Chapter 132: In the Heart of the Beast Lands

Inside a lavish, massive hall, hundreds of people, each wearing the same golden-bird emblem on their robes, stood with their heads bowed. Every one of them was afraid to even breathe too loudly.

At the head of the hall, raised above everyone else, a woman veiled from head to toe sat on a throne, sweeping her gaze over the people below. Her stare was heavy, imperious, as if reminding everyone bowed before her of their utter insignificance.

With an elegant flick of her fingers, a boy who looked no older than fifteen came sprinting up to her side and, dropping to his knees, held out a rolled-up scroll in trembling hands.

Using her Qi, she drew the scroll toward herself and unrolled it in front of her.

In total silence, so complete that the wind stirring up specks of dust was audible, everyone held their breath, waiting for her to finish reading. A few of the bowed figures started shifting uneasily, their nerves getting the better of them.

"Advisor Osu... what's the reason the northern front has pushed three hundred miles closer to our forces?" Deactivating her Qi, she tossed the scroll to the ground, and instantly the boy sprinted over, snatched it up, and slipped out of her sight, disappearing behind the crowd, still bent in a bow the entire time, afraid to straighten up.

From the crowd, an old bald man slowly stepped forward, his mustache, like a catfish's whiskers, dragging along the golden floor.

Taking a few steps toward the throne, he dropped to one knee and bowed. "Golden Mother! Advisor Osu bows before your greatness!"

Nodding, she gestured with one hand, signaling him to continue speaking.

"Over the past week, the Church of Awakening's army has grown significantly, thanks to a new development of theirs!" Still on one knee, but with his head raised now, Advisor Osu began his report.

"A new development? Explain..." Suddenly the Golden Mother's voice turned colder.

Sensing her displeasure, a woman with golden hair braided back, a massive scar across her face partially covered by a white wrap that fully concealed her eyes, stepped out of the crowd.

Dropping to one knee, she bowed her head as well. "Golden Mother, according to intelligence from our spies planted within the ranks of the Church of Awakening. The Church has spent several years trying to develop a new artifact of enslavement. And if the reports are accurate, they finally succeeded, just a few weeks ago."

The hall sank into a strange silence, one on the verge of erupting.

The people in the crowd remained perfectly still, heads bowed, though a few of them wore faint, barely visible smirks, sensing the Golden Mother's uncertainty and reaction from her throne.

After a long pause, the Golden Mother finally spoke, looking directly at the bowing woman with the eye wrap. "General, I need a full report-"

Before she could finish, a young man burst through the main gates, dropped to the ground, struck his forehead against the golden floor three times, and, rising into a half-bow, sprinted across the entire hall, dropping to his knees again right in front of the throne, beside the Advisor and the General, and pressed his head to the floor. "Golden Mother! Urgent black message!"

The instant he shouted this, everyone around froze in shock, hearing the words ‘black message’.

Stretching out her snow-white hand, she wrapped the black letter in her Qi and drew it toward herself, then waved a hand, releasing the messenger.

Seeing her gesture, the messenger stood and backed toward the exit, keeping the upper half of his body bent in a bow the entire time.

Opening the letter, she began reading, and the further she read, the tighter her free hand gripped the armrest of her throne.

"Everyone out! Now!!" Shouting this, she rose from her throne and, hovering above the ground as if it weren't worthy of her touch, waved a hand and vanished into thin air.

….

In a dark corridor built entirely from black stone, in front of a set of golden doors, the Golden Mother suddenly appeared, still hovering.

Carefully opening the door, she found herself inside a chamber.

A small room decorated in various silks and smooth fur. At its center sat a pool filled with thick golden liquid. And on the side opposite the door stood a massive royal bed, draped with a translucent veil, behind which the Golden Mother could make out several graceful feminine silhouettes.

Seeing the curves of the women's bodies on the bed, coldness flashed through the Golden Mother's eyes, mixed with killing intent.

Her anger was cut short when a man's silhouette began rising out of the pool. Emerging up to his chest, he gathered his long black hair into a knot and leaned his back against the pool's edge, not even bothering to turn toward the Golden Mother.

Playing with the golden droplets running down his fingers, he spoke in a calm voice, almost a whisper. "It's rare for my beloved wife to visit my chambers..."

The girls behind the veil, hearing this, started giggling.

Hearing their laughter, unhidden, aimed straight at her, the Golden Mother clenched her hands into fists, straining to hold herself back, to keep from painting the fur around them red. "A black letter arrived from our daughter." Throwing the letter at his back, she turned and headed for the exit, unable to bear even another second of this humiliation while standing there.

"Stop..." His voice, like a command, froze her in place. Even the girls on the bed behind the veil fell silent, going still, quickly lowering their heads.

Slowly opening the letter and reading its contents, the man suddenly frowned. Without much thought, he crushed it in his hand, and it instantly turned to ash.

On the other side of the room, on a desk buried under scrolls and papers, a sheet suddenly lifted into the air and flew over to him. Simply looking at it, he began writing on it, no ink at all, just his own Qi.

Finishing, he cloned the letter and sent both copies toward the Golden Mother.

Catching them, she looked at him, waiting for his order.

"One letter to Clan Duan... The second to Clan Lin... their heirs, same as our daughter, are also in that lower world... and by the way, this information could help our cause." Closing his eyes, he relaxed and sank slightly deeper into the golden water.

After a pause, the Golden Mother couldn't stay silent. "You want to use our daughter for your own ends?"

"Ha? Hahaha! Why do you think she sent a black letter? Just because of that creature they found in this filthy, primitive world? Hahaha!" He started laughing so loud the walls of the room began to shake. "Our daughter is far smarter than you, and craftier than me! She knew exactly what my reaction would be!"

"Then... what about the Emperor?" Smirking slightly, she squeezed the letters a little tighter in her hands.

"The Emperor? That crumbling relic... Soon, the entire Empire will be at our feet! At the feet of the Ridegold family!!" The instant he finished saying this, the heads of every girl behind the veil suddenly burst like balloons.

Watching this, watching the entire veil soak through and turn red, the Golden Mother couldn't hold back a smile, watching intently as the headless bodies twitched their last.

….

In a small room built entirely of pale, warm-toned wood, beside a massive window overlooking an endless sea, where, through the thick, rose-tinted fog, the ruins of structures resembling a colosseum could be made out, hundreds of times larger than any ordinary one.

Right by the window, an old man stood leaning on a cane, and without turning, still gazing out into the distance, "Hm, do you think they actually have a chance of seeing their plan through to the end?"

Standing beside him, a young woman who looked twenty to twenty-five, with white wavy hair and blue eyes, identical in appearance to Miu Muye, Mo Fan's close friend, whom he'd protected on his very first day at the sect from a persistent suitor.

The girl turned her head toward a table by the window, where an open letter lay.

Hesitating for a few seconds, she couldn't hold back and said exactly what was on her mind. "Grandfather! This is treason against the Empire! Treason against you! How can you stay so calm and keep pretending you don't know anything!"

"Ho-ho? You think if I worried myself sick, it would somehow help me?" Pulling his gaze away from the enchanting surface of the sea, he smiled and looked at his granddaughter. "Your mind should always stay as calm as the surface of the Sea of Origin."

Turning back toward the sea, he continued. "For thousands of years, natural disasters have tested the Sea of Origin... but every single time, it's remained exactly where it stands, never once letting nature so much as ruffle it..."

"Hmph! So according to you, we should just endure and wait while everyone around us plots against our family? Against you?!" Listening to her grandfather, she furrowed her brow and crossed her arms over her chest, unable to make sense of his logic.

"Ha! Of course not! Do you think we're some lake?" Taking the cane in hand, with a light motion hidden from her eyes, he gave her a gentle tap on the forehead.

"Ouch! Grandfather!!" Grabbing her forehead, she started rubbing it.

"Don't worry... every precaution's already been taken, long before they even started drawing up their plans. I already knew exactly what they'd attempt! Hoho!" Setting his cane back on the ground, he leaned on it, using his other hand to support his own back.

Still rubbing her forehead, the girl looked out the window. "What about my sister? You can't just abandon her."

"I told you, don't worry, everything's already been arranged... She'll be back soon, safe and sound." Reaching out, he patted her on the head.

"Grandfather, enough! I'm not a child anymore!" Dodging too late, she crossed her arms over her chest again and pouted.

"Hahaha!" Looking at his granddaughter, the old man burst out laughing.

….

Deep in the forest, at night, a massive bonfire burned in the middle of a clearing, and around it, a bird kept running back and forth, carrying branches in its beak and under its wings, clumsily tossing them into the flames.

"ROOOAAR!"

A horrifying roar, shaking the very ground, tore out of a cave several hundred meters from the fire.

"BAWK!!" The roar passing straight through him, rattling every organ in his body, the bird dropped every branch and bolted at full speed in the opposite direction from the cave, wings flapping nonstop, trying desperately to take flight.

Crash!

Something so enormous emerged from the cave that the narrow entrance couldn't withstand its clumsy, hurried exit and immediately collapsed.

"GROOAAR!"

It was a massive, short lizard, its tail severed clean at the base, an enormous scar running across the top of its armored crocodile-like head, right between its three pairs of eyes.

Rising up onto its rear two pairs of legs, the beast stood taller than twenty meters, and throwing its gaze toward the massive bonfire, glowing like a beacon in the darkness, the lizard immediately charged straight at it.

….

At that same moment, deep inside the cave, several hundred meters down, in one of the spacious chambers, a handful of baby lizards huddled together, growling viciously, doing everything they could to hide their fear.

'There you are! Finally got you!' Digging a pink mushroom the size of a baby's head out of the ground, a young man in old, worn-out clothes tucked it into the white ring on his finger.

Standing up, he looked at the baby lizards and walked closer to them.

Watching this two-legged creature draw closer and closer, the little lizards stopped growling and, falling silent, froze in place, huddling together into one large mass in the corner of the nest, hoping that if they stayed still, this creature wouldn't notice them.

Lifting one edge of the nest, the young man used his Qi to clear away the dirt, revealing a view of several small white mushrooms. "Hm, three mushrooms should be enough for you not to disrupt your own development... So, no offense, little ones..."

Taking all the mushrooms except the three largest, he lowered the nest back into place and, straightening up, looked upward, through the layers of earth, toward the surface. 'The beast's already coming back... time for me to leave too.'

Walking up to a slightly damaged section of the chamber wall, he wrapped himself in Qi and seemed to melt straight into the wall, then began swimming through the layers of soil and stone toward the surface at tremendous speed, angling himself so that the beast, descending through the cave's tunnels, wouldn't be able to sense his presence.

.

.

Finally emerging from underground, several hundred meters away, he brushed himself off and whistled.

"Cluck? Bawk!" At his whistle, a feathery ball leapt out of the bushes and ran up to him, hopping around excitedly.

"Eh... I was hoping that once you broke through to second rank, you'd change somehow... but all that's changed is how much fat you've got under your skin, and not for the better..." Glancing around, scanning his surroundings, the young man picked up the bird and, holding him under one arm, jumped onto a tree branch and started running, leaping from tree to tree.

The bird tried to protest, but the moment he opened his beak, the rush of air from their tremendous speed nearly tore it apart. Clamping both wings over his now-aching beak, he could only grumble, letting out sounds from deep in his throat.

Running across the treetops, the young man kept glancing up now and then, where he could see flashes of very dim light against the night sky, over and over. 'Every time I remember flying up there and that swarm nearly eating me alive... Ugh...' A shudder ran through him just remembering what he'd faced.

'I read in Know Whose Tracks These Are about these Bone Ravens... and that the sky above the Core Region of the Beast Land belongs to them... but I didn't think it was this bad.' Shaking his head, he kept running across the branches, toward a low mountain in the distance.

.

.

Reaching a small waterfall and the pool beneath it, he didn't waste a moment and dove straight under the falling water.

Activating his Qi, he shot through a long, winding tunnel like a torpedo and surfaced inside a heavenly pit, sealed off entirely from the outside world.

This was a remarkably spacious ecosystem, hidden within the mass of the mountain. A huge variety of plants and trees, and beneath and between them, all sorts of small spirit-beast families had made their homes.

The ceiling of this heavenly pit stood a hundred meters above the ground, entirely covered in massive Pseudo-Solar veins. This material behaved much like metal, and its defining trait was its ability to project stored solar energy, passing it from vein to vein, creating the perfect conditions for an ecosystem to thrive in an enclosed space like this heavenly pit.

Climbing out onto the shore, the young man brushed his shaggy hair out of his face and looked around with his empty, glowing green eyes.

Tossing the soaked bird onto the ground, he stepped a little to the side, sat down against the wall near the water, and pulled a book, ink, and a homemade pen out of his ring.

"Cluck... Cluck..." Standing in place, the bird started shaking himself off and grumbling, looking at his precious feathers, ruined by the water.

"Stop complaining, Baldi... you should go do some physical exercise instead, or soon you won't even be able to stand up straight." Without lifting his head, he opened the book and, dipping the pen into the ink, used his Qi to fill it.

"Bawk! Bawk!" Stomping his feet in irritation, Baldi turned and ran off toward the forest.

Ignoring him, An began writing descriptions of both mushrooms he'd found in the lizards' tunnels into his book.

Once he'd finished, he closed the book and tucked it back into his ring. 'Now it's time to see if this actually works...' Laying the pink mushroom out in front of himself, along with a few third-rank spirit plants, An activated his Qi and formed his Qi Cauldron in front of him.