Jin was unsure if he should feel relieved about the State Agent’s ignorance on the matter, but he decided to play along to learn the extent of how much Kong Rong actually knew. Perhaps, he might not know of the existence of the System at all, and that itself would be a great relief for Jin.
“I did not expect the Royal Zodiacs or even the Ministry of State Security to even know- hmm no, you surely know of our existence. More like wasting resources and allocating manpower to track our existence, if what Kraft said is true about you. We are basically dead in your eyes since we have no strength nor power to fight you guys. Why do you bother to look us -erm me up?” Jin queried even though he initially wanted to play dumb.
Yet, knowing Kong Rong, it was useless to do so and might actually be counterproductive. Thus, Jin decided to acknowledge the fact that he was indeed part of the rumoured Royal Panda Clan.
“Hah! You useless? Have you forgotten you have single handedly brought down an aberration of horror that no one actually knew how to kill aside from Senior Demon Exorcists Instructor Yuan? And in retrospective, even our records were proven to be useless otherwise.” Kong Rong retorted.
“You do know that those records had been edited by the Banned Emperor faction, right?” Kraft asked as a casual question.
“Well, yes and no. We did not know of their meddling until this particular incident happened especially after Instructor Yuan vouched that those reports had been edited by showing us her own copy which she had kept. Since then, we had started to trace these moles, especially in the defence sector, and we are in the works to do a massive raid in each and every department, including other sectors.” Kong Rong responded cautiously.
“Still, the Royal Panda Clan has always been an elusive group of members, one that I could not help but wonder why history had not acknowledged them. No matter which library or database I look upon, there were traces of information erased about them. The only place where I could find evidence of this clan was the Royal Zodiac Archives. But more importantly, I wanted to learn why my grandmother constantly considered them traitors when everyone had forgotten about them. Most if not everyone I know, do not recognise the existence of such a clan. They all believed it was just folklore similar to how those Banned Emperor terrorists got their name from it.” Kong Rong stated his reason for being here to learn more about the Royal Panda Clan.
“Your grandmother?” Jin asked with curiosity as he bent over the island bar and picked up the whiskey left by the Panda Bartender to refill Kong Rong’s bottle. Kong Rong thanked him as this time, he decided to drink the shot without adding any of his wife’s oolong tea.
“Indeed, I am the grandson of the Lead Royal Zodiac Archivist. She’s the only one in the country, heck maybe in the whole world that has the power to tap into the Dragon Ley lines.” Kong Rong revealed, but Jin merely gave him a blank look when he heard about the dragon ley lines.
Kraft decided to step in so he could fill in some knowledge for his master and at the same time flaunted his expertise in front of Kong Rong. “It isn’t too surprising that a modern person like you would not have any ideas about them unless you studied the occult or cared much about ancient history. The concept of these Dragon Ley lines stems from the belief that the Earth is a giant living organism and would have something resembling the chi and mana circuits in one’s body. The Dragon Ley lines are the most prominent for humans to obverse and thus taken advantage of.”
“According to rumours, they are currently dormant since many cultivators of old travelled far and wide to find these Ley lines. There are records of those cultivators stating how they were blessed by the Heavens… a nice way to refer to exploiting them for their own purposes. Absorbing the Earth’s spiritual energy allowed them to jump cultivation grades. Of course, those were mainly rumours since I believe those people who jumped grade just needed that extra push from their current state. But still, there were many who tried finding them for the sake of power, but only very few succeeded.” Kraft explained as he felt peckish and stole another chicken wing since the Panda Bartender was not there to stop him. Jin shook his head and actually revealed another plate that the Panda Bartender had been hiding it when he took the whiskey bottle out.
With his mouth filled with tender, juicy meat, Kraft added that the ultimate price of this treasure hunt was actually Dragon Ley lines crossing each other, which are called Dragon Ley Nodes. In those places, the power spirals so intensely that it becomes a massive vortex of spiritual energy. This was not discovered only by the cultivators but mages too. One such place is in Old England where at least twelve Dragon Ley lines intersected before diverging into the core of the Earth.
That was one of the reasons why the Stonehenge was erected to contain its power after a mage stumbled upon the excessive spiritual energy which spilt out as a method for Earth to stabilise itself. Those monolithic stones have been put up not only to hold the spiritual power but also as a method to transfer said spiritual energy into a person.
Stonehenge has basically become the coveted prize for most mages to attain possible perfection. To avoid such a power falling into the wrong hands, the government protects it so fiercely since its inception. But to everyone’s surprise, even the founding mage did not attain a perfect Grade 20 in their supposed magic levels.
Some even thought that the only Grade 20 Cultivator, Guan Yu, had found one, if not more of these Dragon Ley Nodes that allowed him to reach his godly attainment. Some even deduced that he had walked and visited every possible Ley Node in the world and even discovered some hidden Ley Nodes underground that enabled him to hit that Grade 20.
However, as modernisation set in, so did the disappearance of these Dragon Ley lines. This was mainly because when Guan Yu changed the laws of nature, more people were able to fight against the domain monsters usually lurking around the Ley lines. The laws of nature might have changed, but humanity’s greedy nature has not. Many exploited the Ley lines to the point that various governments had to step in because of the unexpected consequences of taking in this spiritual energy too frequently.
Earth was supposed to release spiritual energy periodically to stabilise oneself, but the constant exploitation caused spiritual energy to be sucked out of Earth itself instead of naturally releasing excess energy.
This inadvertently created natural disasters of massive scale due to the imbalance in the spiritual energy which the researchers at the time were unable to explain as anything but Heaven’s Wrath.
Ironically, the one to propose the theory that by extracting spiritual energy from the surface Dragon Ley lines, it interrupted the entire meridian system within Earth, causing the imbalance of spiritual energy to certain parts of the world and thus these natural disasters, had been branded a heretic.
“Most attributed it to the change in the laws of nature. It must have been convenient to just pin the blame on someone else. In the end, only decades later did a joint team of mages and cultivators manage to find the reason why all these were happening, led by one of the successors of that ‘heretic’s’ idea. They were the first to become known as China’s Royal Zodiac Archivists.” Kraft munched happily on his chicken wings as he showed a peace sign towards Kong Rong.
“As expected from a person of your sinister calibre.” Kong Rong sighed after listening to the explanations from Kraft. Surprisingly he learnt quite a few things that he had not been taught by his grandmother— especially the natural disasters portion.
The State Agent tried again to use his chi enhanced senses to check if Kraft was lying, but there was no scent of lies, no unusual panic aversion of his eyes and the body language was too relaxed. If Kraft was a con artist, he was extremely good at his job.
“Tsk, so much having your grandmother being the ‘archive’ and protector of history,” Kraft noted sarcastically while grabbing the whiskey bottle and pouring himself a drink. Jin knew this thousand year fox could not be beaten if you compete him with history lessons.
At the same time, all those explanations caused Jin to wonder about the state of the Farming World’s condition. From Kraft’s impromptu history lesson, Litoride, the precious miracle ore responsible for the rats’ Steampunk technology, sounded quite similar to the concept of Dragon Ley lines.
“Could it be, that they are digging so many caves and hideouts under the ground because…” Jin considered the possibility that the underground network of the Demon Rats might be far more dangerous than anticipated. It might actually be because they were digging deeper for a better quality Litoride…
Or maybe something more sinister.
