Volume 4 – Perpetual Conflict, Chapter 17: Song Clan Ancient Scroll: Mystery
Brahms, who was initially struggling on the verge of death, suddenly stopped moving. The spider limbs that were excavating deep lines in the ground just moments ago froze in mid-air as the dirt and residual origin power waves gradually settled. Meanwhile, Qianye stood there like a statue without the slightest bit of movement.
“Qianye?” Wei Bainian sensed something was wrong and swiftly arrived through the air.
Only then did Qianye come to. He turned around and replied softly, “I’m fine. I’m just… too tired.” At this time, his face was as pale as a sheet but would be often suffused by a somewhat strange tinge of red.
Wei Bainian landed beside Qianye and felt relieved only after hearing his words. “This battle was indeed quite arduous, but our victory was also absolute. You have the leading merit!”
Qianye could only force a silent smile. The blood energy within his body had expanded to the point where it could explode at any moment. So much that he was worried a dense aura of fresh blood power would gush out from his mouth if he spoke.
Qianye exerted his last bit of remaining strength to extract the Radiant Edge. The arachne viscount’s human-shaped upper body suddenly shriveled up as soon as the dagger left the body, and his skin completely lost its luster. Furthermore, many wrinkles appeared on its body as if it had aged hundreds of years within moments.
Wei Bainian said apologetically, “I only wanted to leave the final blow to you, but I didn’t consider how you’ve been fighting an arduous battle up till now. Sigh, I was thoughtless.”
“Not at all. It’s my honor.” Qianye revealed a sincere smile.
Wei Bainian didn’t seem to pay much attention to the arachne viscount’s unusual condition. The dark races possessed as many odd and secretive arts as there were stars in the sky and would take all sorts of odd forms after death. He only checked Qianye from head to toe with worry.
At this time, Qianye was completely bathed in blood. There were many open wounds on his body suffused with different origin power auras. Fortunately, he appeared to be merely exhausted. His aura was still enduring and powerful. Wei Bainian transferred the giant shield to his left hand and approached to support Qianye.
Qianye’s body momentarily tensed up—two human figures climbed up from below and arrived beside Qianye in a flash, holding him up left and right. It was Lil’ Seven and Lil’ Nine. The twins’ beautiful eyes gazed at Qianye and almost seemed to be tearing up. They were covered in dirt and blood but appeared otherwise unharmed.
“General, I’ll go back to rest a bit.” Qianye’s voice was extremely feeble.
Wei Bainian withdrew his hand after seeing the twins and nodded faintly. He assigned a few officers to lead their squads in a cleanup of the battlefield and left first.
Wei Bainian had also sustained significant injuries during this battle. Brahms lacked any scheming, was violent and easily enraged, but he was definitely one of the best among the dark race viscounts. If it wasn’t Wei Bainian with his Thousand Mountains art and, instead, another human champion with weaker defense, he would’ve collapsed with heavy injuries even if he survived the first round of attacks.
The great battle had finally ended.
Cheers suddenly rang out from the town with increasing clarity and intensity. All the warriors hugged each other, laughing and shouting. The veterans were somewhat more reserved, but the young soldiers were almost crazy with joy. Even several badly injured soldiers were roaring and waving their fists despite the pain, expressing the joy within their hearts!
It was a glorious victory!
They had killed an arachne viscount and eradicated a well-organized unit of regular dark race warriors. This kind of accomplishment was extremely rare, even if not unique, among all class A defensive regions. All surviving soldiers with such a contribution would almost always receive a promotion. The empire had always been generous in rewarding military accomplishments.
Being able to survive such a battle was proof of one’s strength and fortune. However, they had also paid a hefty price for this victory—Qianye saw corpses at almost every step along the way, and there was no small number of familiar faces among them.
Victory was always constructed on sacrifice.
Whether it was daybreak or evernight, the fame of those illustrious characters was built on foundations of white bones and painted with fresh blood.
Seeing an unscathed Song Hu after turning toward the next street block, Qianye couldn’t help but feel some relief. The former was currently leading a number of captains in reorganizing the soldiers from the mercenary corps. After seeing Qianye who, at the moment, could hardly even walk, Song Hu hurriedly arranged a place for him to rest.
It was a house with only the ground floor still intact. There was a semi-basement there suitable to use as a cultivation room. Qianye instructed Lil’ Seven and Nine to stand guard outside and not to disturb him for any reason.
The moment the heavy stone door was shut, Qianye’s face turned dark red as he sprayed out a mist of blood.
Coughing up this mouthful of blood didn’t ease Qianye’s situation much. At this moment, he could no longer suppress the boiling blood energy within his body and felt as if his body was being stewed. A part of the blood energy had already begun to vaporize and seep through his skin toward the exterior, enshrouding his whole body in a hazy sanguineous mist.
Back then, Qianye had only thought of cutting Brahms’ heart with a stab of his blade to completely kill off this dark race expert. However, he hadn’t expected the Radiant Edge’s blood absorption to transform from a trickle to an overflowing tidal wave. Vast amounts of blood energy essence had rushed into his body within moments.
Just how formidable was a champion’s power? Additionally, the arachne were famous for their powerful vitality. If not for Qianye’s vampire constitution and his condensed origin power after cultivating the Song Clan Ancient Scroll, he might have exploded from the blood energy overload.
Even so, not only was Qianye not having an easy time right now, but he was also at an extremely dangerous juncture.
Although the blood energy from the arachne viscount contained vast amounts of vitality, it was essentially a type of darkness origin power. Unlike before, Qianye’s red, purple, and gold blood energies, as well as his own daybreak origin power, were only thin streams compared to it. The abundant darkness origin power was flowing slowly within Qianye’s vessels and had already drowned out his near-exhausted daybreak origin power.
Even his origin nodes were being threatened. The recently ignited origin node in Qianye’s knees was being continuously invaded by the dark tides and gradually being dyed red!
Qianye’s body was flaring up in a conflagration, but his heart was ice-cold...
However, he no longer had any choice at this moment. It was absolutely impossible for him to expel the blood energy with his own strength. Calculating from his previous rate, it would take at least three months for the three-colored blood energies to devour all the blood energy. By that time, his origin node would’ve long since transformed from daybreak to darkness attribute.
Qianye sat cross-legged with the Radiant Edge on the ground in front of him and took out a jade piece from the Song Clan Ancient Scroll. He brushed it with his fingers and caused numerous collections of words to appear.
This was the first volume of the Song Clan Ancient Scroll’s darkness origin power cultivation art, “Mystery”. Qianye had tried cultivating this art before and had achieved a complete cycle, but he set it aside later on although it was capable of diminishing his fresh blood power aura. Qianye had no intention to cultivate darkness origin power.
However, he had little choice at present and could only gamble on it. The Song Clan Ancient Scroll’s introductory arts all possessed a purification and condensation effect on origin power. Working with daybreak origin power, It consumed ten times the amount of origin power purified.
Now Qianye only hoped the efficiency would be the same for darkness origin power cultivation. As for whether the considerable amount of condensed darkness origin power would oppose the daybreak origin power from his combatant formula, there was no way to tell at present.
Qianye guided the tremendous dark tides according to the records on the mystery chapter. Perhaps due to the overabundance of darkness origin power, a part of the arachne blood energy began to rotate and form a small whirlpool just as he had completed one cycle.
“Pop!” The jade tablet of the Song Clan Ancient Scroll suddenly shattered and transformed into lustrous specks of light which disappeared into Qianye’s fingertips.
At this moment, Qianye had no time to heed the jade tablet. His attention was focused on the small vortex in his lower abdomen. The amount of arachne blood energy gradually decreased with the spinning of this whirlpool, and the dark tides in the vicinity were also drawn in. It seemed this type of cultivation method could, indeed, use up the arachne blood energy. Only then did Qianye sigh in relief and continued to guide the circulation.
The vortex gradually began to expand with the continuous consumption of darkness origin power. In the end, all of the arachne blood energy in Qianye’s body began to revolve around the part of his body described in the Song Clan Ancient Scroll as the “dantian”. The vortex was like a grinding stone. Every cycle of its rotation would wear away some of the arachne blood energy while expanding the vortex itself a little bit.
At this moment, the dark red and purple vampire blood energies were all holed up in his heart without the slightest bit of movement. Qianye even felt that they were somewhat apprehensive of the gradually spinning vortex. Only the gold-colored blood energy was revolving around his heart. It seemed as if neither daybreak nor darkness origin power could trouble it.
An unusual phenomenon arose after an unknown amount of time. A blood-red mist was gradually condensed from the vortex. It then began to stretch and move about as if it possessed a spirit, but it couldn’t leave the confines of the dantian no matter how much it moved about.
The gold blood energy immediately noticed the appearance of the bloody mist. It suddenly calmed down as if it was focusing its attention on the direction of the rotating vortex.
After a moment of silence, a new strand of mist was born and converged into the small bloody mist.
The golden blood energy, in its extreme longing, rushed toward Qianye’s consciousness with the momentum of an avalanche, After which, it moved toward the vortex like an arrow before he could even react. It darted into the dantian and swallowed the bloody mist in one gulp!
The middle segment of the golden blood energy bulged up like a snake that had overeaten. Before it could make its next move, the vortex suddenly began to spin rapidly. The latter instantly swept the golden blood energy into it, forming an indistinct mass of shining mist!
The whole process was completed within the blink of an eye. Qianye had no time to react—he could only stare helplessly as the golden blood energy aura rapidly weakened until, in the end, it completely merged into the vortex and ceased to exist.
Qianye was stunned and his mind momentarily turned blank. The golden blood energy not only gave him his eyes ability, but was also the core of his so-called Venus Dawn. The three blood energies had existed together in his body until now and he could naturally tell that the golden blood energy was the strongest among them.
In truth, all of these things were just part of the reason. Qianye suddenly felt his mind go empty when the golden blood energy dissipated within the vortex. He even felt a vague pain in his head. The sensation of unwarranted regret made him feel as if everything was just an illusion.
At this moment in a certain faraway land, a group of high-ranking dark race warriors was traveling swiftly through an underground tunnel. The squad consisted mostly of vampires. Shockingly, there were three viscounts and a count in their ranks, and the weakest among them was a knight.
There were also two pale and lanky demonkin within the squad. The auras on their bodies were profound and mysterious. It was almost impossible to see through them.
Although this squad consisted of less than 100 people, it could immediately cause a huge quake if they were deployed in any part of Evernight Continent. Their strengths were easily sufficient to decide the battle situation with a perimeter covering several counties.
However, these people seemed to have little interest in the war on the surface. They were completely focused on advancing forward. Finally, a pillared hall with no doors appeared at the end of the hidden tunnel. In the depths of this hall, however, were two gigantic copper doors dozens of meters in height.