Qianye finally understood the source of the stony metal. Remembering the two holy trees aboard the Martyr’s Palace, he couldn’t help but want to capture a six-armed creature alive.

He dismissed the notion rather quickly, however. Even the weakest among the six-armed creatures was a glorious marquis, more or less a human divine-champion. Capturing such an expert was much harder than simply killing him. Besides, there was no telling if the creature could be subdued.

At this point, the six-armed creature produced yet another stony material and sprinkled his blood on it before letting it soak in the pond. After the material had absorbed enough of the sap, he began banging on it once more. This time, it looked like he was making a stone sword.

Things didn’t go smoothly this time. Growing impatient, the six-armed creature placed the stony material back into the water. He looked up at the holy tree before breaking off one of its branches.

The moment the branch snapped, Qianye also felt a vague pain from his body. His consciousness expanded involuntarily, allowing him to sense the holy tree to a greater degree and even merge into its consciousness.

The holy tree was emitting mournful wails, seemingly unable to handle the pain of its broken branch.

Only then did Qianye realize that these holy trees could actually feel pain.

It was at this moment that Qianye came into contact with a cold, slippery existence that was full of unfriendly intent. Soon, a white ball of flesh appeared in his consciousness.

This was the core of the beast lair. Qianye had seen such entities in more than just one forest. He had destroyed some of them but left most of them intact, only ordering the sentries to patrol and observe it.

This was the first time he had come into actual contact with its consciousness. The six-armed creature—having sensed the connection—started to look around vigilantly.

Hesitating no more, Qianye brought out Dragonsgrave and fired the pre-formed origin bullet! He didn’t have time to adjust the origin power ratio.

Dragonsgrave was so powerful that even Sousa could hardly stand the blow. The current six-armed creature was among the weakest of their kind, so how could it survive? It had just turned around when the origin bullet arrived at its forehead, blasting his skull apart. The creature staggered briefly before collapsing to the ground.

The beast army in the forest became restless once the six-armed creature was killed. They climbed out from the ground and began searching for the invader.

Qianye’s eyes narrowed. He didn’t move into combat this time and, instead, connected to the beast lair’s core through the holy tree’s consciousness. He had a guess that he wanted to confirm.

In the blink of an eye, a cold intent flew over like an arrow and stabbed ruthlessly into Qianye’s spirit. The latter sneered as the ancient aura stemming from the River of Blood surged forth to face the consciousness of the beast lair.

The arrow of consciousness collapsed upon contact, and a mournful howl came from the depths of the earth. Qianye could sense the consciousness of the beast lair’s core leaving the holy tree and receding into the earth.

This battle of wills was no different from flipping cards. It was a contest to see which consciousness was of a higher rank. As someone who could communicate with the River of Blood at each breakthrough and obtain new inheritances, Qianye’s foundations were beyond solid. Why would he even put this little beast-lair core in his eyes? Besides, this one wasn’t even mature yet.

After the core was defeated, the beast army lost its chain of command and fell into chaos. Some began running through the forest in all directions, while others dug into the soil and continued their hibernation.

Qianye knew where the core was, so finding the entrance to the lair was easy. The core seemed to have sensed the approaching danger—it sent wave after wave of beasts to obstruct Qianye, risking damage to its consciousness.

Yet, this invader did not fear group battles at all. The sword in his grasp flickered irregularly, cutting down numerous creatures each time. The entire process flowed naturally without the slightest waste of energy.

Even the fiercest beasts would succumb to a single slash. The extreme weight of East Peak seemed no more than a willow leaf in Qianye’s hands.

Occasionally, large groups of beasts would appear in the tunnel entrance. Qianye would unleash his Venus Dawn-empowered domain and suppress all of the creatures, then turn hundreds of them into corpses at a time with Life Plunder.

Qianye had no interest at all in these alien beasts. Their essence blood was full of impurities and was thus useless despite containing large amounts of origin power. Even the Song Clan Ancient Scroll’s purification effects were limited. He would need to put in far more effort to achieve the same effect.

That was why Qianye would pour all of the absorbed essence blood into the Book of Darkness, with the intention of emptying it at some point.

During this Life Plunder, however, Qianye sensed the strange origin power locked within the beasts’ essence-blood starting to loosen. A single thought from Qianye and the Book of Darkness flipped to a new page to store all of the essence blood.

No more large beast waves appeared afterward. As he went further in, Qianye noticed that there were only scattered groups of enemies in twos or threes. They were also growing weaker, and some were still covered in egg-white. Apparently, these creatures had been rushed out of their eggs.

Qianye didn’t need to do anything beyond moving forward with East Peak in hand. He could simply stomp all of the beasts to death by relying on East Peak’s weight. Before long, he had arrived at the cave where the core was located.

The core of this beast lair was apparently rather new. It was merely the size of a human, and the cave chamber was a far cry from the one in the forest with four holy trees.

The lair was still emitting cold fluctuations of aggression. There wasn’t the slightest sign that it would submit.

Seeing that this core didn’t know what was good for it, Qianye swung East Peak with a cold smile and cleaved it into two. Then, he burned the two halves with sanguine blood until there were only ashes left. He had an abundance of beast lairs that would no longer breed, so there was no need to keep this little one for study.

After clearing out the core, the beast lair lost its function, and the beast eggs no longer hatched. Qianye soon tasked his men with clearing out all of these eggs as the Imperial research academy was paying a high price for them in terms of holy-tree-sap medicine.

Qianye planned to stay here for a day so that his troops could clean up the remaining beasts before heading to the next forest.

After returning to the Martyr’s Palace, Qianye added yet another marking on the map. The forests he had captured connected to form a curved line, the center of which was pointing toward the Moorland door.

Qianye carefully plotted his route along the curved path. The plan was to suppress the Moorland werewolves’ sphere of power without getting too close. This was so that Sousa would not have enough time to take action. After the fight with the great dark monarch, Qianye had a good grasp of each party’s strength and range. He would need to plot out the distribution of forces carefully.

A week went by just like that, and the Martyr’s Palace took down two more forests before retracing its path. The first batch of troops that had boarded the airship needed to rest and replenish their supply of medicine. The new soldiers who had just completed their training would take their place.

Cerulean Wave City, at this point, was bustling with activity. Most of the slums in the city had been removed, replaced by a mixture of human and werewolf architecture. The city was now full of foreign faces. It was a common sight to see women in revealing clothing from both the werewolf and human races.

The first thing sought by soldiers on holiday was wine and women. This applied to both humans and werewolves. The massive rise in demand not only provided a business opportunity for the impoverished but also attracted werewolf women from across the Jade Sea. The human mercenaries liked werewolf ladies, while the human girls from Zheng were a favorite of the werewolf chiefs and shamans.

This city on the shore of the Jade Sea had changed almost entirely in just a few months. Almost a million werewolves populated this city, helping it prosper far beyond Tempest City, the capital of the Storm Territory.

Qianye put down the map he was holding and walked out to the balcony. From here, he could see the entire plaza of the duke’s residence and the Jade Sea far off in the distance.

Now that the war was in full swing, the plaza of the duke’s residence had been modified into a landing pad. This was the only place in the city where large aircraft could land.

There were several crates lined up beside the plaza. The handful of boxes were guarded by hundreds of elites, led by two chiefs and a shaman. These three werewolves were already count-rank experts, yet they didn’t dare act carelessly.

Qianye was satisfied. These werewolves truly believed that he was the son of darkness and were fully devoted in both body and mind. They took their work with the utmost seriousness and didn’t fear death in battle. Qianye couldn’t ask for better subjects.

Looking at things from his current angle, it almost seemed that the werewolves and humans weren't all that different after all. The werewolves were even cuter and more obedient sometimes.

These crates were neither big nor eye-catching, but the airship carrying them was one of the fastest and most advanced vessels in Qianye’s possession. There was also a marquis-rank expert escorting the fleet at all times. Naturally, such a lineup was because the goods were priceless.

Those crates were full of holy-tree sap from the new world. Qianye controlled dozens of forests of varying sizes, yet this was all he could produce in a week.

Qianye couldn’t extract too much tree sap at a time if he wanted to keep the forest in an operational state. This current rate was just the right amount. Every week, Qianye would send an airship full of holy-tree sap to the Empire and bring back medicine and supplies. That airship was the fastest corvette in his fleet and was solely dedicated to shipping holy-tree sap and medicines. The aristocratic families would ship the general military supplies on their own.

Qianye noticed that something seemed to be missing on the empty plaza. Frowning, he had a bad feeling when he noticed a general running toward the duke’s residence.

This general had been in Dark Flame for many years and had always been a calm person. That was why Qianye put him in charge of logistics and resources. Now that he seemed so frantic, there had to be something difficult going on.

Qianye returned to his study and waited calmly for the man’s arrival. Before long, there was a knock on the door as the general came in. The first thing he said was, “Sire, the most recent batch of medicines haven’t arrived!”

“Explain, what’s the reason?”

“The Empire isn’t issuing the goods.”

“Give me the list.”

The general had already prepared the records for Qianye’s inspection. The latter’s expression sank after looking through the data. “Not including the batch at the airship port, we’ve made three shipments to the Empire. Yet, they’ve already stopped shipments since last week?”

The general replied. “At first, I thought there were some unexpected delays. I didn’t dare make baseless guesses, so I asked some of the aristocratic family members and found out that the Empire has stopped issuing the goods.”