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 Hui Tai estate with a cultivation spell Mathias was unfamiliar with, one of the elders took out a golden pocket watch 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 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 firstborn 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 found a young man standing in the middle 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 man, 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 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 Mathias.
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 the great 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?"