Laksh’s survival was not a result of resilience, strategy, or cultivation attainment, but a consequence of timing that narrowly aligned with intervention from a higher existence, an outcome so bitter that even he understood the humiliation embedded within it.

  Had the Overlord Warrior of the Falling Leaf Sect arrived even a breath later, Laksh’s body would have already been reduced to nothing more than pulverized flesh scattered across the shattered mountains, his soul extinguished by Anshvi’s divine spear without the dignity of a final scream.

  Ishant and Anshvi hovered silently in mid-air as they watched Laksh being escorted away, his body supported not by his own strength but by the Overlord Warrior’s authority. Toward the massive flying vessels stationed at the battlefield’s edge, vessels that had once carried the arrogance of conquest but now bore the shame of retreat.

  What gathered upon those ships could no longer rightfully be called the Light Rain Sect, because that sect had been annihilated to its roots, its Elders erased. Its Masters warrior exterminated beneath thunder and divine pressure, and its Grandmasters warriors slaughtered without resistance, leaving behind only remnants too weak to influence fate.

  The practitioners who survived did so not through valor but through insignificance, crushed into the mountain bed by shockwaves and collapsing terrain, many crippled beyond recovery, many bleeding out slowly amid broken stone. Their deaths were delayed rather than prevented.

  Only around fifty disciples remained capable of standing. Their cultivation foundations fractured, their spirits trembling, their allegiance already severed from the name they once served, and these survivors were gathered onto the flying vessels not as victors or even prisoners, but as assets to be absorbed into the Falling Leaf Sect.

  Since practitioner warriors could not fly. The Overlord Warrior himself intervened, lifting them with casual indifference and placing them upon the ship, his actions devoid of compassion and guided purely by obligation.

  Before the vessels slowly turned and vanished beyond the horizon, retreating from the ruins of the Rudra Clan’s land with damaged hulls that bore the scars of Ishant and Laksh’s clash.

  As the last trace of those ships disappeared into the distant clouds, the battlefield descended into a silence so dense that even the wind hesitated to pass through it, the aftermath of destruction stretching across mountains, valleys, and shattered peaks.

  Ishant and Anshvi remained floating mid-air, Ishant bearing injuries accumulated through prolonged combat, sustaining himself through sheer will rather than remaining strength, and both were fully aware that survival had been purchased at a steep cost.

  It was then that Ishant’s body finally betrayed him. The internal damage he had suppressed erupting all at once as blood surged from his mouth, staining the air before him as his vision dimmed and his consciousness slipped away. His body losing its battle against gravity as he began to fall from the sky, no longer a Clan Leader in that moment, but a wounded man whose limits had been exceeded.

  Anshvi reacted instantly, space itself seeming to ripple as she vanished from her position and reappeared beneath Ishant’s falling form. Threads of ki shooting outward like luminous silk to wrap around his body with precision and care, halting his descent and preventing further injury as she guided him gently toward the mountain below.

  She landed beside Elder Sahas, who sat cross-legged upon the shattered stone with his eyes open and alert despite the exhaustion etched into his features. She carefully laid Ishant upon the ground, restraining the overwhelming power within her so that it would not harm him.

  Elder Sahas rose immediately and moved closer, his expression darkening as he assessed Ishant’s condition, while Eklavya, who had witnessed his father’s fall from below. He rushed forward and dropped to his knees beside him without hesitation, his breath uneven and his hands trembling as he stared at the unconscious figure before him.

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  Ashish arrived soon after, dragging behind him the lifeless bodies of the two young masters from the Marwah Clan and the Taraj Clan. Their once-proud faces frozen in death and their ambitions silenced permanently upon the cracked stone.

  The battle had ended, but its weight lingered heavily in the air, and with Ishant unconscious and incapable of issuing commands. Elder Sahas stepped forward as the Supreme Elder and took control of the situation, his voice carrying authority forged through decades of survival.

  Turning his gaze toward the remaining survivors of the Marwah and Taraj Clans, he declared with cold clarity that those who surrendered to the Rudra Clan would be spared, while those who wished to resist could choose death instead. Reminding them that their leaders were already dead, their clans shattered beyond recovery, and that survival was the only path left open to them.

  The response was immediate and unanimous, because in the cultivation world survival outweighed loyalty, honor, and pride, and humans would abandon even those who had nurtured them if it meant clinging to life.

  Every remaining warrior dropped to the ground in surrender without hesitation, fear drowning out any lingering sense of shame, and as they approached Ishant’s unconscious body. They bowed deeply and spoke in unison, their voices trembling but resolute as they declared, “We are willing to join the Rudra clan and die for it.”

  Eklavya smirked as he looked at the kneeling figures and thought, ‘They can’t even die for their own clan, the place where they were born, raised, and given a name. The moment death showed its face, all their pride, loyalty, and so-called honor shattered like fragile glass. What a pathetic bunch of cowards, clinging to life even after throwing away everything that once made them human.’

  Then he looked towards his father again.

  A faint presence stirred within him, cold and ancient, and Magha’s agreement resonated silently through his mind, shaped by memories of an era ruled by the heartless God Emperor Avrah, where such weakness would not even be acknowledged as worthy of judgment.

  The words echoed across the battlefield, hollow and contradictory that was announced by the Elder Sahas, and in that moment Anshvi slowly rose into the air once more, her eyes opening fully as her divine aura surged outward.

  Her divine ki caused the clearing sky to darken again as clouds gathered unnaturally above. Elder Sahas shouted from below, his voice sharp with urgency as he demanded, “What are you doing Anshvi.”

  Anshvi did not look down at him immediately, her gaze fixed upon the kneeling figures below as she replied calmly, “Nothing Elder, I am just sending these cowards. Where they belong to.”

  Elder Sahas did not ask anything further, because he understood her reasoning all too well, and had he not been bound by clan responsibility, he would have made the same choice himself.

  His own anger ignited by the hypocrisy of those who claimed willingness to die yet had failed to do so for their own clans. Anshvi’s voice descended again, colder than before, sharp enough to freeze intent itself as she said, “You all said, willing to die!”

  Her pressure erupted outward without warning, a crushing force that descended like a collapsing sky, splitting the earth beneath the surrendered warriors as bones shattered, organs ruptured, and cultivation ki cores cracked under unbearable weight.

  The surviving practitioners and the handful of Masters from the Marwah and Taraj Clans were flattened into the mountain without resistance. Their lives extinguished silently as blood flowed down the slopes like thin streams, carrying fragments of flesh and broken dreams into the valley below. Nearly two hundred lives ended in that instant, erased not by blade or technique, but by judgment alone, leaving behind only corpses and crimson-stained stone.

  The members of the Rudra Clan stood rooted in place, their expressions a mixture of fear, reverence, and unspoken gratitude as they stared at the figure who had just ended the battle with a single, merciless judgment. To them, Anshvi was no longer merely a Spirit Warrior or an ally who had appeared at the right moment, but a living embodiment of authority so absolute that it reshaped their understanding of power itself.

  Her ruthlessness carved itself into their minds not as cruelty but as inevitability, and from that moment onward her image crystallized into that of a queen who ruled life and death without hesitation. No words were exchanged, no proclamations made. Yet the title formed naturally and permanently within the clan’s collective consciousness, born from fear, awe, and absolute certainty—the Ruthless Goddess.

  But that image shattered the instant she descended from the sky and landed beside Eklavya. The divine pressure receded as though it had never existed, replaced by a quiet gentleness that no one had expected. She knelt beside him without concern for the blood-soaked ground or the countless eyes watching her. Her overwhelming aura folded inward until only warmth remained, and in a soft voice carrying none of the cold judgment from moments before, she asked him, “Are you fine.”

  Eklavya did not respond, nor did he lift his gaze, because his world had narrowed to the still body of his father lying before him. His tears flowing soundlessly as his face remained rigid, unblinking, carved from grief rather than flesh.

  Inside his mind, a merciless voice repeated itself again and again, each echo cutting deeper than the last. Until it drowned out everything else, whispering with cruel certainty, ‘You are weak. Just like before, everyone will die again, and you will not be able to do anything except watch, standing there like a spectator while your loved ones bleed.’