Eternal Emerald Dragon

Chapter 799 - 798 - Vile Normalcy

Lind had braced himself for horrific scenes of consumption or simply torture, but strangely, the villages of Fiends were normal.

It was a vile kind of normal, but still, normal.  Families would tend to not only the pens full of humans with food, cleaning, and sometimes cultivation resources, but also crops and beasts!

In fact, he saw that the villagers had to use beasts kept in pens for their consumption.  They did not kill them, however.  It only took him a week of watching to see why.

The consumption was highly inefficient but if they consumed the beasts entirely at one session, they would quickly run out.  The Fiends were also withered just like Kintz.

He did find something very tragic as well.

The children were not like the adults.  They were not tainted by the consumption of souls.  Yet, they had ash gray skin just like them.  It told him they had been fed souls or something about the Celestial Fields corrupted them from birth.

The Law Binding had been totally isolated from Heaven and Earth as part of its construction so maybe the one he encountered required something similar to be born.  Still, they were innocent in so far as they did not actively consume until they reached the Soul Realm.

The instant they had to breakthrough from Body Refining to Soul Realm needed a sacrifice but the villagers used beasts for all of it.  It explained why the highest cultivation realm he felt was the World Realm.

He also found something else he had not expected.

Demons.  A lot of demons.

They were not kept in pens, however, but served as the officers of the wall and patrols!  Kintz had left that off as well!  Lind realized he had made a lot of assumptions but now he saw that the demons were used as the military and functionaries.

There was usually at least 1 Fiend with the patrols but that was all.  They mostly did what would again be normal in most powers.

Check on conditions of villages, prepare for the harvest tax, and so forth but it was all laced with the undertone of living cultivators as the harvest!

From what Lind gathered, the culling had only recently happened and was to resupply the very farms he was spying on.

"No wonder they came back quickly.  If someone messed with the villages, they would lose their bumper crops."  He was very angry when he spoke but calmed himself.  It meant he had time.

The 'harvest' would not be happening quite yet as they wanted to make sure as many women were pregnant as possible.  They would be the only people not harvested.

It made a hell of a motivation for the women but not so much the men.  If not for the horrifying reality, he might have found it funny how the men seemed terrified of the women.

There were a few other exceptions as well.  If there were any special physiques or other rare cultivating talents, they would be heavily nurtured but it was only a delay.  They would be the food for the Immortals and taken from the farms for careful raising elsewhere.

The giant wall was actually 1 of 4 too.  The patrols mentioned how the largest area was where the demons mostly lived.  The Demon Prefecture was essentially full of millions of demons.

He found it odd that where everyone else had weak or pathetic cultivation foundations, demons were actually pretty good.  He wondered at the discrepancy but had to put aside the cause and focus on the issue.

If the demons were at full strength, he had to be careful if there were any Immortals.  He also noted all of them had some kind of corruption.  One look at their dantians told him all he needed.

Instead of Star, Moon, and Sun Tiers, he saw Void, Eclipse, and Nova Tiers.  The Void was swallowing all the elemental Qi into a bottomless pit that then formed a star that was swallowed by a dark shadow.

The Eclipse Tier then used the occluded star to condense the demonic elements violently at the edges.  It was a very dangerous path that then led to the Nova Tier.

Rather than a stable sun to fuse all the elements together, the dantian was full of explosions that forced the elements together.  The corrupted path for demons had great power but the risk was equally high.

What he found interesting was not a single demon showed the pure path that was common in the lower realms.

"So the demons were corrupted by the Fiends, maybe?"  It would have a horrific attrition rate from what he knew but overtime it would be a wash if they were prolific enough.

The next wall was like the production area of most cities but it was the size of an entire country.  Fiend and demonic artisans worked there with the resources available but they had to nurture their own herbs and other treasures.

The fact that Fiend versions existed told him a lot but he narrowed his eyes to hear about the conversion facilities taking up the most space.

"If natural treasures exist, why convert?"  He pondered over it but it was not important at the moment.

The last 2 areas were all Fiends.  The large city between the 3rd and 4th wall was where the vast majority of Fiends lived.  It sounded strangely normal as well with guards, merchants, and other kinds of jobs you would find in any city.

Compared to the Heaven Realm that was just mass human farms and soldiers, it was clear that life was starkly different up in the Celestial Fields for them.

The final area was the actual capital.  It held the Immortals, all 15 of them.  They had their followers and ministers of course but the final piece of interesting news was the title of the leader.

Regent Zhong was the current leader.  Apparently the Starbreaker Empire refrained from usurping their main branch and only assumed the roll of regent.  That made no sense to him at first until one of the leaders of the patrol looked damned familiar.

"The Widow looks almost identical to her!"  The leaders of the patrols were in better shape than Kintz or the villagers but still not as impossibly beautiful as he was used to.

She, on the other hand, was stunningly beautiful.  He had found it odd until she mentioned her relation to the Regent.

"So Widow has a royal bloodline or just a coincidence?"  He did not know enough about Fiends to declare more than a guess but similarities should be for familial reasons just like every other race.

The aether children were the only other race to be naturally beautiful.

The final piece of knowledge he garnered was stunning to him.  A festival!  These people would have a festival right before the harvest.

It would be the one time the villagers could feast on the humans and aether children.  The tax collectors would gather the ones marked by the very patrols he spied on.

It would be one giant celebration and feasting for all the Fiends.  The demons apparently let loose in battles and other activities.

Lind had then tried to run through some ideas but he came up short every time on the issue of no disguise would explain him being unaffiliated.  No one, not a single soul, in their empire was not assigned or delegated to some role.

Itinerant cultivators did not exist.

It was wise of them as it avoided spies extremely easily.  Everyone had a history and the only way in was to turn someone but contact was limited to official sessions or their little play.

The demons actually gave him some hope but while he could try and use only demonic Qi, it would not change the fact he was human in appearance.

His last option was the most risky.  He was a dragon and had a perfect foundation.

He could try and bluff his way through but given how highly regulated their empire was, he would bet they had similar procedures for dragon visitation.  He did not even know if they would visit at all.

He was about to dismiss the idea when another one came to him that almost made him burst out loud with laughter.

An investigator!

He could come as an investigator of a rogue dragon.  He could investigate himself!  It held a lot of appeal but then he frowned.  His harmony would be a problem.

While suppressing it would be possible as he was, the sheer number of Fiends would cause him to react.  He doubted he could stop it from wiping out everything around him.

He tried several scenarios but the only acceptable ones had him going inside the walls and that was a disaster waiting to happen.

He was mulling it over when something surprising came up.  It was yet another snippet of normalcy but the reason made his eyes narrow in shock.

"Hey, has that little brat shown her head anywhere today?"  A large Fiend boy had gathered a group of his fellows and seemed to have a sinister smile as he spoke.  The withered look was missing from the children as they did not need to consume yet.

"I heard she was out for 2 weeks from the last lesson.  Her strange colored skin is bad enough but she is so weak!"  Another tiny kid spoke up and said something that made Lind risk a deeper look.

He swept the village heavily and found what he was looking for.

It was an impossibly beautiful child with pale gold skin!

A Celestial!  He had found a Celestial!