Monarch of Evernight (Web Novel)

[Volume 5 – A Distance Within Reach]

An unknown length of time had passed when Qianye sat up and glanced vacantly at his surroundings. He recalled, after quite some time, that he had fallen into a deep slumber just as he was about to cultivate.

He reached for the nearby origin clock and was relieved to find that only about half an hour had passed. Qianye was just thinking about circulating the Song Clan Ancient Scroll when he suddenly realized that his essence blood was missing again. Additionally, over half of it had vanished and only about a third remained.

Qianye was shocked—this time, he knew for certain that something was wrong. He immediately sat down, activated his True Sight with great concentration, and began to check every corner of his body. He couldn’t rest easy without uncovering the mystery of the vanishing essence blood.

Qianye’s internal vision had become much clearer after obtaining True Sight, and he could even capture the most minute of changes in origin power. As such, he began to circulate his cultivation arts one by one and observed the flow of origin power within.

Everything was normal, starting from the Combatant Formula to the Song Clan Ancient Scroll. He simply couldn’t find anything odd.

This vortex was like an invisible grinding stone which crushed and expelled the mixed impurities within the essence blood. This process produced the purest of darkness origin power which was then absorbed by his blood energies.

After absorbing darkness origin power, the purple blood energy would use it to strengthen his body. At the same time, it would release some specks of purple light which were then carried, by means of his blood, to every part of his body.

Meanwhile, the dark golden blood energy displayed no changes despite absorbing even more darkness origin power than the purple one. Instead, a certain feather on the Wings of Inception suddenly seemed a bit brighter than before. It was almost tangible and no longer illusory like it was before.

Sometimes, the dark golden blood energy would also release some light, but it didn’t flow to his limbs and bones via the bloodstream and was instead absorbed by his internal organs. There were some minute changes in the organs after absorbing the golden light. The changes were so minuscule that one could hardly notice them, but they were, in fact, a definite reinforcement.

Qianye finally discovered the dark golden blood energy’s effects. It was unexpectedly capable of strengthening his internal organs.

The cultivation path of those from the Evernight faction was much more straightforward compared to the complex human systems—every race prioritized strengthening their bodies. But the upgrade was mostly limited to the external physique below the level of champion. Only after passing the champion threshold would the darkness origin power enter deeper into the organs and reach a new level.

This implied that Qianye, with his dark golden blood energy, possessed combat strength comparable to that of a viscount despite the fact that his blood energy was quantitatively at the level of a baron’s.

This also meant that his strength in combat would exceed other vampires of the same level when he formally condensed a blood core and advanced to the champion rank.

As expected, the essence blood seeping out of his heart was cut off at the beginning of his second cycle, and only a small amount of essence blood seeped out a while later. The flow of essence blood during this entire process was intermittent—apparently, a part of it was disappearing once again.

Qianye slowly withdrew his arts. He already knew that the essence blood he had absorbed were all stored in his heart, and hence, the reason behind the vanishing essence blood should also be in its depths. It was just that ordinary internal vision couldn’t probe into the internal operations of the heart.

He gave it some thought before operating his true sight, focusing it on his heart. Quite unexpectedly, the heart became transparent under his True Sight and slowly revealed the scene within.

At this moment, the essence blood had formed a ball the size of his thumb and was hovering within his heart chamber. Its color was fairly mottled—some parts were bright red, while others were somewhat darker, presumably caused by the mixture of essence blood from different races.

Above this sanguineous ball, Qianye saw the illusory figure of a book. That was the Book of Darkness which he had obtained from Andruil’s treasury!

Back then, the book had inexplicably entered Qianye’s consciousness but had mysteriously disappeared after he had left the lost realm. He couldn’t find any traces of it no matter how he observed. He had never expected the book to have entered the depths of his heart at some point.

The “Book of Darkness: Genesis” was one of the dark race’s lost classics, but Qianye had no other information about it apart from the demonstration of the world’s inception when he had first obtained it. Even though the Song clan’s depository had indeed collected a fair share of dark race historical documents, no records there were related to this book.

The bleeding eye on the book’s cover had undergone some changes and now seemed rather illusory. On the contrary, the three runes around it appeared much clearer than before.

Qianye observed for a moment and automatically understood their meaning.

The first rune was the “Book of Darkness”, the second meant “Genesis” and the third represented “darkness origin power”.

Two out of the three runes had already been lit up, while the third was halfway between illusory and material—it was lacking just a little bit to appear completely.

At this moment, the scenery within this conscious space became exceptionally clear. A strand of essence blood would occasionally seep out from the bloody sphere to be absorbed by the Book of Darkness. Could it be that the vanishing essence blood had been absorbed by the Book of Darkness?

Qianye, once again, shifted his focus onto the Book of Darkness. This time, the Book of Darkness was altered the moment it came into contact with his consciousness—an inexplicable and enormous attractive force began to draw the ball of essence blood toward it.

The Book of Darkness began to pulse as though it possessed a life of its own and continuously devoured the essence blood in large gulps. Within the blink of an eye, the ball of essence blood equivalent to a knight had completely disappeared.

Qianye was amazed. Afterward, he discovered that the last rune on the cover had lit up, and a thought flashed through his mind—he subconsciously wanted to open the Book of Darkness and study it in detail. This notion had just emerged when the hovering Book of Darkness opened itself.

There was a table of contents on the title page, but it contained only one line: “Tempering”.

Qianye’s will moved once again, and the Book of Darkness flipped to the next page on its own. This time, there were masses of billowing darkness on the page. There was a small runic word at the corner of the page which read “Tempering”. Qianye tried to flip the page once again, but it jumped directly to the back cover.

This thick Book of Darkness, at present, had only one page.

Following the attention of his consciousness, the mass of darkness slowly transformed, and the irregular mist slowly formed meaningful and continuously transforming images. Suddenly, the figure of a person flashed past, someone Qianye felt he had seen before.

The figure immediately became much clearer as Qianye focused his attention, its form stabilizing in the shape of a man thrusting with a sword. Qianye was fairly familiar with this diagram—it was a basic stance from one of the Song clan’s basic sword techniques. Qianye soon recalled the other sword stances from this basic sword technique, and the corresponding human-shaped figure would appear almost immediately.

All of the human-shaped diagrams were moving continuously and displaying their representative sword techniques. Every demonstration was slightly different, and these minor discrepancies shook Qianye’s heart. They were actually improvements made to the basic sword technique! Those changes happened to be in the parts which he had felt were not very smooth but didn’t know how to improve on.

The Book of Darkness was automatically deriving martial arts?

Qianye suppressed the astonishment in his heart and began to recall the other martial techniques he had seen in the Song clan depository. As expected, any stance he recalled would appear on the Book of Darkness. Within the blink of an eye, there were hundreds of human-shaped figures within that lump of darkness. They moved up and down as they continuously demonstrated various types of martial arts.

Back at the Song clan, he had spent most of his time and energy on studying sword techniques after obtaining East Peak and naturally paid more attention to sword techniques at present.

Following his will, all of the human figures in the Book of Darkness turned blurry and reverted to misty black lines. Then, they assembled once more, and this time, all of the human-shaped figures were holding swords. The most astonishing thing was that these swords were actually identical to East Peak.

Every human figure represented a sword stance. On careful observation, these sword techniques all originated from the dozens of basic sword technique records Qianye had read.

The mass of darkness surged at progressively greater speeds, and all of the human-shaped figures began to move accordingly. Within moments, hundreds of people were waving swords in front of Qianye’s eyes. Some were performing sword dances on their own, others were sparring with one another, and some figures were even engaging in a group brawl. Moments later, some of the human-shaped figures disappeared, while others combined into one. Their numbers dwindled quickly, and only a couple of human figures remained in the end.

Qianye observed with even greater concentration and found that these figures weren’t using the sword techniques from any single sword art. Their actions were similarly simple and direct but were much more exquisite than basic sword techniques. Most importantly, these sword techniques were obviously a fit for the East Peak, not only in terms of size and shape, but also in terms of weight.

Qianye had been single-mindedly studying East Peak’s use during this period and was struck with a sudden flash of insight after seeing these techniques. But he still felt something was missing.

As if they had sensed Qianye’s thoughts, the human figures performing swordplay in the darkness turned blurry. They gathered to one side and seemed to be on the verge of merging together. During this process, the mass of pure darkness origin power faded away rapidly and was fully consumed in the blink of an eye. After which, only a single human figure was left on the page.

With the sword in hand, the figure slashed out like a thunderbolt and fired a sword radiance extending dozens of meters.

Qianye’s heart and mind were completely shaken as he watched this move. This sword strike wasn’t elaborate and only sought pure might, almost capable of slashing open space.

The human figure released that single slash and then stopped moving as numerous ancient runes began to appear in the surrounding space.

An abrupt revelation condensed the meaning of this runic word in Qianye’s consciousness.