'Yes, I want to know,' Mia thought to herself as she swallowed down a gulp of saliva before following after the man. 

With how they refused to just explain the situation right away on the street, she assumed that there was no point asking about it now. 

They would tell her only when they would be ready for it. Inquiring about the topic right now would only make the opinion those two had of her falter. 

During their entire tour back to the auction hall, not a single one of the trio uttered a single word. 

Mia was too scared to bother the two clearly important figures. As for Ackhart and Andrea, she could only guess what their reason for the silence was. 

"Finally home," Andrea muttered when their small group passed through the set of columns that decorated the entrance to the auction hall. 

Her shoulders dropped the second she released a deep sigh, indicating that she was tense all over through the entire journey back to this place. 

"Right now, I only have one question," Mia muttered after taking a long while to look at the sketch that Andrea produced. "Why are you telling me all of this?" she asked, raising her eyes on the woman. "What does it all have to do with me?" 

She followed those two people because she believed she would learn something about the recent event that happened outside. 

Why did Arganar attack her? Unless he truly was just an old dog lusting for her swan's flesh, there had to be some reason for his actions!

Yet, even after patiently listening to all Andrea's explanations, Mia still couldn't figure out a single thing about the recent encounter!

"Sangakarts?" Mia echoed the question, uttering the word itself to see whether it felt familiar on her lips. She then shook her head. "Not at all," she denied, glancing over at Ackhart's face with curiosity. 

The man's lips curved up in a small smile that was devoid of any happiness or amusement. 

"They infiltrated the sect over a century ago. If you were ever curious why this sect, known for its meritocracy, turned out the way it did, now you have your answer," Ackhart explained.

'That was unexpected,' Mia thought, gulping down her saliva. 

She spent nearly an hour listening to Andrea's explanation only to learn the things that she didn't care about in the slightest. Yet, after just a few sentences spoken by the man and she started to see the connection!

"You are a bait."

This one sentence was enough to make Mia freeze. 

She couldn't care less about being in danger herself. If she was a coward like this, she would never bother to challenge the system that governed the sect. 

But being a bait, who would pull Arthur into trouble?

Mia tightened her hands. 

"Excuse me?" Mia finally uttered through her tightened lips. 

'I can't do shit about it now,' she thought, suddenly realizing just how naive her earlier thinking was. 'Why did I stop cultivating? Who cares what the sect will think? Because I stalled my own growth, now I'm as powerless to do anything as I always was!' she thought, heavily blaming herself for her earlier, cautious decision. 

"One!" one of the disciples shouted, pressing the attack against the training pillar with their hand. 

"Two!" someone else sang to the same tune, doing the same but with his left hand. 

"Four!" yet another disciple trained at his own pace, striking the pillar with his left foot. 

'Look at them go,' Mia thought with a small smile, observing how the normie disciples trained. 

Not a single one of them had any chance of participating in the intersect tournament. Outside of Mia's team, hardly any disciple managed to reach the fifth stage, not to speak about the sixth one, which was basically a requirement for the sect to consider one's participation. 

But that didn't stop any of them. 

Intersect tournament or not, they were all eager to squeeze this opportunity to grow to its limits. 

'If only I didn't have so much on my mind,' Mia thought, her mood souring by the second. 

"I'm sorry, elder, but I don't think my answer will satisfy you."

Mia's answer managed to take everyone by surprise, sponsored disciples to her left, her own team to the right, and the Elder to the front included. 

"And what if I insist?" the Elder asked after taking a moment to process the girl's reply. 

Yet, contrary to the snickers that Kathia and Dirk instantly uttered, he didn't look at Mia with anger, pity or annoyance. 

Rather than that, the Elder's eyes were filled with curiosity. 

Mia didn't answer his question, though. 

'Should I tell him?' she asked herself, not sure how she was supposed to react right now. 

In theory, this was the perfect opportunity that Andrea and Ackhart would kill her for not using. Yet, on the other hand, making use of this chance was insanely risky.

'Is he with Sangakarts? Or is he just curious?' Mia attempted to figure out the solution to this seemingly simple dilemma.

"For now, that's all that I managed to discover. In the end, I can only hope you will find those letters before Sangakarts' boogiemen will find you."

"Best of luck, 

Mia." 

'This girl...' A thought flashed through my head when I finished the last word of the last letter. 

I gently put the letter back on the pile, taking a moment for all of the information I learned to sink in. 

'She is really trying too hard,' I thought, clenching my fists. 

If there was anything that struck me out in those letters, it was Mia's desperation to prove herself useful for me. 

She appeared not to realize that my only wish was for her to stay safe instead!

Deciphering all the letters took me a considerable amount of time. Just a single glance through the window proved that the sun was long hidden behind the horizon. 

Thump. 

The dull sound of my shoes hitting the hard stones of the floor wasn't loud enough to attract anyone's attention. The shouts of the people from the auction hall all rushing in to deal with the fire were more than enough to cover the noise I made. 

'No one should be able to see me,' I thought, quickly changing my position from where I landed. 

With the fires to my back, the area that their light didn't reach would turn subjectively even darker. Anyone who would as much as throw a single glance towards the commotion would have a way harder time noticing my silhouette in the darkness. 

It was a trick I learned... by reading books. Something that one of my favorite authors pointed out, explaining why guards in the medieval cities rarely used fires while patrolling the walls through the night. 

'It burns!'

This single thought permeated through my mind, filling every last thinking cell of my brain. 

When I first pushed my hand into a flame, it felt like resting it on the overheated radiator heater, stinging but bearable. Yet, after just a few moments, a certain truth became apparent. 

My cultivation reinforced my body, making it more resilient. But it didn't decrease the pain nature could inflict on me by any degree!

The little hair that I had on my hand was long gone, sizzled away in flames. My skin was on fire, ready to evaporate and turn into ashes at any time, exposing my red flesh to the boiling heat. 

'I need to toughen it through,' I forced this thought on myself, gnashing my teeth as I continued my desperate attempts to uncover the truth of the fire. 

I could feel the energy within the blaze. It was there, within reach of my hand... 

If someone were to ask me how it felt to control my energy, I would be hardpressed to come up with an answer.

Even after everything that I came through, I still couldn't truly grasp the feeling of the mana itself. 

Sure, I knew how to use it or how to calculate formations for it. Yet, no matter how hard I trained, it was still a foreign feeling, not something that I truly adopted. 

But right now, when I recklessly pumped my own mana into the fires that I was supposed to quell...

For the first time in my life, I could truly feel the flow of my energy. 

The fires around me exploded. 

It was no wonder. I pumped them full of my fresh energy, after all. As a result, the blaze covered my entire body. 

Right now, it was only a matter of time before I would burn alive, molten down by the very fires I helped to create. 

'HOLD IT,' a single thought appeared in my mind. 

Everything stopped in its tracks. 

The second my hands slammed into the ground, the fire ceased its movements, turning into a still aura of heat and energy. 

And then, along with the air that I inhaled, all the fire swirled towards me, filling my lungs with its fiery power. 

This fire-born mana wasn't fully purified. 

Despite my constant attempts to wrestle full control over this energy, I managed to achieve only partial success. As such, even the tiniest sliver of this energy would wreak havoc in my inner state. 

And right now, I consumed the single greatest amount of energy in my entire life... 

All at once. 

I tightened my teeth. My breath was deep, allowing the fires to reach all the way to my very core.

At this point, my body was a bloody mess, even though not a single drop of blood came out from my wounds. 

'Fuck,' I could only silently think while the fires ravaged me from the inside out.