Chapter 140
On the panel, the data came up under the name Trever.
He didn’t need to read the strategy, his relationship tier with the Nine-Headed Serpent had lit the second highest title, Absolute Loyalty.
Worth noting, the serpent had spent over a dozen years in that hellish illusion earning it, an incense stick was not the honest measure.
To Soren it was an incense stick, to Trever it was more than a decade of real torture, mental and physical.
He belonged to the Spirit race, naturally hostile to demons, and he was an Upper-Tier Spirit Ancestor besides, his escalation could hardly be called quick.
Everyone’s conquest strategy was different, and conquering an Upper-Tier Ancestor was never as simple as it looked from outside.
But Soren had worked out a universal truth. Everyone carries an instinctive reverence for the strong, fear or admiration, the underlying emotion didn’t matter, let them see absolute strength and the tier was likely to move.
Being powerful enough to inspire fear or awe was itself a form of emotional resonance, and a strategy that worked on anyone.
He was very satisfied with the Hell Path Demonic Form, it looked like a shortcut for conquering powerhouses fast.
Its conversion degree was only 53, though. It might do nothing against a living Upper-Tier Ancestor, and even where it worked, it might hold them a day or two, converted to real time, that was a finger snap, a scratch.
The serpent’s soul was capped around Middle Tier by having no body, which was the only reason it went into the illusion at all.
Having tasted what the ability could do, Soren found himself thinking he ought to make time to keep bestowing his merciful salvation upon the goddesses and push those conversion degrees along.
Cecilia had spent the entire episode standing there in the same state.
The Nine-Headed Serpent from one incense stick ago and the one in front of her now did not seem related, its attitude had turned completely inside out.
Is it faking submission the same way I am?
And even if it is, Soren wouldn’t know, exactly, that’s what this is.
Cecilia settled on that firmly, refusing on principle to believe anyone could become genuinely loyal inside one incense stick.
Soren gave the serpent some instructions, and it nodded along, looking honestly pleased. It looked exactly like the real thing.
Cecilia curled her lip at that.
Soren fused the remaining drops from the Ancestor skeleton with the Falling Cherry Spirit Emperor’s blood essence and drove the mixture back into the bones.
One hand on the ancient frame, he activated the Human Path Demonic Form.
Using the marrow’s blood essence as catalyst, thick martial meridians began regrowing across the skeleton, flesh, muscle, and organs took shape under the nourishment of blood and bone.
Every half incense stick the skeleton was in a new state entirely.
At the last step, interlocking black and gold scales spread across the whole body, the Nine-Headed Serpent was a genuinely imposing sight.
Soren activated the Hungry Ghost Path Demonic Form and drove the summoned soul into the new body.
Trever opened his crimson Spirit eyes.
A berserk aura came out of his jaws, space was cut apart by the energy currents, thousands of blades’ worth, and the radius around him went to fingernail-sized fragments in a moment.
Black and gold Spirit wind wrapped him.
Then he put the beast form away and took human shape, a middle-aged man with sword-shaped brows, bright eyes, and a face that looked chiseled out with a blade.
He reined his aura in and bowed to Soren several times. "Thank you, Master, for bestowing this body on me, I am in your debt without end."
More than a decade in the hellish illusion had ground the violence out of him, in front of Soren he showed nothing but reverence and didn’t let an edge slip out anywhere.
"A pity," Soren said.
"The blood essence left in your skeleton was too sparse, and the Falling Cherry Spirit Emperor’s wasn’t potent enough, rebuilding the body used all of it, so it won’t do much for your raw combat strength."
"But once you finish fusing with the half of the destiny I left in your bones, you should come back to where you were in life."
Trever bowed again. "Yes, thank you, Master, for bestowing this destiny."
Soren considered a moment, then asked, "You were Patriarch of the Nine-Headed Serpent Spirit Tribe?"
Trever answered with care. "I was the last Patriarch, it was I who led the Nine-Headed Tribe to its destruction." The regret in it was heavy.
Cecilia craned her neck and edged closer. "The Nine-Headed Serpent Spirit Tribe was that formidable, how does a race like that get wiped out overnight?"
She’d read rough descriptions in Alliance intelligence scrolls, even the intelligence division had no detailed record, they’d never turned up the cause.
Trever eyed her, and only started talking after Soren nodded.
"The forerunners of the Eight-Headed White-Scaled Serpent Tribe were a vassal tribe of my race."
"They had coveted our bloodline for a long time, their Patriarch had more ambition than sense, and I’ll take the blame for my own carelessness, I never imagined he’d have the guts."
"He lured the elite of our tribe into an ancient ruin under a false pretext, inside, we were ambushed."
Cecilia let out a soft sound of surprise, vassal tribes generally carried inferior bloodlines and middling strength, and generally stayed loyal, holding the master-servant arrangement steady, that particular vassal tribe had monstrous nerve.
Then again, if they hadn’t been sure of themselves they’d never have tried it, since failure meant their own extinction.
"Inside that ruin, we found a strange sarcophagus, deliberately made."
"I’d never seen anything like it, curiosity got the better of me, I opened it."
"There was nothing inside but black mist, the mist came out, swept past me, and after that I lost consciousness."
"When I woke, every tribesman who had walked into that ruin with me had been reduced to pieces."
Cecilia shuddered, even imagining it turned her stomach.
She killed people herself, and killed on order without hesitating, but she took prominent, high-value targets, she would never charge a crowd head-on to hack it into parts.
There were countless ways to kill someone, making a person die gracefully was an art, and the only real demonstration of skill.