The Demon King did not ask further. He shot out a beam of black energy which condensed into a revolving dark ball above Nighteye’s head. Drops of strong darkness origin power dripped down onto Nighteye’s body, each drop causing her to tremble slightly. Soon afterward, a wisp of daybreak origin power seeped out of her body and dispersed.
The two dukes couldn’t help but feel envious from afar. Every drop of darkness origin power was at the apex of purity, almost an incarnation of the darkness origins itself. If they could obtain just one drop of it, they would gain a new level of comprehension and break through their current bottleneck.
The sphere of darkness faded away after producing seven continuous drops of darkness origin power. The Demon King looked somewhat exhausted as well. It would seem that the bestowment wasn’t easy.
“That’s all I can do for now. Also, I’ll push back the opening of the second door by one month, I hope you can recover by then.”
Nighteye replied, “One month is enough, I don’t need any longer.”
“I hope so. It’s best you clear away the things that might put you in danger during this period. Although this is just a projection, it does take a fair bit of effort for me to come here.”
“I will consider it.” Nighteye’s voice was cold.
The Demon King didn’t force the issue, either, and only reminded, “Don’t forget what you promised.”
“Of course.”
The boundless darkness dispersed, and the suppressive might faded away. The two dukes were drenched in sweat, almost as though they had just escaped death.
The Demon King was one who had climbed his way up from humble beginnings, the most humble and moderate of the lot. Yet the two dukes had no wish to experience again the feeling of having their life and death in another’s hand.
One of the dukes arrived near Nighteye and said, “Your Majesty, is there anything we can help with?”
“Not yet for now, but the soldiers here can’t hold on for much longer. They need treatment.”
“Yes, I’ll see to it immediately.” After responding thus, the duke couldn’t resist saying, “Your Majesty, the Demon King’s words have deep meaning. If you have attachments to the human race, you should cut them off as soon as you can.”
Nighteye said coldly, “When was it your turn to criticize me?”
The duke wasn’t angry. “We have a duty to protect you, but we really are helpless if something like that happens again. The opening of the new world is extremely important, and we’re stuck at the second gate. Sigh, even if I don’t say it, you know that the council will voice their displeasure.”
Nighteye said coldly, “Whoever is dissatisfied can come find me!”
The other duke who was listening quietly all along stepped in to dissuade her. “Your Majesty is of course not afraid of them, and they can’t do anything to you, either. What the Demon King said just now isn’t a secret anymore and many people suspect that as well. Those old fogeys have been waiting for over a thousand years. Now that their lives are nearing the end, they’re willing to do all sorts of crazy things. I heard they plan to take action and cut off your relationships from the human side.”
A cold glint appeared in Nighteye’s pupils. “What connections do I have there? And how do they plan to cut them?”
The duke said tactfully, “That I have no idea, but since the humans managed to find you here, those people can probably do the same with their human targets. I think they have ample reason to take action after what happened today.”
The killing intent in Nighteye’s gaze slowly faded away, but the feeling of danger coming off of her increased. She said word-by-word, “Then tell those old fogeys, I’m not one to be threatened! If they think they’ve lived too long, I can help them move along.”
The duke sighed. “Your Majesty, there’s no meaning in this. It’s not like they’re hell-bent on targeting you. On the contrary, we really think you should consider the Demon King’s suggestion. The humans are simply too treacherous. This isn’t the first time they’ve tried to kill you, and they don’t have any qualms about their method, either. Even the Pointer Monarch is taking action. You might’ve escaped this time, but what about the next time?”
Nighteye revealed no expression and only responded with a “fair enough”.
The two dukes exchanged glances. Realizing that this was the end of the conversation, they left to treat the injured. Numerous elite vampire warriors lay scattered across the ruins of Castle Ducasse—none of them could get up, and some of the titled experts were on their last breath.
The Pointer Monarch’s sudden explosion of power wasn’t something these vampires could withstand, and the Demon King’s subsequent appearance put great pressure on them again. The supreme cared little about the fate of these vampires, nor would he restrain his domain just to avoid hurting them. His only concern was Nighteye’s injury.
Nighteye moved into the underground since her room was now destroyed. There was a giant coffin slowly rotating at the center of the large hall.
This coffin was soaked in a blood pond, calm and emitting a faint fragrance. The iron-coffin blood pond of Castle Ducasse was quite famous as it was the key support for the castle’s expert fighting force back in the day. The first thing the founding ancestor did after occupying the castle was to destroy the blood pond. The vampires had to spend a great deal to reconstruct it after taking back the castle.
After entering the hall, Nighteye said to the two viscounts behind her, “You may leave, wake me up after three days.”
“Yes, Your Majesty!”
The heavy doors of the underground palace closed behind Nighteye. She slowly took off her armor and looked down at her flawless body. The wound around her abdomen had miraculously healed, but the flesh around the wound was almost translucent. Some of the newly regenerated muscles were only the size of a finger, still a long ways from their normal bulk. And that was just the muscles—the organs hadn’t had enough time to regenerate at all.
Some faintly discernible embers still lingered on Nighteye’s skin, and that slight frown of hers proved that they were quite painful. These remnant daybreak flames were like stubborn bone-eating maggots; even the Demon King couldn’t clear them away completely.
The flame latched itself onto Nighteye’s finger as she pressed on it, burning constantly in an attempt to devour her flesh, blood, and origin power.
She placed the finger before her eyes and watched the leaping sparks. Moments later, she said self-deprecatingly, “They really put a lot into this. Do you people really want me dead so badly? Haha, I don’t think I’ve provoked you before.”
Judging from how difficult this daybreak origin fire was, one could easily imagine that it was no ordinary method. Adding a curse-like effect to the fire not only required rare materials but also Nighteye’s own spirit fragments. Back when she had fallen into the military’s hands, Li Fengshui had used the Chaos Millstone to torture her and likely collected her spirit fragments in the process.
With Nighteye’s current awakening, the value of those old spirit fragments had increased exponentially. The Empire was actually willing to use some of them, along with top-quality origin crystals, to add this curse attribute to the attack. They were truly intent on succeeding.
But what enmity would make them go so far? She wasn’t the only target if they wanted to stop the opening of the new world, nor was she the easiest to deal with. Was her past fetters the only reason? Was it because of those sentiments deep inside her heart, that bit of goodwill and trust toward humans? Was that what made her the easiest target?
Nighteye exhaled a wisp of blood energy and extinguished the flame on her finger. The embers on her abdomen were too fierce to extinguish on her own. It would take three days and three nights in the iron-coffin blood pond to completely extinguish them.
The Pointer Monarch’s attack was abnormally well-prepared. He might not have expected her to be strong enough to block the attack, but he didn’t forget to prepare for accidents, either.
This kind of lingering daybreak origin fire could burn her flesh in a short while and destroy her completely. They had dispatched one of her surviving clan members as an assassin in order to lower her guard and fall into the trap easily. This also made it impossible for the two duke bodyguards to react in time.
Perhaps the Pointer Monarch’s only mistake was not accounting for the Demon King’s quick appearance. The supreme’s projection had arrived almost immediately after the attack.
It was unknown where the Demon King’s main body was, but he was most likely in the demonkin territory. Traversing the vast distance to send a projection into vampire territory wasn’t easy for him. That one month of rest he mentioned wasn’t just for Nighteye; it was for himself as well.
Nighteye opened the coffin and slowly lay down inside it. A sigh seemingly echoed through the chamber as the blood covered her face.
Qin Continent, Imperial Capital.
Within a quiet courtyard in the suburbs, an old man was fishing near a stream. The long line was floating in the steady current as the mottled afternoon sunlight shone through the leaves and onto the stream. Several small fish swam about in the waters, occasionally touching the bait but never biting on it.
The old man seemed half-asleep, his eyes narrowed and seemingly drifting through the mountains and rivers. “Snap!” The fishing line broke all of a sudden, and a wisp of dark energy curled up toward the fisher.
Only then did the old man open his eyes. A plume of fire flickered on the fishing rod, engulfing the darkness and burning it constantly. The fire was powerful, but the dark energy was exceptionally resilient as well. It took a fair bit of time before it was completely dispersed.
This time, the old man finally straightened his back and muttered to himself, “He came personally. Could that person be even more important than I thought?”
“Did you get any fish today?”
The old man replied without looking back, “What are you doing here without handling things in court? There are so many important things in the world that can’t be abandoned just yet.”
The man standing behind the old man was the Radiant Emperor. The man was clad in plain clothing and his aura was contained, almost like an ordinary farmer. One would be hard-pressed to see that he was the Emperor of the Great Qin Empire. He stood there casually, unbothered by the fact that the old man gave him a lecture and didn’t even glance at him.
