Chapter 650 The Hunt
Jonathan gritted his teeth while going through the image in his head. The next instant, the floor beneath him shattered to pieces, and he crashed into the wall like a charging bull.
In the living room next door, a man in a bathrobe was going through some documents. Following a loud crash, the wall in his house exploded. As Jonathan’s figure dashed across the room before his eyes, all the furniture in the room was blown into smithereens.
The man turned around to check the enormous hole behind him while still holding the documents, only to see the elderly man showing up again and rushing toward him.
With three of his seven opponents gathered in one spot, there was no reason not to get rid of them in one go.
While still under the bell’s protection, Jonathan crashed into another wall. He grabbed the bell in his hand with a wave and pierced Heaven Sword forward.
“I’ll block him!” shouted one of the members of Team Oracle.
However, his long sword was broken by Heaven Sword the moment it was lifted.
His head also flew backward before stopping mid-air.
It was as if the entire room was frozen in time.
“Condense!”
Jonathan made a gesture with his left hand to set up a Grandmaster Realm force field.
Unlike the force fields that he had set up before, it only covered a distance of ten meters. However, the spiritual energy it contained was scarily compact.
Whoever had achieved Grandmaster Realm would be able to form a force field. Jonathan wouldn’t be able to break other force fields with his own even if he had reached God Realm and had a stronger force field.
Nonetheless, the inability to break force fields didn’t mean he couldn’t utilize his force field to limit his opponents’ movements.
By condensing his spiritual energy within his force field so compactly that it became almost a solid object, cultivators who were trapped within it would only be able to form a spherical field of one meter in radius even if they tried and wouldn’t be able to move around.
Jonathan dashed past the remaining two people before smashing the door and leaving.
Standing in the middle of the room, Zebedee was filled with rage.
Those people were elites within Team Oracle. Although they weren’t his disciples, they had more or less been under his tutelage ever since they joined Team Oracle.
It could thus be said that Zebedee had witnessed their growth in becoming the elites that they were now.
For Zebedee, who was neither married nor had children, his students were his biggest pride and joy.
And yet, Jonathan had killed four of them by that point.
“Jonathan!”
Zebedee cast the blade in his hand in Jonathan’s direction, aiming at the latter’s back.
Clang!
The golden rune lit up once again.
Underneath the bell, Jonathan spat out blood as his figure faltered, but he still made it into the room beside him the next instant.
In that room, a member from Team Oracle was already holding a blade against a man’s neck.
Although the team member didn’t witness Jonathan in the act, he had perceived through his spiritual sense the latter’s cold-blooded murder of his companions.
Acutely aware that he wouldn’t be able to outrun Jonathan, he took a random person hostage.
He aimed to incapacitate Jonathan with a hostage. As long as he could delay Jonathan until Zebedee’s arrival, Zebedee would be able to restrict Jonathan’s movements, which would provide him with an opening for escape.
While it was a nice idea, Jonathan never took such threats well.
In a flash, Jonathan wielded his blade for an upward slash.
The hostage’s arm was sliced off from the shoulder and below, while the Team Oracle member was chopped into two halves that ended up falling to the sides.
During times of war, especially during wars between cultivators, emphasis shouldn’t be placed on moral considerations in situations where innocent people were taken as hostages.
When opponents noticed that the trick worked, there would be no end to hostage situations and similar dangers.
In fact, Hades had gone as far as to make a rather brutal claim during the previous war.
If Asura Office’s opponents were to take a faction member hostage, they would kill the hostage alongside the opponent. After repeated incidents like that, their opponents would reach the consensus that hostages were of no use, and they would thus no longer use that trick to threaten Asura’s Office.
When Hades first suggested such a method, Dorian and the others criticized him for being antisocial.
However, it had become an iron rule amongst cultivators during war times.
Jonathan reached out to tap on the hostage’s shoulder as he brushed past the latter and then rushed into another room.
That tap was infused with spiritual energy, which would prevent major blood loss. As long as he received timely treatment, he should be able to survive.
At the same time, Zebedee, who had been hot on Jonathan’s heels, finally realized something.
He and Jonathan were similar in terms of cultivation level, and Jonathan was intent on fleeing while utilizing his bell. He could neither catch up with nor kill Jonathan on the spot, so stopping him would pose quite a challenge.
Nonetheless, Zebedee was able to figure out the function of the odd magical item in Jonathan’s possession during their brief encounter.
As within, so without.
The eerie glow that the bell exuded wouldn’t only block attacks from the outside, but it would also prevent Jonathan from attacking from the inside.
Zebedee had already had his suspicions during the initial moments when they traded blows. Given the prowess of Jonathan’s magical item that managed to block a blow from his blade, Snowfall, it was odd that Jonathan didn’t strike at that instant.
After all, killing Zebedee, an elite who had reached God Realm, would take precedence over killing the twelve others who were in Grandmaster Realm.
Having observed Jonathan utilize the bell multiple times after that, Zebedee finally came to a conclusion.
It wasn’t that Jonathan refused to attack. He actually couldn’t do anything!
That golden glow’s effect was two-sided.
Who would create a magical item like that?
Regardless, understanding the pattern made things easier for Zebedee.
Since he couldn’t break Jonathan’s protective barrier, he decided to meet up with his subordinate in advance. As long as he was ahead of Jonathan, the latter would have to deal with him if he tried to kill again.
With that thought in mind, Zebedee no longer hesitated as he rushed to the room of his two subordinates.
Meanwhile, the remaining three people on the twenty-ninth floor had already been decapitated by Jonathan.
“Mr. Makino…”
Upon witnessing Jonathan decapitating their companions one by one through their spiritual sense, Zebedee’s remaining subordinates who were hailed as Grandmasters were already on edge.
Zebedee huffed when he saw the two of them.
“Why are you panicking? I’ve come to protect you! Inform the people downstairs to rendezvous with us.”
“Understood!”
As the three of them stood in the room, Jonathan turned to look in Zebedee’s direction from a few rooms away.
Although there were a few walls between them, their spiritual sense ran into each other.
After Jonathan locked onto the remaining four people with his spiritual sense, he turned to crash through the window and allowed himself to free fall from the twenty-second floor.
“That idiot!”
Zebedee wielded his blade, imitating Jonathan’s previous move, and tried to fall to the lower levels by crashing through the ceiling.
Despite his high cultivation level, he couldn’t possibly crash through the floors faster than Jonathan fell.
When Zebedee just landed on the twenty-eight floor, Jonathan had pierced Heaven Sword into the wall of the building.
Following a huge resistant force, Jonathan rolled over and into a room on the twentieth floor before making a dash for the stairwell without thinking.
It would be unlikely to track down these people again if they left this building, and nobody can foresee the consequences that would follow. The only way to go is to give it my all to annihilate them regardless of the consequences!
