Chapter 122
And look how neatly the cycle closed.
Drain Mira and the other serpent powerhouses of blood essence to resurrect the ancient Nine-Headed Serpent.
Let the resurrected Nine-Headed Serpent find the rest of its tribe’s blood essence.
Summon those souls back and pour them into the drained bodies of Mira and her kin, ready-made containers waiting to be filled.
Consider it.
The Eight-Headed White-Scaled Serpents had evolved by eating Nine-Headed bone and blood in the first place.
Their bodies were biologically compatible with Nine-Headed souls to an unusual degree.
The resurrected would settle into new vessels fast.
So.
He couldn’t kill Mira yet.
He needed them alive long enough to harvest the blood, once drained, he’d repurpose the shells and squeeze out whatever value remained.
Sons of bitches, a forbidden formation stealing the destiny of the whole continent, how many brilliant cultivators across the four races have been stuck at Emperor or Venerable because of this?
Two reasons Exalted Continent’s destiny ran so thin.
First, after the Immemorial War, supreme powerhouses from the other continents joined forces and walled Exalted Continent off behind an isolation barrier.
That cut the continent’s destiny off from the Azure Spirit World, nothing circulated in and nothing replenished.
Spend it and it was gone.
Second, the ancestors of the Eight-Headed White-Scaled Serpent Tribe had quietly laid this forbidden formation to steal and hoard whatever remained.
More than half of what little the continent had left had been funneled into the Falling Cherry Spirit Domain.
And on top of that.
When Soren, Bruce and Arcturus crossed that barrier, the formation took more than half of Soren’s personal destiny.
He wanted it back.
A hundred times over, a thousand.
With the plan assembled, the corner of Soren’s mouth curved.
He looked down at Mira, whose eyes flickered with fear under his fingers at her throat.
His fingers kept sliding down.
Bruce swallowed, so did Arcturus.
In the city below, countless pairs of eyes fixed on Soren and Mira.
The men in particular found their throats had gone dry.
Soren’s fingers kept sliding down.
In his head, he read off the system’s numbers.
[Body count: 111.]
[Total encounters: 19,312.]
On the strength of her looks and bedroom skills, Mira secured that Spirit Emperor his seat as ruler of the Falling Cherry Imperial Palace.
Every Upper-Tier Spirit Venerable in the domain has passed through her hands, all of them.
And not only the Upper-Tier, plenty of well-regarded Middle-Tier Venerables have had their turn too.
Soren wore half a smile.
He slid a cold glance at the Spirit Emperor still bowed in midair.
Heh, he doesn’t mind spending his own woman to buy his subordinates’ loyalty.
Soren’s fingers slid.
Snap.
One flick.
Raw force detonated off his fingertip.
The blast hit like a thunderclap and threw Mira backward through the air.
She shrieked, slammed down beside the Falling Cherry Spirit Emperor, and coughed up blood.
"Watch them, nobody here leaves."
"Yes, Master!"
Neither Bruce nor Arcturus had any idea what was in Soren’s head.
One thing was obvious enough.
He had no interest in Mira whatsoever.
"My wife and I bowed our heads to the Demon Ancestor of our own will!" the Spirit Emperor cried.
"Why treat us like this?"
"You injure my wife in public, strip her of her dignity..."
"...and now you put us under house arrest?"
Soren ignored the wounded innocence entirely.
Killing them now would take no effort.
But killing them today would gut the resurrection plan.
A living body meant the returning spirit woke inside something that breathed.
A corpse only produced walking dead. Not a real resurrection, the flesh would rot out sooner or later.
Living vessels were not optional.
Soren turned and walked into the empty air.
Dark ripples pulsed from under his boots with every step, stirring the sky into unstable pockets of distorted space.
Down in the city the whispering never stopped, plenty were furious, not one dared say so out loud.
Arcturus was baffled too.
The Falling Cherry Spirit Emperor had done exactly what Arcturus himself had done, submitted on the spot, no hesitation.
He’d been a more aggressive bootlicker, if anything, offered up his own wife to buy goodwill.
Arcturus had assumed their place in the empire was settled.
Instead Soren did the opposite of what every person present expected.
He refused the submission of the Spirit Emperor and his Grand Mistress.
Then ordered them penned up under guard.
Why?
It made no sense.
Arcturus couldn’t crack it, and curiosity got the better of him, he leaned over and asked Bruce.
Bruce’s answer was refreshingly direct.
"I don’t know."
"Whatever Master orders, I do."
"If Master orders me to die, then he has his reasons for my death."
"So there’s no point guessing at his thoughts."
"I only need to obey."
Arcturus was speechless.
"My, my."
"As expected of Brother Bruce, the Demon Ancestor’s most trusted man!"
His head’s screwed on straighter than mine.
"I truly must learn from Brother Bruce."
Arcturus made a theatrical show of slapping his own cheek, no force in it, but he performed it with total gravity.
He hadn’t flipped his attitude the moment Soren left, even though Bruce’s realm was below his own.
His desire to serve Soren was real, his desire to collect a share of the spoils equally real, the two got along fine.
Neither had any idea what Soren was actually after.
If someone had told them the truth right then, that the instant they set foot in the Falling Cherry Spirit Domain, an invisible formation quietly took more than half their destiny.
That without getting it back they’d face permanent bottlenecks, fail to comprehend new techniques, and see the returns on their dual cultivation cut in half.
Both would have gone red-eyed.
They’d have flown over and beaten that Spirit Emperor to death on the spot.
Arcturus stroked the white goatee on his chin, a question still itched at him.
He elbowed Bruce, who was glaring at his prisoners with big bovine eyes, terrified they’d slip out from under his watch.
"Hehehe, Brother Bruce."
"That Grand Mistress, top-tier looks, wouldn’t you say?"
"So why wasn’t the Demon Ancestor interested at all?"
Bruce’s brows came down hard.
"Do you take my Master for a garbage collector?"
"Right, right, right! Brother Bruce speaks the absolute truth! A dignified Ancestor Realm powerhouse deserves the finest and the freshest!" Arcturus said in a rush.