Chapter 84 Soul Reaping

Kaze flew above the riot, developing on a four-way intersection with four lanes on either side.

Riot patrol members and barricades prevented the three hundred rioters from getting into the economic district of the city.

It was an essential lifeline for the city, so the troops protected it at any cost.

Each soldier held an assault rifle or stood behind turrets in one of the twenty humvees blocking the rioter's paths.

A pit of dead bodies riddled with bullets proved that the soldiers were no longer averse to killing when necessary.

They had a job and lost patience in dealing with the endless madness in the streets.

"I need food, you pig!"

"My family needs to eat!"

"You can't horde supplies!"

"STAY BACK!" A soldier in green camo yelled, lifting his assault rifle, "You must go to the east entrance like everyone else!"

"East entrance!?" A woman scoffed, "There's a mile-long line!"

"That's a mile of people following the fucking rules. Now get back!"

No one noticed Kaze, who stopped falling twenty feet above them, hoving with his arms crossed.

"You don't know the meaning of pain!"

"You make me sick!"

"FUCK YOU!"

"I don't care what you think! Move back or you'll join those dead bodies over there!" The soldier yelled.

"SILENCE!" The emperor boomed in an amplified voice, sending a wave of shock pulsing through the crowd.

The soldiers turned their turrets on the well-dressed black-haired teen wearing a grey button-up and charcoal grey slacks.

He stared at them with vicious green eyes.

"Who the hell are you!?" A soldier yelled, "Identify yourself!"

"Someone with enough power to fly, you fool!" Kaze yelled, "If you don't turn away those weapons, you'll learn that the hard way!"

Someone put their finger on the trigger. A moment later, that soldier disappeared, and everyone looked up, triggered by the sound of screaming.

"Aghhhhhhhhhhhhh!"

BOOM!

A crimson flower bloomed on the ground the speaking soldier stood a moment prior.

He disappeared, fell eighty feet from the air, and created a bloody mess in the exact same location.

Everyone turned back to the emperor, who had his hand forward.

"Must you have another demonstration to lower those weapons?" Kaze asked chillingly.

The soldiers trembled and lowered their turrets, traumatized by what they had seen.

Satisfied, the emperor spoke to everyone present.

"If you seek life, then leave." He declared boldly, "If you don't, I'll count you amongst the raving and depraved when I turn this area to ruin!"

Every sane person trembled in confusion and panic.

"W-Wait! You are not serious, right!?" A soldier cried.

Many more panicked soldiers followed instantly. They didn't want to get in trouble with the military, which had become merciless over the last week.

"I speak no falsehood!" Kaze yelled, "If you're sane and free of the disease, you understand my message, yes? The sick cannot.

Therefore, I'm giving everyone three minutes to leave before I kill those who fail to comprehend or comply with my statement.

I will not waste my breath differentiating between two equally insane people."

The soldiers and desperate rioters froze for a moment, lost in shock.

"Your three minutes start now!" The emperor boomed, "Remember that you cannot follow your supervisor's orders if you're dead.

Rioters, you'll die on sight if you move forward to follow the soldiers. Now move!"

To drive his point, Kaze created a frost dragon and had it fly through the area.

It wasn't an offensive weapon; it was something that he developed for the Ice Phoenix during their years traveling together.

Regardless, it was enough to strike fear into their hearts.

The soldiers fell back half a mile within three minutes, driving away.

As promised, Kaze sent down area slashes to kill all who tried breaking past the barricade, sick or otherwise.

Dead bodies began stacking up, triggering those in the early stages of Qi sickness or sooner to turn around and run away.

In total, one-third of the crowd dispersed to sidestreets, and another fifty died trying to break free of the barricade.

Those that remained were either mad or stupid, and the emperor didn't differentiate.

"What attack would draw her in?" Kaze pensively asked, "[Tears of the Fallen] should do. If I limit it to Sky Plane techniques, she might not feel them."

He lifted his hands to the sky. An ominous wind swept through the area, collecting blood from the ground and lifting it to the earth in a vortex.

The world dyed red as a cloud of blood hovered in the air, shocking everyone for a mile.

"Fall." Kaze said with a ruthless voice, thrusting his hand to the earth.

Tens of thousands of red shards the size of fingernails shot from the sky instantly, destroying the entire area and shredding the buildings, humans, and equipment without distinction.

When the shards touched the ground, they returned to liquid blood.

Within seconds, the entire area was a bloody mess. Over two hundred people perished instantly, falling lifelessly on the ground like falling dominoes.

Kaze closed his eyes. "Reap."

The area turned golden, and a vortex of golden light swept through the area in a divine breeze, sending lifeforce toward the emperor.

His veins glowed gold as they entered his body, and his partially constructed soul core churned to welcome in the new souls.

"Weak." Kaze scoffed in annoyance, "It's not enough for basic repair."

All beings had soul Qi. However, the stronger the cultivator, the more soul Qi they had.

Since the sick couldn't cultivate, they naturally had very little.

If he were desperate, he would kill everyone, including the military, to reap their soul Qi. However, he'd never kill a person unless necessary, and right now, it wasn't.

He only needed to gain enough to repair his soul until the showdown began.

Ideally, he would gain enough to create spatial rings and barriers for their depots, but those were secondary considerations.

"And now we wait." Kaze whispered pensively, "I doubt a demonstration with that much elemental and soul Qi wouldn't go unnoticed by her."

Meanwhile, twenty miles away, a woman with straight, pitch-black hair in a green hoodie froze.

"You again!" She growled with bright purple eyes, "Stay put this time, you fool!"

The woman broke into a fast sprint, jumping onto strip store roofs without concerns about concealing her identity.

...

Kaze waited patiently in the same location, ignoring the skycruiser watching him from a distance.

Agent Ryker naturally watched him massacre hundreds of rioters and stay in place with narrowed eyes, gritting his teeth.

While he knew the rioters were mad, something about how casually the emperor did it made him sick.

He knew that the man was a [sleeper] and now believed that he was ambivalent about human life.

Neither of those viewpoints was correct.

Regardless, he kept his composure, separating the man's value from his actions and countenance.

Three minutes later, his mental tune shifted when he saw a black streak moving across the city.

The cameras tried to pick it up, but it was moving over sixty miles an hour and passing between rooftops in an erratic pattern.

"Is that—"

CRAAAAASSH!

A pulse of warping space cut through a 200-foot residential building near Kaze, shattering the plate-glass windows and toppling the building.

The building crashed down atop the emperor's head before colliding with the earth.

BOOOOM!

Agent Ryker watched the scene in shock. If what Kaze did looked brutal, he could only imagine what would have happened if the humans were still in the building.

The attack would have killed the residents and the protesters in a single strike!

He looked for the emperor at the bottom of the rubble.

When he finally located him, his eyes trembled in shock. The man hadn't moved—he was still flying in the same location without a scratch on them.

Now, there were multiple eyes on him.

Kaze glanced down at the building from fifty feet in the air. It had collapsed after an air slash cut through the support beams and sent it downward.

He was impressed by the skill necessary to make the building topple in his location.

Then he let his eyes glide to a nearby rooftop where a woman in a knee-length frog hoodie stood, gazing at him with murderous eyes.