Chapter 58
Which raised the question, with three Ancestors and three thousand Demon Emperors, why did the Heavenly Demon Alliance skulk? Why not unify the Exalted Continent outright, or the whole Azure Spirit World? Why not squeeze every faction for its treasures and put the world to work on their search?
As he puzzled, a line surfaced on the Strategy Encyclopedia by itself.
Reading it, his expression grew heavier than before.
"This joke isn’t funny at all..."
"Measured against the entire Azure Spirit World, the Heavenly Demon Alliance rates as a second-string faction?"
"And they fear that if their plan to wake the Evil God Ancient Race is exposed, factions from the other continents will seize their work, or wipe them out as heretics?"
He read the entry again and again, and after long thought had no choice but to re-examine this world.
The world knew only that the Exalted Continent belonged to the Azure Spirit World, one piece of it, and knew nothing beyond that except guesswork and fantasy.
The Demon Emperor powerhouses of the Exalted Continent amounted to regional warlords with cramped horizons.
This was the first time even Soren had seen the whole picture.
The Exalted Continent was merely one of the Azure Spirit World’s five great territories.
Beyond it lay the Beast Continent, the Spirit Continent, the Demon Continent, and the Central Continent, four ancient landmasses vastly larger than the Exalted Continent.
On those four, Ancestor Realm powerhouses were numerous, by comparison, the Exalted Continent had the most tangled mix of races, the smallest territory, and the weakest overall strength.
According to the encyclopedia, an invisible barrier ringed the Exalted Continent’s edges, a sealing restriction from the Immemorial Era.
It stood like an unclimbable wall, only those who broke through to the Ancestor Realm could leave and travel the other four continents freely.
Entry ran under restrictions too.
The four continents had signed a pact, unless their ancient races unanimously agreed to intervene over some specific matter, no individual could set foot there alone, violators faced severe punishment.
With the barrier in place, leaving from inside was easy for an Ancestor, and entering from outside was hard, pathways were few, and no one should dream of loopholes.
The Exalted Continent, in other words, was a larger Black Dragon Mountain, hard for outsiders to enter against the sonic wave, easy for the Ice Heaven Alluring Fox to walk out.
And a sealed, undisturbed continent meant Soren could build his power boldly, in peace, holding a Strategy Encyclopedia that could conquer all things, he didn’t believe a problem existed that he couldn’t solve.
If anything, the thought of the vast world outside, its resources, its supreme treasures, its beauties, only stoked him hotter. "This world will be mine."
"And if it isn’t mine, it has no meaning to exist."
The pressing business was to raise his own strength and grow his faction.
The Heavenly Demon Alliance was a shadow organization buried in the Exalted Continent, before Soren could take the Azure Spirit World, he had to take the Exalted Continent, and that meant tearing the Alliance out by the roots.
There would be no shortage of clashes ahead.
Orathis curled its dragon lips, its master hadn’t moved a muscle in minutes, yet his face was running a full theater, solemn one second, sneering with disdain the next.
What marvelous dream is he having in there? Master, if you won’t speak first, I won’t be able to stop myself from asking!
Before it could open its mouth, Soren vanished and reappeared in front of Vorian.
He could joke about pitying the man, but his heart sat still as flat water, he felt nothing for Vorian.
The one who deserved pity was his mother.
Anyone who had lived the old Soren’s long road, despised by his own father, the only child scolded while his older brothers and sisters were doted on from cradle to adulthood, would understand how paper-thin the bond between him and Vorian was.
Having inherited those memories, Soren might as well have lived every day of it himself, the feelings carried over intact.
"Soren, I..."
"Hand over my mother, and I can give you a dignified end."
Vorian said nothing more, head bowed, he opened a spatial portal, and a graceful, middle-aged woman of striking beauty stepped out.
Soren’s mother, Sylene.
The Black Water Dungeon had held her so long that her expression had gone numb, Vorian had brought her out days ago, and still the dazed, drifting look hadn’t lifted.
Her hands, her neck, her cheeks, every inch of exposed skin carried lingering marks of the dungeon’s punishing lightning, fine clothes and careful grooming hid none of it.
Fire was devouring the Great Emperor Palace, corpses littering the ground beneath her, and Sylene understood none of it.
What’s wrong with Vorian? Why does he look so hollow? Where are Aelyra and the other Matriarchs?
Then she heard a voice she had not heard in a very, very long time.
Soren, calling her Mother, gentle, as before, but firm now, in a way it had never been.
She assumed the auditory hallucinations had come back.
In the Black Water Dungeon, scorched by lightning and eaten by black water day and night, she had nearly lost her mind.
Soren was the one thing that kept her holding on, bit by bit, she had begun to hear him.
Every day, when the hallucination of her son’s voice sounded at her ear, the fear went quiet, and she wasn’t afraid of anything anymore.
Sylene turned around slowly, when she saw Soren, she froze for a heartbeat.
The next, her eyes flooded red. "Is it truly... my son?"
Soren said nothing at all, he pulled her into a deep, aching embrace.
In his past life, he had been the lone survivor of a catastrophic accident, raised in an orphanage, he carried no memory of his parents, not one photograph.
Through countless nights he had tried to imagine his mother’s face, and it never came into focus.
Holding Sylene now, an immense peace and warmth settled through him, perhaps my own mother looked exactly like this... A lifetime’s regret, finally answered.
"Mother, you’ve suffered."
"All because I was worthless, and dragged you into my troubles."
"I promise you, from this day on, no one will ever be able to bully you again."
"The Great Emperor Palace is not our home, let’s go to our own home."