Going back in time, Aelina had just grabbed Cyrus by the throat, strangling him.
"Now, why don't you tell me what's really going on before I rip out your throat and feed your corpse to the dogs." She said, her violet eyes peering straight into Cyrus' soul.
She loosened her grip on his throat a bit so he could speak.
Cyrus coughed a few times, catching his breath, before glaring at Aelina.
When was the last time that he, the Sect Master of the Crimson Slayer Sect, a genuine Divine Sea Realm master, had ever been treated like this?
Like a lowly dog?
Cyrus' glare intensified, and with a 'gentle' push, he removed Aelina's hand from his throat and backed away.
"Don't do that again." He warned with a ferocious expression.
Aelina looked at him in amusement as if he were a small child trying to scold an adult but said nothing.
Instead, she repeated her previous question.
"Hurry up and tell me why you're doing this. I refuse to believe it's because your grudge against me is so deep that you can't take it anymore. You might be an insufferable old man, but you're not THAT senile."
Cyrus' eyebrows twitched, but he couldn't scold her as she wasn't wrong.
"The Faction Leader ordered me to attack with my disciples." He grumbled in annoyance. The memory of him being told to invade the Battle Maiden Sect was still fresh in his memory, causing his face to distort.
No sane person would provoke the Battle Maiden Sect for no reason, especially not with war! Not only was that signing one's own death warrant, but it signed the death warrants of all past and future generations!
Aelina's eyes narrowed as she heard Cyrus' words, and she could feel her irritation bubbling inside her.
"The Faction Leader? What does he hope to gain by starting a war with us?" she demanded, her voice cold and dangerous.
Cyrus shrugged his shoulders, a look of resignation on his face.
"I don't know, but it definitely has something to do with that girl you took in, Mira."
Aelina's eyes widened in surprise. She had suspected that the Faction was interested in Mira, but she didn't expect that it would escalate to this level.
"Mira? What does she have to do with any of this?" Aelina asked, her tone filled with curiosity. While Mira might be the most talented person she'd ever seen, that didn't mean they had to go to war with one another.
In fact, in the cultivation world among the top powerhouses, the Unorthodox Faction was a relatively neutral power. They mostly preyed on the weak and powerless, avoiding disciples from the more prominent Sects. It was much more efficient that way for this very reason.
Imagine Unorthodox Faction disciples hunting down Core and Direct Disciples from the Top 7 Orthodox Sects…
All hell would break loose should one of them die.
Thus, it was more efficient overall for the disciples to work with quantity over quality.
Of course, some of the more talented disciples from the Unorthodox Faction hunt down those from the 7 major Orthodox Sects, but they mainly aim for Outer Court and sometimes Inner Court disciples.
The Sects usually overlooked these incidents as friction among factions isn't necessarily a bad thing.
However, even if a Core or Direct Disciple died, it would usually just result in the master of said disciple getting involved, and maybe the Sect Master should things escalate too far. Wars happening over a single person were quite rare.
'If this could even be called a war.' Aelina glanced at the battlefield and noticed that even now, casualties were at a minimum.
Her disciples were fighting to defend their home, while the Unorthodox Faction disciples were…
'Buying time? Stalling?'
Aelina frowned at that conjecture but couldn't come up with anything else as that's what it looked like. They were just mindlessly pounding on the Arrays and Formations while trying not to get hurt.
Cyrus hesitated for a moment before responding.
"I'm… not entirely sure. Perhaps the Faction Leader is just interested in someone so talented."
Aelina scoffed at Cyrus' words.
"Don't give me that crap. The man has never met Mira! He wouldn't start all this bullshit for someone he's only ever heard of in reports."
Then, she pointed at the "war" going on beneath them, "Do you think I'm an idiot? Not only are you not attacking to kill, but you even tried to sneak people into my Sect. You're clearly here for something other than war. Not to mention, if Victor wanted to fight, he wouldn't have sent you; he would've come himself. This whole thing reeks of a conspiracy."
She didn't bother telling him that she sensed Rhydian enter the Sect earlier, signifying Mira's return, as that might be exactly what they wanted.
She could tell that Cyrus wasn't lying when he said this situation was mostly because of Mira, but everything else was a lie.
'There's someone behind all this, someone that's not Victor. The Crimson Titan that I know wouldn't act so cowardly.' Aelina speculated.
Cyrus tensed up for a millisecond at her words, but immediately returned to normal, trying not to convey his riled emotions, but Aelina saw through it.
"...So, someone else really is behind all this." She nodded calmly, thinking of how she should react to this information.
'Could it be those people that Lisica warned Mira about right after she came back from raiding those Spirit Stone Mines?' She thought.
Whoever those people were, they were an anomaly to Aelina. She'd tried investigating them, but all clues she obtained ended up at a dead-end. It was as if they suddenly disappeared after suddenly causing a bit of havoc throughout the continent.
Cyrus knew he had fucked up and closed his mouth shut.
While Sue Ming wasn't exactly a secret among those in the Unorthodox Faction, she wasn't known to the outside world.
Hell, forget about the outside world; even the higher-ups in the Faction barely saw her. Only the Faction Leader interacted with her on a regular basis.
All most people knew was that there was a powerful person, maybe an Elder or perhaps one of their wives, putting in all kinds of requests about a specific person, Mira, and giving out very generous rewards to those who completed the missions.
Even he hardly knew anything about Sue Ming, and he was a Sect Master!
Thus, the last thing he wanted was to alert Aelina of a hidden enemy working behind the scenes to mess with a disciple she had set her eyes on.
Unfortunately, it was too late…
She already had all the information she needed to form her own legitimate conclusions.
"Knowing Victor's temperament, he wouldn't work with just any random person. They'd have to be as strong as him or possess a ton of resources for him to make a move." Aelina thought out loud before shaking her head.
"No, if he's letting this person take control like this, they'd have to be both. He wouldn't disturb his 'cultivation time' just because someone was strong. At least, not anymore."
'Fuck! This bitch! Is she mind-reading?!?' Cyrus inwardly cursed as he listened to Aelina's murmurs.
Aelina didn't bother with him and continued thinking out loud, "However, did this secret mastermind believe that I would just allow him/her to do as they pleased? That they could come and go as they pleased? You might not be killing many of my disciples, but the fact that you marched on my land with a small army and even infiltrated my Sect says more than any declaration of war."
Aelina turned to look at Cyrus, her violet eyes glinting in the sunlight as a small, sinister smile crept up on her face.
"Did they really believe I wouldn't hang your mangled corpse up in the air and broadcast it for all to see? To use your death to send a message to the world and Victor that the Battle Maiden Sect will not tolerate such blatant disrespect?"
Cyrus felt a chill run down his spine as all the hair on his arms stood on end. His instincts told him to run… run as far away as he could, but his pride and confidence in his strength prevented him from doing so.
Thus, he could only stand there and listen to Aelina as she said something that would forever be etched into his mind.
"Back in my day, there was a popular saying that went like this:
Don't poke a sleeping dragon, for when it awakens, its roar will shake the very foundations of the earth."
Aelina's smile widened, looking almost distorted in Cyrus' eyes as she continued, "I gave you warning after warning to stop messing with Mira and me, but you failed to listen. Not just you, but also Victor and the rest of your Faction."
"So, I guess it's only right that I release a little roar of my own."
Taking a deep breath, Aelina amplified her voice with Qi and shouted at the top of her lungs, "Attention all Battle Maiden Sect disciples! This is your Sect Master speaking! As of this moment, we are officially at war with the Crimson Slayer Sect!"
"I repeat! We are at war with the Crimson Slayer Sect!"
