Volume 3 – The Place Where My Heart Feels At Peace, Chapter 42: The Escape
In that instant, Qianye suddenly felt an uncountable amount of little lightning flashes. The world lost its color as an infinite darkness swallowed everything. In this world, Qianye could only see that fiery black blurry silhouette, as well as a pair of fathomless eyes!
Qianye saw himself in those eyes!
He suddenly felt as if his body wasn’t under his control. Every bone, every muscle, and even every blood vessel was seemingly being controlled by an invisible forcefield, twisting, tearing, disintegrating. That feeling of imminent death had never felt this real.
He couldn’t hear anything, and he couldn’t say anything. The previously boiling blood energy suddenly quieted and stopped moving, as if he were dead. Even the golden blood energy could only offer a weak resistance as it was unable to even move out of its own rune.
But Qianye didn’t give up, and with the relentless determination he’d forged over his ten years of hard training, he forced his fingers down, trying to operate the trigger. He could feel his own finger moving, but it was extremely slow, and it was unknown how long it would be before he could cause the Twin Flowers to fire.
At this instant, Nighteye was standing in the middle of the street. Several high level Ross clansmen were waiting on her. They, who were high and mighty, all lowered their heads in respect and servility beside Nighteye.
On the road over, they had left ten-odd corpses, some of the expeditionary army, some of the dark races. All of the corpses were twisted beyond recognition, as if they had been mashed in the hands of a giant. They had all been mysteriously murdered by a flick of Nighteye’s eyes as they blocked her way for some reason or another.
This mysterious and powerful force had already caused all of the Ross clansmen to bend their knees in servitude to her. In front of an incomparable pureblood, status had already lost much of its meaning.
Nighteye’s eyes were filled with a lifelike image of Qianye’s silhouette. Regardless of the char of battle on his face, or the grime of smoke and blood on his face, and even though his structure was different from that time, but Nighteye could see past the falsehoods. Her eyes which could see through the illusions instantly recognized him.
“It’s him?”
The memories began to jump into her mind one after the other, and it was clear, as if they had just happened. Nighteye suddenly realized that she could remember every little detail, and she was once again sitting on the floor tiles of the Red Spider Lily, her tongue still rolling with the taste of fresh blood.
“A blood thrall is not entirely without hope…”
“I’m going to fight along with you later…”
“The Neos… perhaps you’ll have a chance receive the Embrace….”
“the chances are that we’ll have less opportunities to meet on the battlefield…”
In those black eyes that were so deep that they could seemingly swallow the world, the image of Qianye suddenly shattered, and then faded away.
Qianye could feel the sudden pressure on his body releasing, and without a single hesitation, he pulled the trigger through. His entire person was lifted off his feet, and like a flash of lightning, he flew backwards!
The Twin Flowers boomed out at the same time, and the previously-frozen demon flower split in two, its unique gunshot sound like a flower spitting breaking the suffocating silence of the night.
When she saw the light shining from the barrel of the gun, Nighteye finally remembered the other line of what Qianye had said: “If we ever have the chance to meet on the battlefield, I will personally kill you!”
She only had a little hesitation, and her breastplate had already been smashed to smithereens by the origin power. The raging origin power tore into her flesh as two enormous flowers of blood bloomed in the air.
Nighteye was thrown back like a falling leaf, helplessly tossed about in the air. For some reason, her heart was a blank white. She had even forgotten to move her blood energy to protect herself.
Qianye fell to the ground and he raised his head, finally seeing clearly Nighteye who was being thrown backwards, the two flowers of blood drawing his attention like no other.
“It’s her?!”
Nighteye’s appearance was practically unchanged, and even by the strict standards of the vampires’ aesthetic sense, she was nearly perfect.
Qianye completely didn’t expect to meet her here, much less be shot directly in the chest by the twin shots that he had launched! With that terrifying power that she had just demonstrated, even if she wasn’t a Champion, she was well on the verge of being one. If that was the case, forget even dodging the “Twin Flowers”, even if she’d forcefully blocked it, she’d have been fine.
But why had she not dodged, nor had she even blocked!?
“Your Highness!”
The Ross clan vampires were thrown into a panic, and a large number of them rushed towards Nighteye, while the rest came pouncing for Qianye.
Qianye instinctively turned to flee.
This one shot had drained him of all his strength, and the well of his origin power had already dried up, facing those vampire nobles who were at least at the strength of Esquires, he was surely doomed, and worse still, Qianye absolutely refused to let himself be captured alive by the dark races.
The vampires behind him moved like the bitter wind, their speed not an iota below Qianye’s. He completely didn’t dare to even turn, and could only rush onwards at full speed, in an instant running out of the Earth Castle, diagonally running towards the mountains.
Behind Qianye, ten-odd vampire nobles formed themselves into a line formation, dogging him. The two sides were gradually drawing closer inch by tiny inch, and at this rate, Qianye would be caught before he reached the hills.
Qianye didn’t dare to look back, much less retaliate, and only focused entirely on running for the hills. These vampires were completely different from any that he had met previously, and they were the elite of the elite, and even if he himself had some of the vampires’ characteristics, their differences in constitution were clear.
At this time, the earth suddenly began to quake gently. As if the whole mountain region was recovering its life, its hibernating heart slowly beginning to pulse again.
From the shadow of the rightmost of the rugged peaks, a giant wolf emerged. It had snow white fur, and a gold mane around its neck gave it an extreme majesty. The giant wolf stood at the summit, and suddenly arced its head up, howling out with a noise that carried right through the clouds!
The curtains of night were beginning to droop down, and it was the night that the Gemini stars were the closest. The giant, pale moon occupied half of the sky.
With this incomparably severe roar, the moon actually began to pulse in harmony with the earth. The soft moonlight beginning to congeal, cladding the giant wolf. Whereupon the snow-white fur of the wolf began to glow under the light of the moon, scattering a dim glow upon the surroundings, its golden mane glittering like the sun!
The faces of the vampire nobles who had been urgently chasing Qianye all soured, and they all stopped, forming a tight battle formation, giving death glares to the giant wolf on the summit.
After the giant wolf had finished howling, he finally seemed to notice that there were intruders, and raising his hackles, a golden sunray shot out, cutting through the dimness of the night. Its gray-blue eyes had already been focused on the vampires downhill.
These Ross clan vampires had come in high and mighty, but now it was as if they were being faced by their natural predator, not even daring to try to escape. Their tight formation wasn’t in preparation of slaughter, but was for the sake of defense, and even then, they were only barely holding on under the oppressive might that the wolf had projected at them. Those gray-blue eyes were unbearably heavy in their focus, and it felt as if the entire mountain range was expressing its displeasure.
The giant wolf stared them down, and almost as if it had lost interest, it turned to leave. The moonlight cascaded like a waterfall, and seemingly forming a landing in front of the wolf, the wolf walked onto it, and just like that, it walked away into the skies, leaving no mark of its presence.
It was only after the giant wolf had left for a long while, that the Ross clan vampires were able to let out a sigh of relief. All of them were heaving with exertion, and they were all extremely sluggish, as if they had just participated in a large battle. They looked toward the distance, and that human had long since disappeared into the mountain range, impossible to trace.
The baron that headed the troupe had an extremely ugly expression. He hesitated for a long while. “Let’s return!”
The ten-odd vampire nobles followed behind him and were suddenly gone.
In Mike’s tent, Nighteye was sitting in the high-backed chair, her eyes staring pointedly at a seam on the tent room, seemingly deep in thought. She changed her clothes, and her face was pallid, but other than that, she was seemingly unharmed.
Mike stood at one side, hesitating to speak. He had come in to make a report, but seeing Nighteye deep in her own thoughts, he didn’t care to interrupt her.
At this point, the Ross clan vampire nobles walked in, and the head baron amongst them bowed deeply, paying his respects to Nighteye. “Your Highness, we are incompetent, and we failed to chase down that human.”
Nighteye’s eyes stirred a little, as she asked mildly. “What happened?”
“There was an incident on the road.” The baron explained the situation of meeting with the giant wolf.
Nighteye furrowed her eyebrows, speaking lightly. “Isn’t that William? What’s he doing, appearing here?”
She turned to look at Mike. “What’s the situation with Earth Castle? Are there still humans alive?”
“There are at most only a few tens of little worms still hiding inside, but to flush them all out will take a little more time.” Mike had come to report this. The battle for Earth Castle was more or less over but they had to remove all traces of humans and send out search parties to scour the trash heaps.
“There’s no need to spend that time. Regroup your troops, encircle the place, and stop them escaping,” Nighteye continued, “We’ll wait for the human reinforcements to arrive.”
Baron Mike was falling over himself to agree. He too felt that this idea wasn’t too bad. Having a few humans as bait would be far more effective than just the trash heap it was. From a geographical perspective, if they couldn’t take all of the battlefield within a hundred kilometers of this place, then holding this defense point was meaningless, and the humans would eventually take it back.
Qianye continued to scamper along his route, and after running for a long. unknown period of time, the origin power in his body suddenly stopped, and he collapsed to the ground, only able to pant heavily.
After waiting a while, and seeing no vampires appear, Qianye finally confirmed that he had managed to shake off pursuit. But as to why those vampires had given up the goose, he couldn’t understand at all. He only remembered that there was a giant wolf that had suddenly appeared on top of the rugged mountain on his right, and then those vampire nobles had just stopped.
Qianye had instinctively seized the opportunity to flee with all his might, and he completely didn’t bother thinking about whether the threat in front was more terrifying than the vampire nobles behind him. The lucky thing was that that strange giant wolf had seemingly rushed toward the vampires and not blocked him at all.
After a while, Qianye managed to recover a little of his bodily strength with great difficulty, and it was then that he managed to slowly inch his way upright. Looking at the time, he gave up on returning to Earth Castle. With that many vampire nobles appearing, Earth Castle’s troops were definitely going to be unable to hold on. He feared that the battle had long since ended, and that if he went back he would only be throwing himself into their hands.
At this time, a wild boar dashed out of the woods, and seeing Qianye, its eyes went red, and viciously rushed towards him. No matter how weak he’d gotten, there was no way that Qianye would be unable to deal with one ordinary wild boar. With a few strokes, he had toppled the boar, cut its tendons, and was drinking its warm blood in huge gulps.
As the blood entered his stomach, it slightly agitated his blood boil state. The blood of a wild beast didn’t contain much origin power so the recovery speed was not as high nor as violent as that of a werewolf or a vampire expert’s blood, but it was significantly quicker than waiting for his own endurance to return.
Qianye took stock of the equipment on him, and realized that other than the Twin Flowers and a single vampire longsword, all of the other items he’d had were all back at the Earth Castle.
He leaned on a large tree to rest, quietly waiting for his body to recover. But the moment he closed his eyes, the images of his comrades in the 131st would float in front of him, as he relived their final moments. Although they were undisciplinable, as long as they were on the battlefield, they were all true iron-blooded warriors who daringly rushed into the enemy’s formations with their own bodies, using grenades to take the enemy with them even in their dying breath!
But this entire battle had been more than just that. Although considering the dark races’ forces that had emerged later from Earth Castle, they had, by circumstance, stopped one of the assault waves of forces that would have penetrated the borders, and this sacrifice could well be said to have its own value.
And so, if they hadn’t had Qianye’s amazing ability for guerrilla warfare and extreme sniping skills, the 131st might well have all died in the mountainous regions. Even if they had failed, they had failed mysteriously. A military movement of such a scale from the dark races, that had even contained so much cannon fodder, could definitely not have left practically no traces of their movements, and it was impossible that the division level intelligence wouldn’t have noticed this.
To die in battle was not scary. After all, which soldier of the Empire hadn’t already made preparations every time they stepped onto a battlefield? But Qianye couldn’t accept that this was how his comrades had died. For some reason, he thought more and more frequently of the Red Scorpions’ last mission brief.
Qianye gently opened his eyes. Feeling the blood energy and origin power that was well and alive in his body, he slowly stood up. He didn’t know that a pair of gray-blue eyes were watching him as he left the mountain area.
“Using old Ross’ Twin Flowers to hurt the princess of the Monroe clan, this is simply too interesting. My dear friend, you must definitely live on a while longer, this will make life… far more interesting!”