Chapter 225: Return to the Continent of Yong

Susa quickly witnessed Howard’s limitless range of skills and tactics.

Though his youthful appearance was misleading, the Dark Gospel was actually two hundred years older than Susa and possessed a massive reservoir of battlefield wisdom. Howard maintained a careful distance, never engaging Susa directly or even attempting counter-strikes. Even when unavoidable peril struck, Howard would consume drops of spirit blood to forcibly phase away—under no condition willing to establish direct contact with Susa.

Floating in circles around Howard materialized monstrous beasts of varying forms, beasts condensed from thick blood qi energies. Each possessed entirely unique capabilities. Susa, knowledgeable as he was, could only tentatively identify one among them—rumored before, though never previously encountered in real combat, whereas the rest were altogether new.

These blood beasts swirled alive with vibrant essence. Different among them enhanced Howard’s swiftness or allowed his presence to blur like a vision, or deflected momentary force pulls. Their combined blessings rendered Howard unstoppable, darting with a ghostlike agility that left Susa entirely bereft of opportunity to land a blow.

Faint memories echoed within Susa’s mind—another battle from long ago, when he, newly promoted to Warlord status, had fought furiously yet been unable to finish off Howard. Yet no mystery truly remained—this ancient vampire progenitor and Flameless King once fought bitter wars with each other in endless contestation, and even after retreating from open conflict for many decades, Medanzo could still not overpower him—a testament alone to Howard’s cunning resilience.

While evading the Wolf Lord’s relentless strikes, Howard had ample opportunity to bless Nightingale. Across Nightingale’s frame surged twin blood wings that improved even further her already lightning-swift movements—faster than a gust in a storm, slicing endlessly with blade light after blade light raking wounds across her foe.

Meanwhile enhanced by her dual selves, Qianye grew capable of momentarily facing the Warlord directly. His Chaos Primordial Power gradually gained momentum and began to counteract Susa’s overwhelming dominion. Pressured by relentless assaults from Qianye before him, Nightingale behind, and the encircling chaos of Howard, even mighty Susa found himself unable to unleash his terrible prowess fully.

Among the trio, to outward appearance, Howard seemed most ineffectual, but time and time again at precisely crucial turning points he struck out, saving Qianye and Nightingale with bewildering strokes of battlefield improvisation.

A reputation like the “Dark Gospel” arose not from idle gossip, but after countless contests etched into his name. Even severely limited as he was now, Howard himself was one vital pivot within any battlefield dynamic. Without eliminating him, victory against these opponents surely grew tenfold impossible.

Still, just how difficult could it truly ever be to catch someone as agile as Howard the blood-devil fox? Each opponent encountered may well have found tailored for its encounter a different pack and pairing of beasts. Qianye and Nightingale certainly defied common ranks—no regular duke nor archduke, each a dangerous combat threat themselves. The Warlord could suffer wounds carelessly repeated. Even matched with two Princes at odds, his efforts may never be as taxing.

Thus, to obtain decisive victory—perhaps even securing capture of Qianye—Susa now understood, a high cost would be unavoidably demanded.

Grasping this realization, with one heavy stomp beneath Susa’s heel, surging primordial power erupted violently outward, throwing back Qianye, Nightingale, and their vampiric foe with violent force.

Curtaining his fury, regret, and frustration like a falling blade, Susa’s gaze turned impassive, seemingly unaffected by the confrontation.

“Why indeed,” Susa mused bitterly aloud, brushing a smear of dust from his torn mantle, “bother straining so hard since such imbeciles as Brox have already perished on this soil?”

The unexpected reversal momentarily staggered Qianya—pausing to await what else the Warlord’s next words might bring.

Susa dipped one ruined palm into gray-blooded fluid collected across the torn flesh of the battle wound above his forearm, tasting it thoughtfully.

Finally he fixed a penetrating gaze toward Qianye, before muttering dryly: “I must depart—I expect you will offer no protest?”

Qianya, standing resolute: “None.”

It was indeed a favorable end—having confirmed anew, Qianye recognized something vital about his lupine foe: Susa clearly wielded not only raw instinct but battle-hardened strategy.

His brute primordial forces, matched by relentless gravitational pull, carved from thin atmosphere a radius of death across which survival became impossible.

In mere close-quarters warfare Susa ruled with undeniable terror.

Retrospectively, Qianye’s past battle dominating Molsar clans suddenly reemerged not as pure luck, as now the greater context made sense; perhaps that victory hinged not solely upon his own abilities, but upon Susa’s deliberate limitations against expending full strength under the unfamiliar terrain of such an unstable newborn planet?

Susa’s lone vulnerability might be seen in a restricted combat range—yet such a label applied only relatively.

Repeated evasions by quantum displacement attempted by Qianya were effortlessly nullified, dragged forcefully backward into deadly striking arcs—making any attempt at guerilla warfare perilously easier said than done!

What loomed worse than this single foe? What followed from the throne now that Qianya stood so firmly in the Devil Sovereign’s attention as the main prize? A successor might emerge—perhaps a call summoning forth Wolf Primarch himself. Would Eternal Flame stir again? Or—even the Devil Sovereign itself manifesting directly here upon?

Now that Duke Brox had drawn his final breath within this land of dawn known as Seara… surely, dark blood elves would never permit such slights to slide unanswered.

As Qianye and Nightingale stepped aside to clear Susa’s path—Susa halted at the threshold before whispering almost as an ominous afterthought: “Almost forgotten… I still had unfinished something more.”

He raised his hand, tearing a bleeding fissure along the wound’s rim, letting forth a glob of thick life essence that caught sudden flaming fire, transforming into one singularly enormous glowing rune. Before anyone might even scream warning, the glyph expanded overhead around Qianya—penetrating into his frame in a flash.

Too sudden—too instantaneous to evade.

Even by the measure of focused vigilance, eyes blinking merely once risked seeing a flickering distortion—as if one mark existed briefly, yet in tandem across two simultaneous spaces.

“It’s a curse!” screamed Nightingale unsheathing twin silver blades, cleaving down towards the lupin giant’s throat.

Unfazed even as he swatted Nightingale sideways for dozens of meters without effort, Susa explained nonchalantly as his vanquished target surveyed the sensations coursing quietly beneath his undisturbed pulse and form.

“The spell is indeed a brand… just not yet bearing visible harm or discomfort,” he stated.

Standing quietly beside Qianya, Howard spoke next:

“It resembles an Eldercraft glyph—an artifact of Old Marking. Essentially… an anchored tracking beacon.”

Susa chuckled.

“Not without reason you earned Dark Gospel titles—able somehow discern such details across ages.”

Then he turned towards Qianyi and added cryptically:

“Now that my mark lies fixed within you… I expect few clarifications will remain necessary. Just take caution—lest you emulate the foolish arrogance Broxed himself bore.”

With his pronouncement concluded, Susa vanished beyond a nearby ridge.

Before many moments had passed, one aerial carrier approached from the sky in sweeping arcs overhead before vanishing deep into the far reaches of upper atmospherics—the shadow fading until nothing remained.

Though now branded against will under magical leash undetectable and untraceable in any tangible sense, Qianya’s spirit remained unfazed under the pressure of so formidable a presence.

Considering it calmly, Howard then reflected aloud:

“Worth noting perhaps, in ancient times, lycan warclans favored potency of glyphcraft not precision. Should indeed be a tracker rune, it suggests another corresponding rune exists still. Position triangulate demands minimum of three nodes. Yet something seems… incomplete. Perhaps you might possess superior insight to these glyphs, Queen?”

Silently deliberating, the crimson-empress replied, “You touch accurate assumption, albeit the mark likely offers little better than directional bearings—but not absolute loco-coordinance. Meaning that—while perhaps detecting direction pointing to a thousand or even tens of thousands of miles away—it still would fail narrowing that margin of error.”

Still mulling, the bloodlord mused thoughtfully:

“Unless one moves great distances swiftly. By observing variation in glyph orientation from separate locations, tracking one could narrow approximate ranges via spatial offset shifts,”

Shaking her crimson mantle, Nightingale countered:

“Tracking shifts by that method proves error-ridden, even under ideal conditions, misfiring directional bearings fluctuating ten degrees in either direction. Even crossing a thousand miles of distance may not fully nullify the inaccuracies in glyph projection.”

“Indeed,” Howard agreed after some contemplation.

“And perhaps this very inefficiency suggests deeper strategy—or a hidden meaning to his intent. Perhaps, then…”

With solemn pause before continuing,

“As you have spoken, locating Qianye should be no real challenge for those who command full dominance over Seara through Holy Mountain resources… The Devil Sovereign’s presence sufficing alone, through fragmented essence forms, could scour this realm entirely.”

He continued: “Yet the sovereign has not shown himself thus far… suggesting a hidden reason. Meanwhile we cannot entirely discard other Warlords attempting intrusion unbidden.”

Tension gripped them briefly.

Each recalled clearly—the bitter knowledge that just one lone Warlord presented such an immense obstacle. Against a possible pairing?

Then escape—not victory—became most likely their best-case outcome.

After heavy thought, suddenly Qianye spoke quietly, “That truth established, I remain at present merely attracting further threats.”

Nightingale and Howard turned instinctively towards him.

He added simply. Between the prior battle and Susa’s arrival, it now appeared undeniable, confirming an unavoidable conclusion—the Devil Sovereign’s current war efforts clearly prioritized hunting him now more than pursuing mere bloodline remnants.

Seara’s geography made an excellent bastion, its labyrinth-like hidden flight routes making large fleet operations slow moving and difficult at best.

The only rationale for the rapid incursion by vanguard legions pointed heavily toward a single reason: Brox’s fleet flagship possessed the unique device known only in legend—an apparatus capable amplifying and collapsing dimensional boundaries in order to compress the fabled Sighing Veils across the continent itself into usable warp paths.

That this conclusion stemmed no mere conjecture followed also both from eye-witness testimony of surviving council ships fleeing beyond low atmosphere and their subsequent perilous flight through fire-choked high orbital winds that tore still several ships from their formation, and from captured interrogation revealing two still-unseen further battalions of force originally attached—never even making landings.

Meaning therefore, should Qianya simply abandon his base and retreat?

Would the darkness then persist pursuit so readily across such harsh terrain, hunting what now barely represented a marginal bloodline threat—or abandon that quest in order to consolidate their forces.

Conversely—so long as he remained here, he became the beacon leading others straight forward: Warlord-level threats such as Susa, and the Sovereign himself, all with clearer coordinates.

Howard finally replied:

“Disengagement would remain most advised… Whethers through the ancient glyph markers left behind or through prophetic detection techniques beyond the known world, evading such threats means one course—keep constant movement in play, even as vast as continents grow, even with omnipotence possessed by Holy Mountains and their limitless reach. It’s not accomplished swiftly. Evade… for just some time.”

In the end, mutual agreement arrived.

Nightingale determined to accompany Qianye upon his journey across continents.

While Howard pledged resolve himself to remain behind on Seara’s bloodline strongholds—beginning the great construction of new sanctuaries for his people’s descendants.

Shortly afterward, atop the dragon-shaped carrier Anguish Heaven, a slow ascent from the floating isles begun.

But beyond merely personal considerations, Qianye desired to gauge the shifting alignments of the Stormpeaks.

The dark clans clearly aimed their ultimate ambitions toward dominating all of Twilight Dominion—but the old enmities between the bloodlines and the wolfkin, in the presence of possible extinction, might find unlikely rapprochement.

Caution dictated—upon reaching the outer reaches of Yunzhou continent—Qianye ordered the airborne fortress kept in high orbit above its largest urban capital, the city of Azure Tides.

Discreetly slipping away alongside the ever watchful empress and little daughter-figure朱姬 (Zhujì), he chose instead stealthy approach via personal descent into the depths of Yunzhou.

The moment Qianye crossed once more into Azure Tides’ walls—what he surveyed left him momentarily astonished.

Outside—the massive squalor and sprawling disorder of slumer settlements previously hugging its city walls now totally erased, replaced by rising towers sprouting from the dust-covered grounds. What once stood a poverty belt had transformed into a vast ongoing expansion project—one gigantic construction site.

Neatly partitioning the rebuilt zones were distinct districts—irregular in shape but each clearly bearing unique designs from separate tribes and clan factions. Overseeing construction each section bore distinctive banners: standards symbolizing the ownership and patronage of different houses and tribes.

Despite visual disarray, the city exuded unmistakable prosperity—wealth radiating outward from the very air.

Even for someone departing not long ago, it beggared belief how Qianye, returning to such a rapidly blooming megalopolis, could not have foreseen such dramatic change so suddenly appearing.