Qianye turned toward the direction of the call and flew over. The summoning gave him an inherent feeling of familiarity.

It was just that he couldn’t reach the source of that call even after flying endlessly. He couldn’t figure out whether he had actually moved because there was nothing to reference in this endless void.

All he could do was keep flying with all his might.

As time went on, even this incorporeal consciousness began to feel some exhaustion. Qianye suddenly noticed a pair of giant golden eyes slowly open. The eyes merely shot him a glance, but that was enough to send his world spinning. The scenery before him had changed completely when he regained control.

Before him was a raging river. He could not tell whence this giant river stemmed from or where it went; all he knew was that the source of the summoning call came from upstream.

With this thought, Qianye flew along the river.

This time, he knew he was flying. The river gradually became narrower, and the waters turned red, dark red, and then a hint of gold began to appear within. In the blink of an eye, the river had narrowed down to the size of a stream, with golden light flowing between its banks.

The calling grew even clearer; it was coming from the source of the river.

Qianye suddenly realized what he was seeing. This was the River of Blood!

…

Glorious Marquis Margo was enjoying his tea under a big courtyard umbrella. The fragrant flowers and the sunlight shining through the leaves did little to improve his mood.

This was his own territory back at the clan, located on Fire Beacon Continent. Although the land here was small and squeezed up against human territory, it was a good beginning for his family.

Margo was the last batch of experts to be transferred out of Blacksun Valley. He had been feeling sullen for many days, but his mood worsened after returning to Evernight. The showdown on that mountain peak never appeared in any of the records.

He realized what was going on after someone explained it to him. That last battle and its relevant contributions were still under inspection. The process was now half completed, and the rest was in a pending state.

Margo happened to be among the half that was being investigated. He didn’t have much to say since he was captured in the fight, and he didn’t want to wait on Twilight Continent. So, he simply cited injuries and returned to his territory.

Noticing something was off, Margo looked around all of a sudden. Two demonkin had appeared at the entrance to his courtyard.

The marquis recognized the two. He stood up and said in puzzlement, “Your Excellencies Anwen and Eden?!” His expression then shifted drastically. “Eden, what are you doing?!”

The muzzle of Eden’s rifle was staring at him in the face. Margo knew Eden’s special power quite well, and despite being a level higher, he knew it was impossible to escape unscathed.

Eden said calmly, “My apologies, Your Excellency Margo, we’re on a mission. Please return with us.”

Margo said furiously, “If I have to take responsibility, it should be toward Twilight Continent! What’s the meaning of this?”

Incidences of high-ranking experts being captured were few and far between, but it wasn’t as though there weren’t any examples. The exchange of prisoners and ransom couldn’t be made public, but there were always parties operating in the dark.

As for submission, it was naturally impossible between factions. Things, however, could get a bit messy once there was a neutral power involved. For such cases, the council would allow the individual races to settle the matter on their own and only observe the results later on.

Margo had sensed something bad after the battle at Blacksun Valley, but he wasn’t too worried. He was ready to get thrown into another war, but who would’ve thought the council would interfere before the vampire race’s punishment had arrived?

Eden didn’t say anything to him and simply pulled the trigger.

Margo’s hair stood on end as he entered a state of bloodboil. Without a care for the potential damage, he immediately transformed into a shadow and fled. His speed was even faster than an origin bullet!

However, he ran into an invisible wall before he could escape the courtyard. Wisps of dark energy appeared before him as Anwen appeared nearby. The demonkin then captured Margo with his domain as though he were catching an insect.

Margo attacked at the speed of lightning, using his vampiric blade to cleave an escape path on the wall of demonic energy.

Eden’s bullet tore through Margo’s back at that moment. Anwen and his domain suddenly disappeared just before a large shadowy mass flew in and engulfed the vampire marquis.

The vampire castle outside was also in chaos at this point. Large batches of Evernight council soldiers poured in and started massacring everyone in the stronghold. All of them were titled experts who could reap a life with a single strike.

Several transports landed at the borders of the territory, their escort warships still hovering in the air. There were supply crates scattered on the ground and several technicians were busy setting up large equipment on the unoccupied land.

The shadow that had devoured Margo was fired from a cannon-like installation from this place. That dark mass didn’t disperse after engulfing the vampire marquis and instead remained erect on the ground.

Only high-ranking demonkin nobles could clearly see the dissection process that was going on inside. The vampire marquis was being separated into different tissues and broken down into blood energy, which was then converted into pure darkness origin power.

In the end, Margo was reduced to a single blood core and a large cloud of essence, containing half blood energy and half darkness origin power.

During this process, a serious-looking demonkin elder was busy recording the data onto a piece of parchment paper.

At this point, Anwen turned around and said to someone in his guard squad, “Your Excellency, you can go back now that you’ve observed the scene. His Majesty will worry if you run out here like this.”

That tall, soldierly man was Predica.

Predica watched the old demonkin disperse the demonic energy and collect the blood core into a special receptacle. He couldn’t help but rub his chin, saying, “Your matter extraction methods are getting more and more accurate.”

The demonkin nodded and said with a bow, “For darkness and glory. Thank you for the praise, Your Excellency. This is the most cutting-edge extraction method under development. The error control is within half an energy unit and works with any energy system. Well, of course, we still haven’t grasped enough data on void origin power.”

Predica shook his head. “But I feel that His Majesty won’t be willing to offer up that person for such an analysis.”

The old demonkin knew sufficient inside information. “If it’s just for reference data, adding two more provinces under the daybreak system should suffice. We’ve already handed the calculation results to His Majesty Anwen last night. Things turned out quite well. We need to clear away the little insects tainted by darkness origins anyway. It makes little difference if we do it now or later.”

Predica and Anwen exchanged glances, but neither of them said anything. The two were just observers; the decision-making would be left to the other great dark monarchs and princes. Before this senior warlock of the research institute, they had to be careful no matter how high their statuses were.

A soldier arrived at this moment. He bowed first and said, “Lords, there’s a food pen inside with humans among the stock.”

The old demonkin waved at him. “No need to pick them out especially. Daybreak food doesn’t affect the overall data.”

The soldier had just turned around to leave when Predica said, “Wait, I want to take a look. I haven’t seen human commoners before.”

Predica returned after a while and was duly dragged onto the return flight by Anwen.

This time, the demonkin didn’t try to dilly-dally. It was just that he kept gazing out the window after the airship had taken off. After a long while, he asked in puzzlement, “That marshal’s people, are you sure they’re not different species?

Anwen felt that there was a lot to say, but at the same time, he had nothing to say.

Predica’s identity was special, so he had received strict protection from the demonkin race. Even among the upper echelons of the dark races, not many knew of his existence. He rarely left the race’s territory, and even his experience-excursions were limited to special zones that were far away from the daybreak continents.

Also, what did his people mean? What was the power of bloodlines?

Back on the ground, Eden was standing quietly on high ground with his gun.

The territory belonging to a vampire clan was now being leveled rapidly before him. Everything was disappearing—life, castle, and even the lay of the land. Everything was being reduced to thin air and transformed into sets of data in the researchers’ notebooks.

After the entire territory had been wiped clean, the transports shipped over a mountain of equipment. Then, they began assembling a massive entity made of metal, stone, and other unknown materials.

A giant shadow was thus cast over the great land.