227 Chapter 227: Fleeting Reunion (1/2)

By the time Shun Yin and Glen reached the Porter manor, they were too late. The entire estate was ablaze, and they could see a lot of corpses lying on the ground. Some were smoldering from the flames, immolated by spells, but the vast majority of them had been slain through some other methods. Glen was somewhat relieved to see dead Assassins intermingled with Porter mages.

At least his family and the staff serving them had put up a fight.

Then again, Glen wasn't that bothered. Even though he was technically part of the Porter clan, the elders and the current leader had never treated him or his father as part of the family. He rarely interacted with them, mostly dealing with the servants and staff they dispatched to give him orders or assist him, but he wasn't very close to his cousins or relatives. Honestly, he didn't feel anything, even as he continued to see the death toll mounting up.

”We're too late.”

Shun Yin looked grim. If anything, he was more disturbed than Glen was at the death toll. He was clenching his fists, his eyes flaring up stormily as he took in the scene. He held back the urge to howl, to rage at the excessive deaths.

”Why?!” He growled. ”Why are they doing this?! What do they want?!”

”In all likelihood, it's not the Assassins themselves who want this but the people who hired them.” Glen maintained his calmness as he looked around. He shrugged. ”Unless we find the mastermind, we'll never know. The Assassins will never spill the information of their clients. They're trained to withstand any forms of interrogation.”

”Most of them kill themselves upon capture.” Shun Yin could feel his fingernails digging into his palms. ”What sort of inhuman organization brainwashes them and then treats them as expendable, discarding them like pawns?”

”There are worse things in the world,” Glen reminded him quietly. ”I know you don't like the way they operate and take lives…but they are not necessarily evil. The Assassins Guild have been used to assassinate corrupted politicians, end tyrannical regimes, and destroy overly ambitious CEOs set on monopolizing the world market. Yes, they often act in their own economic interests, but they are not evil. Sometimes they sacrifice their own people because they cannot afford to put their organization at risk.”

”Revolt against the government, and you are a freedom fighter.” Shun Yin felt deflated. ”But why would anyone want the Porter clan dead?”

”Did you think the Porter clan was some kind of benevolent entity? An innocent family?” Glen snorted cynically. ”No, our hands have been stained with the blood of others. We haven't been very innocent ourselves. The elders have killed people they thought were threatening their power. We just have been pretty discreet about it.”

”What…?”

Shun Yin turned to stare at Glen in shock. He shrugged indifferently.

”I don't know the details, but how do you think the Porter clan maintain their position as one of the top ten great families? We shut down other families before they can grow larger than ours. Of course, I'm not saying we resort to something as blatant as assassination or hired hitmen, but I'm aware that the Porter clan has bankrupted small and medium family businesses before, and driving those promising entrepreneurs or businessmen to suicide. Bullying tactics, hiring gangs to harass and displace families from their homes so that we can buy up their land for our own industries and businesses. Using the law to steal patents and products from others. We may not stab people in the back with knives and blades, but we use money to kill them. Driving people to suicide is the same as murdering them, don't you agree, Shun Yin?”

Shun Yin fell silent for a moment. He wasn't sure how to answer that. The world was twisted. The world was cruel.

The world should just get destroyed…

No.

Shun Yin suddenly stiffened. Just what was he thinking? Swallowing, he forced the dark thoughts from his mind and scoffed at himself.

What the hell am I, an edge lord?

Yeah, only edge lords would say such stupid stuff like the world should just get destroyed, or that everyone should die, or that they would kill every single person on the planet, or that the human race should perish.

Shun Yin was not an edge lord. He was a hero. The whole purpose was to save the weak and the innocent, not to engineer the extinction of humanity.

”They're still fighting over there!”

Glen's voice snapped him out of his stupor. Shun Yin raised his head and glanced around. Even though much of the estate had been destroyed, he could still sense people fighting somewhere in the distance.

They were…faint, but still barely hanging on there. Judging from the power, they had to be the clan elders. Perhaps the most imposing figure in the center was the clan leader, but Shun Yin couldn't tell. He had never met the clan leader or the clan elders before, so he recognized none of the mana signatures that they emanated.

However, he could make a calculated guess, based on the type of spells they were casting. The darkness type spells…the ones that sent chills up his spine, those had to belong to the Assassins. There was one in particular that was emitting a violent bloodlust that caused him to shudder. There was no way he could fight that single Assassin head-on…

”…eh?”

There was a single presence that felt extremely familiar to Shun Yin. He narrowed his eyes as he tried to home in onto it, but it proved evasive. Even so, he had a feeling that he knew the person. A tinge of nostalgia…

”Hurry!”

Glen's tone was urgent. Shun Yin understood why. The life-signs of the people he guessed were the Porter clan members were rapidly fading away, weakening under the onslaught of murderous spells. For a moment, Shun Yin hesitated. He and Glen were just high school students. Even if they reached the place in time, just what could they do? There was no way the two of them would be able to stop an entire team of Assassins.

Especially a team of Assassins who were capable of slaying quite a few clan elders and the clan leader of one of the top ten Great Families…

Glen must have noticed his hesitation, for he lowered his head.

”Sorry to ask this of you when you're not part of the Porter clan. You're not obligated to help us, you know? If you drop out now, I won't blame you.”

”No.” Shun Yin shook his head as he hardened his resolve. ”I vowed to stop the Assassins. I don't care if I die in the process. As long as I can save someone…”

”The Porter clan is hardly innocent, as I told you earlier,” Glen reminded him. ”We deserve what we get.”

”Even so…killing is wrong. Two wrongs don't make a right. If you truly are guilty, then we'll have to expose their sins and have them punished by the law. Not slaughtered like this.” Shun Yin raised a clenched fist, his determination swelling up within him. ”I will stop them, no matter what.”

He then accelerated, kicking off the ground and launching himself toward the main house. Glen lagged a little behind, unable to keep up. It didn't matter. He wasn't a frontline fighter anyway, and he would rather stay back to complete casting his spell to summon White Tiger. It was unfortunate, but as with all summoning spells, it had a range limit. In other words, he couldn't just cast the spell while running until he reached within 100 meters of where he wanted to summon his White Tiger. The moment he moved out of those 100 meters…

The spell would be reset and he had to cast it all over again.

Not caring about all those, Shun Yin just smashed into the wooden doors, hitting the floor and rolling up. Drawing his sword with one hand, he fired off a fireball with the other at the nearest Assassin, who merely sliced the fiery projectile apart with his dagger.

”…I'm too late.”