10 Minutes Prior to Lewis's Breakthrough

"Quickly, through the gates!" The army of black-robed figures quickly took over the many gates of the inner city, within minutes every gate in the city was under their full control.

Now it wasn't that the security in the city was lax that the guards fell so quickly without any notification of what had happened but because every one of the Black-Robed group was at the Pinnacle of the Mortal Leaving Stage, they were an unstoppable force; however, the scariest aspect of their existence?

They didn't kill a single one of the guards. Not one of them had died - instead, they had all been tranquilized by a sleeping dart into their neck.

What's so scary about that? 

The guards were wearing fully plated armor, the precision of each dart was sublime and managed to pierce through the slight gap between their helmets and their chests, the accuracy was horrifying to an inhuman degree.

...

In a throne room, much more magnificent than the one even King himself sat in - there sat an Old man, who looked well into his eighties but his eyes still had the vigor and fires of youth.

"Your majesty!" A Core Gathering Expert rushed into the throne room at an alarming speed, scaring the two maids standing on either side of the king.

"I know." He said simply, indifference in his eyes as he looked at the Core Gathering Cultivator as if he was looking at an ant. "We both knew this day was coming, the influence his ancestors have had on the present has reached an intolerable state, why couldn't they just bow their heads and accept the fate of this world?!" 

His face contoured in anger as he reached the end of his sentence - there was a deep unwillingness in the depths of his eyes as he thought of the future of his home and the kingdom he had built. But it was quickly replaced by acceptance, despite the fires in the depths of his eyes he no longer had the passion or youth to break away from the fate he was born with.

A long and deep sigh could be heard echoing through the halls of the throne room. "Do we send troops to retake the gates?" The third realm cultivator asked nervously, not daring to pick his head up to look at the king.

"No..." The king looked off into the distance, out of the windows and onto the city he had watched grow from its infancy - he was almost a thousand years old at this point, he had been here when the kingdom had first been established and was one of the earliest people to be transplanted by King into his 'world.' 

He'd also been one of the earliest to accept his new fate, conforming to the way the world had worked - even when the levels of the world were shattered and divided into separate planes and no longer directly attached to each other he had simply accepted that the end was coming.

So after his long pause, the king looked back at the feeble subject that trembled before him despite his own power and sighed a profound sigh filled with a pained sadness, "Send them home, all of them."

The cultivator still kneeling on the floor was dumbfounded by the order and tried to argue only to be cut off before he could begin, "You know our fate... Don't send them to their deaths, maybe this child will actually be able to break free from the constraints that bind us all."

His eyes seemed to gaze through the walls in the direction of a pair of inner-city gates that were slowly closing.

...

"Hold it!" A powerful voice attacked the minds of the black-robed figures who were currently trying to close the final inner city gate, the final gate being the only one that wouldn't be destroyed in their plan.

A woman soared over in an instant, she looked exactly like the one Lewis had ruthlessly slit the throat of as she sat in meditation on the bed.

"Finally, Luna I was thinking you wouldn't show up." A black-cloaked figure stood in the air before her, the closing of the gates had been halted as all of the black-cloaked figures stared up, their faces obscured but reverence could be seen from their postures towards the figure in the sky.

The black-cloaked figure who had flown up to stop the woman was naturally Ninth - he stood in the air staring at her, she was the only Core Gathering Intermediate Stage Cultivators in the outer city so naturally, he had to deal with her first.

"Hmpf, so what if you broke through to the Pinnacle Stage? Your experience is lacking compared to my own, your techniques aren't even comparable to mine!" The woman named Luna said arrogantly, she had fought with Nine once before and it had ended in him being at the disadvantage despite them being at the same realm.

"Today is the day I make up for my lack of technique with raw power, do you really think you can stop me?" He sneered before launching his fist towards her with the overwhelming power of someone at the Pinnacle of the Core Gathering Realm behind it.

"Die!" He said, as his punch connected with her stomach - yet instead of the feeling of connecting with flesh and bone he felt her body bend inwards.

"What the?- NO!" She screamed, a thin line appeared at her neck before she disintegrated into energy that dissipated into the atmosphere.

"A Clone?" Nine simply stood there in dumbfounded, a look of confusion on his face as he looked at the empty space where his opponent had just floated.

Lewis had no way of knowing that by killing the woman who was motionless on the bed he had literally killed her - the clone had been connected to her true body and was sent to see what the situation was like, the downside of the technique was that by creating and sending out a clone she was giving it most of her power and her consciousness so she wouldn't be able to respond to anything happening around her true body.

But she had thought that regardless she would be safe with the two Quasi-Core Gathering Realm Guards standing watch outside, unfortunately, she didn't know that Lewis had been eyeing her pavilion from the start.