Chapter 108
The snow went a garish crimson, cold coming off it, not one of the hundred thousand Spirits was spared, she swallowed all of them.
Back in her human form, she wiped the corner of her mouth with the back of her hand, her aura and appearance were shifting as she stood there.
She looked more bewitching than coming out of the seal, skin that already seemed ready to break under a breeze now had a healthy glow, fair with a hint of rose under it, and a faint fragrance coming off her.
She waved a hand and condensed a mirror out of Spirit energy, studying her reflection, she narrowed her eyes, pleased with how far the body had come back.
A flick of her sleeve shattered the mirror, and she looked up at the sky.
"I wonder if that stupid younger brother of mine is dead yet."
"He trailed around after me like a shadow since we were children, so annoying."
"Ah well. It’s fine if he’s dead"
"I think I’ll go kill some demons, for something to do."
She cast her perception out, locked onto a direction, and vanished like a ghost.
...
Black Dragon Mountain.
Soren looked at the Hungry Ghost Path Demonic Form on the Six Paths Form Diagram, activated and fully demonicized.
The number floating above it read 59, he smiled and ended his cultivation.
59 was the highest starting value of any of the five Demonic Forms he’d activated so far.
Credit went to his strength as a Demon Ancestor.
Lower-Tier Demon Ancestor demonic energy produced obvious results on any of the Forms.
At his current realm, pushing conversion degree under 60 was effortless, past 60, the curve got vicious.
Using that baseline, Soren ran projections.
To move comfortably through 61 to 70, he’d probably need Middle-Tier Demon Ancestor. Breaking into Upper-Tier would only speed up 71 to 80 by a little.
And 81 to 100? On Upper-Tier Demon Ancestor demonic energy alone, agonizing.
He wondered what realm that final stretch corresponded to, whatever it was, it sat well beyond Upper-Tier Demon Ancestor.
The Strategy Encyclopedia was a bottomless well, but everything it gave depended on physical contact with the person or object in question.
It wasn’t a search engine to be queried on a whim.
On the broader structure of cultivation tiers across the Azure Spirit World, unless it touched something he was handling right then, the panel volunteered nothing.
Soren set it aside, the second he got to his feet, something eerie ran up out of his chest, a faint resonance, there and gone.
"What was that?"
Weak, and it lasted a split second, he trusted his instincts, he didn’t imagine it.
It felt like the blood contract marks.
He carried three, the Solitary Heaven Sword, the Heavenly Resentment Demonic Sword, and Orathis.
A resonance through those marks meant eight chances in ten it involved one of the three.
"Master!"
"Big news!" Orathis’s voice came echoing into the hall.
Soren looked up, composed as ever, and lost the composure on the spot.
The young man looked barely older than Soren. Sharp features, high nose bridge, black hair, gold eyes, ruggedly handsome, and under all of it, something distinctly feminine in his bearing.
By any measure, a top-tier good-looking youth.
Who the hell is this? Orathis?
This was the first time he’d seen the dragon take human form, he’d spent months looking at an enormous lump of black coal, being handed a black-haired, gold-eyed pretty boy took some adjusting.
Orathis pointed frantically outside, then up at the sky, wearing the face of a man who’d met a ghost. "Master!"
"It’s over!"
"It’s completely over!"
Soren frowned, ninety-nine percent certain now about where that resonance came from.
"What’s got you flailing around like this?" he asked, annoyed.
Orathis bounded up beside him, hands going everywhere. "Master, do you remember this little dragon telling you I have an older sister?"
Soren thought back, he hadn’t paid much attention, the dragon had mentioned it.
"She was sealed away even earlier than I was!"
"But Master, look! Look at this!" Orathis dug a small tablet out of his spatial storage, a life tablet.
"This is my sister’s life tablet!"
"It went dull when she was sealed, this little dragon never knew if she was alive or dead!"
"Even if she’d died, with her soul trapped inside the barrier, it could never resonate with the tablet!"
"But just now! I was sound asleep and out of nowhere I felt a bloodline resonance!"
"So I pulled this out to look..."
"Hey! Master, guess what?"
I’m not blind, damn it, can I not see the tablet glowing right in front of my face?
"I’m guessing it lit up," Soren said, playing along out of boredom.
"Oh man!" Orathis slapped his thigh and gave him a thumbs-up.
"As expected of little dragon’s Master! Master guessed right, it lit up!"
He handed the tablet over, the glowing tablet interested Soren a lot less than the wailing that came with it, it’s over, it’s completely over.
"My sister is no saint," the dragon warned.
"How far from a saint?" Soren shrugged.
Orathis’s face went dead serious. "Ten thousand times worse than me! Back then my sister loved going on random killing sprees, and she made enemies of the powerhouses of all four major races across the Exalted Continent, dozens of Ancestor Realm experts joined hands and fought her for seven days and seven nights!"
"And at the end of it, my sister killed every last one of them."
"I heard she survived the battle, decided the danger was over, and sat down to recover, that’s when an Upper-Tier Demon Ancestor hiding in the shadows ambushed her, that’s the only reason she got critically injured and sealed."
Remembering that his sister had the face of an angel and the hobbies of a devil, Orathis’s lips shook so hard he could barely keep them still.
Out of a few sentences, Soren pulled several useful things.
One, the sister was absurdly strong, dozens of Ancestor Realm experts working together couldn’t put her down.
Which also meant the Exalted Continent’s destiny had been booming two hundred thousand years ago, with dozens of Ancestor Realm powerhouses alive at once.