Within the Empty Mountain Imperial Palace.
At the Swan-Catching Hall.
This hall was very large and empty. Only a single item was placed in the center of the hall.
This item was a seventy-foot-tall mirror.
Within the mirror, the scene of a mountain and a stream was reflected. The scenery was really quite beautiful.
This was the Swan-Catching Mirror.
The Swan-Catching Mirror was not merely useful for peeking in; it was an important investigative tool, and when combined with the Swan-Catching Demon Seal, it could display the surroundings of any individual who had been imprinted by that seal.
The red dots of light began to appear in the Swan-Catching Mirror, the intensity at which they glowed indicative of how powerful the Gu Clan member was.
It was possible to see the surroundings of every one of those red dots.
Chu Jiangyu chuckled as he stood in front of the Swan-Catching Mirror. "Only by activating the seal can we determine whether or not the person is the person you are looking for. If there are any problems that result because of this, I must ask Brother Gu to forgive me."
As he spoke, he tapped one of the dots on the mirror.
An image appeared on the surface of the Swan-Catching Mirror of a man currently entertained with a woman in his room.
As this image appeared, the male raised his head, staring at the sky in surprise. "This feeling of being watched...... could it be?"
"Aiyaya, I made a mistake," Chu Jiangyu chuckled. He waved his arm, and the image disappeared. He motioned to tap a different dot.
Gu Feihong had seen everything very clearly. The person in the mirror was one of the Gu Clan’s elders, but the woman beneath him wasn’t his wife - it was the wife of another elder.
The worst part was that this elder was at the Spirit Burning Realm, while Gu Qingluo had only just reached the Light Shaking Realm. Their strengths were completely impossible to mix up.
Chu Jiangyu"s tap was obviously intentional.
“Crown Prince!” Gu Feihong yelled.
“Oh, I made a mistake. I’m sorry,” Chu Jiangyu chuckled. He tapped again, this time on someone who was clearly at the Light Shaking Realm and also was outside of the city.
There weren’t many people of the Gu Clan wandering outside the city. The first red dot did not turn out to be Su Chen.
However, when the second dot was pressed, Gu Qingluo’s figure appeared in the mirror.
She was in a stone room with Su Chen, whispering something into his ear.
A strong sense that she was being watched surfaced in her heart. Gu Qingluo’s expression changed as she said, “Gu Feihong found me!”
Su Chen motioned with his hand. Smoke suddenly bloomed, enveloping the two of them so that the watchers couldn’t see clearly what was happening between the two of them.
Even so, the dot that represented Gu Qingluo in the Swan-Catching Mirror was impossible to obscure.
“Found her.” Chu Jiangyu chuckled.
“Those d.a.m.ned illicit lovers! I’m going to kill them right here and right now!” Gu Feihong yelled.
Chu Jiangyu tossed Gu Feihong a transmission talisman. “You go and kill them. I will remain here and watch. No matter where they run, they will not be able to escape my sight.”
“Many thanks, Crown Prince!” Gu Feihong strode out of the Swan-Catching Hall.
As he watched Gu Feihong leave, Chu Jiangyu chuckled darkly and turned back around to gaze at the Swan-Catching Mirror.
He tapped again, this time on three dark, scarlet-colored dots.
An image appeared once again. This time, it was of three elders, two male and one female, sitting in a triangle around 161 candles arranged in a strange formation. The candles glowed with a strange light.
“Not good!” the white-haired woman immediately sensed that they were being watched and cried out as she quickly extinguished the flames.
Chu Jiangyu’s eyes glittered. “They actually gathered that many Lifesource Candles? And they almost got away with it, too. But since I managed to discover them, then sorry - you’d better hand them over to the Chu Clan!
Chu Jiangyu tilted his head back and howled with laughter.
Lifesource Candles were candles made from the power of the Gu Clan’s Origin Beast Bloodline. They were incredibly powerful. By relying on these candles, it was possible to unleash incredibly powerful Origin Skills.
Creating these candles expended a ton of energy from those who possessed an Origin Beast bloodline.
Every year, the Gu Clan needed to contribute a set number of Lifesource Candles to the Chu Clan, which the Chu Clan would then distribute amongst the seven Desolate Beast Bloodline Clans.
This was their purpose for existing - the whole reason that the Seven Kingdoms had not yet wiped them off of the face of the earth.
It could be said that the Gu Clan was like a strategic weapons manufacturer. The Seven Kingdoms relied on them to ensure that the human race would not fall.
The Gu Clan, however, was obviously unwilling to allow themselves to be harvested year after year.
As a result, they were also secretly producing Lifesource Candles for themselves.
When they were able to gather enough Lifesource Candles, they could use them as a medium for unleas.h.i.+ng a secret technique that would allow them to turn back time and wash off the curse, turning them into free individuals.
As such, the Gu Clan had been constantly gathering Lifesource Candles to try and escape, and the Chu Clan did their best to frustrate the Gu Clan in their endeavors without fully turning on them. This way, they would get as many Lifesource Candles as possible.
This kind of a fight had been occurring for a long time, and there seemed to be no end in sight.
In the past few thousands of years, the Gu Clan had succeeded a few times, but they had also failed.
When they succeeded, someone from the Gu Clan would obtain their freedom. When they failed, however, the large number of Lifesource Candles that they had spent so much effort creating would be taken away by the Chu Clan.
Most importantly, these Lifesource Candles could be used by people for their own personal motives.
The Gu Clan was already nearing the number of Lifesource Candles they would need to perform this forbidden technique, but because of Gu Feihong’s idiotic impulsiveness, they had failed at the very end.
The Gu Clan really was too unlucky. Lifesource Candles were not possible to make at all times, yet it was at this moment that they were discovered by Chu Jiangyu.
This was the first time Gu Qingluo had seen the Origin Bone Scepter.
The Origin Bone Scepter floated above the altar, glowing with a faint light.
The Demonic Lord Origin Crystal was consumed slowly as a hazy, illusory image appeared on the surface of the altar, showing Su Chen in the process of performing a series of adept motions.
“This is the you in the future?” Gu Qingluo muttered.
“Yes. At some point in the future, I am performing some research that I have wanted to complete for a long time,” Su Chen chuckled with satisfaction as he stared at the image.
“I don’t quite understand. You said before that the Origin Bone Scepter only makes predictions that the user wants to see, and any predictions that can change in the future will require a much higher price. But after it shows you a prediction of your future experiment, you will remember it, so won’t it be impossible for this future to be realized? You still changed the future, didn’t you?” Gu Qingluo asked.
“There is a difference,” Su Chen replied. “The Origin Bone Staff takes two factors as the basis for its predictions: the first is the length of time, and the second is the actual fact of what happens. Unless I specifically ask when something will happen, the Origin Bone Scepter will not tell me an exact time. My earlier prediction was made because I wanted to see how I would successfully make a breakthrough in my research of the three curses at some unknown point in time, so the Origin Bone Scepter gave me the answer. This answer only contains the occurrence itself, not when it will happen. As such, as long as I don’t try to change time itself, then when this breakthrough happens does not impact the accuracy of its prediction. In a sense, the future was not changed at all; it was just moved up ahead of schedule. For instance, moved up to now.”
The scene disappeared. Su Chen raised his hands, moving in a flurry of incredibly confusing and hard-to-follow movements.
The consciousness crystal allowed him to remember the prediction incredibly clearly without any mistakes, so performing repeated experiments was no longer necessary. With a single try, he was able to extract some dark substance from Gu Qingluo’s blood.
This substance was incredibly rare, so much so that it was impossible to see it with the naked eye.
This was because there were simply too few particles, as they had merely been extracted from a single drop of Gu Qingluo’s blood. Under the activation of Su Chen’s microscopic eye, however, this substance was incredibly transparent.
This was the special Origin Substance that caused the Gu Clan’s members to be under the control of the Capricorn Curse. As such, Su Chen decided to call it the Capricorn Origin Substance.
Capricorn Origin Substance was similar to Darkness Origin Substance and Duplication Origin Substance. They were all incredibly rare, so the next step Su Chen took was to find a way to foster this Origin Substance.
Instead of gathering Capricorn Origin Substance slowly by creating an Origin Conducting Tool, the Capricorn Origin Substance could be directly nourished by a certain kind of growth media.
Su Chen didn’t know why, but since this Origin Bone Scepter had given him such an answer, this implied that his method of creating Origin Conducting Tools was probably not going to be effective on this kind of Origin Substance. As for why this was the case, Su Chen could only continue experimenting.
After preparing the growth media, Su Chen sealed the vial.
“Next, we are going to cultivate this Origin Substance. After a day or so, we should get enough Capricorn Origin Substance to use.”
“So the Capricorn Curse, which the Chu Clan uses to keep the Gu Clan under their control, has been grasped by you? I can’t believe it.” Gu Qingluo stared at Su Chen, stunned.
This was one of the Chu Clan’s greatest treasures in dealing with the Gu Clan, but now Su Chen had somehow managed to control it. Wasn’t that the same as saying that the Gu Clan would, in the future, be under the control of the Su Clan?”
“Well, you could say so.” Su Chen laughed.
“But without the Capricorn Staff, how will you control it?”
“I don’t need it,” Su Chen replied. “I’m the inventor, not the inheritor.”
The biggest difference between them and Su Chen was that Su Chen had truly managed to discover a way to utilize the Capricorn Origin Substance.
Even though inheritors could control the three curses to some extent, they didn’t know why they could control it. Converting this control technique into a more basic form was impossible, so the Chu Clan couldn’t get around using the Capricorn Staff to control the Capricorn Curse.
Su Chen, however, had cultivated this Capricorn Origin Substance from the very beginning, so he could directly use it. By infusing the Origin Substance with his consciousness, he could directly control it, which he had developed techniques for. He didn’t need the a.s.sistance of the Capricorn Staff in the first place.
On the other hand, however, Su Chen had no way of canceling out the Capricorn Staff’s control. In other words, both he and the Capricorn STaff could control this Origin Substance, so the Gu Clan now suddenly had a new master.
No one could have possibly expected Su Chen to reach this point. Even Gu Qingluo was completely stunned. “So in other words, the Gu Clan must listen to your commands from now on?”
“It’s not that simple. I have only mastered one curse out of three, and there are two more curses that haven’t been figured out yet. And my control over this kind of Origin Substance is still a bit shallow. I will need some more time to grow stronger,” Su Chen replied.
“But with the Origin Bone Scepter, you will be able to save lots of time.”
“That’s right,” Su Chen chuckled.
The Origin Bone Scepter might not give him an answer he wouldn’t ever find out, but it could give him answers that would normally take him years to discover.
Time was the greatest benefit that the Origin Bone Scepter brought to Su Chen.
Now that he had discovered the way to control the Capricorn Origin Substance, Su Chen made two more predictions, allowing him to also extract the Swan-Catching Demon Seal’s core Origin Substance. He failed to do so for the Origin Dream Killer, so it was obvious that this final curse was also the most important and complicated one. Perhaps he would be unable to nullify it in the near future.
Su Chen knew that this was because his understanding of the other two curses was still shallow. The Origin Bone Scepter had given him the answer, but it couldn’t give him the research process, so Su Chen needed to find a way to make up for that. Once Su Chen was able to fill in the missing basic knowledge regarding the two curses, perhaps it would be much easier to determine how to deconstruct the Origin Dream Killer curse.
Since he was using Gu Qingluo’s blood to research the three curses, Su Chen didn’t hold back and began to trace the Origin Beast Bloodline all the way to its source to see if there was anything that he could use.
As he traced this path, an astonis.h.i.+ng result appeared before his very eyes.
This result was not related to how he would use the Origin Beast Bloodline, but how he would use the Origin Bone Scepter.
Within the image, Su Chen was placing sacrifices on the altar. It was unclear what kind of answer he was trying to divine, but the sacrifice itself was what drew Su Chen’s attention.
It was a person!
“Gu Liu’an?” Gu Qingluo began to yell. “Why would you place one of the Gu Clan’s members on the altar?”
One of the Gu Clan’s members? Su Chen stared at the image in shock.
Su Chen couldn’t see if the altar had given him an answer or not, but as he stared at the Gu Clan member on the altar, Su Chen suddenly realized something. “So that’s how it is! I get it now!”
“What do you get?” Gu Qingluo didn’t understand.
Su Chen said, “The Origin Bone Scepter is made from a bone belonging to the s.h.i.+ning Dragon! And the Gu Clan’s bloodline is the s.h.i.+ning Dragon Bloodline! Do you not understand, Qingluo? To the Origin Bone Scepter, the best sacrifice is the Gu Clan’s members! If the blood of the members of the Gu Clan were to return to the Origin Bone Scepter, it’s possible that the damage it has sustained will be healed and that its quality will increase!”
When she heard this, Gu Qingluo felt as if she had been dealt a heavy blow.
“You wouldn’t do that, would you?” she asked, stunned.
Su Chen stared at the image. “Obviously, I did.”