The death and elimination of the Initiates not only allowed Mathias use of all their aether against the Ascetic but also prevented the Ascetic from killing them to supply himself more aether. As Mathias denoted before, to even have a chance at killing the Ascetic he had to be unable to receive help, whether this help was consensual or not, meant little.

The next thing Mathias Calypses had to ensure was that the Ascetic couldn’t receive help from the other elders.

After securing the perimeter of the Hua Tai estate with a cultivation spell Mathias was unfamiliar with, one of the elders took out a golden pocketwatch which was also broken.

They did not know why they took it out at that instant, they just had a feeling of childish amusement with it, almost as if it called out for them.

The Astris trait of wonder!

At that instant in the green-tiled jade courtyard of the Hua Tai clan that certain elder dispersed into light blue dust.

It normally would take a few days of constant leeching with Energia Furari for Mathias Calypses to drain all the aether from a fellow Adept, but by using the delayed activation facet of mystical items, Mathias Calypses performed a full week of aether draining within a single instant!

Shortly after the other 8 Adept-ranked elders saw this happen their bodies too gained a blue light and faded to dust with all their aether teleporting to Mathias Calypses’ soul.

This development was due to the fact that the delayed activation of the Energia Furari sorcery that was engraved into the pocketwatch affected an area around the wielder and not just the wielder. This was one of the reasons why Mathias waited so long.

The Ascetic didn’t react originally when all the Initiates of his clan instantly died within his own courtyard. Mathias suspected this was because he trusted his elders to deal with the situation.

Mathias didn’t activate the kill switches on both the Initiates and the Adepts at the same time, since he both wanted to see how the Ascetic would respond and he wanted the Adepts to seal the Hua Tai estate themselves so that Mathias wouldn’t have to do so while fighting the Ascetic.

For Mathias believed that being forced to do while fighting might as well be a death sentence.

He wanted this seal placed so that the Ascetic couldn’t use any pre-planned kill switches in the citizens of his village to spontaneously gain more aether.

Mathias didn’t know if the seal set up to prevent escape would actually prevent the Ascetic from sending out signals to any kill-switches and gaining aether from them nor did he know if these kill-switches even existed but he wouldn’t assume they didn’t, especially with how the youngest young master tried to assassinate him.

But with all of his clansmen now dead, there was only one choice left for the ascetic.

Mathias Calypses looked up from his balcony, his hidden state instantaneously broken by a golden sun which grew brighter and brighter.

The Ascetic’s domain!

Mathias tried to form a series of starlit hallways but found his aether being denatured by the forever glowing sun above his head and stopped this plan.

He then teleported around the complex, attempting to leave teleportation markings in various places to decrease his aether expenditure, only for the ever burning light to fade them all away into nothingness.

Which Mathias thought of as some bullshit since Solaris didn’t counter Astris, in fact it actually made it harder for Solaris to destabilize Astris.

But none of those rules seemed to matter before the Ascetic.

Mathias was aware that this was a domain and henceforth held the real Ascetic somewhere inside it. During his first round of teleportation he came to realize that the domain covered the exact same space as the barrier.

According to this logic, Mathias Calypses then calculated the precise middle point of the barrier and henceforth of the domain using a series of quick, fast-dissapting feedback sorceries when he was teleporting.

Just as he was about to teleport to the exact center of the domain a certain thought entered Mathias’ mind, What if it’s a ruse?

Mathias, having taken control of the aether held by the clan elders who created the barrier, used a sorcery with that as the prerequisite to commandeer the control over the barrier and then made a small hole in it.

At the same time Mathias created an array of Astris structures around the position of the hole.

A bright-flashing light emulating from the sun dashed through the hole and Mathias quickly closed it.

Mathias’ trap was a success!

Before the Astris structures fully dissipated under the intense sunlight, Mathias had triangulated the exact position where that light had come from. He knew that this was the position of the Ascetic due to the fact that Solaris sorcery can only travel in linear lines.

He found that it was in an orientation and direction different from the middle of the domain!

Mathias hypothesized that while the Ascetic may be in an area different than the middle of his domain, he doesn't actually view him as some sort of extreme threat. Mathias assumed because of this, the Ascetic would not instantly resort to deceptive tactics such as using the unique qualities of a domain to make the light come from somewhere different than his true body and set up a death trap in that faked location.

But having reached a level of sorcerous knowledge and wisdom beyond his years, Mathias Calypses didn’t trust his assumptions and preferred to act on fact. This caused him to teleport an illusory clone to the triangulated location instead of his true body.

Mathias then used the unique traits of Astris to establish a visual and voice connection to the illusory clone.

Instantaneously arriving at the triangled location, Mathias Calypses’ illusory clone found himself in an underground area decorated with marble and jade, turning to the middle of the area he saw a young man standing in the center of a jade sun etched into the marble flooring.

The young man, decorated in a green and white cultivator’s robe turned to Mathias’ clone and spoke, “Young master, I see that is a clone. Why don’t we talk face to face. It would save me the trouble.”

Mathias’ clone remained silent.

“As much as one such as myself should detest you, I don’t. I wish to you how you exterminated all my clansmen underneath my nose in such a short time. If I knew how you did that I could make it worth your while.” The Ascetic said.

Mathias’ clone opened his small mouth, “I would like to know more about the Alchemists of Law, Mr. Ascetic.”

The Ascetic had a confused look on his gentle yet manly face, signaling that he had no idea what Mathias was talking about.

“Alchemists of Law? I am afraid I do not know them. Why are you looking for them?” The Ascetic questioned.

Mathias’ clone went silent again.

“You know all of this is futile, young man. You don’t seem to have grasped the true difference between an Ascetic and an Adept. You cannot beat me. I see the techniques you are casting up there and fully understand all of them. They won’t work. In my domain I can fully disallow the use of qi techniques."

Then why don’t you? Mathias thought, realizing some limits of Ascetics.

Mathias believed that what he said was true if he stayed directly under the sun, but within the covered complex Mathias assumed that such a thing was beyond the aether expenditure the Ascetic was willing to waste on him.

In the world of sorcery, sorcerers steal aether from others to permanently increase their supply of aether and the rate they naturally regenerate it. At least to the point where they hit a hard limit, those hard limits represent the different sorcery levels.

Each sorcery level corresponds to a certain amount of aether of sorcerers from the lower levels, an Initiate has the aether of 10 normal men, an Adept has the aether of 100 Initiates, Ascetics have the aether of 1,000 Adepts, Apostles have the aether of 10,000 Ascetics, Sages have the aether of 100,000 Apostles, Evangelists have the aether of 1,000,000 Sages and Gods have the aether of 1,000,000,000 Evangelists.

This of course, is information Mathias Calypses was privy to.

Mathias was prepared for the Ascetic to send the full force of his domain at him and made sufficient preparations but that never happened, he wondered why that was.

He originally attributed it to the surrounding clans in the Hua forest which Mathias suspected to hold Ascetics themselves. Seeing his weakness they might pounce at him, so he assumed that the Ascetic intended to keep his aether above a certain level to ensure his escape.

But the more Mathias thought about it the stranger the situation became, if he was in the shoes of the Ascetic he would have fled the entire area the second all of his elders died. Fearing the situation becoming worse.

His escape would already be pre-planned and have been executed literally at the speed of light by using the unique traits of the Solaris branch of sorcery.

But instead of that, this Ascetic decided to stay. It didn’t make sense on why this was the case. In Mathias Calypses’ short but eventful experience when something isn’t logical it’s either because the person in question is obsessed over something, didn’t realize something or Mathias is missing a piece of crucial information.

In this specific case Mathias believed it was two of them.

He believed that he was certainly missing a piece of crucial information about something which could be considered an obsession of the Ascetic. Something that weighs heavier than his own immediate safety.

Mathias’ illusory clone, which originally carried an indifferent expression, presented a small smile as it spoke, “What exactly are you hiding, Mr. Ascetic?”

The Ascetic’s facial expression became stern as the sun near Mathias Calypses’ true body became brighter, the fact that he wasn’t directly under the sun was becoming increasingly more useless.

At this moment the Ascetic then grabbed Mathias’ illusory clone at the speed of light. Of course, Mathias Calypses’ clone could not react in time.

The Ascetic shattered the clone into aether and absorbed it but sadly it wasn’t a lot of aether. Mathias had designed it that way, so that this clone had even less aether than a normal illusory clone.

But unbeknownst to Mathias, aether absorption was not the main purpose the Ascetic had in mind when seizing his clone.

A beam of light struck Mathias Calypses and shot him out of the building he was residing in. It was sent through the connection between Mathias and his clone, something which is normally of an abstract origin.

The beam also sent him outside, it applied force. One of the most notable weaknesses of Solaris sorcery is that it can’t directly apply force, only apply heat and accelerate things in the direction they are already moving.

A domain’s law alteration!

Mathias Calypses had severely underestimated what was meant by that.

He immediately looked towards the sun as it blasted Mathias at literal lightspeed.

0.3 seconds.

That was all the time it hit Mathias Calypses before he swapped his location with his body double’s corpse which he had originally created to fake his death.

At first he tried to teleport away but was blocked from doing so by the sun. It seemed that the Ascetic started to properly use his domain against Mathias now.

Appearing in the underground morgue which held his body, Mathias looked up surprisingly at the makeshift sunroof above his head.

A trap!

Once more the sun blasted Mathias Calypses at the speed of light.

0.5 seconds.

That was the time Mathias spent being blasted by the sunlight this time. This discrepancy in time was due to Mathias Calypses being unsure of where to teleport to, since teleporting using his usual method was prohibited under the light of the sun.

Since the restriction was placed in, ‘under the light of the sun’ Mathias Calypses created multiple illusory clones in an area of shade and had them teleported into the marble jade underground sanctum.

Upon reaching the sanctum, the seven illusory clones immediately used the characteristics of astris to phase into the ground,

Astris Temptus!

The main counter to sorceries which use light are sorceries that utilize powers of hiding, the best are Nix, Umbris, and Geo. Night, Shadow, and Earth respectively. Through this lens, Astris, which holds a minor speciality in concealing things, actually somewhat counters Solaris. Although such a counter would be more soft, with the advantage only showing when sorcerers of the exact same realm went against each other.

Mathias aimed to use the natural earth below the marble jade sanctum to shield his illusory clones from the destructive power of the Solaris light.

The Ascetic’s calm voice then ensued throughout the entire domain, “Everything here is of my creation. Trying to hide in rock means nothing.”

But Mathias was not trying to hide his clones in an unreachable location so that he could teleport his true body there, no, he was trying to obtain. To obtain the thing the Ascetic supposedly cared so much for.

The fact that the Ascetic called out at Mathias for this hinted at him that he should probe more in this direction.

Mathias considered his actions so far as all-powerful Ascetic to be lacking. Ridiculously powerful but at the same time, extremely conservative with his power.

His original plan was to eliminate all the things he could take aether from and then to tire the Ascetic out, killing him shortly after.

His new plan was different, since the conservative, patient and calm nature of the Ascetic was preventing Mathias Calypses from tiring him out, he opted for a new strategy. He would force the Ascetic’s hand by coveting whatever he was protecting and trying to run off with it. Under the new situation Mathias expected that the Ascetic would shift his conservative and patient nature and fully attempt to kill him. Allowing Mathias to continue with the original plan.

The Ascetic clicked his tongue as the sun above the Hua Tai estate burned with a velvet red.

Every building within the estate spontaneously caught fire, Mathias Calypses’ true body which has long been in the darkness of the underground morgue also caught aflame.

Shadows receded inwards as trees shriveled up like sun-kissed raisins. Their exterior bark peeling off them as their interior forms became enamoured by crystallized sap.

All of the wooden buildings were completely incinerated.