Upon hearing Xia Ji’s words, Xia Yi felt horrified. “This junior understands what he did wrong. This junior truly did not know that the child was cultivating the Nine Clones Secret Technique.”
Xia Ji turned back around to stare at Xia Yi. “You don’t even know what methods your son is training in? It’s absurd for you to be a father. Whether as a father or as the patriarch, you are unqualified.”
Xia Yi shuddered and quickly kneeled down. “I ask ancestor to give me a chance. This junior will never repeat such a mistake again.”
Xia Ji shook his head and stared out into space. “That Xia Luo is not bad. Jiuyou had a flawed heart, but this Xia Luo’s character actually makes up for that flaw. Also, he has a good relationship with that Lu Yin, so he won’t be alone when fighting for opportunities in that place.”
Xia Yi lowered his head and figured out what had happened. When Xia Meng had taken Jiuyou away, the ancestor must have known about it but had not intervened. He had preferred for Jiuyou to be absorbed by Xia Luo.
In the eyes of the ancestor, there was no difference between Xia Jiuyou and Xia Luo. Both of them were inheritors of the Xia family, and Xia Luo was far more suitable for the role than Xia Jiuyou.
“Get up. For the time being, even if you do relinquish your position as patriarch, there is no one who can replace you. It’s a pity that the Xia family has degraded from one generation to the next. Once I die, the Xia family won’t even be able to retain its position as the leader of the Seven Courts,” Xia Ji said.
Xia Yi let out a sigh of relief and stood up. “Ancestor, there are too many geniuses within the next generation. The Tri-Yang Technique has appeared, and it is able to summon both Progenitor Chen and Progenitor Hui. There’s also the Sixth Mainland, as well as the Astral Beast Domain. Also, there’s that child whose power I can’t even understand, Lu Yin. Even though the Nine Clones Secret Technique is impressive, how would ancestor have done things differently?”
Xia Ji indifferently commented, “If you had known from the beginning that the child was cultivating the Nine Clones Secret Technique, you could have helped him. You could have asked some of your old friends to train individual clones, and then once they merged together, his strength would have utterly transformed. Now-” Xia Ji felt helpless even by thinking about it. “We’ll discuss this later.”
After he finished speaking, the last battle of ZENITH appeared in Xia Ji’s mind, as well as Lu Yin’s strange transformation. The Xia ancestor felt as if he had heard of a similar transformation before, but where?
At this moment, Xia Yi’s gadget beeped and alerted him to a notification. He looked down, surprised; was it Jiuyou? No, it should be Xia Luo.
Xia Ji also saw the call, but he remained silent.
Xia Yi answered the call, asking, “What’s the matter?”
Xia Luo’s voice came through from the other end, “I need to trouble my father to have Nan Yuan return the billion star essence that’s currently stored in the Mavis Bank to Lu Yin.”
“A billion?” Xia Yi’s brows shot up. This was an amount that even he, the patriarch of the Seven Courts’ Xia family, could not ignore: a billion star essence.
“This is something that this child promised Lu Yin as thanks for his assistance, and I cannot break my promise.” Xia Luo’s voice was soft, but there was no hint of worry that Xia Yi would refuse the request.
After merging with Xia Jiuyou, even if Xia Luo had become the dominant personality, he was still subconsciously influenced by Xia Jiuyou’s thoughts and memories. Xia Luo was also Xia Jiuyou. Thus, Xia Jiuyou had not truly disappeared, and there was a very strong impression of Xia Yi left in Xia Luo’s mind.
At this moment, Xia Yi would never refuse any of Xia Luo’s requests because he was currently the Xia family’s only direct descendant.
Xia Yi would not be willing to antagonize Xia Luo for a billion star essence.
Xia Luo’s instinct proved right. A billion star essence was indeed a large amount, but it was not enough to push Xia Yi to disagree with Xia Luo. He did not want to see Xia Luo become a second Xia Jiuyou. “Very well, I understand. I will tell Nan Yuan.”
“Thank you, Father.” Xia Luo smiled and ended the call.
Far away, Xia Meng was feeling very uncomfortable. She felt extreme disgust towards Lu Yin. He had defeated Xia Jiuyou during ZENITH and had also caused Xia Jiuyou to disappear. Although Xia Luo was the actual mastermind behind everything and was right in front of her, who had allowed Xia Luo to succeed? Xia Meng had already transferred all of her anger onto Lu Yin and then doubled it.
It was unfortunate that there was no way to move against Lu Yin, as if there were, Xia Meng definitely would have already taken action. Even if she did not kill him, she would definitely teach him a lesson.
“Stay away from that Lu Yin in the future. With only a glance, I already know that he’s no good. It’s a waste of time to be a cultivator and yet not focus on cultivating. Instead, he focuses on schemes and tricks and even rose up to become the master of the Outerverse. That’s the kind of person who will bring disaster onto himself sooner or later,” Xia Meng spoke in a cold tone.
Xia Luo smiled. “I understand, Auntie Meng.”
Every time Xia Luo spoke to her in this manner, Xia Meng’s heart would helplessly soften, and her eyes would fill with adoration. It was as if she was looking at the young Xia Jiuyou again.
Lu Yin also left Astral-10. Before leaving, he left a million star essence with Old Cai. This was no longer an exorbitant amount in Lu Yin’s eyes, and Astral-10 had once been so broke that they had had to rely on sponsors just to own spacecrafts.
Old Cai was quite satisfied.
As soon as he left Astral-10, Lu Yin received an invitation from the Wen family, asking him to visit and speak with them.
He turned down the invitation, as there was no need for him to visit the Wen family at this moment—Lu Yin had other priorities.
His ship shot towards Blazing Mist Flowzone.
One day later, he heard a notification from his gadget. It was a message informing him that he had received a guarantee from Nan Yuan that he would transfer a billion star essence to him through the Mavis Bank.
Lu Yin was ecstatic. A billion? Wasn’t it supposed to be 900 million? Lu Yin had told Xia Luo that he was owed 900 million star essence, so he had not expected to be given a full one billion. Xia Luo was too generous.
An endless amount of money might not be very useful to others, but for Lu Yin, it was an immediate shortcut that he could use to improve his strength.
As soon as he received the message, Lu Yin directed his ship to the nearest Mavis Bank. Just in case, he intended to immediately withdraw the money.
It would be unrealistic to withdraw one billion star essence from a single branch of the Mavis Bank. Even if the Mavis Bank was incredibly wealthy, it was impossible for all its branches to have so much star essence. Forget one branch, even ten combined would not have that much.
Lu Yin was left with no choice but to slowly withdraw his funds from one branch at a time. In the end, he withdrew the final bit of his billion star essence from the thirteenth branch that he visited. After that, he arrived at Blazing Mist Flowzone.
Lu Yin rubbed his cosmic ring. At the moment, his liquid assets amounted to 1.712 billion star essence; what a terrible number! Right now, Lu Yin did not merely stand on the same level as other wealthy individuals as he held an amount of wealth that even the masters of the eight great flowzones would have trouble putting together.
If there was a list of the most wealthy, then Lu Yin felt that he would likely be on it.
After getting so much money, it was time for Lu Yin to upgrade his items.
Back in the Blaze Realm, Lu Yin ignored everything and immediately went into seclusion.
In the Outerverse, in Shenwu Continent’s imperial palace, there were two groups of people facing off against each other. One was composed of natives from Shenwu Continent who were protecting the imperial palace while the other group was composed of people from the Great Yu Empire who had been stationed on Shenwu Continent. Things were turning ugly.
“I’ll tell you again—get out of our way! We must see the empress today!” a woman shouted. She was a Hunter, and her power caused the palace to start crumbling.
Across from her, the faces of the people from Shenwu Continent grew pale. None of them were Martial Gods and were thus unable to compare to this woman. If not for the face that the woman was giving to the empress by not forcing matters, there was no way that they would have been able to block her path.
Bei Hong walked up to the palace, looked at the Hunter, and then looked back at the imperial palace. “Get out of the way. The empress hasn’t shown herself for a long time, and if this continues, then no one will be able to control the situation.”
Upon hearing this, the palace guards helplessly stepped back.
The Hunter rushed to the imperial study, but she found no traces of Ming Yan. All she found was a trembling maid.
The Hunter’s face went pale. It was over, the empress was not there. How had she gotten out? Unless one was an Explorer and had a Hunter open a path for them, there was no way to leave Shenwu Continent.
This was the main reason why the Hunter had never been concerned about Ming Yan not showing herself, but the worst possible situation had occurred.
Bei Hong also had not expected for Ming Yan to leave Shenwu Continent.
The Hunter stared at Bei Hong. “If His Highness finds out about this, we will all die.”
Bei Hong solemnly replied, “I know, which is why I can’t tell His Highness. Send someone to get in touch with the space station outside right now to see if the empress was picked up. If not, it means that she must not have left Shenwu Continent. We need to figure this out right away.”
The Hunter nodded. She had started to panic, so she could only listen to Bei Hong.
Bei Hong’s heart kept sinking further and further. He thought of Ming Zhaoshu’s death and how Ming Yan had been held hostage at that time, which had led to her being poisoned and almost dying. Were any of the people related to that incident still alive? Could they have taken action against Ming Yan? That would be bad.
They would not be able to keep this matter hidden for long.
In the Blaze Realm, in Lu Yin’s secluded room, he raised a hand, and his die appeared, slowly rotating. He tapped it and rolled six pips: Possession.
There was no limit to how much star essence could be consumed with Possession, so as soon as Lu Yin appeared in the strange space with the orbs of light, he instinctively searched for the brightest light and immediately merged with it.
As the scenery changed before his eyes, he appeared in the middle of a battlefield in outer space. Pain racked his body, and Lu Yin looked down to see that his body had already been hacked to pieces. There was a figure in front of him with a pair of scarlet eyes that had slitted pupils. They were cold, ruthless eyes devoid of all life. The figure reached out with a hand to grab at Lu Yin.
He reflexively wanted to use the Ce Secret Art to evade, but this was not his body, so he could not use such a revealing technique. The attacker’s hand stabbed into Lu Yin’s neck, and blood dripped down the back of his hand and off the fingertips. The blood quickly formed a stream.
Lu Yin had not expected to Possess an Enlighter with a power level of more than 300,000 only to immediately die. There were too many other dead bodies floating around in outer space, and the entire area was painted red.
His eyes went dark, and Lu Yin’s consciousness returned to his own body. His eyes snapped open, his pupils mere pinpricks. He had just died.
Once again, he had experienced the sensation of dying. It was a feeling that everyone could only experience once, but Lu Yin had experienced it multiple times.
Suddenly, the black and white mist in his heart throbbed. It then slowly churned, as if pulling at something, before actually growing slightly.
During the last fight of ZENITH, Lu Yin had used the power of this black and white mist to transform. After that fight, the dual-colored mist had become much thinner, being reduced to around half of what it had originally been. Lu Yin felt that if he transformed once more, the black and white mist might disappear entirely.
Lu Yin had been worrying about this power disappearing, and he had wanted to find some place that naturally had death energy, but how could such a place be easy to find? He had never thought that this mist could be replenished by experiencing death himself. Even though it had only been a small amount, he had learned something very useful: it was not entirely necessary to absorb only dead energy.
Lu Yin did not know if he should be happy or depressed, as experiencing death was a horrible sensation. He had only deliberately killed himself during a Possession when confronting Ling Que as a last resort while this most recent death had been due to him failing to react in time. Even just the idea of purposely experiencing death was enough to cause him to panic slightly.
However, there was no other way. If Lu Yin wanted to keep the power of his death energy transformation, then this was just what he had to do.
