Chapter 1422: The True Stairway
Chapter 1422: The True Stairway
The experts didn’t object. This group wasn’t that big, but their overall strength was impressive. Even Anwen himself possessed powerful cultivation and would prove a great adversary in the same rank.
These experts had no idea what mission Anwen was carrying out, not even the vice duke in charge of his safety. All they knew was that it was of a high level.
Anwen kept drawing and writing along the way. He wasn’t really trying to leave everyone out, but no one else knew what those numbers were. In short, it was an important matter.
The group crossed over a mountain ridge in this manner and arrived at a wide valley. There was a massive vortex of origin power rotating in the air, but there was no one at all at the heart of this phenomenon.
Anwen’s eyes lit up—the formless origin power in the air became visible to him as he dissected, organized, and analyzed the data.
“The Combatant Formula of the Great Qin? Yet it’s not exactly the same. What’s the point of absorbing all those impurities? Could it be some kind of secret art? That can’t be right…”
Anwen pondered to himself. “It looks like this person has some way to increase the purity of origin power. Only the Scroll of Chaos can show this kind of efficiency… it’s Qianye!”
He was shocked out of his wits as a sudden chill shot up his spine, almost as though a hunter had locked onto him. He could no longer move!
Through the corner of his eyes, he saw several sanguine threads flicker in and out of existence. He felt a prick on his back as one of the threads shot into his body, causing him to stagger and almost fall. A weakness came over his entire being, as though he had been starving for a month.
A large hand caught him at this moment, and soon, a bit of essence blood returned to his body. Anwen’s demonic energy was quickly replenished like a burst of fireworks.
“Sorry, I lost control for a bit.” Qianye’s voice rang out behind him.
Anwen looked back with a wry smile. “I was assigned this mission for safety reasons. The other fronts are either preparing for battle or already fighting. Who would’ve thought I’d run into you on Serafis?”
Qianye laughed. “Can’t help it. Your supreme isn’t leaving me with a lot of options. Since it makes no difference where I run to, isn’t it better to enjoy the scenery on the demonkin continent?"
Anwen smiled ruefully. “I didn’t want to meet you if possible.”
“It’s too late now.”
“What will you do now? Kill me?”
Qianye was silent. He had a favorable impression of Anwen and Eden, so it wasn’t entirely necessary to finish him off. He had avoided Anwen while using Life Plunder just now, and he had even returned the bit of essence blood that was accidentally absorbed.
Anwen glanced at his surroundings. “You killed all my guards in a flash.”
“To collect data.” Anwen said after a pause, “I am to collect and compile data on the flow of origin power throughout the continents and set up survey stations in key locations to continue acc.u.mulating data. I have dozens of locations to survey on Serafis Continent and sixteen stations to set up.”
“We’re at war, though.” Qianye raised his brows. “Since you’re performing research now, is it related to the war?”
“The war will decide our losses or gains for the moment, but data is the real stairway to the new world.” Anwen’s eyes lit up at the mention of his work.
Qianye observed the man for a while. “Give me a reason not to kill you.”
Anwen asked all of a sudden, “Why were you taking our family registries?”
Qianye was surprised. “How did you know?”
“These records are an important part of every demonkin family’s inheritance. Neither flood nor fire can destroy these family trees, so the clean-up team will collect them after the family’s destruction. The other races never showed any interest in these things, only the families you destroyed have their records missing. There might be another explanation for this, but the most likely reason is that you have them.”
“What do I even do with them? Study their coat-of-arms?” Qianye remained calm on the surface, but he was shaken inside. This demonkin was no idiot; he had immediately found the problem.
Anwen stared at Qianye. “You must already know the secret of our pedigree and inheritance, right?”
“How can you be so accurate if you haven’t figured it out? In addition to Meistan of the Aegis Wellspring, you’ve also wiped out three small branches with laser focus and accuracy.”
At this point, Qianye could only come clean. “Correct, I’m targeting your bloodline inheritances. Speaking of which, does this mode of strengthening even work?”
“Weren’t the effects quite obvious during the war with the vampires?”
Qianye nodded.
During the raid on Twilight Continent, Qianye felt that the first and second rankings among the four major races weren’t entirely accurate.
The vampires were exceptionally strong—they were comparable to the demonkin and even a bit stronger due to their population. Yet, the latter had gained an overwhelming victory right off the bat and wiped out almost half of the old vampire clans.
Although it looked like the demonkin had dragged the arachne and werewolves into the fight, that was just an overall observation. The other two races didn’t put in that much effort when it came to real conflict. The demonkin weren’t about to give them full control over important sectors.
Although it was said that the Queen of the Night was still asleep, the Demon King didn’t really take action himself. All he did was keep Habsburg in check. Medanzo’s betrayal was, of course, an important reason, but why would he? The allure of strength was definitely there, but he wouldn’t have jumped ship so readily if he hadn’t seen the difference in strength.
Judging from the results of this war, the demonkin had completely surpassed the vampires.
Qianye opened it up to find a demonkin family registry, except that it wasn’t as detailed as the information derived by the Book of Darkness. The direction was similar, though.
In fact, the records Qianye had collected from the demonkin families were mostly inaccurate. Their method of research was likely a trial and error between families, the data from which would be gradually compared to find out the best bloodline combinations. As long-lived races, they had all the time in the world.
Their results today probably came from thousands of years ago.
Those family trees were incomparable to the results derived from the book of darkness. Qianye naturally followed the latter. The accuracy of their original research wasn’t all that high, so Qianye hadn’t expected to be discovered so quickly.
Qianye understood everything when he picked up this notebook. The conclusion, which came about from a series of complicated formulas and calculations, was about six parts similar to the Book of Darkness.
“This is?”
“My results from the past seven years,” Anwen replied.
Qianye was silent. The formulas and calculation methods in the book were too complicated. The inexplicable spatial construction was reportedly based on the genetic makeup of the demonkin bloodline. He couldn’t understand a single page of extrapolation out of the several hundred.
The process wasn’t all that important—the key was in the conclusion.
Anwen laughed wryly. “You didn’t expect it, the same goes for the old men from our research institute. They won’t believe that I’m correct even if they see this.”
Qianye sighed. He had already realized that Anwen was actually a talent that could shake the world itself. It was rather unfortunate that such a talent wasn’t born in the Empire.
Qianye drew his azure sword, but after some thought, he switched to the Red Spider Lily. “I now have sufficient reason to kill you, any last words?”
Anwen laughed wryly. “I’m too weak, not worth dirtying your hands.”
“A marquis who might become a great dark monarch one day, you call that weak?”
“My character isn’t good…”
“It’ll improve once you’re dead!”
“I’m really dumb…” Even Anwen himself chuckled.
Qianye wasn’t laughing, though. All of a sudden, grey feathers fluttered down from the sky and locked Anwen to the ground.
“You’re too smart. I don’t understand any of those numbers, who knows what tricks you have to flee. It’s better to suppress you first.”
The feathers felt like mountains falling upon him. Even standing felt quite tiring for Anwen, let alone to resist or escape. He felt helpless because whatever powerful secret art he used would be locked down by that barbaric pressure.
Anwen finally extinguished all of his plans. “Your domain is almost at the level of a great dark monarch, isn’t it? It’s such an overkill to use it on me. I don’t want to die right now, I still want to see the vast world. How about this, I’ll bet you my life.”
“How so?” Qianye asked.
“First, I’ll tell you how to evade the prophetic powers. Secondly, I’ll tell you the secrets of the new world and the truth of this world. In exchange, you let me go and promise not to kill off a certain bloodline. I know you can do it, although I don’t know how.”
Anwen added, “No one will figure out anytime soon the fact that you’ve already touched upon the secrets of the demonkin family trees. It will probably take a lot more casualties before those old bastards start admitting their conceit, but that supreme existence is very different from them.”
Qianye understood Anwen was talking about the Demon King. He didn’t feel that the demonkin was merely trying to scare him.
“I already know how to avoid prophetic scrying.”
“There are many ways to do so, but none of them will be as effective as my method. I myself am an outstanding prophet after all.” Anwen was quite confident. “Besides, don’t ever underestimate a demonkin warlock, sometimes, possibility is just a matter of price.”
“True.” Qianye nodded. The Evernight prophets had experienced a longer history than the human divination experts. Although Lin Xitang had ended up suppressing them, there was no way Evernight would’ve maintained an upper hand if this was their entire strength.
“So do we have a deal?”
“Not yet. Tell me those secrets first, and I will be the judge of whether it’s worth it.”
Anwen chuckled. “Very well, let’s talk about the new world first. In truth, there have been records of that place since ancient times. Back then, there were six major races and five supremes on the Sacred Mountain. The supremes sensed the approach of the new world, so they worked together to pull it close and open up a path for a subsequent expansion. Yet this new world was a tremendous entity. Even with the combined power of the six races, the plan ended up in a failure. One supreme fell during the process, and another followed not long afterward.
“The process, however, stabilized the new world successfully and stopped it from moving away. The three supremes only dared to try opening the new world now because they had sensed that it was close enough.”
“What we opened before was only the surface layer of the new world. The entrance to the true heart of this world lies in Blacksun Valley. The passage will appear once the black flames recede.”
Qianye frowned. “I know this already.”