Hearing a sudden male voice interrupt their venting, the two girls shivered and hid behind Bella and Mia.
"Who?!" The two sisters spun toward the direction of the voice quickly. But, they were stunned when they saw who it was. "It's you?"
Dyon raised an eyebrow. "You recognize me?"
Bella pouted angrily, tears still soaking her cheeks. "Of course we recognize a liar like you." Looking at Dyon's handsome face bitterly.
Dyon frowned. 'Liar? How did they know I lied to them? That would mean they saw through my disguise, but that's impossible.'
"If you want to talk about liars, no one is as great as you two sisters."
"Hey!" Bella shouted angrily. "We helped you!"
Dyon blinked in confusion before he understood. "So, you're the reason I'm here? Thanks, but to tell you the truth, even if I was in a place with tighter security it wouldn't matter."
What a joke, even sealed Dyon didn't take the celestials of this quadrant seriously. The reason he didn't go out and kill them all was in fear for the safety of the soul slaves and the powerhouses coming in from other universes.
Plus, his concealment array couldn't be seen through by a normal celestial. One would have had to have first unlocked their divine sense to the Higher Celestial stage before being capable of doing so.
"You!" Bella's small face reddened. She was already angry at Dyon for lying to them, she even thought that Dyon knew their back story and created his own to garner sympathy from them. How could she like such a manipulative person? Yet, that same person was looking down on their help like this?
"Bella." Mia interjected, cutting her little sister off from throwing a tantrum. "Why are you here? Why haven't you run yet? Do you really want to get captured again?"
"Captured again?" Dyon laughed. "I allowed myself to be caught for the sake of saving everyone here. If I escaped, would I still be a man?"
"Allowed?..." The two sisters involuntarily whispered to themselves, unable to comprehend.
The entire world they understood, from birth to now, was filled with nothing but cruelty and people working for their own selfish desires. How could they so easily believe that someone would allow themselves to be humiliated for the sake of saving strangers they didn't even know?
"Answer my question." Dyon's eyes turned into golden blaze, peering into the souls of the two sister before him. "Are you going to do something about it, or not?"
"Even if we did want to, what could we do?" Mia said bitterly.
"So you're willing to give up?" Dyon asked again, taking a step forward. "You're willing to spend the rest of your life as someone's pawn? To sit, waiting for the day you're no longer useful to them alive?"
"Uh…" The two sisters had never been questioned so heavily before, they didn't know how to respond.
Dyon remained silent, quietly watching the two sisters.
"We don't want that." The finally answered resolutely.
Dyon's eyes shone. "Good. This is what I need you to do then."
**
Within the auction house base of Soul Market, workers scurried around, quickly completing tasks. An auction on a normal scale was already almost impossible to organize, let alone one that planned to sell tens of millions of merchandises over the course of just a few days.
The layout of this base was very simple. On the roof, just like the other bases, a massive teleportation spanning hundreds of meters stood, taking up the entire space. Below that, there was a typical auction house arrangement.
Five levels of seating arrangements faced a large podium. Clearly, they were divided by status. Those from higher ranked quadrants would sit higher than those of lesser.
If Dyon saw this, he was definitely realize that he had underestimated the pull of Soul Market. The idea of being able to instantly learn a technique was far too enticing…
Centuries ago, when the idea of the Soul Market was first introduced, the Devil Cultivators used various means to reach out to potential candidates. The quadrants chosen weren't too powerful so that they could be controlled, but weren't too weak either so that they could provide adequate profit.
After the partners were chosen, the quadrants then selected their soul slaves, or "put in orders". They would then send Soul Market the techniques they wanted these soul slaves to learn and detail to what level they wanted it learned.
Often times, this wasn't even for the sake of themselves. Many of them simply wanted to give their children a head start, so didn't blink an eye when sacrificing the life of others.
This was how Soul Market worked… It had all been accumulating to this day… Soon, investments of centuries would be paid out.
As for the "auction", there wouldn't be one. It would be a simple exchange of payment for past investments. That said, those immature children who had yet to learn any techniques would be bid on.
One could see just how important these proceedings were. If this failed and the soul slaves escaped, the core teachings of tens of quadrants would be exposed to the world.
Dyon had no idea how correct he was about the lives of the soul slaves. Because the quadrants were taking such a risk, Soul Market had to have the ability to protect their interests. Their worries weren't just about their nasty deeds being exposed, but also worry about their secret techniques being disseminated to the public!
These tycoons all knew that if this were to happen, their clans would be finished. This was why the fail safe's of Soul Market not only included destruction of all of its infrastructure, but also the controlled death of each and every soul slave… Even if they somehow escaped, their lives weren't their own…
**
"Is everything prepared?"
A stoic looking elder looked off into the starry skies of space, standing with his hands clasped behind his back.
He was currently on the auction house base's roof, waiting for his orders to be executed.
This elder's name was Bowa, often called Elder Bowa by those who interacted with him. He wasn't among The Cathedral members that went to Soul Rending Peak after the central bell was rung, instead, he remained at Soul Market, monitoring the proceedings.
It was this Elder Bowa that gave instructions to the twin sister just an hour or so ago. He was also the one in charge of the fail safes and overseeing the proper teleportation of all soul slaves.
"Yes, Elder Bowa. We're ready to receive the influx of soul slaves at any moment." A single priest among a group of three answered respectfully.
Elder Bowa nodded. "Good. Have them begin with those 6 bases of Lower Foundation stage innate soul, soul slaves. Use their monitoring tags to arrange them by client and keep them in the same cells for convenience. Follow the plan and everything should be fine."
The truth was that Elder Bowa didn't like the White Mother's decision to speed things up for seemingly no reason at all. He believed that even if something were to go wrong, disorganizing themselves wasn't going to help at all.
They had laid down their plans for today, meticulously, for over 500 years, but now, because of a "bad feeling" they were pushing things up? What nonsense.
However, there was nothing he could do about it. The White Mother was the strongest among them and was the last remaining true disciple of Soul Rending Peak. If it wasn't for her, none of this would have been possible to begin with. Plus, she was also the strongest among them, how could they not listen to her orders, albeit unwillingly?
It was just a shame that all of this was happening because during teleportation day, their original plan involved five of their six celestials being here. After all, the Lower Blossom stage innate soul, soul slaves were far too talented to underestimate. After 500 years of cultivation, even if they were solely focused on one technique related to what their owners paid for, Elder Bowa had little doubt that some of them were definitely dangers to saints at a minimum.
For context, Dyon's soul talent was unrivaled through the cosmos, and even he had to awaken his manifestation before his soul grew into its true Blossom stage innate soul status. Also, even Clara only had a peak Foundation stage innate soul. Of course, she also gained otherworldly body cultivation talent to match it later on, but she reached great heights in soul cultivation already.
