Chapter 428: Enigma (1/2)

Chapter 428: Enigma [V5C135 – A Distance Within Reach]

The wild wolf slowed down its pace dozens of meters away from Qianye’s shelter and let out a series of low growls as though it were hesitating. However, the normal azure of the wolf’s eye was currently suffused with a layer of dark red, and its aura was also much more violent—apparently, it had been affected by the Iron Curtain.

The feral wolf pounced violently toward Qianye, unable to endure its hunger and thirst for blood.

A sudden change occurred at this point. Tens of negligibly thin bloody threads suddenly shot out from Qianye’s body and pierced through the wolf. The bloody threads withdrew immediately after they were shot out, but only one of them carried a red color on its end. Apparently, this feral wolf was already quite short on vitality.

The wolf fell to the ground with a plop, never to move again.

Soon, dozens of vicious beast bodies lay around Qianye in an odd circular shape. The remains of snakes, scorpions, and insects, on the other hand, were innumerable. On this grassy piece of land, there was no creature with life around Qianye.

Qianye finally moved after an unknown length of time and slowly opened his eyes.

He stared blankly at the small patch of grey sky visible through the branches as his senses flowed toward every direction like flowing water. In that short moment, he had already taken in the entire scenery within a hundred meters.

Qianye’s eyes became suffused with a ripple blue color that was even deeper than before. When True Sight was really opened, the world in his eyes changed once again and switched to an origin power aspect. But this time, he could see more things than before—the origin power flow and distribution were even more detailed than before. Moreover, there were some fuzzy things in the air which he couldn’t see quite clearly.

Qianye did his best to clarify what those shadows were, but his visual powers had already reached their limit. The harder he tried, the blurrier they became.

After a momentary daze, Qianye suddenly thought of something. “How come I fell asleep?”

He immediately woke up in astonishment and sat up straight. He was shocked to find the dense stack of beast and insect bodies around him because their deaths were clearly related to him. Qianye collected his thoughts and immediately began to inspect his own body.

His blood core was floating quietly beside his heart and would pulse every once in a while. The trauma it had received last time left no scars, and there were runes swimming in and out of the core without any restriction.

Qianye could recognize his Bloodline Concealment and eye ability runes, but there were two new ones which he didn’t. He touched them with his consciousness and immediately understood the power they contained. One of them was True Sight, but the ability had grown even stronger. The other one was fairly special—it was completely integrated into the blood core.

The ability represented by this rune was Life Plunder. It was the ability he had obtained at his advancement to the viscount realm.

Once activated, Life Plunder would shoot out hundreds of invisible blood threads at nearby life forms and collect their vitality to complement his own.

This power attack was both attack and defense in one move. Qianye had already experienced its might when he first activated it. Even ordinary viscounts wouldn’t be able to block the focused attack of numerous blood threads. As Qianye grew stronger and stronger, the number, might, and range of his sanguineous threads would increase.

Life Plunder was effective against crowds, but it wasn’t without limits. Once used, the blood core would need to rest for at least a day before enough energy would be restored for another activation. Additionally, Life Plunder couldn’t be used with allies in the vicinity since it couldn’t differentiate between friend and foe. Otherwise, all of them would be wiped out.

Now, Qianye knew how those corpses came to be. Most of the dark race bloodline talents were extremely aggressive, and this world was one where the strong devoured the weak. The degree of Life Plunder’s might and ferocity was rare even across the entire Evernight faction. Now, this was a power fitting of a top-grade bloodline.

Qianye stood up and gradually moved his body. His body was like a rusted machine after so many days of sleep; even the simplest of movements were somewhat shaky. But after a moment of activity, Qianye immediately discovered that every cell in his body contained power akin to a volcano, waiting to break out at a moment’s notice.

He tried taking a step forward but almost tripped over. He subconsciously reached out to prop himself against a large tree, but the tree immediately collapsed as though it were completely rotten inside.

Qianye was deeply astonished after discovering that his limb movements were extremely uncoordinated. He realized that the reconstruction of his body following the blood core’s activation could be considered truly complete only at this point. Knowing that it was useless to rush, he simply assumed a combat stance and began practicing the Military Combat Arts right there in the forest.

Qianye’s body could be considered much more mobile after a set of punches and kicks—at least, he was no longer staggering when he walked. He simply repeated the combat arts time and again in order to acclimatize to his new body.

Qianye finally grasped control of his body after a dozen or so sets. He brought out East Peak and performed the basic sword techniques repeatedly. After several hours of exercise, Qianye finally reached complete adaptation.

He brought out an origin sundial to check the time and direction before deciding to continue toward his original destination. Many days had passed by, and it might already be too late even if he were to arrive. However, he still wanted to go and see because he felt something about this entire business was fishy.

Hundreds of kilometers of complicated landscape was only a couple of day’s journey for the current Qianye. He arrived at the designated location one day later.