CHAPTER 205: The King of the Crater and the Sovereign's Burnt Rice
Aethelgard: The City of the Cosmic Balance
Aethelgard was no mere city; it was a sovereign commercial empire—a geographical and historical anomaly that defied the voracity of neighboring kingdoms. It lacked the conventional stone and iron walls that suffocated the metropolises of the mortal world. Instead, the entire city was built across the length, width, and depths of a colossal crater—a wound of continental proportions that appeared to have been carved into the earth's crust by the fall of a meteorite.
Skyscrapers forged from runic alloys, floating palaces suspended over the abyss by thick chains of mystical light, and labyrinthine trade districts spread out concentrically, disappearing into the perpetual thermal mist of the morning. On the surface, sharply contrasting with the dampness and oppressive gloom of the subterranean Underworld, rose the true Aethelgard: a dazzling metropolis erected upon gigantic stepped terraces of polished white stone, intersected by a network of absolute-blue water canals that glistened beneath the northern sun.
If Aethelgard was known throughout the mortal plane as the "Cosmic Balance," it was not due to poetic whim; its existential philosophy, its Dao, and its economic engine were rooted in absolute equilibrium. The city thrived free of open war because no external force possessed the military supremacy required to breach its natural defenses without being annihilated in the process, and because its internal factions kept one another brought to their knees in a coldly calculated political stalemate.
At the highest peak of the crater's edge, piercing the ceiling of the clouds, stood the imposing City Lord's Mansion.
Inside the main assembly hall—an immense circular amphitheater carved entirely from alternating blocks of blood marble and pure obsidian—waited the most dangerous, wealthy, and lethal minds of the city. An emergency session had been convened before the sun had fully risen. The atmosphere inside the chamber was so dense, so thick with stagnant Qi and restrained hostility, that the air seemed to have vitrified.
Someone, somewhere in the north, had just tossed a boulder the size of a mountain range into their perfectly balanced pond.
At the head of the colossal ironwood round table sat the absolute ruler of the metropolis: Lord Valerion, "The King of the Balance."
Before him, occupying their respective thrones carved with their bloodline emblems, sat the heads of the Five Great Families—the pillars that upheld the commercial sky of Aethelgard.
Octavian Aurelia (Grand Saint — Stage 8): The Patriarch of the Aurelia Family. A man of immaculately elegant bearing, with a serene and youthful face, always draped in heavy, pristine white silks embroidered with intricate threads of spiritual gold. He never raised his voice; he spoke with the soft, rhythmic cadence of a melancholy poet. Yet, he was the undisputed master of the dreaded Law of the Contract. His Dao was an invisible karmic spiderweb: if Octavian got an adversary to answer affirmatively to a question or accept a deal—even if the enemy did so mockingly in the midst of a battle to the death—he bound the opponent's soul and meridians to his words. If the victim broke the imposed rule, their Sea of Qi detonated from within, turning them to ash. Kaelen Vulcan (Grand Saint — Stage 6): The Patriarch of the Vulcan Family. A middle-aged colossus—rough, broad-shouldered, and with perpetually bloodshot eyes. His arms were completely bare, proudly displaying a network of grotesque runic burn scars that pulsed with an opaque red glow beneath his skin. He spat when he spoke, openly despised the manners of the politicians at the table, and ruled the city's forge monopoly and blacksmith guild with an iron fist. Morwenna Viridis (Grand Saint — Stage 7): The Matriarch of the Viridis Family. A woman of ethereal, enigmatic, and deeply unsettling beauty. She was covered from head to toe by a translucent green silk veil that blurred her features. A thick, sweet, and suffocatingly intoxicating perfume floated permanently around her—a mystical miasma that subtly dulled the senses, dissolved hostile intent, and slowed the reflexes of anyone breathing near her. She controlled the absolute monopoly on major botanical arrays, elixirs, and medicines. Tyran Corvus (Grand Saint — Stage 6): The Patriarch of the Corvus Family. A living mountain of bulging muscles—a savage warrior wrapped in the tanned hides of calamitous beasts he had personally tracked, skinned, and assimilated with his own bare hands. His voice lacked human inflection; it was a rhythmic, guttural growl that made the obsidian floor vibrate. His natal beast was a Blood Thunderbird, and his absolute mastery over the Law of Predation turned him into a walking cataclysm in war: when Tyran spiritually marked a target, every allied and wild beast within a hundred-kilometer radius entered a state of homicidal frenzy, doubling their muscle mass and completely losing the concept of the fear of death. Lady Seraphine Morwen (Grand Saint — Stage 5): The Matriarch of the Morwen Family. The dazzling, public, and charismatic owner of the Palace of a Thousand Pleasures. A woman of lethal beauty, her curves wrapped in crimson silk, possessing a deeply hypnotic amethyst gaze. She concealed the lower half of her face behind a fan of raven feathers. She was Aethelgard's primary diplomat and network weaver, but her sweet, comforting smile hid an arsenal of poisoned knives. Her combat style was a tactical engineering nightmare: the feathers of her fan housed hundreds of microscopic array flags. With a simple, delicate flick of her wrist, Seraphine could deploy Saint Grade arrays in a fraction of a microsecond, trapping entire armies in void cages or wells of crushing gravity before the adversary could even draw their swords.
The silence at the table was suffocating. The five families, who on any other morning would be tearing each other apart with sarcasm and commercial sabotage, sat rigid, exchanging glances laden with genuine unease.
Lord Valerion opened his eyes.
The pressure in the room multiplied tenfold in a heartbeat. Although the monarch was a fallen Emperor, spiritually mutilated by past betrayals, the heavy residue of his ancient, despotic majesty spilled across the amphitheater, forcing figures of Octavian and Morwenna's caliber to lower their chins out of pure, atavistic submission.
"I assume that all of you, with your vast, boastful, and ridiculously expensive intelligence networks, have brought to this table the name of whoever destroyed the Purple Cloud Sect and the Iron Blood Alliance," Valerion's voice was harsh, dry, and rasping, laden with the unfading authority of a man who has watched entire continents burn. "Days have passed. I demand answers."
The five patriarchs exchanged a quick glance of discomfort. Observing the collective silence of his pillars, Valerion slowly pinched the bridge of his nose, exhaling a gray mist.
"You haven't found a single damn lead..." Valerion whispered, his Sea of Qi expanding until the ironwood table groaned. "So many days... so many millions invested in spies... and nothing."
Enduring the monarch's overwhelming oppression, Octavian Aurelia raised his white-silk-gloved hand with extreme slowness.
"Forgive the inefficiency of our shadows, City Lord," Octavian spoke, his voice flowing like a tranquil stream. "Our clan has tracked every corner of the north. We have interrogated the caravans, we have inspected merchant registries, and we have opened communication seals with our border partners. Nobody knows absolutely anything. Not a single corpse, not a single broken sword, not a single drop of blood was left within a thousand-kilometer radius. Both factions were erased from the fabric of reality as if they had never been born."
PAM.
A brutal slam shook the table, sending cracks splintering through the ironwood. Kaelen Vulcan half-rose, the veins in his neck throbbing with blue fire.
"Speaking plainly and with all due respect to the crown, Lord!" the blacksmith bellowed, spitting sparks as he spoke. "Our forges have stopped receiving obsidian ore from the igneous fault! We've combed the plateaus for three days and three nights. Any of the hundred bastard sects in this region could have done it; those idiots from Iron Blood made enemies every time they breathed! But Patriarch Aurelia is right about one thing: to have butchered two powers of that caliber without emitting a single Qi explosion that alerted our borders... and then to have scrubbed the land completely sterile... that isn't the work of an ordinary mercenary army."
"Heh, heh, heh... Well, well. I am deeply touched that the rough Patriarch Vulcan has decided, for once, to back the words of my refined clan," a melodic, silken, and deeply venomous laugh drifted across the room.
Kaelen turned his face toward Lady Seraphine Morwen, the muscles in his jaw tightening to their breaking point.
"You shut your mouth, you damn feathered witch!" Kaelen roared, releasing a gust of runic heat that rustled the room's veils. "I'm not advocating for the cowards in your useless family! I simply put the facts on the table. Don't think you're the center of the world; your clan of diplomats and whores—"
"Heh, heh, heh... Don't get so worked up, my dear Kaelen. At your age, Qi pressure might pop a vein in your heart," Seraphina interrupted. She folded her black feather fan with a sharp snap, her amethyst gaze turning as sharp as a needle. "And I kindly suggest you never disrespect my women again, old man... unless you want me to read aloud the list of nobles from your forge who visit my chambers every night looking for what they can't find on their anvils."
Kaelen clenched his fists, swallowing a curse, and sat back down heavily.
"Damn bitch..." he muttered between his teeth, before looking back at Valerion. "In short, My Lord: our trackers found nothing. It's as if the executioners were ghosts operating right under our very noses."
"HAHAHAHAHAHA! A FIGHT?! EXCELLENT, I'LL JOIN THE CARNAGE!" a deafening roar drowned out the argument, accompanied by a shockwave of pure, beastly intent that made the walls groan.
Tyran Corvus leaned over the table, baring his jagged fangs.
"Stop your parlor whining!" Tyran growled, his eyes flashing fiercely. "My clan released three thousand tracking beasts of ancestral blood. They flew toward the igneous fault canyon. And do you want to know what happened, My Lord? Upon reaching the ten-kilometer perimeter and assimilating the residual air currents, half of my birds died of heart attacks in mid-air! The rest turned around, wings trembling in absolute terror, and refused to fly a meter closer. My beasts... my siege killers... felt a primordial, atavistic panic branded into their genes. They feared whatever stepped into that canyon with the panic of prey."
Lord Valerion narrowed his eyes, his veteran mind processing the information in cold, absolute silence.
A genetic submission... the monarch reflected inwardly. In the hierarchy of the Dao of beasts, terror is not imposed through brute force or cultivation level; it is imposed solely and exclusively by the purity of bloodline. A Saint-grade predator does not die of fright before a Grand Saint human... it dies of fright when it smells the scent of Absolute Primordial Royalty. What kind of monstrosity descended upon that plateau?
For a second, Valerion considered the ancient families of the Beast Sea, but dismissed the idea instantly; those territorial tyrants would never march south in silence. If they moved, the entire continent would tremble beneath the weight of their steps.
"All three of you, calm down this instant," an icy, soft, distant voice froze the vapor in the room.
Morwenna Viridis turned her veil-covered face toward the brawlers. Her intoxicating perfume suddenly turned bitter and cold.
"Behaving like vulgar tavern patrons in the presence of the City Lord is an unforgivable disappointment," Morwenna ruled. "Show the bare minimum demeanor your rank demands."
"Don't play the saint and act dignified with us, Morwenna," Seraphine hissed, fanning herself slowly. "Your clan of alchemy-obsessed herbalists seems to live in a perpetual opium delirium..."
The temperature around Morwenna dropped sharply, and the scent of frost and pine needles flooded the air.
"Do not press your luck with me, Seraphine," the herbalist warned.
Seraphine ignored the threat, suddenly remembering a crucial detail from her reports.
"Ah, Lord Valerion... there is one final variable our array flags managed to decipher in the canyon ruins," the palace owner continued. "We found the spatial grooves and scars of two immense blocking and sealing arrays. One of them was traced with brute crudeness, but the other... the other was a work of flawless engineering. What is truly terrifying is that, in the few anchor nodes that didn't evaporate, our experts found the residual dust of Supreme Grade Spiritual Crystals."
Hearing the term "Supreme Grade," the five patriarchs froze. The bickering died instantly. A spark of pure, uncontrollable, visceral greed flashed across their eyes, but was swiftly crushed by the weight of logic. If the executioner faction used Supreme Grade stones simply to power temporary blocking formations for a routine hunt... they were not dealing with an ordinary clan. They were dealing with monarchs whose wealth rivaled the Emperor's treasury.
Valerion's face turned somber. The pieces fit together with terrifying tyranny. Are they ancient enemies of my lineage? Or is this a vanguard from the Central Empire that has finally discovered my exile and come to finish the job?
Before the monarch could articulate a general garrison command... the external firmament shattered.
RUMBLE.
A dull, deep, sovereign, telluric vibration breached Aethelgard's runic ceilings. It was no geological quake; it was the weight of a Primordial Law imposing itself over the rules of the continent. At the same time, in the southern imperial palaces, the floating academies, and the abyssal trenches of the earth, the order of the Heavens groaned. The great monarchs and millennial sages who had lain asleep in stasis for centuries opened their eyes, understanding that the cosmic chessboard had just been overturned.
Valerion and the five patriarchs shot out of the mansion, levitating over the abyss of the crater.
Looking south, the City Lord felt his old Emperor's heart skip a beat. The constellation of energy staining the clouds brought back to his memory, with agonizing clarity, the words of the Celestial Grade Oracle who had visited his former palace just before the fall of his empire:
"The throne will fall in blood and your lineage will sleep in ice. Flee north, Valerion. Only there, when an extinct primordial family rises from the ashes of its own tomb—when the sky is torn by atavistic signs and the clock of the era begins to tick... the hourglass of your blood will turn again."
Valerion clenched his fists beneath his cloak until his fingernails dug into his palms.
The five patriarchs, feeling the oppression of the firmament, understood that diplomacy was dead. They needed to garrison their troops and awaken the ancestors sleeping in the vaults.
"Lord Valerion... trouble arises at the borders. We take our leave immediately," announced Octavian Aurelia, bowing his head before the five silhouettes vanished in flashes of light.
They all departed—except for one person. Morwenna Viridis remained floating several meters away, trembling beneath her veil.
"Why are you still here, Morwenna?" Valerion asked without looking at her.
"I... I am sorry, City Lord. I know you tasked us with tracking down the culprits of the massacre, and also... you ordered us to secure the sacred-grade spiritual herbs for the treatment, according to the pact with our Ancestress... but our harvests have failed, and we have found no traces..."
"I do not care about traces right now," Valerion's voice dropped to an abyssal whisper as he released a fraction of his ancient, pure Emperor's killing intent.
Morwenna felt her meridians freeze. The air around her seemed to turn red, projecting onto her mind the oppressive illusion of a mountain of millions of corpses, where a faceless sovereign stared down at her from the peak.
"Go and tell your Ancestress not to forget our deal," Valerion commanded. "If she fails to deliver the life catalysts... I will personally ensure the Viridis Family serves as fertilizer for their own gardens. Get out."
Morwenna swallowed bile, nodding frantically before fleeing toward the lower city.
When the monarch was left entirely alone in the bleeding sky of the crater, suppressing a dry cough from the backlash of forcing his spiritual intent, his divine sense caught a disturbance in the mansion's restricted perimeter.
He descended in a flash of black light, landing inside an underground gallery guarded by obsidian pillars. The air behind a column rippled, revealing a tall figure wrapped in dark, rustic armor heavily dented by a thousand ancient battles.
It was Grand Marshal Kaelthor, "The Broken Sword."
"My Lord," Kaelthor spoke, dropping to one knee. "We found no survivors at the igneous fault. But in the depths of the molten magma bed, my hands managed to unearth this."
The Marshal drew a fragment of vitrified obsidian from his space ring, carefully depositing it onto a sealed jade tray: a single, heavy, perfect drop of neon crimson blood. The blood emitted such absurd heat that the jade tray hissed, threatening to melt.
Valerion took the vessel. Extending a thread of his divine sense to analyze the sample's spiritual structure... a sonic, majestic, mystical roar detonated directly inside his mind.
Valerion instinctively dropped the vial and stumbled back two steps. The jade vessel shattered in mid-air, releasing a gust of pure fire that Kaelthor intercepted with his own chest, placing his armor in the path to protect his master.
Valerion didn't even look at the explosion. His eyes were fixed on the crimson vapor dissipating against the ceiling.
"Dragon blood..." the monarch whispered in disbelief. "Primordial Blood of absolute purity."
There were clans with reptilian heritage on this continent, yes, but they were diluted lineages—beasts that could never achieve the majesty required to bend nature to their will in such a way. The prophecy's chessboard was complete.
"Watch the Five Families closely, Kaelthor," Valerion ordered, a smile of genuine, tragic madness touching his lips. "Especially the cowards who lowered their eyes today. The traitors are going to make their move."
Kaelthor, knowing the weight of his Lord's soul, nodded in silence and melted into the obsidian shadows.
Valerion walked with heavy steps toward the end of the gallery, stopping before a colossal vault door sealed with stasis runes. Pressing his palm against the metal, the door yielded, exhaling a blast of air so absolutely freezing it frosted the monarch's eyelashes.
Inside the deepest sanctuary, suspended within three immense capsules of Absolute Void Ice designed to halt cellular degradation and soul dissipation, rested three women.
The Wife: Lady Kaelia (Grand Saint — Stage 1). She lay in a deep, perpetual coma, dressed in white silks stained with dried blood from that fateful coup d'état in the Central Continent. She had intercepted with her own body the soul-devouring poison needle aimed at Valerion's heart. The Twin Daughters: Princess Ruby and Princess Lumin (Origin Realm — Stage 4). They were barely twelve years old when the poison's peripheral curse caused them to collapse; their bodies had aged at an agonizingly slow pace within the permafrost, retaining the appearance of two ethereal, pale-skinned maidens.
Valerion fell to both knees on the frosted floor. He pressed his forehead against the icy glass of his wife's capsule, his shoulders shaking in a silent weep—dense and heavy with centuries of regret.
"Do not worry, my little girls..." Valerion whispered, tracing the permafrost with his gnarled fingers. "The clock is ticking once more. I will find the method to cleanse this curse, even if I have to rip the heart out of God Himself. I will bring all three of you back."
The monarch looked up toward the sanctuary ceiling, his eyes bloodshot with an unfading thirst for vengeance.
"And that damn dog of the Central Emperor... that vermin Crown Prince who did this to you, Kaelia... will be the first to drown in my crater. I swear it on my extinct bloodline."
At the exact same time, in Aethelgard's financial district, inside the top-floor office of the Aurelia Mansion—a white marble sanctuary from which Octavian managed the Great Open Sky Auction, the Spiritual Banks, and Karmic Loans—the refined Patriarch shut the heavy oak door.
He locked the runic key.
Once alone, the model, poetic Grand Saint entirely shed his facade of untouchable elegance. He stumbled toward his marble desk, braced both hands against the surface, and let his forehead drop against the cold stone, letting out a long, agonizing sigh drenched in cold sweat. With trembling fingers, he ripped the gold brooch from his collar, loosening his heavy white silks to draw oxygen into his collapsing lungs.
"That monster... Valerion is still a damn monster..." Octavian muttered.
He opened a secret drawer in the base of the marble and pulled out a heavy black jade slab. Injecting a thread of Qi, he activated a Saint Grade acoustic and spatial isolation array. Then, he took out a small smoked-crystal orb and rubbed it, establishing a karmic resonance link.
The orb's surface swirled, projecting the distorted, deep, profoundly metallic voice of a man known in the Underworld by only one title: "The Tailor."
"Heh, heh, heh... Look at what a lovely coincidence. The model, pure, untouchable Octavian calling my sewer at this hour of the morning," the Tailor mocked. "Did the old dog's growling in the meeting scare you that much, poet?"
"Drop the boasting and stupid chatter, Tailor," Octavian cut in, regaining his cold, calculating tone. "How are the pieces moving? Valerion is cornered. Our shadows confirmed his Sea of Qi is still cracked—he's been desperate, moving fortunes through that witch Morwenna Viridis to obtain soul restoration elixirs."
"Mmm? And is that all your expensive guild of bankers managed to find out? I expected a much deeper analysis from you, Aurelia," the Tailor replied, his tone turning icy. "Don't think you're untouchable. Your clan is only useful to us for the territorial ambition we share. If you overstep your authority or show cowardice... my employers won't hesitate for a second to swap out the Aurelia Family's Patriarch before dawn."
Octavian gritted his teeth, his face turning pale. He knew perfectly well that the entities operating behind the Tailor possessed the authority and cruelty to wipe out his lineage in a single night. He swallowed his pride and changed direction.
"Moving on... how is the assimilation of the other three families progressing?" the poet asked.
The Tailor let out a metallic chuckle, accepting the detour.
"It is a complex chessboard, Octavian:
The Vulcan Family: They are anvil beasts. Kaelen is a rough idiot, but he's stupidly loyal to the city's sovereignty. He only cares about his alloys and hammers; he'll never join a coup d'état. The Viridis Family: Morwenna is a lost cause. She's Valerion's lapdog; she sells him medicines at cost price just to keep the hope of his sanctuary alive. The Morwen Family: As for Seraphine... that whore is a labyrinth. She's too evasive, astute, and boastful. She promises everything and signs nothing. It will be almost impossible to bind her to a contract, but we will continue injecting gold into her palace."
"In conclusion," Octavian summarized, "for the assault on the mansion, we only have the brute force of Tyran Corvus's savages and my family's networks."
"With Corvus's birds, your contracts, and my Underworld assassins... we have more than enough critical mass to decapitate the fallen Emperor," the Tailor ruled. "And don't stress over military backing; my employers have already mobilized the shadow experts. Soon enough, Aethelgard will change hands, and you will be the treasurer of the new era. HAHAHAHAHA!"
While the two conspirators laughed in the safety of their runic barrier... neither of them noticed a thin, almost imperceptible thread of shadow detach itself from the base of a marble column and slip underneath the door.
It was Kaelthor. The Broken Sword Marshal, whose low Qi signature made him the perfect ghost, had just filed every single word into his iron memory. He dissolved into the crater's wind, racing back toward Valerion's sanctuary at top speed.
Far from Aethelgard's conspiracies, inside the sanctuary of the Eternal Dawn Mini-World, Samael Morningstar stepped out of the reflective portal of Sienna's Mirror Dimension.
As his foot touched the palace marble, Vexia appeared at his side, adjusting her dark-framed glasses with a flawless martial salute.
"Take me to see the flesh batteries," Samael ordered, his voice turning flat and devoid of human warmth.
Vexia nodded, opening a path of light that transported them instantly to one of the realm's immense peripheral floating islands: the training grounds of the Dead Blood Legion. Landing on the plateau's obsidian, Samael looked out over twenty-five thousand armored soldiers standing in perfect geometric formations, moving in unison to the barking commands of the immense Xaloc golem. There were no cries of exhaustion; only the dull, rhythmic clashing of thirty thousand tons of dead star steel.
"The conditioning is progressing optimally, Patriarch," Vexia reported. "But if we want the Legion to reach its critical siege mass before the Tournament begins, we will need to triple our injection of elixirs."
"Do not spare a single crystal," Samael replied. "The Clan will foot the bill. Let us go to the cells."
They walked into the interior of the obsidian fortress at the center of the island. There, guarded behind a barrier connecting directly to Sienna's dimensional authority, lay the prison holding the monarchs captured during the northern hunt.
Stepping through the entrance mirror, Samael swept his gaze across the cells. All the Purple Cloud Sect prisoners had been physically restored, healed of their tears, and dressed in gray captivity robes. In one corner, isolated behind thick slabs of seismic steel, the mercenaries' former Stage 8 Grand Saint, Vargas "The Butcher," sat on the floor staring into emptiness, drooling heavily.
Samael's eyes bypassed Vargas, stopping before the central cell. There, standing with crossed arms and an expression of unbreakable arrogance, waited Vexia's tactical trophy: Lord Ziyun, "The Sage of the Shattered Cloud," a Quasi-Saint King expert.
Feeling the weight of Samael's violet vortexes, Ziyun stepped forward until his chest pressed against the energy bars.
"What do you intend to do with us, you little bastard?" Ziyun spat, sending a glob of blood that landed millimeters from the monarch's obsidian boots. "Do you think that because you have us locked up in an illusory dimension, my sect is going to kneel before a clan of historyless bastards?"
Samael looked down at the stain on the marble. He didn't get angry; his face remained as smooth and cold as a funeral porcelain mask, and a slow smile, completely devoid of mercy, curved his lips.
"Heh... It is absolutely fascinating," Samael whispered. "Do you truly believe, in your tiny, boastful sage brain, that you possess the right to voice an opinion in this place?"
Samael took a step forward, passing through the cell's energy barrier as if it were smoke, invading the Quasi-Saint King's personal space.
"You are not prisoners of war, Ziyun. You are my property. You are my spiritual batteries. You are the sacks of flesh I will place on the front lines to absorb the cannonfire of my enemies."
"Me?! A sage Quasi-Saint King acting as mere cannon fodder?!" Ziyun burst into hysterical laughter, releasing a burst of purple Qi that attempted to push the youth back. "You are completely insane, brat! In this wretched clan, with the exception of that woman behind you, you are all nothing! The Emperor will crush you... HAHAHAHAHA!"
As the sage's laughter grew louder, the other prisoners in the room lapsed into a terrified silence. The former Iron Blood generals backed away into the depths of their cells; they already knew the youth's tyranny, and knew the Purple Cloud experts were digging their own graves out of sheer ignorance.
"Allow me to correct your Dao, trash," Samael's voice dropped to a sonic frequency that made Ziyun's Sea of Qi vibrate.
Samael raised his obsidian boot and brought it down with a dry, crushing, brutal movement directly onto Ziyun's right hand resting on the floor.
CRACK. CRACK-CRACK.
The sound of metacarpal bones splintering and grinding into calcium powder beneath thirty thousand tons of pressure filled the room. Ziyun opened his mouth, but his breath caught in a dull scream.
"I am the only one who legislates here," Samael whispered, leaning down until his face was inches from the old man's. "If I order you to march right, you march right. If I decree that starting today the sky is purple... it will be purple for you. Is the order clear?"
Before Ziyun could utter a groan of pain... reality inside the cell froze.
A high-pitched, ultrasonic, deeply melancholy hum tore through the Patriarch's ears—a sound only he understood as the hysterical, eager laughter of a woman who had just been promised a feast.
The air filled with fissures of silver light as the Odachi Kurohime, "The Princess in her Sarcophagus of Night," materialized floating behind the monarch. Her scabbard—the Devouring Sunset—was not made of wood or metal; it was a physical tear in space lined with a texture of charred dragon scales that throbbed rhythmically. Staring directly at it induced agonizing vertigo. Between the mouth of the scabbard and the hilt, a leak of necrotic miasma dripped toward the floor tiles, disintegrating before touching the stone.
When Samael closed his glove around the funeral-silk-wrapped hilt, the fractal obsidian snowflake handguard flashed with a neon crimson glow. The immense curved blade left the void with a whisper that sounded like the lament of a thousand maidens begging for bloodshed.
Samael pressed Kurohime's hyper-dense, freezing edge directly against Ziyun's throbbing carotid artery. An aura of absolute-black void dragon swirled at his feet.
"Make one damn move, sage," Samael whispered, his dragon pupils locked onto the old man's. "I swear on my crown that if you don't shut your mouth this very instant, I will separate your head from your torso. And even if you die... your soul will remain chained to my forges for the next ten thousand years. Choose your hell."
Ziyun froze, cold sweat soaking his gray robe as he felt the sword's conceptual death. He lowered his gaze, his spirit entirely brought to its knees.
Samael held the stare for one heartbeat more. Then, he sheathed Kurohime with a sharp snap.
In that precise instant, the Sovereign's metamorphosis occurred. The void dragon aura dissipated into the floor; Samael lifted his boot, brushing an invisible speck of dust from his obsidian leather with an exceptionally human gesture. Vexia watched with fascination as the monarch's sharp, inhuman, vertical reptilian pupils dilated, melting into his irises until they softened completely, returning to their warm, serene, deeply human violet color. The tyrant had just merged back into the boy.
Samael turned back toward the cell exit, his voice returning to its administrative tone.
"Vexia, I want them all assimilated and healed to the maximum before the kids depart. Have Cedric, Iris, and the others come assist Sienna with Vargas. And regarding this Ziyun... his mind is too stubborn; give him to the Clan's Sixth Elder, Thalassa. Then have her bring him back to me along with the others—I will use the War God's Puppet Refining Art. I won't turn him into a brainless golem; I will leave his consciousness intact so he knows exactly what he is doing while his body obeys my commands in the vanguard."
"It will be executed with precision, Patriarch," Vexia nodded, before smiling slightly. "I am returning to the central palace now to check on my daughter's rest. Are you coming?"
"It would be a pleasure," Samael smiled.
Using his absolute sovereignty over the spatial folds of the Mini-World, Samael appeared in a flash of warm light directly in the sunny, flower-filled gardens of the main palace, behind Celeste.
The one-year-old little girl, sitting on the grass deeply concentrated on trying to tie knots in the ethereal whiskers of her obsidian leopard, Kala, sensed his arrival. She turned her beautiful silvery-blue-haired head; seeing her father's tall figure, her two mismatched eyes—one glacier, one void—erupted in a gleam of genuine euphoria. Letting go of the beast, she half-stumbled to her feet and ran with tiny open arms, leaping toward the monarch's chest.
"DADDY! Heh, heh, heh!" Celeste squealed, collapsing against his robes.
Samael caught her in mid-air with infinite softness and precision, cradling her against his shoulder as if holding the most fragile lotus in the universe.
"My gorgeous princess!" Samael laughed, pressing his cheek against hers, showering her with loud kisses that made her erupt in giggles of pure dopamine. "How is the queen of this house doing? Mmm? Do you want Daddy to get you aloe sweets? Do you want frost fruits? Or would you rather go flying over the jade waterfalls? Ask Daddy for whatever you crave, and I'll put it right in your hands."
Celeste, snuggled against his neck with her hands tangled in his black hair, pointed toward the artificial sky with her tiny finger.
"Playyyy, Daddy!" she demanded sweetly.
"Your wish is my command, my love," Samael laughed, conjuring tiny, colorful void-light butterflies that fluttered around the little girl.
Vexia, walking a few meters away toward the tea terrace, watched the scene with a half-smile, shaking her head imperceptibly. Who in their right mind... across the entire vast, terrifying mortal plane... could ever begin to conceive that these two identities live under the same skin? the Marshal thought. The butcher who ground a Grand Saint's bones to dust three minutes ago... and this doting, gentle family man. It is a terrifying duality.
Turning toward the marble pavilion to order the afternoon refreshments, Vexia ran into Seraphina, Lilith, and Sienna, who had just arrived from the armory. The three women nodded elegantly, and the Marshal relayed to them, with tactical detail, the "conditioning" session in Ziyun's cell.
The three Matriarchs burst into clean, silken, deeply familiar laughter.
"Heh, heh, heh... It's truly endearing," Seraphina remarked, lifting a silk sleeve to her lips. "They spend millennia locked up in their mortal sects and still believe power grants them the right to choose their destiny. Assigning the Quasi-King to Thalassa was an optimal move, Vexia; her suppression authority is perfect for scrubbing egos clean."
The four women turned their gaze toward the garden, watching Samael, who was now running across the grass making dragon noises while Celeste chased him on Kala's back.
"When will her martial training begin?" Lilith asked, resting her chin on her hand.
"Samael and I agreed she won't touch a single sword until she turns six," Seraphina answered warmly. "We want her to absorb the peace of this garden. Her biological foundation is already a miracle; she was born wielding the density of a Stage 1 Sea of Qi. There is no rush."
"That is a certainty," Sienna added, looking toward the Empress's belly. "And regarding the two presences sleeping inside there... do you have an idea or approximation of their birth date?"
Seraphina caressed the curve of her robe with an expression of boundless love, her blue eyes shining serenely.
"There are no logical records for them, Sienna. I have a firm feeling they will absorb the Qi of this world for several years before deigning to be born. But my bloodline warns me of something with absolute clarity: they will be entities infinitely more chaotic and monstrous than Celeste and the forty-five Sequence kids. But..." Seraphina smiled with maternal ferocity, "...truth be told, we couldn't care less about their talent. Even if they are born wielding the worst, most broken affinity in the mortal world... with the Morningstar banner wrapping around them, there won't be a single sovereign in creation who has the audacity to look down on them."
"Trying to intimidate those twins..." Lilith laughed boastfully, "...would be the equivalent of twisting the tail of that lunatic dragon running across the grass. There wouldn't be a corner in the cosmos to hide the attacker's corpse."
The four women nodded in unspoken agreement. Knowing that Samael's power, paired with the Sequences, formed an impregnable shield, they turned to walk toward the tea table.
At that exact moment, a sharp, deep, deeply offended mental transmission echoed directly inside their ear channels.
"Talking behind the Patriarch's back in the middle of the afternoon is a flagrant violation of this palace's etiquette, ladies. Where is my reputation as a tyrant supposed to go if you paint me like a docile, harmless daycare father in front of the troops?"
Recognizing Samael's voice, the four women paused, and Lilith clicked her tongue shamelessly, turning her face toward the garden.
"Tch! Don't act all dignified with us, nephew. You know perfectly well I didn't lie in a single word," Lilith transmitted mockingly. "You are intensely jealous and overprotective. At this rate, you won't even let my dear nieces get a boyfriend when they head out to explore the continent..."
...
An absolute, heavy, dense, and deeply sepulchral silence fell over the mental transmission. The wind in the garden seemed to stop.
Lilith blinked, feeling a bead of cold sweat slide down the back of her neck.
"...Nephew?" the Phoenix pressed, swallowing hard. "Hey... don't play dead. Say something."
They could only catch the low, hoarse, somber, and deeply paranoid murmur of Samael calculating in the distance:
"...I'll have to triple palace surveillance. No living being of the opposite sex who doesn't share my blood will be allowed within a thousand kilometers of my daughters. If a brat even looks at them... I'll rip out his..."
"Hey! Nephew, by all the gods of the abyss, what kind of damn atrocities are you muttering under your breath?!" Lilith bellowed, losing her manners as she waved her arms. "Don't be a deranged maniac! Your father didn't raise you to be a castrating hermit! Hey! I'm talking to you!"
A quick throat-clearing sounded over the link.
"Sorry, Aunt. My rice is burning."
CLICK.
The mental connection was severed.
Seraphina, Vexia, and Sienna looked at each other for a microsecond before bursting into loud, roaring laughter, tears welling in their eyes as they beheld the absolute, indignant, jaw-dropped stupefaction on Lilith's face.
"HAHAHAHAHAHA!" Sienna had to lean against a column, losing all composure. "Just accept it and give up, Lilith... those girls are going to live in an armored fortress."
"Hey! No, absolutely not!" roared the imposing Ashen Phoenix, gathering her feathered skirts as she shot like a bullet across the grass toward the monarch. "Hey, Samael Morningstar! You wait right there! We are renegotiating that right now! Don't you dare hang up on me! Hey!"
Note from Void_Scribe: 🐉
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