THE GOD EATER

Loki still smiled, and in contrast to Martial Will’s loud voice, his was calm and quiet as he asked, ”Or what?”

”Or I will make your life a living hell!” Martial Will said, replying with all of the sincerity he could muster.

”Is that so? I look forward to it,” he said nonchalantly, not taking the threat to heart.

Then he ignored Martial Will and said to the rest, ”You have broken our agreement. That means I can now do whatever I want with your precious slaves. So checkmate.”

Upon hearing this, Tepid Scholar shouted at Martial Will, ”You fool!”

”I had to,” Martial Will said without remorse. ”He was going to take them from us. Was I supposed to stand there and watch it happen?”

In response, Tepid Scholar sneered and asked, ”And how did you conclude that he would take them away? Do you know how he intends to do that?”

”I don’t need to know how he intended to do it. He swore that oath, and that’s all I need to take action,” Martial Will replied indignantly.

Then he asked Tepid Scholar, ”Didn’t you hear the oath? Or has your advanced age deprived you of your hearing?”

”You fool! You’re the one who has lost his hearing,” Tepid Scholar shot back.

”Didn’t you hear what he said? He said that he intended to help them. Intention is not the same as ability.”

”Intention is what you use to make a group of Rank 8 cultivators believe you and do what you want. Clearly, it is also what you use to fool a Dao Lord.”

”He was bluffing you, buffoon, but you fell for it. I told you he was bluffing, but you still fell into his trap. Now we will lose all of them,” Tepid Scholar said somewhat hysterically.

Martial Will became uncertain of himself after he heard this. But he still didn’t want to believe that he had messed up.

He shook his head, saying, ”That can’t be true. It can’t be a bluff. He looked like he could really help them become rank 9 without our permission. I know what I saw.”

”You saw a bluff. That’s all you saw,” Tepid Scholar said with a sneer.

Since Tepid Scholar refused to be helpful, Martial Will turned to Loki and said, ”You’ve won, so you can tell the truth. Were you bluffing?”

Loki replied, saying, ”I was.”

It was a lie. He hadn’t been bluffing.

If the Dao Lords had let him continue, he would have helped every single Rank 8 cultivator to advance to Rank 9. He planned to take every divine being in their alliance too.

Every Rank 8 cultivator usually led an alliance and had an average of 6 other divine beings at their beck and call. So if he had been allowed to continue, the Dao Lords would have lost 21 Rank 8 cultivators and 126 more divine beings.

That’s how bad things could have gotten for them. But Martial Will saved them from that fate. Unfortunately, they will still lose.

The truth was that as long as the Dao Lords did what he asked and brought all of their Rank 8 Cultivators together, they were going to lose. The outcome was set from the start.

He would ask them for something small that seemed reasonable. Because what he asked for was so reasonable, they accepted his offer, complied, and brought together their most valuable disciples. Then he would have his way with their disciples.

The only difference in the possible outcomes was how much he would get to have his way with their disciples. But Martial Will didn’t need to know that they were playing a losing game. So he lied and enjoyed the turmoil going through Martial Will’s heart.

Martial Will’s face showed little emotion. His face was blank, as if Loki hadn’t spoken words that made him look like a fool. But in his heart, he was questioning his intuition, and his self-confidence was falling to shambles.

Eventually, he said, ”It seems I was wrong.”

”It would seem so,” Tepid Scholar with open disdain.

The other Dao Lords were silent because they too had been fooled to various proportions by Loki. From Heavenly Eye to Sword Maestro and Harem King, they believed Loki for some reason.

The one who had been fooled exactly like Martial Will and thought Loki was speaking the truth was Heavenly Eye. She, too, was now wondering if her eyes had been wrong.

”So what next?” Heavenly Eye asked Loki’s true body.

”Good question,” Loki’s avatar said in reply, prompting the Dao Lords to turn their gaze downward to look at the avatar.

”What will happen next depends on all of you. You will get to decide if I should kill all of these Rank 8 Cultivators, including the divine beings in their alliance, or you will allow me to use them for a hundred years.”

”Use them for what?” Sword Maestro asked suspiciously.

”That’s none of your business, is it?” the avatar asked in return.

To ease the tension, Tepid Scholar smiled and said, ”If you only wanted to borrow our divine beings, you could have asked outright. You didn’t need to go to such lengths.”

But Loki raised an eyebrow at him and asked, saying, ”Would you have given me your disciples to do whatever I wanted with, no questions asked, if I had asked politely?”

Tepid Scholar didn’t have lungs, so he couldn’t cough to ease the awkward atmosphere. So he changed the subject and asked, ”Must you have all of them? It would be best if you left us with one Rank 8 each to use to run errands.”

Loki didn’t care about what they wanted, so he said without hesitation, ”Yes. I want all of them.”

”I also want every divine being in their alliance, not one less. And I want them now.”

”If you want more divine beings, make them. I’m sure you have the personnel ready to become divine beings in your sects.”