While Aster was “fighting” against Nolan, Lilia appeared in the outer space near Prasil, Augustus managed to break free from her grip and immediately distanced himself from her.
“What the hell was that, how did we move so much I couldn’t react at all!!!”, he thought.
Lilia saw his confused expression and she shook her head, normally at space one’s voice would not reach others, but that changes when a cultivator reaches the void manipulation realm or any of the equivalents in the body or soul path.
To be able to survive in the outer space without a spaceship a cultivator must reach the mortal transcending realm, there is spirit energy everywhere so and a mortal transcended can use it as vital support instead of oxygen and to a certain extent as a replacement of food and water.
That being said, only void manipulation and above can freely travel through the space just using their physical bodies, and even then, they would need to stop to rest at some planet along the way.
Lilia saw Augustus smiling as he flew towards the nearest planet, she scanned the planet with her spirit sense and the result made her frown her eyebrows, death, there was death everywhere, mountains of bones and arid zones where there used to be cities, that’s the only thing she saw in the whole planet.
“It’s been some time since I saw this kind of scenes… luckily my darling didn’t come or things might have gotten out of hand”.
Augustus descended on the planet with the idea of preparing a surprise attack, unfortunately for him things didn’t go as he planned.
“Mm?”, he suddenly felt his body shivering and when he turned his head to see the sky, he nearly suffered a heart attack… there was a second sun in the sky, but this one was a mix between black and red.
“Impossible!!!”.
It’s easy to know when a mortal transcending cultivator is born, since one must cross its star tribulation and the sky will change according to the size and intensity of the tribulation, Aurelian wasn’t in a hurry because in all the last five hundred thousand years, there has not been such an event.
In other words, none of the actual people from Riga have truly transcended their mortality, they just achieved a temporal boost which made them look like sea of knowledge or in Augustus case as a genesis manifestation cultivator, their strength wasn’t even near the real thing, just like Mylene mentioned “low quality imitations”.
That’s why he didn’t understand how Lilia transported him all the way from Prasil to the outer space, or how was it possible for a sole person to create an attack so big that it could be confused with the sun.
Augustus immediately took out all his defensive treasures and talismans, and activated them all, his expression was twisted as if he had lost his sanity.
“She is overexerting herself, if I can survive that, then it will be my win, just you wait I will go to your galaxy and turn all their natives into nutrients for my path into supremacy!!!”.
The planet trembled; Lilia’s voice echoed through its whole surface as if a god was speaking, the sky darkened and the mountains collapsed.
“Just like you did here? I was wondering how did you manage to jump all the way from the star tribulation to the genesis manifestation, to think that you actually massacred all the people from this planet, perhaps you thought you became some kind of bigshot just because of something like this?”.
“I have fought against people that are blood thirsty demons in all the mean of the words, you who doesn’t even have their resolution are just a weak excuse of an evil cultivator”.
Augustus felt the heavens collapsing over him as Lilia’s attack descended over the planet, feeling his imminent death, he shouted in an anger filled voice.
“Why are you interfering, I never tried to harm any of you!!!”.
…
The “black sun”, stopped descending for a moment, which made Augustus think he might have a chance to get out of this alive.
“I never tried to attack any of you, my orders only included the daughter of Sylas Eik… the attack at Hawthorn city was orchestrated by that pink haired woman”.
Lilia smirked, she extended her arm towards the planet and her attack continued advancing, which made Augustus fell into despair as he kept shouting how he wasn’t guilty of anything, but seeing it wasn’t having any effect he tried to burn his lifespan in exchange for another boost.
“If I’m going to die anyway, then I might as well drag you to hell with me!!!”, his body swelled up like a globe but no matter how much he tried he couldn’t self-destroy his dantian.
The pain of saturating your body with spirit energy was not something pleasant, for those who chose to die like this the pain is only a little flash, but Augustus wasn’t so lucky.
On his last moments Augustus heard an indifferent voice making the skies tremble.
“I don’t remember giving you permission to die as you wanted, a trash like you who stands in the way of my darling doesn’t deserve an easy death”.
The atmosphere lit up as Lilia’s attack collided against the planet, a big portion of all the mass was evaporated in the explosion resulting from both the attack and the body of a genesis manifestation cultivator exploding at the same time, the previously spherical planet was now missing half a hemisphere, to the point that the internal the core was partially visible.
Lilia nodded, “I managed to not destroy the planet completely, being in a low rank star cluster surely is becoming a hassle”.
She used her spirit sense to scan the planet and as expected there was no signs of any living being remaining, still with time the core will attract more material from the space until the part that exploded grows again, but the planet will be uninhabitable for the time being.
Lilia snorted.
“What a waste of time, I could have been cheering up my darling on his first big scale fight, instead of having to deal with that excuse of an evil cultivator humph”.
Back when she was a teen she witnessed the actions of true evil cultivators, they don’t kill out of necessity or because they want to be strong, they do it simply because it’s fun for them, true evil methods make the cultivator abandon all sense of humanity, so there is no limit for their cruelty.
That’s why the scene of piles of bones was not even close to what she has seen before, nor she cared for those who died, Augustus was an eyesore for her son, so he was eliminated it was as simple as that, if the dead could find peace due to him getting what he deserved it was bonus, or at least that’s how Lilia saw it.
Just like that Lilia disappeared leaving behind nothing of the “strongest” cultivator that has appeared in Prasil in the last five hundred thousand years… and a planet which was now missing a quart of its original mass.
Back at Prasil, Aster suddenly felt a familiar soft sensation on his back, he saw a beautiful pair of arms hugging him from behind.
Lilia’s melodious voice made its way to his ears.
“I’m back darling ♥”.
Aster smiled.
“In what plane of existence, destroying a planet is “controlling your strength” mom?”.
Lilia shrugged.
“You also finished your fight quite fast, I wanted to cheer you up while you fought so I hurried up to return, but these guys turned out to be a disappointment none of them surpassed their tribulation so they are too weak”.
“A real genesis manifestation could have used his inner universe to resist at least one of those light attacks, like the one I used”.
Aster shook his head.
“Let’s go see the others, this war should be over in an hour or so”.
They flew across the whole battlefield clung to each other, along the way they saw many little craters which were burned in black, a personal signature of Alice, there were also a lot of trees and even buildings which were sliced in many pieces as if they were cut with a sharp razor something usual for wind cultivators.
Besides that, there were also a lot of corpses from corrupted beasts piling up here and there, they all only have one wound or two.
“Those three are having quite a lot of fun”, he thought.
Aster looked from the distance there was a giant cage made out of vines, and inside of it there were the two women that were accompanying Augustus, the only difference was that their previously young appearances were gone, their hair was gray and lifeless and their skin was sagged.
Eris approached Aster with a confused expression.
“We were fighting those bitches, when they suddenly screamed and became like this”.
Aster turned to see Lilia looking for an explanation, which was given to him a couple of seconds later.
“That guy tried to suicide, his body got bigger so he probably had set some kind of linking formation to absorb their energy if it was needed”.
Aster nodded, the result was going to be the same, at least they could interrogate these women later, well more accurately Sylas could interrogate them.
Eris doubted for a moment but she still spoke.
“Mylene immediately left to watch over Sarina and the others… so she deserves her reward”.
Aster was surprised to see Eris speak on behalf Mylene, of course he knew she was doing her job, as she previously showed her attribute to him, “decadence”, it’s an attribute that makes everything age and wither, somewhat similar to the effect of corruption in the body.
And he saw some corpses of the corrupted that acted as leaders for the beasts which were nothing more than bones and skin, a clear sign that Mylene was keeping them in check for Alice, Aria and Kana.
“Have you two buried the hatchet or something like that?”, he asked.
Eris sighed.
“We had a little conversation back when she woke up from reintegrating her soul… and I don’t know what to believe anymore, what she told me is something I need to see with my own eyes, for the time being we are in something like a truce”.