The death of a Grand Duke Clan potential heir was too much. Mason might have been ranked second amongst his Clan's Quasi Golds, but that position alone was more than worthy to become a future pillar of the family.
No Clan was built off the back of one genius. Even if they felt right now that he was inferior to another, it wasn't by an exaggerated amount, and it certainly wasn't enough for them to feel that he was worthless.
This was only more so since Mason was a key figure in their position in the Obsidian Eclipse Sect as well.
As per usual, Clans always kept their best geniuses in-house, only sending out those beneath them to join other organizations like the Sects and the Imperial Academies. This was how they could prevent their geniuses from being influenced by ideologies they didn't agree with, and also keep them from being unnecessarily targeted.
The Zhen Clan was in a unique position where they had two outstanding geniuses, one capable of holding up the skies in the Sect and another capable of doing the same back at the Clan.
Their future was bright.
Until it was suddenly ripped to shreds.
Suddenly, the Zhen Clan went from a somewhat firm stance on the material being their own to lay claim to, to practically feverish.
They had lost a genius through unknown means, and now this seemed like the only way for them to recoup their losses. Only if they could make their number one Quasi Gold genius even stronger than now would they have a small chance of making up over almost a quarter century of investment into Mason.
And by extension, how could the Duke Clan of the maid servant allow themselves to be nudged out? If anything, the Obsidian Eclipse Sect would use them as a shield and support them from the background so they could continue to stand up to the Zhens as technically speaking, they had the largest claim.
This Duke Clan though… was it a coincidence that they were actually of the Nowlan Duke Clan? The very same Clan that the Matriarch of the Sect descended from? The very same Clan whose genius Theron had killed in a dark alley not long after he clashed with Rowan of the Bordeaux Clan?
Suddenly, the Bordeaux Clan got a chance to infiltrate into these matters if for no other reason than to stand on the side of the Zhen Clan.
Because of their clashes, the Nowlan Duke Clan had begun to faintly suppress the Bordeaux Clan, and there was only so much the Imperial Clan could do about it.
No one was naive enough to believe that the Imperial Clan would truly be able to protect them all. If the Bordeaux Clan got a chance to cut the Zhen Clan down a peg, they would take it.
Suddenly, it felt like one domino after another was falling, and so many heads were clashing in the capital that not nearly enough manpower was put into finding Mason's killer until the sun slowly peeked over the horizon.
Maybe even Theron himself didn't expect things to work out so smoothly. But for these Imperial Nobles… none of them would have guessed that they were merely the appetizer.
Theron wasn't doing all of this for the sake of targeting them; that helped out the Thistles far too much, and he wasn't in the business of giving them too much aid as that would make his path forward all the more difficult.
Instead, the real reason he had done this was for a plan that was about to bear its fruits very soon.
There was no such thing as an impenetrable wall. Ruu had said it herself.
This time… that was exactly what Theron was banking on as the capital fell into chaos.
Theron was honestly quite surprised. Was the cultivation world really so incompetent? They didn't send a single Gold Mancer after him?
Honestly, he had been looking forward to what he could do against a Gold Mancer. While he didn't think he could defeat one even in the rain, he felt that he could use them to fight on the edge of life and death a bit, maybe earn some breakthroughs in the throes of battle… before escaping with either [Blood Escape] or [Soul Escape] depending on how powerful they were.
But no one showed up. Even days later, he was still on high alert, and yet no one had come at all.
The truth was that they weren't incompetent. Theron was simply too much of an anomaly.
The main crux of the issue wasn't that Theron had hidden his cultivation so well. It was just that logically, he couldn't have been at his current cultivation realm at all.
Theron was already at Fourth Resonance after there were even reports of him being stuck at Ninth Resonance for so very long. Who could predict something like that?
And even if they had known, who would send a Gold Mancer after a mid-tier Silver Mancer? The fact Mason was acting was already more than overkill in their eyes.
Plus, the timing of Theron's plot was too perfect. He had planned contingencies for things going wrong, especially since he was relying on Ruu and not himself to lay out the seeds to sprout, but Ruu had performed just as perfectly as he would have.
Now, it was about time he returned to Daggers of the Night.
There was a flash of cold in Theron's eyes as he leapt from the back of his steed. It continued off into the distance, but before it had vanished over the horizon, Theron himself had long done so.
A figure suddenly appeared before Theron's steed. Even if he had been there, he wouldn't have recognized this person at all, though this could be said to be the second time she had appeared.
The old lady of Ruu's Daggers of the Night branch.
She blinked, looking at the horse, seemingly confused.
Where had Theron gone? Shouldn't he be here?
Her palm clenched, and the head of the horse shattered to pieces in a twisting weave of spatial nodes.
"Did this boy trick me? How could he even know who I am?"
A sudden realization came over the old woman, and her expression changed.
With a flicker, she vanished. At that moment, she knew that dealing with Theron was the last of her problems.