Eternal Emerald Dragon

Chapter 625 - 624 - Karma can only be delayed, not avoided

Lind was unsure what to feel at the moment.  He had confirmed the Empress was the last living relative with a bloodline to the original founder of the Orwellia Empire.  The rest had been burned out of existence by the Heavenly Wrath.

It was not just the work of the Fiend that had angered Heaven and Earth, but of man.

While it helped him access the main palace secret areas, the woman in question was little better than a doll.  She had apparently broken free from whatever control Timat had when his death was confirmed for her.

Lind had tested it on a few other prisoners to worse results.  One had his head explode from Qi run wild, while another was effectively brain dead.  Nothing he tried could help any of the survivors at all.

A guess, and it was a shot in the dark to be honest, was that whatever altered their perception was very destructive when removed.  It would be like all the false parts vanished that one thought was real but nothing filled in those gaps.

If they learned to cultivate in the fantasy, the real knowledge gained was now gone.  Why the Empress did better than most was not hard to guess as the arrays were still working for the most part.

She was the key.

It was likely why Timat did not kill her or consume her family too much in case Xing went on a killing spree.  He was curious as to why Xing had not attacked but it might be that the disturbance over 2 months ago had affected the Law Binding.

The further evidence of that was the stunningly good news from the Requera Empire.

It was currently suffering from an organized beast tide!  The Moon and Sun Tier overlords of the Hinterlands had suddenly organized and sent forth a devastating tide of beasts under their control, yet it was not the bloodbath most would expect.

Soldiers, by far, were being killed in horrendous numbers, but villages and innocents were simply herded into their homes to be left alone.  It was not a one sided slaughter by any means as many beasts died, but they became food for the others to grow stronger!

Envoys from the beasts had come to him and offered to keep Requera Empire busy until he was ready to take it as well.  Lind did not look a gift horse in the mouth and quickly organized some forces to assist.

He did not commit the bulk yet as they were far from ready to simply leave Orwellia as it was.  The more books and jade slips he explored, the more depressed he got.  The Soul Realms could be saved.

He was glad of that.

They were essentially pseudo-puppets but it was reversible with some well laid out instructions.  Clearly, if talent had been discovered in the Soul Realm, it had not been squandered away even by the fool that created the empire.

The World Realms might be saved with some serious gaps in their memory and maybe even re-learning their cultivation.  It had risks but with the Soul Realms as a reference and the Soulless as a comparison of far worse, Lind had confidence to eventually help most of them.

The problem was after that.

Sky Realms, that had not been simply turned into mindless drones like the guards, were little better than simple machines.  Puppets at least were isolated from their souls and Lind had some hope of reversing that with enough study and time.

The Sky Realms he had encountered everywhere in the Orwellia Empire were too far gone for anyone to save.  If he tried, they would simply die by dantian implosion.  It was a variant of what Timat did to the Empress and his other toys.

Unlike them, they had no part of their minds left alone.  It would essentially kill them to free them.  No matter what method he looked at, they were simply dead.

Small wonder Heaven and Earth were enraged.  Cultivation was a path offered for those brave enough to face the challenges but the founder of the Orwellia Empire had belittled and neutered it.

As for the Heaven Realms, without exception,would die soon even if he did nothing.  Their secondary elements were actually inserted into their minds by external methods.  It was like a pill-forced foundation in the lower realms.

A cultivator could theoretically reach the peak of the Iron Tier in the World Realm with just pills but no farther.  A tribulation would kill them instantly even at the weakest strength recorded.

They had no foundation and all their potential would have been long burned up by the pills forcing them forward.

The method of Orwellia Empire was to simply record a stable secondary element in the controlled cultivators and since none of their foundations was truly unique to them it worked.  The result, however, were Heaven Realms that needed constant maintenance or they would lose all cohesion of their star fields, moons, or suns respectively.

Keera had already started killing them as a mercy.  Even demons found pity for the Orwellian Heaven Realms at that point.

The Empress was one of a few exceptions.  Since her family was needed to maintain the control, Timat had allowed them to retain enough self to really learn to cultivate but still sheltered them through their tribulations.

The result was somewhat stable but weak Heaven Realms.

The ease of the war was due to the limits of a Fiend helping human cultivators.

"I am not sure you can hear me, but while your ancestor deserved whatever Heaven and Earth wanted to throw at him, you are not at fault.  Timat has ruled here for over a million years.  Your hands are clean of any karma to my thinking."  Lind simply read as she sat next to him.  He spoke now and again like that to see if he could get a reaction.

Her dark eyes remained dull and nothing else was noticeable.

"Sigh, I still haven't found the source arrays.  I have found the original layout of the defenses and everything else, but not the damned source arrays."  Lind could not save anyone until he dismantled the final control arrays kept going by the Empress.

Killing her might break them but he did not put it past Timat to have bred some bastard Imperials just to cover his bets.

If anyone of sufficient blood was still alive and had been attuned to the formations, the control would shift to them.  It would take far too long to find the needle in the haystack if that happened.

"Emperor Frey, Emperor Haim reports the 3 remaining Empires have begun to mobilize their soldiers at their borders but they do not seem to be coming for us."  Lind saw Benny stifling laughter as a demon stood prim and proper reporting to him.

Benny was one of the few that still treated him somewhat normally.  Lind waved at the demon and he marched off back to his post.

"You would think all those insults they used to throw at you never happened."  Benny sneered at the retreating demon but Lind could only sigh at her words.  She just did not understand that strength could break all issues with demons.

Theoretically, after his little display in Orwellia, Haim might be inclined to abdicate but Lind refused to let him!  New and separate powers were better in the long run for what was to come.

He was happy to help, but he could not make a huge power here or he would never be able to leave!  He knew that danger and made it damned clear he was leaving once it was all over.

"Leave it, Benny.  Let's try the last floor and hope we can find another secret entrance."  Lind gathered up the Empress, whose name no one could find even after a month of searching.  In fact many of the Heaven Realms had no names at all!

The few who had were killed in the Heavenly Wrath it seemed.

Lind was about to ascend when a thought suddenly came back to him.

"Karma, hmmm, that might work."  Lind slowly turned back to the dull eyed woman and closed his eyes.  The empire had been punished by Heaven and Earth.  It was done with the place so far as it was concerned.

Lind, however, had chosen to fight and had resonated with that Heavenly Wrath.  He knew what that meant after nearly dying a few times in those moments in his past.  He slowly felt for a trace of the karmic retribution still lingering.

Sure enough, a small crackle of black lightning danced in the library but Lind snuffed it out with golden lightning that made his aura skyrocket.

He opened his eyes and saw something stunning looking at the Empress and Benny together.  Benny was like a beacon of golden light that danced freely in the world but the Empress was a shattered mirror.

Fiendish traces were heavily weighted down with black karma but the whimpering girl inside was covered in solid gold!

The war outside was over but the war within had not ended at all!

Lind reached out and his skin actually burned as black goo suddenly appeared on the Empress' skin.

"Benny!  GET OUT!"  His voice jolted her but she obeyed instantly.  The feeling in the room was too oppressive, especially as Lind's eyes shifted to vertical slits!

"I already killed you, but you cling still to her!  Karma can only be delayed, but not avoided you damned bastard!"  Golden lightning cascaded along Lind's arms as it slammed into the Empress.

The Fiend Qi wailed as it actually used the black karmic Qi like a shield!  Yet, it could not resist Lind's combination of golden karmic Qi and emerald harmonic Qi.

"AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"  A scream came from the Empress as life returned to her eyes at long last and she seemed to want to claw them out.  Lind grabbed her and let the golden light wash over her gently at that point.

"It is over!  He is dead and gone!  You are free!"  He shouted over her screams but she did not seem to understand.

Emerald scales slowly began to spread on his skin as he tilted his head back.

"ROOOOOOAAAARRRRR!"  The whole floating mass shook as emerald and gold exploded from the palace.  In all directions, any aether child or aether beast instinctively bowed in awe.

In the library, a weeping woman clung to a man in crimson robes as he gently comforted her.  Despite having the body of an adult, he now could hear childish gibberish between tears.  She had the mind of a child!

He deeply wished to resurrect Timat to kill him personally!

As he sat there rocking her back and forth, an audible click came from above that made Lind snap his head up to see a rack swing open.  He narrowed his eyes but felt no threat from it as he carefully picked up the weeping girl and began to make his way inside the stone passage.

Why had it opened now?  Had the Empress done it?

He walked a short distance to find a dark stone plinth with a thick book laying on it.  It had no arcane symbols or anything from the cultivation world.  It had a set of numbers Lind was very familiar with.

It simply said, '1984.'