“The thirteen sacred stars? In a faraway world? Sense them with your heart?” Qianye didn’t know what to say. He said after a while, “What do the sacred stars look like?”
“Each tribe can sense a different star. Our tribe’s sacred star is like this…” He drew it out on the ground.
The diagram was crudely drawn, but it was definitely a flower—the flower of dread, the datura.
The datura was the Monroe clan’s insignia, the source of Qianye and Nighteye’s bloodline. This young warrior here could also sense the datura as his sacred star, and this star was also ranked second in the list. This could not be a coincidence.
Qianye picked the man up and looked into his deep red eyes. With a light tap, he sent a sanguine thread into his body and dragged out a drop of blood.
Qianye closed both eyes as he sensed the taste of that blood. After a while, he said, “What’s your name?”
“Su… Shi.”
“This name…”
“What’s wrong?”
Qianye shook his head. “Nothing. Why would you pick this name?”
Su Shi looked puzzled. “My father gave me this name. Is something wrong?”
“I’m just asking why it’s in that style?”
“The Attawa race has always named ourselves like this. Is that a problem?”
Of course, there was a problem. Su Shi was a typical Imperial name, while Attawa was an Evernight name. These two styles mixed together simply felt awkward.
“Where do you usually live? How do you live?”
“Our second sacred star tribe lives at the peak of the black mountain, the others are scattered in different places.” Su Shi puffed his c.h.e.s.t out. “The black mountain is the holy mountain of the Attawa, and our tribe is its guardian.”
“Your tribe is the guardian tribe? What about the first sacred star tribe?”
“You mean the Perth tribe? They’re the weakest. They live in the northern icy plains, a big territory with nothing but ice and snow beasts. They have to wait until the warm season to break through the ice and hunt sea beasts.”
“How is this possible?” Qianye was surprised.
“Why are they weak?” Qianye asked.
Since even the names were the same, Qianye could confirm that the Attawa race of the inner world and the vampires of the Evernight world were related.
That being the case, it was rather unbelievable that the Perth tribe was so weak. The Perth bloodline was the immovable number one in the Evernight world. The descendants might be weak, but the Queen of the Night’s presence was something that couldn’t be ignored.
There was little reference left regarding her peak state prowess, but even in the current era where she needed to spend most of her time in hibernation, she could still suppress the entire realm when she woke up. Even an ambitious character like the Demon King had to wait until she was asleep in order to put his plans into action. Even then, he had to take ample precautions not to alert her.
Qianye had found the Monroe clan’s taste in Su Shi’s blood just now. Although it was rather faint and distorted by the origin power environment of the inner world, the hint of Monroe aura in the deepest parts of the blood was unmistakable.
Since there was Monroe and Perth, others like the Sperger clan had to exist as well. Why was the Perth clan’s bloodline so weak, though?
Qianye asked in greater detail, but Su Shi could no longer answer. After a while, Qianye had no choice but to give up on this topic and move to the local geography.
At the mention of this, Su Shi’s eyes lit up. “As the guardians of the holy mountain, our Monroe territory is naturally the most bountiful of them all. With the holy mountain as the center, our land stretches thirty rundays to the north, twenty-eight to the south, twenty-five to the east…”
“What’s a runday?”
“What standard is a rank one warrior?”
“I am a rank one warrior.” Su Shi puffed his c.h.e.s.t out.
Qianye had ventured a guess, but he was still surprised. Su Shi was at the marquis level in overall strength, but his speed wasn’t slower than an Evernight Duke.
This meant that the Monroe tribe’s territory alone stretched over fifty rundays from north to south, bigger than a continent in the Evernight world. It would seem that this inner world was incomparably vast.
“What other places exist outside of your territory?” Qianye was curious.
“There are of course other tribal territories outside of ours.”
“What about beyond those territories?”
“That I don’t know. I heard the Sperger tribe’s lands are the furthest away, and all they can see beyond their land is a boundless ocean of trees. They expanded continuously into the woods and gave up the newly pioneered territory to stronger tribes.”
“What lies beyond the sea of trees?”
The tremendous size of the inner world was unimaginable. After some thought, another question emerged in Qianye’s mind. “How many people make up the Monroe tribe?”
“We have an entire ten thousand tribe members! The other tribes only have about seven thousand!”
Qianye was surprised yet again. This number was too small, almost unbelievably so. Considering how vast the Monroe tribe’s lands were, it wouldn’t be a surprise even if Su Shi had said there were a billion of them.
Qianye said with a frown, “Why are there so few of you? Why are there only ten thousand people on such a vast land?”
Su Shi was shocked. “How is that few? Our tribe is the biggest, and our warriors are the strongest of them all. The other tribes cannot match us in numbers and in bravery.”
Realizing that he wouldn’t get any more information in this manner, Qianye switched to other topics like their lifespans, marriage customs, reproduction cycles, etc. After a good while of questioning, he finally understood more about this world.
Just like the vampires, the Attawa were long-lived races—even more so than the vampires. Su Shi had just reached a.d.u.l.thood in the tribe, but he was over five hundred years old in terms of the Evernight time system. Every Attawa would live between three to five thousand years, and the oldest was reportedly six millennia old.
Such long lifespans meant long reproduction cycles and thus smaller populations. An Attawa couple would produce at most six to seven generations of progeny during their lifespan. Childhood alone took up over two hundred years.
The Attawa could be considered the ancient vampires of the inner world. They were individually strong, but their technology and culture were still at a primitive level. The werewolves' ancestral faction still adopted the primitive tribal system, but that was only the system. Their technology and knowledge were no different from the other dark races.
Qianye had nothing more to ask the man, but the questioning just now had left Qianye with a deep intrigue for the Attawa tribes.
He could basically ascertain that the sacred stars sensed by the Attawa were the clan insignias within the River of Blood.
The River of Blood was an incomparably mysterious entity in the void. It wasn’t a surprise that other races could sense its existence and draw upon its powers, but why were the tribe names identical?
Qianye had obtained the river’s favor more than once, as well as its inheritance and knowledge. However, there was nothing in that knowledge related to the clan names. Even if the knowledge Qianye had obtained was incomplete, it wasn’t as though the twelve clans hadn’t changed their names before. Why were even the changed names identical?
That being said, there was no answer to this question no matter how he questioned this man. After some thought, Qianye decided to let Su Shi go if only out of consideration for his Monroe bloodline. It could be considered fate that had brought them together.
Su Shi seemed rather surprised at his sudden freedom. He stood there in a daze, saying, “Are you really going to let me go?”
“Unless you want me to kill you? Go.”
Su Shi reached a hand out toward Qianye. “Can you… hold my hand?”
Qianye was a bit puzzled, but he wasn’t afraid of any sneak attacks, so he gave the man his hand.
In truth, the Attawa were rather similar to the vampires if one could look past the bodies that had been affected by the environment.
Qianye felt a strange perception sweep over his body when he touched Su Shi’s hand. It felt as though some of his secrets had been seen through.
“What are you doing?!” Qianye roared. Applying greater force to his hands, he pulled the man over and pressed him to the ground. A couple of shakes left Su Shi limp, almost as though his skeleton had been entirely disjointed.
“I don’t have any malicious intentions, I just wanted to confirm if you’re one of our brothers from a different world.”
Qianye raised his brows. “You know?”
Su Shi nodded. “There are countless other worlds outside of our own. Every one of them is blessed by the thirteen sacred stars, only to different degrees.”
Qianye was surprised because this knowledge wasn’t something a primitive civilization could grasp. It would seem that this Attawa tribe was even more mysterious than he had imagined.
Su Shi stepped back slowly as Qianye loosened his grip. “I’ll be heading back now. I will inform my tribe that you guys are our brethren from a different world. Please don’t attack our tribesmen when you see them in the future.”
“Very well.”
Su Shi gazed deeply at Qianye. “We will meet again.” With that, he jumped up and left the cave at lightning speed, vanishing into the night.
