Book 17, Indigo Prefecture – Chapter 37, Calmness and Savagery


    Bloodbath Gorge.


    Emanuel and Forhan were together.


    “I have a bad feeling...” Forhan said with a frown.


    “Father, what is it?” Emanuel said hurriedly.


    Forhan said, “Look at how much the Patriarch cared about that Sovereign’s Emissary. Most likely, he wants to draw that Sovereign’s Emissary closer to us. After all, our Four Divine Beasts n is currently in dire straits. If that’s the case...Linley most likely won’t be punished.”


    “Won’t be punished?” Emanuel was frantic.


    He had wanted to deal with Linley this entire time. This time, he ‘wanted to steal a chicken, but instead just lost the bait’. Even his most powerful divine water clone had been destroyed. The sort of rage this engendered had all immediately and naturally been transferred onto Linley.


    He wasn’t strong enough to deal with Linley, so he wanted to find some other methods.


    “How can Linley not be punished?” Emanuel said hurriedly. “The Grand Elder already agreed.”


    “Shut your mouth.” Forhan frowned and shouted.


    Emanuel immediately didn’t dare to make a sound. Forhan took a deep breath. After being quiet for a moment, allowing the room to fall into silence, Forhan finally said in a soft voice, “As I see it, it’s not too likely that the n will punish Linley. It’ll be up to us.”


    “What method do we have?” Emanuel said hurriedly.


    “There are many methods.” Forhan couldn’t help but narrow his eyes, and heughed coldly. “This time, someone rescued Linley. I refuse to believe that in the future, he’ll be so lucky as to be rescued again.”


    “Father, are you saying...” Emanuelughed.


    “I know each and every one of the Elders of the n. It won’t be too hard to set up a trap for him to fall into. There will be plenty of opportunities!” Forhan said confidently. “During a battle, if we y a few tricks...hmph! When experts are battling each other, even the slightest distraction can be enough to take his life!”


    “In particr, if our side loses all of our Six Star Fiends in a battle and there are no eyewitnesses remaining, we can kill him directly.” Forhanughed coldly. “Even if he cries out at the injustice of it all, who will believe him?”


    Emanuel’s face immediately broke out into a smile.


    “How can a junior descendant like him be worthy of the Azure Dragon ring of our ancestor?” Forhan snickered. “Even with the Azure Dragon ring, he’s only an ordinary Seven Star Fiend. If I were to hold the Azure Dragon ring...I would be much more useful to the n than he is!”


    Indeed. If Forhan were to fly out with Linley, Linley wouldn’t suspect that Forhan would suddenly attack him. When flying normally, Linley would be in his human form...once Forhan truly attacked, the results would be easily imagined.


    Linley could cry out at the injustice, but without any witnesses, so what if he did?


    Forhan could simply maintain that it was an enemy who had done it. There was nothing Linley could do at all.


    “Forhan. Emanuel.” A voice rang out.


    “Mother’s here.” Forhan hurriedly rose to his feet, and Emanuel rose, standing to the side respectfully.


    “Creaaak.” The hall door swung open. The Grand Elder, wearing that silver mask, directly walked in. She looked calmly at the two of them. “Forhan, Emanuel. The matter of punishing Linleyes to an end, here and now.”


    Emanuel felt shock in his heart. “It really as Father predicted it. However...although it might not be possible now, in the future, we’ll still have our chance.”


    Carrying out missions involved walking a fine line between life and death.


    If one’s partners were to secretly cause trouble, the chance of survival would be very low.


    “From today onwards, Linley will depart from Bloodbath Gorge. He will not take on any assignments from Bloodbath Gorge.” The Grand Elder said calmly.


    Forhan and Emanuel were stunned.


    They were utterly stupefied!


    “Mother, how can that be?” Forhan said hurriedly. “The rules of our n state that each person can only retire after a thousand years. Linley hasn’t been in Bloodbath Gorge for very long. He’s far from reaching the thousand year mark.”


    “Right. The rules of the n can’t be broken.” Emanuel said frantically as well.


    If Linley weren’t to take on assignments in Bloodbath Gorge, and instead remained in the Skyrite Mountains, there was no way at all for them to make Linley die...after all, no private battles were permitted within the Skyrite Mountains.


    “This is the decision of the four n leaders!” The Grand Elder said coldly.


    Forhan and Emanuel, hearing these words, couldn’t help but be stunned. The Patriarch was the leader of their n. The joint orders of the four n leaders werepletely unchangeable!


    From that day onwards, Linley no longer needed to go to Bloodbath Gorge. He was able to calmly leave a peaceful life. Delia and Bebe, upon hearing this news, were extremely happy...and so, in such a peaceful manner, their life proceeded.


    In the eyes of the Four Divine Beasts n, Linley was their hope of a connection to the Redbud Sovereign!


    But what Linley didn’t know was...to the eight great ns, he was their greatest threat!


    The Skyrite Mountains. Within the gorge.


    There was a grassy yard in front of Linley’s room, which had a stone table ced in the middle of it. The stone table had a bottle of wine atop it, and Linley was currently holding a book in his hands. Linley’s four clones were all training, while his original body was enjoying the peace.


    Delia walked out from her room, holding two tes of food in her hands. Seeing Linley reading, she couldn’t help but chuckle. She walked over, gently cing the tes down on the stone table.


    “Eh?”


    Linley suddenly smelled a fragrant odor, and he turned to look at the tter. His eyes couldn’t help but to light up. “Delia, haha, it smells so delicious. Your culinary skills have improved greatly.” As he spoke, he flipped the book shut.


    He immediately went to go for a taste, and ate while praising, “Not bad, not bad. The taste isparable to that of the restaurants in the cities.”


    “Far from it.” Deliaughed, her face blushing. “This is based off of one of several cooking recipes I bought on myst trip to the city. The ingredients for these dishes, I acquired by asking those who went to the cities to buy for me.”


    Delia sat down across from him, resting her chin on her hands as she watched Linley eat.


    As Linley ate, he suddenly began to chuckle.


    “Why are youughing like an idiot?” Delia couldn’t help but smile as well.


    “I’m just thinking!” Linley let out a sigh. “Training in the Laws, adventuring in the boundless Infernal Realm...then, when free, reading some books, drinking some fine wine, then eating the delicious food prepared by my wife. This sort of life is simply...haha, perfect!” Linleyughed, absolutely delighted.


    Deliaughed as well.


    “Linley, if you always want to live such afortable life, you can, you know.” Delia said. “As long as in the future, you don’t go to Bloodbath Gorge, that’ll be enough. I keep on having the feeling that the Four Divine Beasts n care too much about their face...if it was me, I would’ve ordered the Four Divine Beasts n to remain locked in the mountain. The members of the n would all live quiet lives. Why go battle against those eight great ns?”


    Linley put down his chopsticks.


    “Enough, Delia.” Linleyughed. “Life, especially for those who possess unending life, is all about face. The glory of the n is particrly valued. Unless it is absolutely necessary...the n won’t choose to retreat into the mountains andpletely turtle up.”


    Deliaughed. “It doesn’t matter to me, as long as you don’t have to go to Bloodbath Gorge.” In Delia’s heart, she didn’t feel too much of a sense of belonging to the Four Divine Beasts n. All she cared about was...that Linley had to be safe.


    “Hehe...” Linley chuckled.


    “Come, you have a taste as well. This vor really is excellent.” Linleyughed as he spoke.


    In the blink of an eye, a hundred years of this sort of life passed. With Linley by her side, Delia naturally didn’t feel bored at all. Every day, her face was wreathed in smiles, and she also learned how to cook one delicacy after another, to Linley’s great delight, as he could now often taste new food.


    As for Bebe...


    He asionally would be with Linley, or joke around with the members of the Yn branch, but when bored, Bebe would still join the n’s squadrons and head out to the city for a stroll.


    Bloodbath Gorge. The Grand Pce of the Four Divine Beasts. The four n leaders were assembled there.


    “It’s only been a century!” Gison’s face was gloomy.


    “In the past century, it seems as though those eight great ns have gone mad! They don’t care about casualties at all, nor about wasting Sovereign’s Might. They insist on killing our people!” The Patriarch of the White Tiger n said furiously.


    “In the past century, our Vermillion Bird n has lost three Elders. The rest of you?” The Matriarch of the Vermillion Bird n said, a long, gloomy look her face.


    “Our White Tiger n has lost four Elders!” The Patriarch of the White Tiger n’s words held boundless rage. “Third Brother, how about your ck Tortoise n?”


    The Patriarch of the ck Tortoise n let out a low sigh as well. “Our ck Tortoise n’s losses have been severe as well. We lost two Elders. It has only been a century!”


    “Elder Brother.” The Matriarch of the Vermillion Bird n looked towards Gison.


    “Our Azure Dragon n has lost three Elders.” Gison sighed. “By my calctions, in a short century, our Four Divine Beasts n has lost a total of twelve Elders!”


    Based on how things had previously progressed in their war of attrition, the loss of twelve Elders was something which would happen in a thousand years.


    But now, they reached that number in a mere century.


    “Those eight great ns have gone mad.” The Matriarch of the Vermillion Bird n said angrily. “In the past century, each time, they’ll send out three or four Seven Star Fiends. And each time, one of them will be holding a Sovereign’s Might! They don’t begrudge using the Sovereign’s Might at all, if it means they can kill all our people.”


    “They’ve lost quite a bit in their madness as well.” Gison said. “Our Azure Dragon n alone has killed four of their Elders.”


    “Our Vermillion Bird n has killed three.”


    The four n leaders all reported their results.


    “In the past thousand years, the losses of the eight great ns have been even greater than ours. They lost fifteen of their Elders.” Gison said.


    “But the eight great ns have the advantage of numbers.” The Patriarch of the ck Tortoise n said in a low voice. “Ever since our four ancestors died, our Four Divine Beasts n has lost, in total, nearly a hundred and twenty Seven Star Fiends...now, our entire Four Divine Beasts n has, allbined, roughly around a hundred surviving Seven Star Fiends. But the enemy? They have more than three hundred Seven Star Fiends in total!”


    Any of the eight great ns couldpare with the Azure Dragon n in terms of experts.


    Early on, the Azure Dragon n had over sixty Seven Star Fiends as well.


    The eight great ns originally had nearly five hundred Seven Star Fiends as well. After so many years of warfare, they had killed nearly a hundred and twenty Seven Star Fiends of the Four Divine Beasts n, while they themselves had lost more than a hundred.


    But despite that, thebined forces of the eight great ns still numbered more than three hundred Seven Star Fiends?


    If this sort of attrition continued...


    Even after all of the experts of the Four Divine Beasts n were dead, the enemy would probably still have two hundred or more Elders. In addition, the enemy also had many supreme experts. The Patriarchs of the eight great ns were all extremely powerful figures!


    “Madness. Madness! They ignore the cost in Sovereign’s Might and in deaths of Seven Star Fiends. They’ve all gone mad!” The Patriarch of the ck Tortoise n said unhappily.


    “What’s going on? In the past ten thousand years, they’ve never been as wild as this. Why have they gone so mad in the past century?” Gison simply couldn’t understand it.


    But how could the leaders of the Four Divine Beasts n have imagined...that the reason these eight great ns had gone mad and sent out three or four Elders to join forces each time was, first of all, in the hopes that when they ran into Linley, they would be able to kill him.


    And the second reason was, they wanted to speed up the pace! They didn’t dare to waste more time, for fear that as time went on, Linley might suddenly break through and be that which they feared the most; a ‘Highgod Paragon’.


    Although the Four Divine Beasts n and the eight great ns had entered a wild state, the Skyrite Mountains were still very quiet and calm. Linley lived this sort of calm life with no struggles, while his four clones constantly improved as well.


    After his retirement from Bloodbath Gorge, two hundred years had passed.


    In the past two hundred years, Linley had made the greatest improvements in his divine water clone, which could in fact be described as having made ‘monstrous gains’. The speed at which he gained new insights into the profound mysteries was absolutely ‘astonishing’. It was on a full level faster than even his divine earth clone and his divine wind clone.


    Naturally, it was countless times faster than his divine fire clone.


    By now, his divine water clone had already reached the God level long ago, and had mastered three profound mysteries and was currently working on the fourth...but actually, if one closely considered it, this wasn’t too astonishing. After all, after the Ancestral Baptism, Linley had naturally understood one of the profound mysteries.


    His divine wind clone had gained mastery into a sixth profound mystery, but since the Laws of the Wind had nine profound mysteries in total, it was harder to advance in.


    As for his divine fire clone, it was still working on the third profound mystery, advancing at a slow pace.


    “Linley, your life is quitefortable.” A loudugh rang out.


    Linley, Delia, and Bebe were seated around a table, eating while chatting.


    Linley turned to look. The person who had walked in was Elder Garvey.


    “Garvey seems to have a rather unhappy look on his face. He’s worrying about something.” Linley could tell this at a single nce. For an expert such as Elder Garvey to so easily reveal his thoughts meant that something major had definitely urred.”


    “Elder Garvey.” Bebe was the first to wee him happily. “Hurry on over. This is the first time my Boss cooked. Have a taste...it is so delicious, you could die!”


    “Bebe.” Linley couldn’t help but feel his face heat up.


    He clearly had done exactly as the cookbook described, but the difference in vor between what he had cooked and what Delia cooked was...simply too vast. However, it wasn’t so bad as to cause someone to ‘die’.