Nothing about Liam moved. Even after the jailer collapsed, his body and mind remained tense and sharp, ready to wager his life in his next attack.
However, as the seconds passed, sweat began to accumulate over Liam's forehead and back. The adrenaline from the battle also subsided, reminding him of the pain radiating from behind him and the need to catch a breath.
"The Divine Cult is my life," The scroll said, and the other kids shouted those words, finally snapping Liam out of his tense concentration.
Liam took a deep breath, wanting to gulp, only to find something in the way. He spat it to the floor, having to repeat the action a few times to remove the pieces of cloth and gore stuck in his mouth and teeth.
Still, Liam's gaze never left his prey during the process. His black eyes remained on the collapsed man even after he wiped his mouth and began to approach him.
Of course, Liam's senses remained as sharp as possible. He didn't miss anything, from the scroll's voice to the kids still thrusting their fingers into their buckets.
However, the collapsed jailor only radiated silence. Liam's ears would have captured the faintest breath. Honestly, he would have probably been able to hear a heartbeat in his current state, but nothing came out of the hooded man.
But Liam didn't dare to rejoice or relax. Cultivators were beyond his understanding, and the previous almost-clash had hammered down that point. Even if the jailor looked dead, Liam couldn't forget his terrifying aura.
So, Liam poked the jailer's leg with his foot, carefully absorbing every sound and reaction before walking away. His gaze never left the collapsed man, but that didn't hinder him from retrieving a specific item.
Then, Liam returned to the jailor, wooden tile in hand. He kicked him belly up, warily waiting for something to happen. However, nothing did, and his senses kept giving the all-clear, making him kneel toward his prey.
Death was final, but that rule applied to mortals. Liam didn't know if cultivators could magically come back to life, so he had to make sure that the jailer couldn't.
A new noise joined the hall's shouts and thrusts. Liam repeatedly slammed the tile's edge on the jailer's neck, slowly digging through his wounded flesh.
The tile was by no means sharp, but it was sturdy enough to endure those repeated blows. Of course, its edge broke, opening into splinters, but the item remained intact until it slammed on the stone floor, crumbling in Liam's hand.
By then, Liam didn't have any use for the tile anymore. There the jailer stood, beheaded far from cleanly, but headless nonetheless, and Liam had to believe that even cultivators couldn't come back from that.
At that scene, Liam finally relaxed. He had won. His hunt had succeeded. He had killed the man who had tortured him for an unknown amount of time, but his heart remained cold, devoid of any emotion or feeling.
Liam had already learned how killing felt, and that first conscious murder was no different. Death only brought emptiness. Even after what the jailer had done to Liam, he experienced no happiness or satisfaction.
Yet, something was different. The disgust and storm of emotions Liam had felt after his first kill were gone, and turning to look at the four kids still performing their drills uncovered the deeper marks that cruel experience had carved into him.
In the past, Liam wouldn't have hesitated to do something about those kids. They didn't only share his suffering. They weren't only comrades of one of the worst experiences in his life. It was simply right to save them.
Nevertheless, concepts of right and wrong felt vague now. Liam had seen, experienced, and done too much to cling to such a naive perspective of the world. After that training, life seemed to have lost any meaning, and not just in the general sense.
If mere kids could die so easily with little to no repercussions, human lives couldn't have much value in the first place.
Still, more than all that, Liam was exhausted, too tired to care, do the right thing, or blame himself for what he had done. He had had enough and only wanted to leave without shouldering the burden of those fellow young lives.
"The Divine Cult's weapons know no pain," The white-masked man's voice resounded from the scroll, snapping Liam out of his pensive state, making him sigh loudly.
The kids shouted those words while Liam stood up and approached the scroll, inspecting it from side to side, but not daring to touch it. It made no sense how mere paper could produce voices, and Liam couldn't help but blame those strange glowing symbols for that.
'I really need to understand how this cultivation stuff works,' Liam sighed, this time in his mind, diverting his gaze to the brazier with the blue flame to his right.
Liam reached for the brazier's metal stand, finding no issue with its weight, only for his injured back to hurt while he lifted it. Then, he brought the item to the scroll, placing the blue fire right under it.
Liam almost believed the scroll would survive that strange blue fire. After all, talking paper was basically magic, so being fire-resistant would hardly lead to any surprise.
Yet, the paper did burn, its intricate glowing symbols failing to resist the erosion.
"The Divine Cult is-," The scroll tried to speak again, only for the blue fire to take over it completely, its symbols going dark as the flame devoured it.
The kids behind Liam echoed that partial statement and thrust their fingers into the buckets once more, but stopped afterwards. Without the scroll giving orders, their drills came to a halt.
Still, Liam left those updates to his ears. His black eyes remained on the burning scroll, capturing the very second in which it disappeared. He had wondered whether the scene would have been cathartic, but nothing of the sort happened.
Something had broken inside Liam, and part of him knew there was no turning back from that.