novelraw Chapter 798 - 797 - Carving up the Apocalypse
Chapter 798 - 797 - Carving up the Apocalypse
Lind was currently in a copse of giant fir trees he had found. They were incongruent with the rest of the wild forest but useful to let him digest all he had learned.
Cultivators could be stunningly pragmatic when they wanted to be.
Fiends and cultivators had indeed been at war just as they were now in the Heaven Realm. The 2 knew little of the past beyond that.
The need to survive and stave off the other was far more important. In a way, Kintz knew more as they were a true cohesive force to start rather than a bunch of smaller groups that had to come together on the cultivator's side.
He could imagine making a bargain to live for such people but he could not condone it. They knew the price and gladly offered up their weaker members or likely those that were political opponents.
It did not matter if they planned from the beginning to wipe out the Fiends, they still offered up people that could have helped defeat them instead. He could not forgive that.
The loftily named Starbreaker Empire was actually once one of many Fiend powers. While the Fiends were at war, they also were selfish. The sheer size of the Celestial Fields also made it where they may not be able to unify as they had in the Heaven Realm.
Lind suspected there was a mass exodus over a million years ago from those fleeing whatever was coming.
There was no way someone in the Fiends did not know or learn of it and simply fled. Their 'Great One' was their god as far as they were concerned.
They would not defy it even if it threatened their plans.
He also appreciated that while the Heaven Realm lands were massive in comparison to the mortal realms, the Celestials Fields could swallow it all with room to spare. The sheer size left him humbled.
An Immortal could not cross it in their lifetime without using teleportation arrays!
In any event, once they realized they were not dying like the rest. The respective powers carved out their territories and agreed to hold a play every few years.
Fiends would come to cull villages and other outer areas then the Immortals could come to 'stop' them. It was all fake and almost none died on the upper echelons.
They let a few lower rungs die for the sake of reality and they might even believe they are fighting for real, but the truth was they simply were buying time.
Both sides were ready to betray the other once they were sure they could win.
How many had died while that little act had gone on? He doubted they cared but he did. He felt a rage he had not felt in a long time but there was more.
Something called the Sacred Paths referred to an underground passage lined in powerful elemental crystals. According to Immortal Darken, it was full of Laws!
In other words, it was untouched! Lind thought to dig down but apparently others had tried and found only death when they tried. The revitalization Lind was in was fairly new, only in the last 200,000 years or so.
It made him realize the situation had been far worse not too long ago as Immortals measured time.
He also learned that no original Immortal remained on either side. Darken was considered fairly new at only 50,000 years old but Kintz was older at 100,000 yet fairly powerful in his empire.
It was all skewed as a mess. Fiends extended their lives as before but without Laws, they degraded over time regardless. Kintz was dying already with maybe a few thousand years left in him.
Just like the beasts and plants, the Fiends seemed to need Laws even at the lower realms or they became unstable.
Darken, on the other hand, was just weak. The Laws in the Sacred Paths were not diverse enough it seemed. It barely allowed them to ascend to the Immortal Realm.
There had been some appearances of Immortal Dragons long ago when the Immortals tried to delve into the Law filled underground paths but were expelled by the 'Perfect Foundation' beasts as they called them.
That told Lind there was somewhere intact under the dragons' control. He desperately wanted to go there himself, but he had started a bit of a mess in his current trip.
He could ignore it and just leave but that would condemn the villagers to death. Certainly, Lis' village would be totally wiped out and they were innocent. They were scraping out their existence already but it was all a play for the current giants of their world.
"This will be annoying." He was without allies and the few contacts he had made were nowhere near powerful enough to do anything from what he had grasped.
Just as in the Heaven Realm, there was a fixed number of Fiend Immortals but unlike down there, several generations had passed since the Fall of Civilization as they called it.
It would likely be very easy to crush the Fiends with him alone but that would leave the more troublesome Immortals on the cultivators' side.
They would likely become tyrants and carefully suppress any challenges to their power. He could not so easily dominate them as Immortal Darken had confirmed there were dozens of Sliver Tiers.
No Shard Tiers existed anymore. They had all died in the Fall.
No Shard Tier had been born either as the limited Laws were simply not enough. Lind understood his limits. While he was powerful one on one without question, a group of Immortals could easily exhaust him.
He also could not recover as easily as he could in the Heaven Realm lands. His elixirs gave him an edge but they were not limitless.
Making anything grade 7 was also out as there were no Laws to pull on and Law Traces were extremely insufficient.
It was amusing that he was sitting there trying to figure out how to crush 2 powers at once alone but he could only take down 1 easily.
He felt like he was a kid making up a one man army story or something.
He could try to venture into the citadel that was described to him but there was a good chance they would ensnare him with some leftover artifacts that survived the Fall. They could retain their functions until used so at least 1 use remained even for ones that would normally be used over and over.
It was all too easy to see many problems no matter how he approached either one. There was the possibility of scaring the crap out of the Immortals by wiping out the Fiends, but Lind did not assume it would be the case.
"I need an alternative." He could not see a way out on his own. He missed having his Empire suddenly.
He wove his best protections and slowly flew north. He kept his aura subtly expanded to see if any more guests came but it stayed clear of all but beasts.
He finally reached an area that felt different. Compared to all the other areas, a true barrier had been erected. It was peak grade 5 and very well done.
He flew around it and saw it covered a massive area but he could also finally feel full Laws not far inside. They were just barely detectable but muddled through the barrier.
"There is no way this barrier is only grade 5." Lind grew suspicious and used his Eyes at full power. Sure enough, he found another hidden barrier at peak grade 6! The grade 5 was for show or to buy time for the grade 6 to react.
"Clever, but useless." A formation was powerful but weaving let Lind pull off some frustrating things. For instance, he could see the eye of both formations and with a simple low grade 7 weaving.
As it depended on his soul and not external sources, it still worked quite well.
He slipped his senses only inside and was glad he did. Hidden behind the 2 barriers was a final trick. There was several traps and other guards hidden waiting for someone to cross.
"Wise of them, but useless." He quickly put them to sleep none the wiser hence why. weavings were very nasty to normal formations. Nothing could block it all.
Once he confirmed no other surprises waiting, he slipped inside and found much of what he expected, only worse. There were beasts corralled not as livestock or some other normal use, but being drained of blood, tissues, and their cores. They were also kept alive to preserve the quality!
He also saw the thralls doing what they did best. Finding good targets or consuming their own victims.
Nothing was hidden from his Immortal Eyes.
"Perhaps killing the Fiends is not such a bad idea." By his estimate, there were at least 10% of the cultivators that were now thralls. Considering how they gathered a cultish following, the power structure in several areas would likely collapse.
Lind slipped back out and let the formations close up as his weavings dispersed. Those that woke up would be curious but would find nothing. There had not been a single weaver anywhere in the population.
He then flew east.
It only took him a few days to sense the vile feeling of Fiend Qi. He was stunned to feel it in the very air, unlike what he expected. There were actual walls, formations, and other standard fixtures of a true civilization!
The materials were also just as vile and he realized why the branch was built there. Fiend treasures and resources! They actually existed as he had expected after finding a small vein in the stone dral cavern.
"This will be annoying." If he so much as touched or even walked down those streets, he would cause a commotion as his harmony ripped it all apart!
He scanned the area and was stunned to find another normal feature of large kingdoms. Villages! Real villages!
Kintz had failed to mention that!
As he flew by them, he saw something he had seen far too much in the Heaven Realm. Human farms. He also saw actual aether children as well.
"There are the missing 80 million people, more or less." Lind could see some similar clothes on the humans but the aether children were essentially naked. The Fiends did not care too much about these people as they can be replaced one way or the other.
"Time to collect more data." He found a place to rest and observe as once he started, he doubted the fighting would ever stop. It was better to grasp what he was dealing with before jumping right in.
He steeled himself for what was to come as people would die in front of him and he had to let it happen.
"Spirits forgive me." He almost dove down but held back as he set up the weavings to hide his new abode from prying eyes and began to quickly gather what information he could.