Chapter 724: Ploy
The duo ran through the night at the speed of lightning. William shot a glance at the primo with an impatient expression—the latter was running with every ounce of strength she had, gritting her teeth as she did so. Even then, she was barely able to keep up with William. There was no helping it because William, in his giant wolf form, was superior in both speed and acceleration.
All of a sudden, William came to a screeching halt. Twilight also followed suit and unleashed a large cloud of blood energy, causing both man and wolf to fade out of existence. A mound of earth appeared in their place with half a pit dug into it.
At a glance, it looked like a half-constructed fortification, the kind one could see everywhere in the area.
At this moment, the sudden sound of engines echoed through the forest, growing louder and louder as several motorcycles flashed past. But even when they were at the closest point, the sound of the engines wasn’t as loud as one would expect it to be. Apparently, they had installed an origin array capable of suppressing sound.
The group of motorcycles, suffused with frosty killing intent, soon vanished into the night.
William and Twilight remained in their disguised state without making any rushed movements. Their extraordinary senses told them that this was the Zhao clan’s mounted patrol squad, a unit famed throughout the Evernight faction for the quality of their members. Moreover, several of these squads would work together in unison and they had secret methods of communicating with the main army. Once they had encountered an enemy, reinforcements would arrive within a short period and suppress the enemy.
Now, they had only seen a single mounted patrol squad, and there was no telling where the others were. Most importantly, there were powerful Zhao clan forces stationed nearby with a large number of experts among them. William and Twilight were strong, but they didn’t want to stir up trouble at the moment—they weren’t here for a fight. Things would really turn ugly if Duke You were to be alerted of their presence.
They had nothing better to do while hiding, so Twilight asked, “How come you refuse to turn back into human form after arriving near Indomitable?”
“Because there’s no need to.”
Twilight wasn’t about to fall for that. “No need? You can’t even open a box?”
“I have you, don’t I?” William remained headstrong.
Twilight snorted coldly. “I only forced myself along the way. Don’t tell me you’ve already made plans to use my hand for opening boxes and crates?”
William’s expression remained the same. “I thought the humans would deliver it in a bag.”
Twilight waved the little box in her hand, speaking in an exaggerated manner, “A drop of blood? In a bag?”
“What? Do you have a problem with that?” William growled with eyes full of killing intent.
“Nope, no problem at all. That’s very normal. This thing is best transported in a bag!” Knowing that she was inferior to the other party, Twilight’s attitude had been fairly pragmatic all along.
“Now that’s right.” William snorted.
Twilight produced her own vampiric blade, a mysterious little dagger as wide as a finger with a near-transparent edge. She fished out Nighteye’s blood from within the box and compared it to her blade. With a flick of her wrist, she quickly split the crystal and blood into two parts, and then shaved off two thin pieces of crystal to seal the cut edges.
After that, Twilight passed the crystal with more blood in it to William and said, “This is fine, right?”
William nodded slowly.
The vampire primo waved the crystal in her hand and said, “Any less and it won’t be enough for our race’s divination master to use his secret arts.”
“Are you sure the Lightless Monarch can invite that old fellow to oversee the ceremony?”
Twilight said assuredly, “There’s no doubt. This is so important to him that he was willing to pay a huge sum to the humans in exchange for Nighteye. Now that we have a rare clue on her, how can he trust anyone else? This blood is only enough for a single divination.”
William mumbled, “Why is he so fixated on Nighteye? This isn’t right! It might be more logical if it’s one of the Monroe clan’s princes we’re talking about. You’re not hiding anything from me, are you?”
Twilight smiled wryly. “You’re overestimating me. I haven’t really switched over to Medanzo’s side right now. How can he tell me something so important?”
William said after pondering for a while, “I guess that’s true, let’s just go according to plan.”
Twilight asked in a curious tone, “What preparations have you made on your side? You should know that the old fellow Medanzo invited isn’t that simple. I heard he was on par with Lin Xitang before he was injured.”
William said through clenched teeth, “I know that! He was the reason the several werewolf tribes were found out and killed, not leaving even a single descendant!”
Twilight knew about this part of history. She said with a sigh, “That’s inevitable. Although your Summit of Peaks holds the most ancient of orthodox bloodlines, the weakness is simply too evident. The more different werewolf bloodlines there are, the more powerful your ultimate secret art. That’s why everyone would want to wipe out those solitary powers with special bloodlines given the chance.”
A low growl emerged from William’s throat. Apparently, Twilight’s words had struck the wound in his heart.
William said coldly, “That’s why I need that old man to die! Now that we’re working with the humans, the old man is sure to take the bait. He’s not fully healed yet at the moment and is sure to die if he dares to use his divination arts!”
Twilight couldn’t help but ask, “Just who is it that you’ve found? Even the great werewolf shaman doesn’t have this power.”
William finally said, “The great warlock of the demonkin race.”
Twilight was astonished. “The Warlock of Calamity?”
“Yes.”
Twilight regained her calm as she said, “If it’s him, then it’s fairly doable. How did you even get in touch with him?”
William replied calmly, “The demonkin have always been quite enthusiastic about weakening the vampire race.”
Twilight gave it some thought and said, “This won’t do! You must’ve gained huge benefits from this deal, I’m losing out here.”
William shot her a glance. “This is something that will greatly weaken your vampire race, don’t you have anything to say about that?”
Twilight said calmly, “This is nothing. Didn’t we also betray the demonkin in our plot? Besides, even the Warlock of Calamity will have to pay a certain price to take that old man’s life. Most importantly, I’ll only dare go over to the Lightless Medanzo’s side after the old man is dead.”
At this point, one patrol squad after the other appeared and passed them by. Seeing the mounted patrols gone, Twilight retracted the disguise and left hurriedly with William.
Wei Potian eventually woke up after the duo had left the human defensive zone and felt as though he was in a different world. The location was clearly the same as before, but he was surrounded by deceased dark race members, including a demonkin. Judging from the distribution of the corpses, it looked as though Wei Potian had suddenly encountered these soldiers and fought a huge battle, wiping out the enemy forces before falling unconscious in the end. Yet, he didn’t remember fighting anyone before he was knocked out.
As for that ancient tree from his nightmares, it was nowhere to be found.
Wei Potian jumped up with a loud cry, but this movement exacerbated the sharp pain from his buttocks. He was rather puzzled—he remembered vaguely about the pain behind his head, but why was his buttock also in pain?
Wei Potian rubbed his butt and found that it was fortunately still whole. He was rather thick-skinned and the pain subsided quickly after circulating the Thousand Mountain a couple of times, so he paid no more attention to it. He walked over to where the old tree was and looked around carefully. However, there wasn’t the slightest trace of this tree having ever existed—not to mention the huge trunk, there wasn’t even a splinter on the ground.
Dissatisfied, he drew his sword and dug a huge pit, but there wasn’t even half a root left in the earth. This time, Wei Potian even started to doubt his own memories. Add to that the appearance of that female face, the entire process was eerie and almost unreal.
Wei Potian looked back and spied the leather cylinder Twilight had intentionally left behind. The object wasn’t just beautiful but was also emitting a continuous stream of origin power, almost as though it was hoping to be found out.
Wei Potian picked up the cylinder and fished out a paper capable of storing origin power. He was greatly astonished the moment he unfurled this scroll because the detailed intelligence of a demonkin marquis’ warzone was depicted on it!
The special paper could store energy and project a three-dimensional map of the warzone once activated. Be it in the empire or Evernight, this kind of map was the highest level of its kind, and no one below the rank of lieutenant general could even lay eyes on it.
If the intelligence here was true, its value would be significant. The empire could use this to their advantage to utterly route the enemies in this warzone, just like how the dark races were beating down on the military’s battlefront. In the hands of a marshal like Lin Xitang, the humans could even formulate a plan to lure out and kill the marquis overseeing this area.
Wei Potian felt giddy about the meat pie that had dropped into his lap, and a huge one at that. Merely handing in this warzone map was enough for him to be promoted to a lieutenant general. Even if he couldn’t be given the actual rank due to the lack of combat strength, actual authority and clearance could be granted in advance.
What Wei Potian was actually thinking was, “Haha, no more house-arrest!”
Fortunately, he wasn’t a complete idiot. Knowing that these corpses had appeared so mysteriously, how could he not search them? After the investigation, however, he found nothing valuable apart from a viscount’s proof of rank.
He didn’t need anything else, either. The demonkin viscount himself was the best proof of the map’s origins.
Not wanting to linger too long in this eerie place, Wei Potian picked up the demonkin’s corpse and marched toward Indomitable.
The return journey went rather smoothly, and he arrived back at the Wei clan courtyard without alerting anyone.
After jumping over the wall, Wei Potian was immediately flabbergasted. He gazed at that inherently impressive middle-aged man and finally squeezed out a single word, “Dad.”
Marquis Bowang snorted. “You dare run about even during confinement. It seems the family rules are now useless.”
His words sounded quite calm, but it was suffused with a deep chill as well as disappointment. Realizing the abnormality in his father’s tone, Wei Potian could no longer care about his suspicions regarding his undeserved reward. He quickly passed the map over and said, “I wasn’t running about. I went out and reaped a huge contribution.”
Marquis Bowang was clearly skeptical as he took the map and gave it a glance. However, his expression changed drastically upon seeing the contents. He observed the map for a good while before saying, “T-This… is this real?”
“You just need to match the information with the frontline reports.”
Marquis Bowang took a deep breath and said, “No need, it’s definitely genuine.”