491 Ripe, old man (1/2)
After a short while, even I could clearly hear the content over which those elders at the bottom debated. And it didn't look like their debate would end any time soon!
”But he spared him! It was your idea to send the disciples first to gauge his strength! If not for his mercifulness, my son would be dead and his blood would be on your hands!”
The more I heard from this exchange, the less I power I could muster to stop myself from lying flat on the arena just in order to hear how this unexpected situation would develop.
In reality, rather than intentionally sparing that guy, I simply wanted to get rid of him with the least effort possible, and doing him in would require me to go for quite an extra mile in the situation that appeared, hence the result.
As the argument below the stage developed, I finally lost my patience and just sat on the rocks, listening in to the live show. From the escalating volume and intensity from down there, I could tell that the things were taking more and more interesting turns, yet I was worried that if I were to interfere at this point, those dumb elders would come to their senses and realise that while they were fighting among themselves, their real enemy was awaiting the next participant for his challenge!
But when even after quite a long time the argument only seemed to escalate, with some sounds of disciples or elders shouting the names of the techniques they started to use or claiming how they would skewer the other party with their priced weapon, I realised that I couldn't just stay and hear the proceedings.
”Hey, you there, ancestor or something. Are you going to get me my fight, or do I need to go down and kill them all?”
In the end, this challenge was something I issued, and if they all started to kill each other, I wouldn't even be able to test how strong their elders were! And if the worst were to happen and their leader would fall, I would lose my opportunity to challenge him in order to get the right to challenge the ancestor, forcing me to go through the entire process once again!
”Get your fucking hands off me! I will go!”
Instead of answering my question, I felt an eruption of a considerable strength from below the stage, before the opening of the area barrier was filled with a huge posture of an old man.
With his white beard reaching all the way to his chest, he had the look of the typical anime old man, laughed at by everyone but capable of splitting the mountains in half in reality. Yet from the simple fact that he was an elder of the entire sect, capable of standing toe to toe with other elders, if not to say that even stronger than them from how just as the barrier closed behind his back, it was covered with a dense rain of energy coming from below.