Chapter 238: The Goldbiter Rat King’s First Taste of Sweetness
To be abandoned by the humans, to lack all protection, to be nibbled away by alien races and become their food!
Although it was only a hypothesis, it still made Iron Can shudder in fear. He could hear his father’s worry from his tone.
“Father, surely our sixteen kingdoms can’t be in that bad of a situation?” Iron Can managed to squeeze out an ugly smile.
“We’re worse off than you can think! Not a single one of our pract.i.tioners have broken through from the spirit realm in all these years. Those who’ve gone on to the origin realm are all old monsters who did so hundreds of years ago. Of the sixteen kingdoms, only the four great sects can each boast of one origin realm pract.i.tioner!”
A venerated origin realm pract.i.tioner!
This was the existence of legends to Iron Can.
He had once heard that the Precious Tree Sect had an origin realm ancestor as well, but as to what this ancestor looked like and where he was, Iron Can had never cared about that.
He’d felt that this was too far away from him and he had no need to pay attention to matters like these.
“Father, a venerated origin realm pract.i.tioner is the stuff of legends. Do the other factions in the Myriad Domain have more origin realm pract.i.tioners than us?”
Iron Long laughed ruefully, “More? How does more even begin to sum it up? Iron Can, you have an unlimited future ahead of you in the Precious Tree Sect because you have me as your father. However, my level of training would only net me an ordinary mid to senior executive position within the powerful empires and dynasties of the Myriad Domain. I wouldn’t even make it into the core power. These powerful forces and great sects have dozens of origin realm pract.i.tioners, possibly even more!”
“What?”
Iron Can was thoroughly shocked to hear these words.
The entire Precious Tree Sect had less than ten pract.i.tioners in the sky spirit realm, much less the origin realm. They only had one in the origin realm, and he was just a figure in a far away fairy tale.
“Stop losing your composure over this. My estimate is also likely quite conservative. These origin realm pract.i.tioners are also divided into the minor, earth, and sky origin realm, much like the spirit realm. The origin pract.i.tioners of our four sects are only of the first and second levels, making them of the minor levels as well. To these great sects and powerful parties, a minor origin realm is nothing at all. Those within the heart of their core power are all of the sky origin realm!”
Iron Can was thoroughly flabbergasted. His sense of superiority seemed to have been stripped away from him instantly; he was completely sh.e.l.l shocked.
A frog at the bottom of the well?
A complete frog at the bottom of the well!
…...
Yang Zhao’s death and the news of the Dragonteeth Guard cleaning house quickly made the rounds in the capital.
Firstly, with respect to the conflict between Yang Zhao and the Crown Prince, as well as the various grudges between Lu Wuji and Jiang Chen, it had all quickly become public knowledge within the capital beforehand.
The n.o.bles, courtiers, and officials within the capital had all held the mentality of watching a good show as they had kept an eye on the struggle between the Crown Prince and vice director of the Dragonteeth Guard.
People hadn’t held high hopes for the Crown Prince originally. After all, Yang Zhao had a sect elder behind him that even Shangguan Yi would give him some respect for! Ye Rong was a Crown Prince who’d just received his t.i.tle. His foundations were shaky, his background not substantial enough, what would he bring out to contend against Yang Zhao?
It was said that Jiang Chen was the Crown Prince’s right hand man and had killed Lu Wuji.
However, those of the capital still veered on not looking too favorably on the Crown Prince.
Jiang Chen?
Although the courtiers and officials recognized that Jiang Chen had some ability to him, but to think that a foreign child would use his power alone to fight against Yang Zhao and the sect elder behind him was simply too ludicrous!
However --
Everyone found it hard to believe the developments that had come to pa.s.s.
Jiang Chen had singlehandedly rushed into the Dragonteeth Guard headquarters and used his strength alone to kill Xin Wudao and Qi Fengxian, two of Yang Zhao’s confidantes, right in front of Shangguan Yi and Elder Iron!
He’d been completely without fear even when Elder Iron himself oppressed him after that.
Even more astonis.h.i.+ng was that the honored tutor, someone who usually disdained from involving himself with the matters of the world, had protected Jiang Chen at the cost of offending Elder Iron!
The most confounding of them all was that the vice director had died randomly within a secret chamber!
These astounding scenes happened one after another; it was truly a series of unfortunate events.
The entire matter had proceeded in a direction that no one could’ve antic.i.p.ated at all.
Yang Zhao, someone who held tremendous power within the Dragonteeth Guard, had bizarrely died just like that!
His confederates, who’d always liked lording it and running roughshod over others, had either been killed or demoted and thoroughly swept out of the guard.
Even the overweeningly arrogant Elder Iron hadn’t wrung any concessions out of Jiang Chen and returned to the sect with a face full of dust.
It was only then that everyone realized how laughably they’d underestimated Jiang Chen before.
But of course, people couldn’t be faulted for looking down on Jiang Chen.
After all, he’d kept a low profile since arriving in the Skylaurel Kingdom and hadn’t raised a great fanfare.
He’d kept his first clash with Lu Wuji confined within a small s.p.a.ce, so news of that hadn’t spread.
Although he had shone in the spotlight during the honored tutor’s birthday banquet, but many had felt that he had just been lucky and knew some tricks to amuse the honored tutor.
Even though there had been many points of doubt during the trials within the maze realm, but there was no direct evidence that proved how awesome Jiang Chen was.
It wasn’t that they didn’t suspect Jiang Chen, but as n.o.bles of the Skylaurel Kingdom, everyone was consciously avoiding this topic.
After all, how could it be an easy thing for a foreign kid to receive the true acceptance of the Skylaurel Kingdom?
However --
With how things had developed, everyone within the Skylaurel Kingdom had to admit that they were witnessing Jiang Chen’s rise and that they had underestimated him before!
If people had had any doubts regarding Jiang Chen’s strength before, then the three arrows that had killed Xin Wudao and Qi Fengxian had thoroughly helped everyone understand -- Jiang Chen’s martial dao potential was higher than that of any of his peers!
The entire Jiang manor was celebrating riotously.
When they listened to Tian Shao describe what had happened, Jiang Chen’s personal guards were all filled with fervent ardor and pride beyond belief.
Venturing into the dragon’s cave alone, he had exterminated their enemies in the heart of the Dragonteeth Guard’s headquarters!
The Precious Tree Sect elder had arrived with imposing momentum, but had gotten nothing but a face full of dust for his troubles!
Yet, through all this, Jiang Chen was rather indifferent.
Whether it was Xin Wudao or Qi Fengxian, they were just a few small p.a.w.ns. So he’d killed them. Jiang Chen didn’t think it was much of anything.
As for Yang Zhao, that was naturally the work of the Goldbiter Rat king.
Within the secret chamber, the Goldbiter Rat King was on his back and belching loudly.
“Ole King, enjoyed yourself this time, didn’t you? You look like you’ve taken in a lot of nutrition after swallowing two earth spirit realm pract.i.tioners!”
The Rat King chuckled. He’d had his first taste of sweetness since leaving the maze realm.
His Goldbiter Rat tribe had to scurry to and fro for hiding places within the maze realm, to say nothing of trying to actually hunt other spirit creatures.
He’d discovered that there were actually quite a few spirit realm pract.i.tioners to devour in the outside world!
These spirit realm pract.i.tioners were enormously nutritious, and there were so many of them!
The a.s.sa.s.sin Xue San from the Hidden Hand and Yang Zhao had been particularly rich supplements.
Jiang Chen knew that the Rat King must have been feeling d.a.m.n good when he saw the Rat King chuckle deviously.
“However, keep in mind that although there are opportunities to devour spirit realm pract.i.tioners, they aren’t that numerous either. They’re also of limited effect when it comes to evolving bloodlines.”
These words mentioned the crux of the problem.
“Young master Chen, your words are quite right. Although devouring spirit realm pract.i.tioners have great benefits for training, it has no particular use for evolving bloodlines.”
Although the Rat King was quite satisfied with his recent meals, the true reason why he’d ventured into the outside world with Jiang Chen occupied every moment of his thoughts.
To evolve bloodlines, improve the bloodlines of his tribe, and trace their source up to that of the Ancient Goldbiter Kingrats!
That was the ultimate goal and why he’d left his homeland with his tribe!
“Ole King, there are many ways to evolve bloodlines.”
“Tell me about it.”
“The first is to naturally awaken your heritage of memories and use the secret arts contained within to complete the evolution of your bloodlines. This method is the most useful, but certain opportunities are needed to provoke the awakening of memories. I know a few ways to provoke this awakening, but I can’t train in those methods for now due to the level of my training. There’s no way to practice the secret arts of the soul without entering the origin realm.”
The Rat King nodded his head. Although he didn’t know of any secret arts, Jiang Chen’s words made sense. Awakening the heritage of memories was indeed the most ideal way to evolve bloodlines.
“The second secret art is to make use of heaven defying spirit medicines to forcefully remake your bodies and encourage the evolution of bloodlines. Fortuitous encounters are also needed to use these methods, and the type of heaven defying spirit medicine needed are all heavenly treasures that can be found only once in a hundred years.”
“As for the third method, it’s similar to the second method. There are many wondrous locations filled with spirit qi in this world. If you enter any one of them, you can use the spirit qi inside to remake your bodies and complete the evolution of bloodlines. These spirit qi places are incredibly rare.”
“There are also a few other ways, but they’re even rarer. However, the evolution of bloodlines only needs to succeed in one of your children. As long as one succeeds, then all its descendents will see their bloodlines change as well. Although theirs won’t be as pure as the original, but the overall quality of your bloodlines will greatly increase.”
The Rat King widened his eyes as he looked at Jiang Chen, his eyes filled with admiration.
“Young master Chen, you… you understand this much? It looks like you really haven’t lied to me.” The Rat King was completely hero wors.h.i.+pping Jiang Chen at this point.
“No s.h.i.+t. When did I ever lie to you?” Jiang Chen was a bit depressed.
“Heh heh, as long as young master Chen hasn’t lied to me, I, ole King, will be your a.s.sistant in the future. I’ll destroy whoever you tell me to destroy!”
Jiang Chen laughed, “Don’t think I don’t know your schemes. You also eat well when you’re my a.s.sistant!”
The Rat King chuckled wickedly, “Of course I should benefit from being your a.s.sistant. Oh right, young master Chen, I feel that your martial dao training defies the heavens as well, and it’s only a matter of time before you enter the origin realm. You must practice those secret arts of the soul then and help us awaken our heritage.”
“That’s the promise between us, of course I won’t forget.”
“Alright!” The Rat King was quite satisfied and also spoke a reminder, “Young master Chen, you’ve absorbed the essence of the Bewitching Lotus of Fire and Ice. You should hurry and develop it. I can sense that once you make the essence your own, it will absolutely become one of your trump cards!”