Return of the Mythic Bloodline

"Brother, are you alright?" Wukong asked, worry evident on his face. He extended his hand towards Maximilian, but the latter removed it.

"Do you hear the cries?" Maximilian asked in a low whisper.

"What cries? I don’t hear anything."

"I-I will be back in some time," Maximilian muttered, opening a portal.

"Brother, where are you...going?" Before Wukong could even ask, Maximilian had already vanished.

He appeared inside the Control Room. As long as he was inside the spaceship, he couldn’t teleport outside.

"AINOS, I want to go outside," he ordered, holding his chest with one hand.

Initialising the master’s request...

The glass at the front of the room dissolved, and the side walls opened a way for him. A thin blue barrier still covered the opening, preventing the dense Death Energy in the surroundings from entering.

As soon as the way outside was opened, Maximilian tore through the space before him, creating another portal.

With his current power, he could distort the distance of a thousand kilometres with a single portal. He moved in the direction from which he could hear the weeping sound.

Naturally, he laced himself in Cosmic Soulforce to protect his body from the raw Death Energy he would be exposed to on the other side of the portal.

Still, the Death Energy at nineteen thousand kilometres deep in the Riftlands, where he reached through the portal, was too potent for him.

The moment he stepped outside the portal, he felt his vitality being drained by the Death Energy.

In an instant, he opened another portal and went inside. He had only been exposed for a second, yet he had lost one year of his lifespan, something that wasn’t particularly concerning for a dragon whose lifespan had reached over five thousand years after attaining the Celestial Realm.

Through continuous teleportation, he crossed fifteen thousand kilometres within fifteen seconds, losing around eight years of his lifespan in the process. The farther away he was from the centre, the less potent the Death Energy became.

"The voice is coming from the Lower Realm," Maximilian muttered as he emerged from the portal.

Now that the Lower Realm was only five thousand kilometres away from him, Maximilian could sense numerous presences around the border. Some of them were inside the Riftlands, only a couple hundred kilometres away from him.

"The dragons are still searching for us?" he scoffed, his brows furrowing at the familiar presence. It had been fifteen years since the hunt had begun, yet they still hadn’t given up. Perhaps they might have stopped already, but Maximilian’s breakthrough had stirred the search once again.

He felt someone approaching him at an incredible speed. His pupils shrank, his golden eyes glowing as he activated his Divine Sense.

A dragoness in her demi-human transformation, with vines and wood spreading across her emerald form, was coming towards him. Her body was laced in a green energy from which Maximilian could sense the faint presence of Cosmic Soulforce.

"Elyndra, the head of the Floral Clan," Maximilian muttered, his eyes narrowing. She must have sensed his presence, but because he had changed his Soulforce signature, she couldn’t tell that it was actually him.

Before she could confront him, he tore open a portal in space and went inside. She was at the Middle-Stage Celestial Realm. If both of them were to go all out, Maximilian wasn’t sure if he could kill her without getting seriously injured. Moreover, the source of the weeping sound demanded more of his attention.

"Huh? I sensed an unfamiliar presence here," Elyndra murmured, her brows raised in confusion as she reached the spot where Maximilian had been standing a moment ago.

She spread her Divine Sense across the area but couldn’t sense a soul in the surrounding dark terrain. All there was were the Death Demons spread across the ground.

"Tch, I shouldn’t waste my time and should continue my search for that cursed monster," she declared, her jaw tightening in suppressed fury as she moved into the deeper part of the Riftlands.

---

"She is the only Divine Dragon in this area of the Riftlands," Maximilian released a sigh of relief as he emerged from the portal. "There wouldn’t be any Divine Dragon from the Éclair Clan searching for us. I believe Lord Godfrey mustn’t have joined the hunt either. Since Elyndra is here, the remaining four must be searching from the opposite side, thinking that I wouldn’t have crossed the deepest part and reached this close to the border of the Lower Realm."

There were many dragons at the Transcendent Realm spread across the border, but Maximilian easily passed through them using his portals.

He had crossed the entire distance from the depths of the Riftlands to the Lower Realm in less than a minute.

"What is actually happening in Vyoman?" Maximilian gasped, his eyes turning towards the sky. Grey clouds stretched across the sky as far as the eye could see, pouring down heavy rain. The clouds were completely silent. There wasn’t even a flicker of lightning within them, as if they were mourning with someone. Maximilian couldn’t help but think that the sound of weeping was somehow connected to this.

He didn’t waste much time there, continuing his pursuit towards the sound. It was too far from the border of the Riftlands. He had to pass through the Abyssal Sea, mountains, and rivers, covering the distance in more than five minutes. His transformation had been undone, turning him back into his demi-human form. The continuous teleportation had consumed almost ninety percent of his Soulforce reserves.

The closer he drew to the source, the louder the sound became and the more heavily the rain poured. He was now certain that whoever was causing this phenomenon was certainly a divine being.

When he moved out through the final portal, appearing high in the sky, the sight below widened his eyes in shock.

The land was covered in blood, corpses, and injured people. The stench of death had permeated the surroundings. A few hundred metres ahead stood a city, its front wall completely destroyed.

It didn’t take long for Maximilian to realise what had occurred here. A war had just ended. However, what truly caught his attention was the three-tailed Divine Fox hovering in the air before him, the source of the weeping sound.