Arkfaire made no abnormal movements. He merely nodded and said, “My ancestors were indeed from a demonkin branch. Back then, the demonkin clans were much more segregated and each faction worshipped different powers. My ancestors were defeated in the holy war and forced to the neutral lands. The place was welcoming to a mixture of many races, but to our ancestors, the environment wasn’t even fit for survival. In the end, they found the only land they could and decided to settle down, completing the Thunderfrost Temple only centuries later. After looking at these sculptures, you probably understand that our bodies and souls have undergone great changes. At this point, no one would guess we were once demonkin if I didn’t mention it.”
“Dark races… you guys aren’t considered a dark race, either, right?”
“Indeed.” Arkfaire’s expression was filled with melancholy and helplessness.
The frost power of the Thunderfrost Temple was situated between daybreak and Evernight, so they were no longer of the dark race by traditional definition. However, the demonkin were the favorite children of the world and known as the sons of darkness. Not only did Arkfaire’s clan lose their original origin power attribute, but their bloodlines were also no longer pure. One could only imagine the taste of comparing themselves to their former glory.
Arkfaire escaped his sentiments very quickly. He looked deeply at Qianye, saying, “Actually, my sister’s talents are greater than mine. She’s currently weaker than me only because I inherited the power of the Thunderfrost Temple. This power is easy to accept, but the drawbacks are easy to imagine; I won’t be taking a single step forward from where I am. That’s not the same for her as she can keep advancing. Even a little bit of hope is better than my state.”
Qianye waited for the continuation message in silence.
Arkfaire said after a slight pause, “Qianye, you have sufficient talents to lead our clan forward. My sister and I might be old by human standards, but we’re still quite young compared to our lifespans.”
Having guessed what the young man was going to say, a surprised Qianye cut him short in a hurry. “I’m not strong enough, I don’t have the qualification.”
“No, the purity of your origin power has reached an extreme. Your future attainments will be far beyond our ancestral heroes. As a future monarch, you are qualified to have us follow you.”
“But right now, you can slap me to death,” Qianye made a humble remark.
“Impossible. I can defeat you, but that’s not going to be easy, either. My intuition tells me that I might not have the power to kill you.” At this point, Arkfaire looked absent-minded for a while. “The Thunderfrost Temple is my home ground, so it won’t be that easy for you to escape, that is unless you possess the power to shuttle through space. But I can even track down Demonic Traversal, why am I getting the feeling that I won’t be able to kill you?”
Arkfaire began to contemplate in earnest.
Qianye discovered that this fellow was actually quite simple in certain aspects. Afraid that he would actually test out his theory, Qianye said hurriedly, “It’s just intuition, no need to take things too seriously. Let’s get to business.”
Arkfaire woke up from his reverie. “I understand that you’re refusing my first suggestion. Then, let’s switch to a different model. My sister will join your fight and I’ll even send some of my clansmen. As repayment, you must also join us when we fight for our territory, and you must help us once when the Thunderfrost Temple is in danger.”
Qianye was surprised. “The terms are so… relaxed. What can I even do with my current strength?”
The Thunderfrost Temple had Arkfaire and Caroline, surrounded by a natural fortress. If there was an enemy even they couldn’t handle, it was useless even if Qianye were to step in.
However, Arkfaire said, “You’re a future monarch, a promise from you is incomparably valuable.”
Qianye felt a bit guilty at the thought of it. Arkfaire was like a customer who had fallen for beautiful packaging while he was the profiteering businessman. However, the terms were so good that Qianye had no reason to refuse. Besides, he was the one who had come to seek help.
The doors to the chamber opened up quietly. The duo looked back and saw Caroline walking in with a pale face.
“I’ll go with you,” said Caroline.
Arkfaire was astonished. “Sis, we don’t know what war they’re fighting…”
Caroline shook her head. “That’s not important.”
Qianye frowned. “I think I should explain it first.”
Arkfaire seconded the motion immediately.
Caroline tapped Qianye’s chest and said, “Whatever the battle is about, I’ll go wherever you go as long as you help us when we pioneer new land. Where’s your airship, let’s go.”
Arkfaire wanted to say something but stopped midway. In the end, he said, “Wait, I’ll send some people with you. You can ask them to handle the miscellaneous stuff.”
Caroline asked with a frown, “Is the battle in the neutral lands?”
“No.”
“Then it’s fine. Get them ready, Arkfaire, I want to leave right away.”
The young man smiled wryly. “You’re always so impatient. Fine, just wait a while.” Qianye didn’t see him do anything, but soon, the chamber doors opened once more and four tall men walked in. They stood in a row before the group, their skin so pale that there was even a hint of blue underneath.
Qianye looked up hesitantly at Arkfaire, but after some thought, he decided to take them onto the Martyr’s Palace.
Arkfaire led the group to the roof of the Thunderfrost Temple. “I can give you all a hand.”
He slowly raised his hand to summon a stream of warm air which swept the group upward. The breeze seemed gentle, but it was as firm as it was lasting and brought everyone out of the protective barrier before dispersing. Arkfaire had inadvertently revealed his peerless strength, one on par with Luo Bingfeng. Perhaps this was a kind of warning and hint.
Qianye began flying toward the hovering Martyr’s Palace. With a swing of her whip, Caroline rolled up the four attendants and dragged them along. These men couldn’t fly through the void on their own just yet.
Qianye couldn’t bring people along, but he was able to fly at great speeds. The four attendants couldn’t help but feel astonished at the sight of it.
The massive Martyr’s Palace slowly appeared in the void ahead of them. It was as big as a small mountain, assaulting everyone with a wave of stifling pressure.
As they approached the airship, the barely composed attendants found their mouths falling open.
Qianye flew in from the tail side, followed by Caroline and her subordinates. At this point, the walls of the Martyr’s Palace had been largely reconstructed, and only the tail area was left. The Earth Dragon’s tail was an extremely powerful weapon. Whoever wanted to enter through the tail would have to think twice.
Inside the palace, there were craftsmen and warriors from the Highbeard Tribe working alongside the technicians and cannoneers from the Ningyuan Group. There were also hundreds of people working on the installation and adjustment of new facilities. However, the hundreds of people would immediately disappear when spread throughout the airship.
Most of the construction work on the dragonship had been completed, and the vessel was finally starting to take shape.
Caroline followed Qianye to the residential area where they settled the four attendants in. Then, they ascended along the gangway and arrived at a higher level where the side cannons were installed.
Caroline was stunned when she arrived here. She walked over to an uninstalled cannon, running her hands over the glistening body and the thick ballista bolts. Moments later, she turned back and asked, “What grade are these?”
“Imperial cruiser main cannons.”
“Cruiser-grade…” Caroline rose one meter into the air and looked out. There were several other ballistae of the same grade in this wide chamber. There were smaller ones as well, but the difference wasn’t too big, and this was only one side of the airship.
After Caroline had observed her fill, Qianye brought her forward along the cannon chamber. Despite having installed a dozen or so cannons, the room still looked quite empty. The giant airship’s power would be unimaginable if all the cannon slots had been filled.
The duo finally arrived at the main cannon area. Caroline was stunned when she saw Landsinker, but she didn’t lose her composure entirely. She glanced deeply at the main cannon before heading up onto the Earth Dragon’s head.
The two stood side by side, looking out at the boundless void in front of them.
All they felt was a slight tremble as the Martyr’s Palace turned about and flew back to the Eastern Sea.
Caroline gazed into the distance. “Actually, Arkfaire isn’t related to me by blood.”
“I know, you’ve mentioned it once.”
“In every generation of our clan, siblings would be marked by talents and combat strength, not blood relationships. According to tradition, children of the same generation would be raised by the clan. That’s why we were never as close as real siblings. Arkfaire inherited frost origin power, while I inherited the power of lightning. As such, we became siblings according to tradition.”
This was a strange rule, but that didn’t come as too much of a surprise since they were even willing to shift their origin power attributes for survival.
“I told you before, right? I have a werewolf bloodline. Even though it’s quite thin, it’s still there. The reason for that…”
Caroline paused for a moment, hesitating whether or not she should continue.
Qianye said, “You don’t need to say it if it makes you unhappy.”
Caroline shook her head. “I’ve suppressed these things in my heart for too long. You’re qualified to listen right now.”
“Our clan branch was cursed by a great dark monarch when we were expelled. The power of the curse took root at the source of our bloodline, and we were unable to expel it for many generations. The neutral lands was an adverse place, but to our race, the effects were even stronger. That was why we decided to settle down on Thunderfrost Continent even though it was difficult.
“Everyone knew that was our only choice, and they had expected that things would be difficult… but life there was simply too bitter, so bitter that we wanted to give up on ourselves. The clan had experimented on interbreeding with other races so that we may live in the other parts of the neutral lands. We just wanted to escape this curse and the land of Thunderfrost. However, the experiment ended in failure and the result was that some clansmen no longer possessed pure bloodlines. I inherited one of those impure bloodlines.
“The mixed demonkin suffered inferior status compared to the pureblooded ones, it wouldn’t be too overboard to say we were no more than slaves. Even though I had revealed enough talent from a young age and was considered the hope of our next generation, I still can’t forget how my mixed-blood demonkin siblings were treated. That was why I decided to pick void lightning instead of frost power.”
“Is there a difference between the two?” Qianye inquired.
As he saw it, the purity of her lightning origin power wasn’t below that of frost. At the same cultivation rank, it was probably even a bit more powerful. In the Thunderfrost Temple, however, the status of frost origin power was evidently higher than lightning.
Caroline explained, “The quality of these two origin powers is comparable, but there’s a vast difference in quantity. The power of frost in the Thunderfrost Temple is virtually boundless, but only a small amount of lightning power would be condensed over a long period. Arkfaire and I picked our attributes only half a year apart, but he’s already at the level of a superior divine champion while I hover around the intermediate rank.”
Qianye understood at this point. Every step beyond the divine champion realm was extremely difficult. Even if there was enough lightning power to absorb, one could only hope of breaking through to the superior divine champion rank. Even Caroline herself couldn’t say for sure if she would take another step forward.
The girl sighed softly. “I wanted a territory of my own because I wanted to give those mixed-blooded clansmen a place to live and multiply. Their bloodlines are no longer pure, but they can adapt to more environments than the others. It’s… quite a helpless matter.”
Qianye only listened in silence. Humans were in a difficult phase in this realm, but they were a growing race with boundless room for development. The vampires had always been troubled by their slumbering River of Blood, but they still held a strong position in the Evernight Council and on the Sacred Mountain—they weren’t in a decline just yet.
The sorrow of a declining race, Qianye had seen a hint of that in William, but it never left as deep an impression as the Thunderfrost Temple. In this world filled with darkness, every race had the right to survive, even races outside of Evernight—this was something the daybreak and neutral factions had always said. It was rather encouraging and arduous, but only the humans had ever realized such an ideal.
Qianye didn’t know how to console Caroline, but he knew that empty words were meaningless.
Caroline’s spirits finally recovered. “After listening to the conversation between you and Arkfaire, however, I realized that this new territory should belong to all clansmen.”
Qianye said, “However you wish to use that territory, I’ll do my best to help you.”
Caroline glanced at Qianye. “Actually, it won’t be easy to pioneer new land even with our combined forces.”
Qianye nodded. “We must wait until I grow stronger. At the same time, we need more soldiers, an airship fleet, and the Empire’s nominal protection. We’ll need time to get all that, but you’ll get your territory eventually.”
Caroline said to Qianye, “I really wonder where you get all that confidence from? Maybe you still don’t know the trouble we’ll have to face.” Originating from the Thunderfrost Temple meant forfeiting all possibility of protection from the Evernight Council. The Great Qin Empire, on the other hand, would only become less reliable as it grows stronger. “The demonkin will launch an attack once they realize you’ve found a place to establish yourself, right?”
“Since you already know, why are you still so confident?” Caroline asked.
“Of course, I’m confident, I’ve been fighting the dark races all my life. Why would I fear the demonkin?”
Caroline nodded. “That almost sounds reasonable.”
Survival in the neutral lands had to be fought for. Origin power was nowhere near as important as absolute power. In truth, Qianye could divide a piece of land on the Northern Continent and fulfill his promise of giving them a place to settle. The environment there was mild enough for Caroline and her people to live.
However, the Northern Continent was too valuable. Qianye didn’t want to bring it up unless absolutely necessary. With so little resource-rich land left to be developed, the discovery of the Northern Continent would surely lead to war. Qianye didn’t want outsiders to know about the place until he had the power to protect it himself.
The Martyr’s Palace flew so steadily that one could hardly feel it moving. The inherent power of a void colossus allowed it to move like fish in water.
Caroline remained silent as she experienced the feeling of gliding through the void. At this point, she felt as though she was one with the Earth Dragon, and every minute of that comprehension was a rare opportunity.
Just as Caroline was fully immersed in the sensation, she noticed Qianye standing calmly. He looked neither tense nor deliberate as his body resonated with every movement of the Earth-Dragon. Shaken, Caroline said, “You can communicate with this giant airship?”
