Jared was waiting outside of the wars.h.i.+p, probably to avoid being suspected of eavesdropping and the like.

Seeing Qianye walk out, Jared asked in surprise, “You’re out so quickly?”

“Three minutes.”

“Indeed only three minutes…” Jared didn’t know what to say.

“That’s enough, I’ll come again after a while.”

“Wait.” Jared called Qianye back and said in a hushed voice, “Did you notice any change in Master’s condition?”

Qianye nodded.

At this point, Nighteye seemed to be asleep. Her bodily functions had been frozen, but she remained conscious of mind. The environment in the hall was also fairly peculiar—it was somewhat similar to an ancient blood pond but clearly was not.

“I think the Master is trying to comprehend anew the utilization of the power of blood. Additionally, her current physical body has become a bottleneck, something that needs to be modified.”

Qianye couldn’t help but feel impressed by Jared’s knowledge. He himself could only make a vague guess even after obtaining the inheritance of the River of Blood. Jared, on the other hand, was indeed a marquis and one level higher than Qianye in terms of blood energy, but it’s been many years since the vampire race had sensed the River of Blood or obtained its knowledge. Knowing all of this meant that he had either sensed the River of Blood when he was young or gained insight from studying ancient texts.

“You mean…”

“Once Master achieves a breakthrough, all aspects of her power will rise sharply. She must be thinking about returning to Twilight Continent and making Medanzo pay for his rudeness. At that point, you should be standing beside her. Forgive me for saying this, but your current strength is far from enough, and the time you have is short.”

Qianye looked deeply into Jared’s eyes. “Why would you tell me this? There must be a lot of vampires who fancy her, right? Perhaps you included.”

Jared laughed wryly. “I know a bit about your past, and it’s quite fantastic, but you might not know all too well about our race’s internal structure. Master’s bloodline is too powerful, and hardly a handful of people in the entire race is qualified to be her match. We can only tremble in reverence before her, to speak nothing of having other desires. This is decided by one’s order in the River of Blood. You, on the other hand, are different. I can sense a similar power in you that makes me shudder, only an ancient bloodline like that is worthy of the Master. However, you’re currently too weak. I believe the Lightless Monarch would stop at nothing to remove you should he discover your existence.”

With a nod, Qianye memorized these words and said his farewells to Jared.

Due to that special connection between him and Nighteye, Qianye understood that Nighteye’s condition wasn’t as optimistic as Jared had imagined. He had sensed a flicker of weakness while facing her inside the hall.

Nighteye had suffered grave injuries, so she was repairing her wounds while comprehending her powers anew. Qianye had no idea how bad the damage was, but not fully recovering after all this time proved just how serious it was.

For someone as proud as her, it came as a deep embarra.s.sment that she would be injured by Medanzo’s subordinates and forced to recover in hiding. To a superior vampire, a vendetta like this was worth a thousand years of retaliation.

Qianye sighed to himself. He did want to upgrade his blood energy, but the daybreak side couldn’t be rushed.

Without a const.i.tution strengthened by his Evernight powers, his daybreak origin power would collapse like a sandcastle. On the other hand, progressing his Evernight powers without daybreak origin power would turn him into a true vampire and return him to the River of Blood.

After parting ways with Jared, Qianye left the Martyr’s Palace hovering where it was and left for Southern Blue. He even paid a brief visit to Port City.

The city had long since fallen to ruins, but there was a new fortress-like structure at its center. Its walls and corners were decorated with steel spikes. Such a crude, sinister-looking style was characteristic to the arachne.

The primary fighting power during the battle of Port City were the Moonlight Demons and the Wolf King, but now, the Spider Emperor was apparently the master of this castle.

Qianye gave it some thought and decided to take a look. The guards at the city gates were all dark races. The two low-ranking vampires there were pale and trembling with just a slight release of Qianye’s blood energy aura. How would they dare to stop him?

The fortress was populated by dark race members, with the occasional human appearing in cages on the streets. Most of these cages were empty and the dark bloodstains on them were a testament to what had happened to them.

Most of Port City’s residents had been captured to serve as fuel for the Blood Altars. Now, with the Martyr’s Palace in hand, Qianye finally understood that the purpose of these altars wasn’t so much to alter the Earth Dragon’s will as it was to suppress the Pointer Monarch’s. It was just that Elder Wei and the others had never imagined that the monarch’s will had already evolved into an independent ent.i.ty with its own thought processes. If it wasn’t for a lack of a body, the will would’ve become another Pointer Monarch.

These Blood Altars were useless against such a consciousness. The only reason it had allowed Elder Wei and the others to ascend the mountain was because of Qianye. Naturally, there was nothing more to discuss if Qianye couldn’t last until the summit; he just had to wait a couple hundred more years. The Pointer Monarch had buried his heart there in the past, with no intention of allowing the Martyr’s Palace to see the light of day.

Qianye strolled around Port City and found no more than a couple hundred humans, all of them in either captivation or slavery.

Back when Su Dingqian was the city lord, the honest people here still possessed a modic.u.m of dignity despite their poverty. After all, they were residents of the city under his rule. But now, only a handful of dispirited people remained out of over twenty thousand.

At this moment, Qianye felt an inexplicable sense of disgust toward Zhang Buzhou. Considering the man’s cultivation and his self-proclamation as guardian of the race, he ought to lead and protect the humans.

Anger sprang out in his heart. What was the use of such a heavenly monarch?

At this moment, a vulgar voice rang out behind him, “What are you standing here for?”

Behind him was a powerful-looking arachne knight, staring down at Qianye and sizing him up.

Qianye’s expression turned cold. He shot a wisp of blood energy at the arachne and roared, “Scram!!!”

The arachne was sent into a blurry daze and fell limp onto the ground.

Qianye’s ancient vampire bloodline was just behind the arachne warlord’s in quality. Although the intimidation effect was weaker across races, it wasn’t something an inferior arachne could deal with. Qianye didn’t let him off just like that. He took a step forward and stepped onto one of his limbs, shattering the chitinous sh.e.l.l with crackling sounds.

The knight screamed but didn’t dare retaliate.

At this moment, hundreds of arachne and dark race warriors had rushed over after hearing the screams.

Qianye didn’t leave just yet. Instead, he said coldly to the collapsed arachne, “You’d better look carefully the next time you want to pick a fight.”

The arachne knight’s consciousness was fuzzy from the intimidation of the blood energy. And Qianye’s unrestrained killing intent made it clear that a single wrong answer would mean his death. No matter how violent in nature the arachne were, they were mostly wary of death. There were ample examples of superiors executing their subordinates in the cruel world of the dark races.

Seeing the arachne knight in silence, the other warriors of the Spider Emperor exchanged glances amongst themselves, not knowing what to do.

Qianye suddenly unleashed his dark golden blood energy and said in a cold voice, “What are you looking at? Itching to die, are you?”

The aura of the dark golden blood energy was deep and ancient, suffused with a tinge of extreme darkness. A single wisp of it was enough to elicit a deep fear from the depths of their soul.

The stronger ones retreated while the weaker ones fell kneeling onto the ground, unable to move at all.

Qianye had no interest in attacking these random soldiers. He simply walked past them and went toward the fortress doors.

No one stopped him along the way. The thousands of dark race soldiers in the fortress simply stood by and watched him leave.

Atop the fortress, a fierce, heavily-armored man was watching Qianye with a gloomy expression. There were dark green patterns on his face; apparently, he was a high-ranking arachne capable of taking human form.

The werewolf viscount near him said, “Sire Count, are you going to let him leave just like that? This will reflect poorly on the Spider Emperor’s prestige.”

The arachne count snorted. “This man is indeed suspicious, why don’t you go and catch him! I think he resembles that Zhao Ye wanted by the Wolf King.”

The werewolf viscount’s expression turned awkward. “This, how can it be? The wanted person is a human, but this one is a vampire. Maybe he belongs to the Throne of Blood.”

The Spider Emperor mocked, “Zhao Ye might be from the Throne of Blood, to begin with, there’s no contradiction there.”

The werewolf viscount said hurriedly, “No, Zhao Ye is clearly a human.”

The arachne count said in a drawn-out voice, “Oh, is that so…”

“Yes, it is,” the werewolf replied.

With a snort, the spider count said to his followers, “Let’s go, staying here leaves me in a bad mood.”

With that, he led his soldiers down the walls, leaving the werewolf where he was.

The werewolf stood blankly for a moment. Then, he glared ferociously in Qianye’s direction and left.

At dusk half a day later, Qianye arrived outside of Southern Blue and made to enter the city. The guards naturally recognized him and came to welcome him politely. “Sire Qianye, what brings you here? Where are you headed? Allow me to lead the way.”

“The city lord manor.”

“Yes, sir.” The guard summoned a vehicle and drove Qianye toward the city lord’s residence.

They were halfway along the road when Qianye’s ears twitched ever so slightly, having caught the sudden sound of a moving pinion.

That was the sound of a machine cannon warming up!

Soon afterward, a terrifying stream of fire tore through the streets and blasted Qianye’s car.