There are many reasons why I have said that the oppressive aura felt 'red', but the main reason was the light in the eyes of the assassins. As someone who had been in the thick of it at the start of the confrontation, no one was able to detect where the assassins had been. Maybe some sultanzade and Aaliyah-al-Ydaz were aware of the presence of assassins, but there was too much noise and distractions to pinpoint an assassin. Especially when mindless violence had worked fine until then. But now their eyes shone red.

  It felt like the shine of the charm stance, but not quite. If I had to say: the charm stance made the cultivator emit a glow, but now the eyes of the assassins felt like the reflection of light on water. They were not projecting their own light, just reflecting an existing one.

  Aaliyah-al-Ydaz's light.

  Yes, the Sultanah's eyes were purple and they shone like amethysts when she wielded the charm stance, but… this was something else. Truth be told, to this day I am quite confounded about what had happened, but right then Aaliyah-al-Ydaz felt more powerful than she was. No longer a person but a… presence? Not quite right either.

  It was as if… power bled and the light glowed from another place.

  I know, it is not the best of descriptions, but I guess this confusing narration just excels at showing how lost I was.

  But that red pressure had been a shout, a burst of energy. And it was diminishing. It was getting weaker, if ever-so-slightly. Still, as I dashed through the Loyatan army – mostly corpses by now – I found assassins standing still here and there. Some were paralyzed on the ground, some groaning, but almost all had their eyes bloodshot. A select handful were even bleeding from them.

  Whatever attack the Heavenly Descendant had released, it had knocked out most of the assassin forces. The same could not be said for the cultivators though.

  I saw the corpses of some of my siblings and I felt nothing at the sight of them. Even when I could tell they had clearly been killed by our mother.

  Because they had exploded, Aloe, that is why.

  When an object that is mostly water – a human body, for example – is hit by a powerful force and comes to a sudden halt… well, the object just explodes akin to a watermelon would.

  Soldiers could not do that. Assassins could not do that. But cultivators could. Yet I highly doubted my siblings had started killing each other when Aaliyah-al-Ydaz was still alive.

  War is a gory sight, indeed, but my mother made it seem like child's play.

  When I had reached the heart of the battle, the violence had relaxed. Or more exactly, had slowed down. It may seem impossible, but Aaliyah-al-Ydaz was exhausted even if it had only been around two hours since the battle started.

  A person would have laughed at me back in our age, but we both know that cultivators with that amount of Haya would not tire if they had fought for three days straight.

  Which in a way, the Sultanah had.

  Remember, she had forgotten to sleep to guess the assassin's strategy. A mistake born out of hubris, wanting to beat them intellectually, for that exhaustion was what they wanted.

  But anyway, most of her exhaustion came from the small cuts on what used to be her perfect and unpolluted skin. Death by a Thousand Cuts. The expression could have been born there, way before the act of presence of those bloodthirsty plants when you saw those small trickles of blood.

  She had not lost that much blood, but considering how much vitality carried a single drop of her blood, every drop was literally an ocean of advantage our side was winning.

  Not many cultivators remained alive or standing up. I saw Rani in the corner of my eye, though she was embracing her body, her hand pressing against her thigh. She had been cut, but it was most likely friendly fire as any attack from our mother would have killed her. It mattered not anymore that she was her favorite, she had tried to kill her too. As pathetic as her attempts had been.

  The assassins continued going strong at it, though. Not that impressive considering that many drugs bank on the idea of gifting bursts of strength, and assassins had always seemed capable of delaying the side effects for way longer than common people.

  Even though both sides were exhausted, the battle was still raging too fiercely for me to join it, so I kept myself on reconnaissance duty. That allowed me to detect small details that I would not have seen otherwise.

  The main reason why the sultanzade could keep going even when Aaliyah-al-Ydaz was beginning to struggle was because they could afford to rest.

  I told you, breaks and rotations are key in a war.

  The regeneration stance allowed the sultanzade to jump out of the battle, take a five-minute breather, and be almost as good as new. This strategy was far from perfect, of course, as a single hit from the Sultanah was a death sentence.

  Cultivators could rotate, but assassins had their own tactics. Assassins had more numbers – though still pitiful compared to an army – but most importantly, they had a limitless supply of their drugs. Soldiers shifted their duty as meat shields and instead resupplied the assassins.

  When I got close to them, it was when it hit me. That thick odor of saffron.

  They were not just having a pinch or a handful of saffron but barrels upon barrels of it, with many empty ones lingering around.

  I thought you were aware of it? Huh.

  Enlightenment does not require drugs as you may think of them, it requires substances that affect the body, or better yet, the mind. That is why substances like alcohol work for their vital art.

  …Interesting. I guess the definition of a drug is also rather elastic, medicines also work, after all.

  But yes, the reason why saffron works as a 'drug' is because it is rather toxic. Especially in the amounts these madmen were using it.

  Blood, steel, saffron. Those were the smells of the battle.

  My mind and senses had completely ignored that spicy and metallic smell until now – especially because there were several stronger metallic smells out there – but now I sensed it everywhere. A powerful silky odor that made me cough more than once before regaining my composure.

  I had the same questions as you. Why saffron? Why this much? The answers were obvious when you looked at Aaliyah-al-Ydaz.

  Her eyes were bloodshot, exactly like those of the assassins.

  I cannot stress enough how precise that 'exactly' is. You had to see it. It was as if my mother was one of them. A fool would think that she was using their vital arts, but I personally knew her hate for Enlightenment, so it was not that.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  The most obvious answer, as stupid or impossible as it could sound, was that they were sharing their intoxication with her.

  And I was right.

  Yes, Aloe, they were making her stoned at a distance.

  Now, I cannot say how stacking multiple effects of Enlightenment saffron can affect a person, but Aaliyah-al-Ydaz had been resisting that for two hours now without having slept for days whilst fighting assassins and cultivators, and she was still holding her ground.

  The realization was even more monstrous to my young self.

  If I was right, the Heavenly Descendant was a bound animal, and yet no one had managed to land the killing blow, and most had died trying to do so.

  I know I have boasted about the rotation tactics of my brethren, but they were not fresh after these many hours, regeneration stance or not. The only one who somewhat held his ground to this moment was the oldest sultanzade, Afar, who previously to this battle had been nearing – if not reached – the four-digit mark of Haya. This was no longer the case as he had lost some blood, but that still meant his regeneration stance was more powerful than that of the other sultanzade, which made his breaks more efficient.

  Hope truly seemed lost when he died.

  I already told you I was not the best storyteller. I have a flair for dramatics, not a knack. Very different.

  A single slip was what Aaliyah-al-Ydaz had needed to kill her first child. A swift strike on his neck had pushed his laryngeal prominence into his windpipe, basically rendering him unable to breathe. Perhaps not an outright mortal strike, but lethal nonetheless as he would die from suffocation in the following minutes.

  That was perhaps the biggest mistake Aaliyah-al-Ydaz had made in her entire life.

  A cornered animal fought more wildly than one that believed it had a chance to survive, and Afar became rabid at that moment.

  I cannot begin to think what my older half-brother thought back then when he knew that no matter what the outcome of the battle was he would die either way, but I saw determination and fear in his eyes in equal part.

  Afar's innate flowing technique was that of fire, but he had scarcely used it during the fight before as the more vitality he wasted on those flames, the weaker his stances would be.

  That was no longer the case.

  He was a dead man walking, and he was about to make sure every last drop of his vitality was used.

  He burned, Aloe. Burned. Not just the fire summoned from his fingertips, but his skin, his hair, his flesh, his bones. Everything. He became fire itself, and though that must have been one of the most painful experiences possible, he just smiled as his skin melted.

  Aaliyah-al-Ydaz kicked him to push him away, but as if he were a carbonized pile of wood, her foot went straight through his chest.

  That smile on his face, when he realized our mother had accidentally locked herself, was not that of a djinn but of the very heavens.

  The fire burned even brighter, no longer consuming his copious amounts of vitality, but also his body. It was a statement. He would not die by the wounds inflicted upon him by her but by his own hand.

  Bright and powerful those flames were. I was a solid hundred meters away from the conflagration and I could still feel the heat upon my skin. Aaliyah-al-Ydaz did not melt, but neither did she leave unscathed.

  She screamed, Aloe.

  Screamed.

  Ah, I have never heard something more beautiful. I wish you had been there to hear her wails of pain. They almost made me wet.

  Ehem.

  So yes, Afar landed the greatest strike any of us had managed to land. It did cost us our greatest fighter, but his sacrifice ignited the fire of the rest of the members of our little coalition. A handful of Assassin Grandmasters still survived but they were mostly useless, they kept shoving saffron inside of them, if just to contribute.

  Many died in the following seconds.

  Aaliyah-al-Ydaz was on her last breath, but she was still the Sultanah of Ydaz, the Heavenly Descendant, and the greatest cultivator Khaffat had known.

  I watched many people die in what felt like lifetimes as I awaited my chance. A single one I had, and if I failed I would not be able to recover from it and I would instantly die.

  I had everything to lose. Yet I also had everything to win.

  The sheer magnitude of the gamble pumped a frenzy into my veins.

  Then the opportunity arose.

  It was Hassan. Yes, the one you are thinking about. He had been prowling in the shadows here and there, and he had the same idea as I.

  Landing the killing strike.

  He was not a snake; he was a rat. And I doubted any one of our siblings would accept his claim as the Heavenly Descendant if he managed to kill her as he had been disinherited, but I cared not for those chances now.

  Hassan had taught the assassins Nurture, but he had also learned from them and picked up Enlightenment. His movements were a new kind of martial arts, one born out of the synergy of Nurture and Enlightenment, and at that moment I knew that I could not allow him to live regardless of the circumstances. If he had developed such grace in a handful of months, heavens knew what he would be capable of in a matter of years.

  He needed to die as much as our mother.

  So I struck.

  It was the perfect attack. A strike of such magnificence and elegance that it managed to knock out two of the most capable martial artists in the whole world without a possibility to fight back when I was completely outmatched in experience, strength, vitality, and vital arts.

  Pocket sand.

  …

  Ha-ha, I assure you I am not jesting, Aloe. A distraction can be fatal in a battle, and my pouch of pocket sand was in the perfect place at the perfect time.

  Aaliyah-al-Ydaz had not sensed Hassan's presence, but because my pouch sonorously flew behind her, she acknowledged its presence and, by proxy, my half-brother's. She turned to kill him as he was lunging for his mortal strike, but her rapidly rotating body collided with the pouch, making it explode.

  Making them both blind.

  The trajectory of Hassan's strike was slightly deviated by the distraction, but he was still wielding an arcane combination of two arts, and he had managed to make a gnarly cut on our mother's neck. Having said so, he turned into red mist a moment later. Maybe she only had a fraction of her vitality remaining, but a fraction of Aaliyah-al-Ydaz's vitality was far more than we could hope to collect between all the rest of the cultivators that still breathed.

  Then I struck.

  No, it was not more pocket sand.

  A silent but graceful blade that slid right into her heart from the back. I had perfectly calculated everything. She had lost a lot of vitality, she was not wielding the defense stance, I had avoided muscle and bone to strike directly her heart, and yet she still moved.

  I tried to jump away as I sensed my imminent death, but she was still faster than me, even if I was the one using the speed stance. Aaliyah-al-Ydaz grabbed me by the collar, pulled me to her front, looked at me, and sighed.

  "I am so tired…" And with those words, she fell to the ground.

  Her legs faltered, yes, but she was still breathing. In my mind, it did not matter that she had a blade through her heart, cuts all across her body, and half her body burned, she would still make it. She had always seemed so eternal and it still felt like it at that moment.

  "Oh, she has disappointed me so much…" Aaliyah-al-Ydaz murmured, and I looked at where she was looking at, or rather, who. Rani. "Heavens I tried, but you are all so moronic. It is impossible to forge you all into fine steel even when you are made of the best materials…"

  I was so intimidated, so scowled by her low voice that I did not speak. Maybe I yelped, but I cannot remember it exactly. There was only Aaliyah-al-Ydaz in my mind at that moment, and how she looked like a mountain. A mountain suffering from an avalanche and an earthquake at the same time.

  "At least you forged yourself into something worthwhile," she chuckled. "Maybe I was onto something about the heir stuff. Ah…" The mightiest of cultivators groaned in pain.

  Now that I was in front of her, I could see how my tulwar was poking out of her right bosom with a flow of deep red blood. She may have lost a lot of vitality and was not wielding the charm stance, and also she was my mother, but there was something so… viscerally attractive about a tit covered in blood.

  "I care not what you do in the future, Naila…" It felt weird having her mention my name. I think I had never heard her refer to me by my name. In a way, I thought that she did not even know it. "But regardless of what you do… give them hell and be bright. Be powerful. Be strong."

  I felt fire in my veins as she said those words and I suddenly felt more… myself. It was at that moment that she gave me my second stance, the thing you have mentioned about. This 'Perennial Longevity'.

  For a moment, I thought she had died already as her eyes had turned glossy. But what a fool I was, she was still Aaliyah-al-Ydaz.

  "Cannot go… away without not letting this… reservoir go to waste. Should have done this… ages ago." The Sultanah gritted her teeth and let out the mightiest of roars.

  Her voice was so potent and loud that it was a miracle that I was not left permanently deaf then. Still, it did leave me heavily nauseated.

  Much like Afar, her vitality was set alight. But instead of bursting into flames, it burst alive.

  We have all heard about the Blood of the Sultanah, and we all knew that it was a drop that turned deserts into farmlands, but have you wondered, Aloe Ayad, what would happen if instead of a drop, it was a whole body of a two-meter giantess full of blood?

  Yes, she turned all her blood into the Blood of the Sultanah. But this is not a surprise to you, is it? You have long seen the effects of it.

  Perhaps the drugs, the cuts, the fire, and my stab had not killed Aaliyah-al-Ydaz, but turning all her blood into the lifeblood of Ydaz definitely did the job.

  The end of the battle had finally come.

  A dead goddess. A dead army. A blossoming field. A broken status quo. But most importantly, a new ruler.

  A new Heavenly Descendant.