Chapter 121
Then they’d wash off today in blood.
And if Soren had noticed the formation without understanding what it was, the same act would let them mislead him.
Even in the worst case, if he uncovered everything about the formation and the hoard, devoted service might still buy their lives.
It had to be said, the two of them had calculated well.
Soren saw through all of it at a glance, thanks to a cheat nobody else knew existed.
Understanding the origin of things meant understanding what people wanted.
Every eye in the sky was on him.
He didn’t speak.
He exerted a pull across the void and dragged the Grand Mistress of the Falling Cherry Empire to a stop in front of him.
Two fingers came up and tilted her chin.
Ordinary looks held no interest for him.
Neither did women other men had already used.
But he needed deeper intelligence on the forbidden formation and the stored destiny.
A little contact was necessary.
The panel stirred as his fingers touched her skin, the exchange of energy tripping the system.
Text condensed across the interface.
[Mira]
[Upper-Tier Spirit Venerable.]
Soren skipped to her portrait and the title beneath it.
[Strangers Meeting by Chance.]
The default tier for most of the world.
Under Ancestor Realm coercion, most people who bowed their heads climbed at least to Obedient and Submissive, Arcturus had.
Mira sat frozen at Strangers Meeting by Chance, not the faintest flicker toward the next tier.
What did that mean?
No matter what he ordered, she would carry it out against her will and never obey from the heart.
She would hunt for chances to lie, misdirect, work against him.
Which confirmed what he’d already read off them.
Neither Mira nor the Spirit Emperor had submitted to anything.
They were nothing like Arcturus, who only wanted to tag along and collect a share.
Soren went digging for what sat deeper in Mira’s data.
Lines of Dao-woven text filled the screen.
[The destiny stolen by the forbidden formation is sealed within the Spirit bones of a hidden sanctuary.]
[Those bones belong to a Lower-Tier Spirit Ancestor of the Nine-Headed Serpent Spirit Tribe.]
[Before the Immemorial Era, the Nine-Headed Serpent Spirit Tribe was among the most terrifying Spirit tribes alive, their entire lineage perished in the Immemorial War, they are extinct.]
[The Nine-Headed Serpent skeleton is enormous and exceptionally rare, able to store and preserve cosmic destiny and other highly concentrated energies.]
[It leaks nothing and loses nothing over time.]
[Extraction is relatively simple.]
[The dominant Spirit population of the Falling Cherry Spirit Domain is the Eight-Headed White-Scaled Spirit Serpent Tribe.]
[They evolved through bloodline mutation.]
[They began as the Two-Headed White-Scaled Serpents, an unremarkable low-tier tribe near the bottom of the Spirit race’s hierarchy.]
[After the Immemorial War annihilated the Nine-Headed Serpents, they scavenged and devoured the remaining bones and blood essence of the fallen, and rose to their present strength.]
[The Nine-Headed Serpent skeleton used to collect the stolen destiny is buried beneath a plain of eternal black flame.]
[That black flame was left a million years ago by the first Eight-Headed White-Scaled Serpent to reach the Ancestor Realm after devouring Nine-Headed blood essence and bone.]
[It is an Innate Ancestor Skill.]
[Its temperature is extreme and it cannot be extinguished.]
[A million years of unbroken burning has gathered heat in the sky above the plain, producing a spatial anomaly.]
[Anyone who approaches the fire plain and looks up at the twisting distortions falls into severe hallucination, the Dao heart collapses under the torment until sanity goes, and the victim ends himself with his own hands.]
Soren frowned.
An Innate Ancestor Skill, a divine ability that awakens under specific conditions at the moment of an Ancestor Realm breakthrough.
Usually only among those who break into the Middle or Upper Tier.
I haven’t shown a hint of awakening one yet.
And if that black flame came from the first Eight-Headed White-Scaled Serpent Ancestor, then their first Ancestor was no Lower-Tier, Middle-Tier at minimum, maybe Upper.
He hadn’t touched the black flames yet, so the encyclopedia had generated nothing about the fire itself.
Once he set foot on that plain and put a hand in it, the rest would open up.
Two fingers under a woman’s chin.
That was all it cost him to pull the ancient history of both serpent tribes, plus the exact coordinates of the sealed skeleton.
She’d outlived her use.
Soren’s fingers slid down.
Toward the pale line of Mira’s throat.
Then a new paragraph shot across the panel.
[Mira’s body carries the concentrated bloodline of an Eight-Headed White-Scaled Serpent Spirit Ancestor, tracing back to the extinct Nine-Headed Serpent Tribe.]
[Master may extract Mira’s blood essence and fuse it into the Nine-Headed Serpent skeleton. With the regeneration of the Human Path Demonic Form, there is a 70% probability of resurrecting a genuine Ancestor Realm powerhouse.]
That landed.
An Ancestor Realm powerhouse loyal to him and available on command would be worth a great deal.
And there was more.
Buried under that fire plain was a complete, intact Nine-Headed Serpent skeleton.
A million years gone, and residual blood essence from a fallen Spirit Ancestor still sat in the marrow.
He could use the skeleton and that residue to regrow organs, flesh, and muscle onto the frame. Then Eight-Headed White-Scaled blood essence as catalyst, accelerating the fusion of bone and flesh, hammering physical strength up as it went.
The payoff probably didn’t stop at one Ancestor.
If the ancient Nine-Headed Serpent came back.
If it swore itself to him.
It could lead him to the mass graves where the rest of the tribe’s bones were buried.
History said the Eight-Headed White-Scaled Serpents had scavenged and devoured all of it, Soren didn’t believe a single drop had gone unmissed.
One drop of surviving blood essence was enough.
Then the summoning power of the Hungry Ghost Path Demonic Form would call the dead back, he could weave demonic energy into vessels for them, or slot them into prepared corpses for a full and permanent resurrection.
Dragging an extinct Immemorial terror back into the world as his personal army was an excellent idea.
Better still, souls resurrected through his Demonic Form would be bound to his will. Disobedience wouldn’t be available to them.
An army of deathless soldiers, nothing else came close.
The Nine-Headed Serpent Spirit Tribe’s combat strength needed no argument, they had been one of the great Immemorial races.