Monarch of Evernight

Qianye went around the small town and finished off the remaining wargs one after the other. Naturally, those he had cut down before wouldn’t live long either.

After doing all of this, Qianye leapt onto the building and cut down the Wolf King’s war banner. He then picked up a wooden board, preparing to carve his own insignia and hang it on the building.

On one hand, it was to announce that this little town was his territory, while on the other, it was to tell the Wolf King that everything was his doing and that there was no need to take it out on other people. Naturally, he wasn't dumb enough to tell the Wolf King his own identity. How much the latter knew would depend on how capable his subordinates were.

The design of this crest, however, gave Qianye quite a bit of a problem. He first carved a vortex in the ocean to represent his Profound Combatant Formula. Then, he added the depiction of a rising sun which signified daybreak origin power.

Now that daybreak had been represented, a token of the other side became necessary. At the thought of this, Qianye added a pair of luminous wings on the sea. The Wings of Inception was Qianye’s most powerful aces and something absolutely vital to him. After drawing the Wings of Inception, he carved the symbol of his ancient vampire inheritance, a sanguineous river stretching through the air.

This wasn’t complete yet, so Qianye added a book in one corner of the emblem. The book of darkness was so mysterious that even the Black-Winged Monarch only managed to obtain the first volume. He gave it some thought, and then added a scroll atop the black tome. The Song Clan Ancient Scroll had been crucial throughout his development.

He finally managed to add everything in, but the insignia had become a complicated mess that even Qianye himself couldn’t bear to see.

As such, he shattered the wooden board and found a new one to start his design anew. However, it simply didn’t feel right no matter which one of the representations was removed. In the end, Qianye carved, scrapped, and carved again—he produced over ten rough drafts in total, yet no proper solution was formed.

In his anger, Qianye simply drew an X on the board and stuck it onto the roof. As for the true war banner and insignia, Qianye decided to let Nighteye do the design since it couldn’t be rushed.

After leaving the small town, Qianye left the old truck and ran back to his courtyard directly. He then assembled Nighteye and the old man to tell them of today’s situation and seek their opinion.

Cui Yuanhai seemed worried. “Although we know nothing about the Wolf King’s strength, rumors suggest that he should be at least as strong as a divine champion. In terms of Evernight’s ranking system, he might be a vice-duke or at least an honored marquis. Quite frankly speaking, you two might not be a match for this kind of power. As for this old man, I’ll be a complete burden. Only certain death awaits if you need to take care of me, too.”

This analysis was within Qianye’s expectations. He turned toward Nighteye and asked, “What about you? What do you think?”

Nighteye was as calm as still water and seemed completely unworried about this matter. “We fight of course. We let loose and fight him until the Wolf King can take it no more and retreats from this place of his own accord.”

Qianye nodded. This was also his intention.

Cui Yuanhai was astonished. “You two want to fight the Wolf King? Are you crazy?”

Qianye said with a smile, “We’re not crazy. It’s not like we want to fight the Wolf King, it’s the Wolf King who forced us to do battle. These are the neutral lands, so backing down blindly isn’t the way to go.

“But we can move to other places. The neutral lands are so big and the Wolf King can only control so many places. We can easily find another place where he can’t reach us and live our lives in peace. With your great talents, you two can slowly contend with the Wolf King in just a few years. Why rush things?”

Qianye replied, “Even if we leave, the Wolf King can hunt us down just as easily. So, we must teach him a painful lesson before we leave and make him forget about chasing after us. Only then will we be safe.”

“What are your plans?”

Qianye replied, “Simple. First, we’ll wipe out his personal guard squad. Then, I’ll hunt down his subordinates in the wilderness. As long as it isn’t the Wolf King himself, everyone else will find it hard to escape my assassination.”

Cui Yuanhai shook his head. “The Wolf King will personally take action if you kill enough of his men. What will you do then?”

Qianye exchanged glances with Nighteye. “I should be able to escape.”

“Should? Humph, there are too many things that should be. What if you can’t escape?”

Qianye spoke no more. Instead, he opened up a map of the Eastern Sea and began looking through it in detail. After a moment, he pointed to a location on the map and said, “Old Cui, we’ll send you to a nearby port city. The area is more or less neutral, so you should settle in there first. We’ll come and pick you up after our battle with the Wolf King shows some results. There’s an airship port in town, I can send you over now.”

Knowing that he would be nothing but a burden, Cui Yuanhai didn’t object to this. As a master-level craftsman in weapons and origin bullets, his knowledge of machines was fairly deep and it wouldn’t be a problem for him to pilot an airship.

“How about Zhuji?” The old man inquired.

“She’ll follow us.”

The three continued to discuss some of the finer details until midnight. Only then did Qianye remember that he had forgotten about his spar with the mysterious entity. It seemed to know Qianye was busy tonight, hence, it didn’t remind him of their seaside match.

At the thought of the mysterious entity, Qianye suddenly recalled how their fights in the past few days had been exceptionally difficult. It was extremely hard to win even one battle back then. Consequently, the Black Grove had expanded without restraint and blocked the path to town entirely.

Qianye could freely pass through it, but other people might suffer after entering the woods. Perhaps it was because of this reason that the werewolf guard squad hadn’t discovered Qianye’s residence. Even if the people in town had been forced to speak of Qianye’s location, the Wolf King’s Guard probably didn’t dare enter the depths of the forest and chose to forget him instead.

Did this mean that the mysterious character was helping in secret?

Qianye still had no idea what this entity’s true appearance was or what its intentions were. In the face of such a major issue as the Wolf King, he naturally couldn’t entrust it to this existence.

The night was deep—Cui Yuanhai was asleep, and little Zhuji hadn’t woken up from her many days of slumber. There were only Qianye and Nighteye in the room.

“Wait a minute, I have something to give you?” Qianye called out to Nighteye.

“What is it? A present?” Nighteye was curious.

“I guess it would count as one!”

Qianye fished out his vampiric blade and produced a cut to his wrist. Then, he squeezed out several drops of blood from the barely open wound. The liquid had specks of gold within them and almost seemed to be on fire. The drops of blood eventually converged into a crystalline drop of blood which fell onto Qianye’s fingertips.

Qianye raised his hand and tapped Nighteye on the forehead.

The latter had no idea what Qianye wanted to do, but she could feel a sense of ancient bleakness from the blood that caused her bloodline to tremble slightly.

Those drops of blood vanished once Qianye’s hand came into contact with Nighteye’s forehead. There wasn’t a single trace left on her skin, almost as though nothing had ever happened before. As the drops of blood disappeared, Qianye’s complexion became somewhat pale and his aura also weakened a bit.

Turning abruptly pale, she closed her eyes tight as her body trembled abruptly.

The trembling gradually calmed down after a good while. She then opened her eyes and said incredulously, “Spatial Flash?”

“Yes, this is the Black-Winged Monarch Andruil’s ultimate secret art. You come from the Monroe clan and have awakened his bloodline, so you should be able to use this technique.”

Nighteye still hadn’t recovered from the shock. She reached out to touch her forehead, but the blood had left no trace during its entry and her skin was perfectly intact. No matter how she felt around, she couldn’t find any sign of this blood.

“What’s going on?” After a long while, Nighteye gave up and asked directly.

“This is a method used by ancient vampires to transfer secret arts. Using a drop of essence blood as medium, one can fully bestow an inheritance and experience on the other party.”

“Why do you know this?” Nighteye couldn’t find such a transfer technique in her blurry memories.

“This is the knowledge I gained from the River of Blood.” Qianye didn’t try to hide anything.

“You’ve communicated with the River of Blood!?” Although she had forgotten a lot of things, she knew that such communication was a huge thing for a vampire.

“Yes, is there any problem?”

“I don’t know, it feels like… No, I don’t remember anymore.” Nighteye tried hard to recall, but she simply couldn’t remember why a connection to the river was so important.

The ancient art of essence blood transfer instilled in Nighteye all of Qianye’s findings regarding Spatial Flash, saving her the process of exploration and comprehension. Spatial Flash was actually an extremely powerful secret art for traversing space. Theoretically, anyone with powerful darkness origin power could use it. However, those with the Black-Winged Monarch’s bloodline were especially suitable for the technique—the effects produced would be countless times more powerful than those with ordinary bloodlines.

Vampires from other bloodlines—or even other dark race members—could obtain Spatial Flash, but the effects were limited. From what Qianye had seen, if Eden were to use Spatial Flash, the effects would be far inferior to his own Shadow Traversal. Additionally, there was a high probability of a backlash that might very well take his life instead.

For such dark race members, Spatial Flash’s real value lay in the fact that there was no limit to it. The greater one’s darkness origin power is, the more powerful this art would become. Perhaps in the hands of a great dark monarch, this secret art would be able to display its true worth. Shadow Traversal’s limit was at the honored marquis rank. There would be no additional effect no matter how high one’s level was after that.

Nighteye possessed the Black-Winged Monarch’s bloodline and had also been bestowed with the inheritance by Qianye. Hence, her speed in cultivating Spatial Flash was extremely fast, taking only one night to complete the entire process. It was just that she had just recovered from her injury and was still one step away from the count rank. Her usage of the art was still a bit inferior to Qianye’s.

Now that both of them possessed Spatial Flash, their chances of survival would increase greatly even against the Wolf King. The Black-Winged Monarch’s core inheritance was indeed boundlessly powerful.

Qianye then fished out the Carol of Shadows and gave it to Nighteye.

Upon seeing this rifle, Nighteye’s expression became somewhat odd. “This is Eden’s gun, why is it in your hands?”

“You still remember Eden?” Qianye snorted.

Nighteye immediately explained in a loveable manner, “I think he’s saved me before, that’s why I remember him more clearly. I also remember a lot of things with you!”

Qianye snorted once more but didn’t press on. “You can have this gun. Although it’s not as smooth to use, its firepower is not bad.”

“How did you get this?”

“Humph, I encountered Eden on the battlefield, so I gave him a good beating and took his gun. Unfortunately, he escaped in the end.”

Nighteye made no comment and ignored Qianye’s fixed stare.

After a moment of deadlock, Nighteye suddenly broke into a laugh. She reached out to caress Qianye’s hair and asked, “Tell me the truth, what were you thinking just now?”

“I was thinking I should’ve beaten him even harder!” Qianye ground his teeth.

“You’re so dumb.”