Soulbound: Dual Cultivation

Chapter 456: Fear

Lucas’s laughter did not fade, did not weaken, and did not break despite the condition his body was in, instead it grew louder, deeper, more unhinged, echoing across the battlefield in a way that unsettled everyone who heard it, because it did not sound like the laughter of a man on the verge of death, it sounded like something else entirely, something that did not belong to pain or defeat, and that alone made it unbearable to listen to, especially for the one standing directly before him, because Ken, who had controlled everything up until this point, who had dictated the pace, the outcome, and the suffering of everyone involved, now found himself facing something he could not understand, something that did not fit into the image of dominance he had constructed.

The laughter got to him.

It dug into his composure, into his pride, into the certainty that had carried him through the entire battle, and slowly, visibly, it began to irritate him, his expression tightening as he stepped closer, his eyes locking onto Lucas with growing intensity as though trying to force an answer out of him without words, but Lucas did not stop, did not even acknowledge him in the way Ken expected, he simply kept laughing, his body trembling under the strain, blood still dripping down his face, yet the sound continued, raw and unrestrained.

"Why are you laughing?" Ken demanded, his voice sharper now, no longer calm, no longer controlled in the same way as before, because this was something he could not tolerate, something he could not allow to continue without understanding.

Lucas did not answer.

He laughed.

Ken stepped even closer, the distance between them closing until he stood right in front of him, towering over him, his presence heavy with growing anger as he repeated the question again, his tone harder this time, more forceful, more demanding.

"Why are you laughing?"

Still no answer.

Only laughter.

That was the moment something snapped.

Ken’s hand shot forward, grabbing Lucas by the collar and yanking him up from his kneeling position just enough to hold him in place, his grip tight, unforgiving, his control slipping as irritation turned into anger. Without hesitation, he drove his fist into Lucas’s face, the impact sharp and brutal, snapping his head to the side as blood sprayed from his already battered features.

"Why are you laughing?"

The question came immediately after the strike, almost in the same breath, as though he expected the blow to force an answer out of him.

But Lucas only laughed.

The sound came again, broken yet unmistakable, spilling out of him as though the pain meant nothing, as though the strike had only fed whatever madness drove that laughter.

Ken’s grip tightened.

Another punch followed.

Harder.

Faster.

More force behind it.

Lucas’s head snapped the other way, his body barely held upright by the grip on his collar, blood flying with the impact, his condition worsening with every hit.

"WHY are you laughing?"

The question came again, louder this time, edged with clear frustration, almost anger, as Ken struck him once more, each punch landing with brutal precision, each one meant to break him further, to force something out of him, any answer, any reaction that made sense.

But Lucas gave him nothing.

Nothing except laughter.

It continued after every strike, after every question, after every attempt to force an explanation out of him, the sound refusing to stop, refusing to bend, as though whatever he found so amusing was beyond the pain, beyond the damage, beyond even the reality of the situation he was in.

To everyone watching, it made no sense.

The girls, the King, the soldiers of Valerion, even the enemies, all looked on with confusion, unable to understand what they were witnessing, because from the outside, it looked like madness, like a man who had been pushed too far, whose mind had finally broken under the weight of everything he had endured.

It looked like he was enjoying it.

Enjoying the pain.

Enjoying the beating.

Enjoying the moment that should have been his end.

And that made it even more unsettling.

Ken saw it too, and it only made things worse, because every punch he threw, every question he demanded an answer to, was met with the same response, the same laughter that refused to stop, refused to fade, refused to give him the control he expected to have.

And in that moment, for the first time since the fight began, Ken was no longer just angry.

He was unsettled.

Lucas’s laughter continued to echo across the battlefield, raw, unrelenting, and completely out of place amidst the silence and tension that had taken hold of both armies, and with every passing second it seemed to dig deeper into Ken’s composure, unraveling the control he had maintained from the beginning of the fight as irritation turned into something sharper, something far more volatile, his grip still tight on Lucas’s collar as he held him up like a broken thing that refused to act broken, his strikes having done more than enough to end a lesser man, yet still he received nothing in return but that maddening laughter.

Ken drew his arm back again, his expression hardened, his patience completely gone now as he prepared to land another crushing blow, his intent no longer just to demand answers but to silence that laughter entirely, to beat it out of Lucas if that was what it took, his fist tightening as the energy around him surged, the air itself reacting to the force he was about to unleash.

And then...Something entered the battlefield in a flash.

It was so fast that it did not feel like movement at all, more like a sudden shift in the space itself, a presence cutting through the battlefield with impossible speed, shrouded in a cloud-like mist that seemed to part and gather at will, carrying with it an aura so majestic, so overwhelming, that for a split second the entire battlefield felt as though it had been forced into stillness.

Ken did not see it coming.

No one did.

Before his strike could land, before his fist could even descend, the presence reached him, and in the next instant, he was hit, the impact sudden and absolute, breaking his motion completely as his body was forced back, the force of it interrupting everything, his control, his stance, his dominance over the moment, all of it disrupted in a single, precise action.

The mist lingered for a brief second longer, swirling faintly around the figure that had appeared, its presence commanding attention without effort, the aura alone enough to make even the strongest on the battlefield instinctively pause.

Then it began to clear.

Slowly.

Deliberately.

And as it faded, revealing the one who had just intervened, a wave of shock rippled through everyone watching, from the soldiers to the commanders, from the King to the girls, even to Ken himself, because the identity of the one who stood there was unmistakable.

It was the Empress of Lechia.

That was why Lucas had been laughing, why even in a state where his body was broken and his vision gone he had found something so overwhelmingly amusing that he could not stop, because while everyone else saw the end approaching, while they saw defeat, humiliation, and death closing in around him, he alone knew something they did not, something that had already shifted the outcome long before this moment had even arrived.

The Empress of Lechia stood there, her presence calm yet incomprehensibly vast, the faint remnants of mist still curling around her form as though reality itself struggled to fully contain what she had become, her aura no longer that of a mere celestial but something far beyond, something purer, something that carried a weight that did not belong to the mortal realm anymore, and the difference was not subtle, it was absolute, pressing down on everything around her in a way that made even the battlefield itself feel insignificant.

Lucas’s laughter continued, softer now but no less certain, because this was what he had been waiting for, what he had endured everything for, every strike, every drop of blood, every moment of pain, all of it leading to this exact point where the balance would shift so completely that there would be no coming back from it. He had felt her connection with him spark back to life and he knew she was close to the battlefield.

Ken felt it instantly.

The moment the mist cleared, the moment her presence fully revealed itself, something deep within him reacted, not with anger, not with confidence, but with something he had not felt in a very long time.

Fear.

His body stiffened slightly, his eyes locking onto her as disbelief flickered across his face, his mind struggling to reconcile what he was seeing with what he knew to be possible, because this... this should not exist, this should not be happening, not here, not now.

"That’s... impossible..." he muttered, his voice lower, uncertain in a way it had not been throughout the entire battle, yet even as he said it, even as he tried to deny it, he could feel it clearly, could see it plainly, could not escape the truth that stood right in front of him.

Her aura alone confirmed it.

Her presence declared it.

She had crossed that threshold.

She was no longer bound by the same limits, no longer standing within the same realm as him, no longer a celestial in the way he understood it, because what stood before him now was something beyond that stage, something that had already stepped into the next existence, something that was no longer truly part of the mortal world.

An immortal celestial.

For the first time in over a thousand years, a mortal cultivator had transcended into that realm, breaking through the boundary that separated the two existences, reaching a level that most only spoke of in myths and forgotten records, a level that marked the beginning of ascension into the celestial realm itself.

And Ken knew it.

He felt it.

There was no denying it anymore.

Because standing before him was proof that it had happened.