chi sighed softly and smiled faintly at Akangie. Leaning close to his ear, he whispered, “Hold on a little longer. You’ll be free very soon, God of Light.”