Chapter 130
"Don’t take it too hard," Soren said.
"That woman is unusual."
"Her techniques aren’t conventional demonic techniques."
"They’re forbidden techniques out of the Immemorial Era."
"Forget an Upper-Tier Emperor, a Lower-Tier Ancestor would struggle to get the upper hand on her."
"Her raw combat strength isn’t much."
"Her strength is that her utility techniques have almost no counter."
"If her true body stays hidden, then even as a Middle-Tier Demon Ancestor there isn’t much I can do from here."
Hearing the Demon Ancestor console him, Arcturus stared in disbelief.
Then something threatened to come out of his eye sockets.
Tears, they were tears.
He lifted a sleeve to the corners of his eyes and worked in some flattery on the way.
"The Demon Ancestor is a magnanimous sovereign who weighs merit and fault clearly!"
"To follow at the Demon Ancestor’s side..."
"...is this humble one’s fortune and the blessing of my whole tribe!"
Soren narrowed his right eye.
Crimson light glinted out of it, and a demonic pattern surfaced deep in that pupil, different from the one in his left.
The lightning raging across the heavens rushed toward his right eye.
The whole black flood poured into his right pupil and was gone in the time it takes lightning to flash.
Before Arcturus could work out what he was watching, the sky was clear.
The apocalypse threatening to unmake the world moments earlier had been swallowed clean in under a second.
The pattern faded, his eye went back to normal.
Arcturus swallowed and asked carefully, "Could that be the Demon Ancestor’s Innate Ancestor Technique?"
"This humble one has heard..."
"...that only on breaking into the Ancestor Realm is there any chance of awakening a bound technique, and only under specific triggers."
"They say the defining trait is that it’s unique."
"It can’t be copied and it can’t be stolen."
Soren gave a small nod and said nothing further.
He used the Human Path Demonic Form to restore the eye the needle had taken, then told the old beast to find Bruce, he’d already handed Bruce a fresh Nether Pearl.
Once they met up, Bruce would crush it and take him into the Nether Sea, they were to cultivate inside, Soren would handle the rest.
Hearing he could go in, and that he didn’t have to wait.
Arcturus dropped to his knees again and breathed warm air onto Soren’s boots, he announced he was in no hurry to enter the Kun-Heaven Nether Sea, polishing the Demon Ancestor’s boots mattered more.
Soren had nothing to say to that.
Once he’d finished buffing them with real enthusiasm, Arcturus bent at the waist and withdrew.
Soren turned toward the fire plain and spoke quietly.
"So I awakened my own Innate Ancestor Technique inside the Kun-Heaven Nether Sea."
"An ocular one, at that."
"The right eye absorbs and releases the most destructive energies in the world."
"Unlike the devouring of the Heavenly Dao Demonic Form, the energy doesn’t integrate into my body, it sits there, a reservoir with next to no ceiling."
"The left eye is stranger."
"It shapes whatever the right eye holds into any form I want."
"And it can send attacks at separate targets along my line of sight."
"There’s more in it, too."
"Powers I haven’t opened up yet, telling illusion from reality, for one."
"A casual sweep of my gaze pinned that woman’s exact coordinates."
"Shame about the rest."
"The Strategy Encyclopedia says clones don’t qualify for data extraction."
"So taking her alive wouldn’t have been worth anything either."
The Falling Cherry Spirit Emperor had one possible destination, the fire plain, since the woman left a clone to hold Arcturus off, there was an eighty percent chance her true body was near the plain too.
Soren suspected Cecilia already knew about the forbidden formation and the destiny.
"That woman."
"There was a peculiar fluctuation in her clone’s blood."
"It resembled the Blood Demon Ancestor I killed rather closely."
"Someone out of the Heavenly Demon Alliance, then."
"Hmph."
"Boring."
A wave of his hand tore the void open, and he stepped toward the plain of black fire, he’d pulled the exact coordinates out of Mira’s mind, one jump covered it.
Cecilia kept her true body hidden behind forbidden techniques and trailed the Falling Cherry Spirit Emperor without being noticed once.
Her utility techniques came out of the Immemorial Era.
They demanded an enormous price for what they gave, from the other side, every last one was top of its class.
She could suppress her fluctuations entirely and shadow the man without raising a flicker of suspicion, she moved like something that had never been alive.
Then a sharp pain opened deep in her chest, and blood spilled from under her veil, her brows drew together, the stars in her eyes dimmed.
"My clone is gone."
"I deployed Heaven-Shrouding Phantom Shift and he still pinned exactly where it was hiding."
"As expected of the monster who killed the Blood Demon Ancestor."
"From the last memories my clone sent back, he’s awakened an Innate Ancestor Technique of his own."
"Those eyes look dangerous."
"Still, a few unexpected variables aside, the overall shape of things is holding to my design."
"And this proves the point again, anyone willing to fight Soren head-on has lost their damn mind."
"His combat strength now is more absurd than when he’d just entered Lower-Tier Demon Ancestor."
"Without specialized forbidden pills and formations, I doubt the Heaven Demon Ancestor and my uncle together could put him down."
Cecilia turned it over.
"Do I report the forbidden formation and the destiny to my uncle?"
"Even if I send it back to the Heavenly Demon Alliance, he and the Heaven Demon Ancestor will pick stability over risk."
"Awakening the Ancient Evil God tribe is worth glaringly more than a million years of stolen destiny."
"And with Soren at Middle-Tier Demon Ancestor now, a death match over it doesn’t pay."
She weighed it end to end and settled it, the intelligence about the formation and the destiny would not go back to the Heavenly Demon Alliance.
In the end it made no difference who claimed a million years of hoarded destiny, so long as it didn’t disturb the blueprint the Alliance had spent millennia laying down.
Besides, if luck runs my way and I take that hoard myself, wouldn’t that be lovely?