Ye Chui resummoned Bear Grylls. Earlier, when he was inside that sandworm’s body, to avoid being pierced by the sandworm’s sharp teeth and the jagged protrusions in its intestines, he had used the [Invincible Hulk] magic spell. This directly caused him to burst out of his clothes, leaving only a patch around his waist that barely remained intact.
After that, during the giant transformation, since the giant form merely coalesced around his body like a Gundam, his clothes and such were not affected.
But now he had to prepare new clothes for himself. The clothes in the [Storage Space] could not be taken out and used. The best method was naturally to have Bear Grylls quickly prepare a set for him: the magically modified Bear Grylls, with his wilderness survival points maxed out, could turn a pile of hides into a blanket in ten seconds. Preparing a piece of clothing was naturally effortless.
The hides rapidly transformed in Bear Grylls’ hands. Soon, he handed a fur garment to Ye Chui.
“What is this?”
“Underpants, made of fur.”
“Fur underpants!?”
Ye Chui looked at the underpants in his hand and could not help but laugh wryly. He glanced down at his waist and said to Bear Grylls, “Underpants… no need for those. Weave me a pair of trousers and a top instead. Oh, and do not forget to make a cloak as well. Who knows if the temperature here might suddenly drop below zero.”
“Alright, just a moment.”
Thus, a few minutes later, Ye Chui appeared before Debbie and the others dressed in a bizarre fur outfit. Debbie and the rest all clicked their tongues in wonder, gathering around Ye Chui to examine it. They could not help but marvel at Bear Grylls’ craftsmanship. This clothing showed no trace of roughness at all; it was more like the garments worn by those luxurious nobles. There were no visible seams, as if the fur had been magically fused together seamlessly. Wearing it was not only comfortable but also gave an additional sense of noble elegance. A fur coat, after all…
“I want your heroic spirit to make me one too when we get back.” Debbie said to Ye Chui, tapping her chin.
“I think Bear Grylls would be delighted to oblige.” Ye Chui said with a smile. He turned his gaze to the sand tribesman elder who was bound nearby and guarded by Shilos. He asked, “Have you all gotten anything out of him?”
“This old fellow has a hard mouth. He refuses to say anything no matter what we ask. He keeps clamouring for us to kill him.” Green replied.
The native inhabitants of this secret realm were inherently fierce; it seemed they were not so easily subdued. Ye Chui walked up to the sand tribesman elder. The old man was bound tightly, kneeling on the ground, yet he held his head high and glared coldly at Ye Chui. In a strange accent, he said, “Kill me. I would be glad to heed the call of the ferocious spirit god, to serve him with death. Kill me!”
“What is this ferocious spirit god? The evil god you worship?” Ye Chui asked with a frown.
“You will all die beneath the ferocious spirit god and become part of him!” the old man continued.
Ye Chui could tell that this sand tribesman elder had a very resolute will. Interrogating him like this would probably yield nothing. He looked at Shilos. “Can your black firefly control others and make them divulge secrets?”
“No, the black firefly can only control basic actions of others. It cannot pry into their privacy.” Shilos shook his head regretfully.
“I see. In that case, let me try.” Ye Chui opened the browser in his magic guide book and scanned the QR code to log into the sand tribesman elder’s memory world. He had deliberately spared the sand tribesman elder’s life precisely to extract more information from him, including the factions within the secret realm and how the tenth prince had gained the support of the Blood Scorpion tribe.
The browser successfully logged into the sand tribesman elder’s memories.
However…
“A foreign language?” Ye Chui stared in astonishment at the browser screen, where those strange textual interfaces appeared.
In fact, whenever Ye Chui had previously used the browser to log into others’ memories, what appeared was always in the Chinese he was familiar with. But now, it displayed a completely different language. He thought for a moment and understood what was happening: the browser parsed the memory world based on the text the subject knew, translating it into the Chinese interface Ye Chui was familiar with. On the Castro Continent, the common tongue was used for both language and writing, and Ye Chui himself was proficient in both the common tongue and Chinese characters. This essentially meant he had a built-in “translation plugin,” so previously, when Ye Chui logged into memory worlds, the browser automatically translated them into Chinese.
The sand tribesmen were different. Although their spoken language could barely be understood, the script they used was clearly something other than the common tongue. Ye Chui’s “translation plugin” was utterly useless, hence the display of this completely incomprehensible foreign language interface.
Invading the memories seemed pointless now.
Ye Chui sighed and turned to his companions. “Who knows how to interrogate him?”
Debbie and the others all shook their heads. They were not skilled in such highly specialised matters. Thus, Ye Chui’s gaze fell on the Blue Knight Konstantine, who was standing beside Jacob. His eyes lit up. “Blue Knight, you were a knight in the past, leading troops into battle. I imagine you must know how to make someone reveal their secrets, right?”
“I specialise in defeating my enemies on the battlefield. I disdain doing something as lowly as interrogation!” Konstantine said arrogantly. “Why must there always be conflict? Can people not coexist peacefully? What this world lacks is art and peace, not deceit and trickery. Interrogation brings suffering to others, I prefer to use art to inspire my enemies.”
Ye Chui frowned at Konstantine’s words in the first half, but upon hearing the latter half, he understood something. “Use art to inspire enemies? Very well then, this old man is yours. Inspire him.”
Konstantine immediately smiled confidently, showing an expression of “leave it to me.” He walked up to the sand tribesman elder, who continued to regard the Blue Knight with that unyielding gaze.
The Blue Knight cleared his throat with a cough and then began to speak. “Do you know what art is?”
“…”
“It seems you do not. Allow me to tell you the true essence of art. Art is the most wonderful thing in this world. Art is the beauty of nature, art is nature reflected in the human realm. It can elevate our souls; that is the greatness of art. And twisted art is the most wonderful of all arts. Born in distortion, dying in distortion, twist, twist, twist again, that is the pinnacle of beauty… (the following omits n words)”
Ye Chui and Debbie and the others stood by, utterly stunned, watching Konstantine expound endlessly on everything about art, accompanied by intense body language, exaggerated expressions, and occasional clenching of fists with his entire body trembling uncontrollably.
Ye Chui could not help but recall the Tang Monk who had talked a minotaur demon into hanging itself with mere words. Now, the Blue Knight Konstantine surpassed even the Tang Monk in this regard.
So this was what was meant by using art to inspire enemies?
At first, the sand tribesman elder remained unmoved by Konstantine’s words, but soon he showed an expression of extreme annoyance. He began shaking his head and clamping his mouth shut, but that voice continued to flood relentlessly into his mind: art is twist, twist, twist, twist again… It was like a demonic incantation piercing his ears. Gradually, he revealed a pained expression, his face turning ashen, sweat pouring down his forehead like rain.
Not to mention him; even Ye Chui and the others, the onlookers, were starting to find it unbearable.
“He talks more than the undead head housekeeper.” Debbie whispered to Ye Chui. “The undead head housekeeper must be connected to him somehow, right? Look at this nagging manner; it is exactly the same.”
Ye Chui nodded in deep agreement.
Thirty minutes had already passed, and Konstantine was still rambling on about art without end, while the sand tribesman elder was clearly at his limit. “Aaaah,” he suddenly let out a roar from his mouth, leaping up from the ground and charging headfirst towards a large tree nearby.
Damn, was he going to bash his head against the tree to commit suicide?
Heavens, the Blue Knight’s word barrage had driven the man to suicide!
Ye Chui and the others hurriedly moved to intervene; they could not let this man die just like that. But for dealing with such a situation, the Blue Knight clearly had more experience: his long spear thrust towards the tree first. A strange blue light shadow swept over it, and the sand tribesman elder collapsed directly to the ground. Where the tree had originally stood, there was now empty space; the tree had not been destroyed in a single strike but had strangely shifted to the side.
The Blue Knight’s sword aura could twist space!
He had twisted the position where the tree originally stood!
“Committing suicide in my presence is a blasphemy against art. You shall not.” Konstantine declared arrogantly.
“…” Judging by this, he was not the first to be driven to suicidal thoughts by his words. He was experienced.
Ye Chui walked up to the sand tribesman elder and helped him up, preparing to tell him that if he did not reveal the information they needed, he would have to endure several more hours of art lectures. But before Ye Chui could even speak, the sand tribesman elder gasped for breath and shouted, “I will tell you everything, no matter what you want to know. Just please do not make me listen to his nonsense anymore!”
Ye Chui: “Er, alright then…” He quietly gave Konstantine a thumbs up.
More than an hour later, Ye Chui learned the general situation in the secret realm from the sand tribesman elder’s mouth.
The scope of this secret realm was vast and boundless, with over ninety percent of it covered by desert. Countless terrifying sand beasts lived in the desert, and scattered oases dotted it.
The desert’s native inhabitants were those left behind here a thousand years ago by the Star Empire’s first emperor when he opened the Crown Battlefield. After a thousand years of reproduction, their numbers were unknown. Originally, these people had a unified name: they were called the divine people, the chosen ones responsible for participating in and controlling the Crown Battlefield.
But since the Crown Battlefield was abandoned over three hundred years ago, this place had been isolated from the world for a long time. The divine people split apart; a portion no longer wished to adhere to their mission and became tribal nomads in the secret realm. After three hundred years of division and alliances, the factions in the secret realm now, besides the most numerous divine people, included three major tribes: the Blood Scorpion Tribe, the Mad Wind Tribe, and the Green Bay Tribe.
Among them, the Blood Scorpion Tribe was the strongest of the three major tribes.
The divine people and the tribal sand people were in a hostile relationship, but the sand people occasionally went to the divine people’s Divine City in the centre of the secret realm for trade. The tribes, however, were in constant war with one another, rarely enjoying peace.
Because the sand people and divine people were isolated from the outside Castro Continent, their forms of power were also entirely different. Besides swordsmen, the people here did not know how to use magic, after all, magic was constrained by magic guide books, and magic guilds would not establish magic book towers here. However, although they could not use magic, the people here could use necromancy.
Necromancy, as the name implied, was a variant of magic that used undead as the carrier of power.
Living beings could give birth to souls within their bodies. Souls could become undead, and undead could transform into ferocious spirits, evil spirits, or heroic spirits. Necrospirits, however, were an entirely different existence from these. In a certain sense, the so-called guardian spirits were a type of necrospirit.
The powerhouses of the Star Empire, after death, would have their souls sent into the secret realm through the imperial family’s sacrificial rites. In the secret realm, these powerhouses would convert into necrospirits.
Necrospirits were powerful spirit bodies that required reliance on humans to exist. Countless necrospirits wandered the secret realm; they were formless and intangible, unable to interact with the real world. But under certain conditions, they could connect with the living, which was “summoning.” Royal bloodlines bearing the name of prince could summon guardian spirits, and among the secret realm’s natives, a portion could also summon necrospirits.
Necrospirits and guardian spirits were essentially the same, but guardian spirits were summoned based on the royal prince’s bloodline, while necrospirits were obtained through one’s own comprehension to gain the acknowledgment of a necrospirit. Such people were extremely rare. The sand tribesman elder had previously summoned his own necrospirit; those who could summon necrospirits like the sand tribesman elder were called spirit summoner priests.
“What about those sand people? Are they all spirit summoner priests like you?” Ye Chui asked further.
“Spirit summoner priests are only a minority. The Blood Scorpion Tribe has only about a dozen spirit summoner priests. Those sand people were created by the spirit god.”
“Spirit god? What is a spirit god?” Debbie asked.
“Spirit god…”
A spirit god was also a type of necrospirit.
During the three hundred plus years that the Crown Battlefield was severed, among those countless necrospirits, a portion would become immensely powerful by devouring other necrospirits, evolving into spirit gods. They could manifest in the real world even without relying on human connections, but to exist long-term, they still needed humans to offer sacrifices and devotion. To obtain the power of spirit gods, both the divine people and the three major tribes worshipped their respective spirit gods.
The spirit god worshipped by the Blood Scorpion Tribe was precisely the ferocious spirit god.
It was a spirit god renowned for its cruelty and savagery, possessing tremendous power.
“What do you mean the tenth prince obtained the support of the spirit god?” Ye Chui continued to ask.
“That is the will decided by the ferocious spirit god. The tenth prince you speak of has a brutal personality and is known outside as the brutal prince. He is the most ideal host for the ferocious spirit god! As soon as he arrived in the secret realm, he was detected by the ferocious spirit god!”
“Host?”
“Indeed. The ferocious spirit god is also a necrospirit, or one could say a guardian spirit. When one wins the Crown War, the guardian spirit can follow the host back to the outside world. The ferocious spirit god wishes to leave the Crown Battlefield for the outside world, so he must assist a prince in winning the Crown Battlefield. And the one he chose is the tenth prince.”
The sand tribesman elder’s voice carried a hint of fanaticism.
“The Blood Scorpion Tribe will do everything in its power to fulfil the ferocious spirit god’s wish. Now, the ferocious spirit god is about to complete the fusion with the tenth prince!”
