Book 5, Chapter 115: Divine Guidance
Chapter 115: Divine Guidance
Every race had their own unique absolute trump card that they relied on in pinches. The humans had their Lifesource Candles and the Ravagers had their Elemental Totems. Naturally, the Harpies had one too.
The Divine Feather was one of these items.
Apparently, the Divine Feather had been bestowed upon them by the Mother Goddess — a feather plucked directly from her wings.
The Divine Feather had a divine aura, making it incredibly powerful. It would bless the user and give them incredible strength, making it an extremely valuable weapon in battle.
And the Mother Goddess Sect was responsible for guarding it.
Apparently, the Mother Goddess had bestowed a total of seven feathers upon her followers. In the years that followed, four had been either lost or destroyed. At this point, the Harpies only had three feathers remaining.
And Night God Sun was carrying one of those feathers on him.
But he was stunned that Azure Mark knew that he was carrying a Divine Feather.
In addition, he had mentioned some kind of connection between the Divine Feather and the true nature of this secret realm.
He was suddenly reminded of a certain legend, and his expression dramatically shifted. “Are the legends true? Was one of the lost Divine Feathers in Jade Clearmist’s possession?”
Su Chen chuckled before he replied, “That’s right.”
When he saw this demonic-looking smile, Night God Sun yelped, “How could you know?”
“How I know isn’t important. If you don’t believe me, you’re free to experiment for yourself. Isn’t that right, Fate’s Light Inigo?” With those words, Su Chen turned to face Inigo.
Inigo sighed.
He originally had some thoughts of stopping the battle when he heard about the Divine Feather.
After all, that kind of an ancient relic was unbelievably powerful. Even he didn’t want to face the brunt of its power head-on. After all, he was a scholar first, not a warrior. Despite his powerful strength, he was not particularly bold. He was more than happy to pick on people weaker than him, but he wasn’t particularly keen on engaging in desperate struggles.
But when he heard that Jade Clearmist’s secret realm also had a Divine Feather, and that Night God Sun’s was the key to uncovering the truth of the secret realm, it was impossible for his greed to not be moved.
Most importantly, he had no choice but to listen to Azure Mark.
Inigo also knew about the legend that Night God Sun had mentioned. After all, he was a scholar, so his knowledge was incredibly broad.
Even though the creator of the realm, Jade Clearmist, wasn’t a Mother Goddess Disciple, he was intimately related to an important individual amongst the Mother Goddess Sect. In addition, before the feather was lost, it had indeed belonged to that important individual of the sect.
When these two facts were considered together, Inigo would have had to be an idiot to not understand what kind of game Azure Mark was trying to play.
It was obvious that Azure Mark had known how to open Jade Clearmist’s secret realm a long time ago, but he hadn’t been confident that he could do it alone. As such, he was relying on Inigo to deal with this problem.
But how could he possibly know about the secret?
How had he known that Night God Sun would bring the Divine Feather with him?
Just how could he be so confident that everything would go precisely according to his plan?
It wouldn’t make sense if it was all based off of scheming.
All schemes were based upon predicting the human heart and typically followed general principles guiding human behavior. All plans that were made on the basis of other assumptions were intrinsically based off of blind guesswork, even if they managed to predict the situation correctly.
Li Daohong’s appearance here, as well as the presence of the Divine Feather, were not things that could possibly be anticipated through mere scheming alone.
Was this Azure Mark actually a high-status individual amongst the Mother Goddess Sect? Was he the one who had orchestrated this whole ordeal?
Otherwise, there was no possible explanation!
Even Night God Sun seemed to realize that the strangeness of this scenario.
Their opponent’s calculations were simply impossibly precise, far outside the realm of what was feasible through raw intelligence. It was only natural that Night God Sun was also beginning to suspect that Azure Mark was a powerful Harpy.
If not for the fact that his instructor, the Harpy that he trusted the most, had been the one to give him the Divine Feather, Night God Sun might have even though that the person before him was actually his master.
Of course, Su Chen would never admit to how he had found out about all these matters.
This kind of anticipation was impossible to accomplish through scheming alone. He had basically had no choice but to cheat.
However, the Origin Bone Scepter could only give him a limited amount of clues. The rest of the plan had been pieced together based on the information already available to him. It wasn’t like he had been handed this plan on a platter.
But there was no need for Su Chen to explain all of this to them. It wasn’t a bad idea to pretend to be omniscient from time to time.
Su Chen didn’t say anything when he saw their reactions and merely stepped back.
Now that they had reached this point, there was no need for Su Chen to say anything else.
Indeed, Inigo sighed and said, “Even if I know that you are only using me, there is nothing I can do about it. Prince Night God, please take out the Divine Feather. Otherwise, you will not be fit to be my opponent.”
As he spoke, he tore off a page from his book. On the page was a drawing of a golden peregrine.
He rubbed his finger across the page, causing it to burst into flames. A golden peregrine flew out from the flames, tilting its majestic head and letting out a clear clarion call. The page had returned to a blank state yet again.
Based on its aura, it was immediately apparent that this Demonic Beast was at least at the level of a Lord-Class Demonic Beast.
Ninth-Ring Arcana Masters were truly on another level, unleashing a Lord-Class Beast on the first move.
However, Su Chen and Night God Sun were more focused on the book in his hands.
Blacktower Book.
Blacktower was an Arcana Master organization that had been created at the height of the Arcana Kingdom’s power. It was as famous as Whitetower, the organization that had created Whitetower Teleportation.
The Blacktower Book had been created by an Arcana Master by the name of Regilo, so it was also known as Regilo’s book. Apparently, Regilo had felt restricted by Arcana Techniques, so he had created the Blacktower Book in an attempt to circumvent the dependency on Arcana Technique Patterns. The greatest benefit of the Blacktower Book was that Arcana Techniques could be directly imprinted into this book and used through it.
This book made it much easier to use Arcana Techniques. Even low-tier Arcana Masters would be able to use high-tier Arcana Techniques if they possessed the Blacktower Book.
However, this creation had not been viewed as particularly revolutionary or strong at the very beginning.
The Arcanists had held the viewpoint that relying on external tools for strength was putting the cart before the horse.
They wanted to grow stronger, yes, but not by relying on external tools.
There were too many such tools that had already been created. If the only goal was to increase a person’s power, they were better off creating large cannons instead.
Arcana Techniques were representations of a lifeform’s innate strength. What was the point of relying on a crutch to unleash techniques?
This was why the Blacktower Book had not been well received, and Regilo had died a sad death as a result.
But this book had still been passed on, eventually being obtained by Fate’s Hands.
Even though this item seemed to betray the Arcanists’ fundamental philosophy of increasing a lifeform’s personal strength, the power of the Blacktower Book was undeniable.
The golden peregrine filled the sky with a golden light.
This light very clearly demonstrated the aura of a powerful expert.
Even so, this was only a small taste of what was to come.
Inigo was an important individual, and the way he attacked was clearly reflected that. It was impossible for him to directly start off with a killing blow.
The golden light seemed to illuminate everything nearby.
Everything had fallen under its influence.
It almost seemed like this peregrine would be able to sweep through everyone present in an instant.
Night God Sun harrumphed. “Who cares about a Blazing Sun Peregrine? Try my Falling Sun Bow on for size!”
As he spoke, he drew his bow and unleashed an arrow. The razor-sharp arrow shot through the sky.
The golden peregrine — no, the Blazing Sun Peregrine — spat out a mouthful of flames. The flames were so powerful that even metal would melt in an instant.
Even so, the arrow that Night God Sun had shot out seemed relentless. The flames crashed into the arrow, but immediately came to a halt before being pushed back and flying right back at the Blazing Sun Peregrine.
In this exchange of blows, Night God Sun had actually been the one to come out on top.
And not only that , but Night God Sun immediately followed up with three more arrows, aiming them all at Inigo. Instantly, it appeared as if Night God Sun was one-sidedly suppressing Inigo.
While the others were surprised, however, Su Chen was not.
Inigo was indeed a Ninth-Ring Arcana Master, but he had one fatal weakness, which was that he didn’t have a fighter’s instincts.
He was a scholar. He had been in far too few life-and-death battles, or perhaps he had even been in none at all.
As such, his attacks were quite constrained, and could even be considered methodical or wooden.
This was why he had only unleashed a Lord-Class Demonic Beast in his first strike. Given his strength, he should have been able to at least call forth a Demonic King with no problems.
Inigo’s lack of battle experience was a huge stumbling block for him, but that didn’t mean that Night God Sun would be able to turn the tables on him that easily.
Strength was still strength. Even an adult that lacked in combat experience would be able to easily beat up a child.
Inigo sighed when he saw Night God Sun’s three arrows fly in his direction.
He flipped to yet another page.
On this page, there was a drawing of an Arcana Master holding a torch in his right hand and a shield in his left.
When he opened this page, Inigo’s body suddenly began to glow with a saintly light.
In that moment, it felt as if he were the disciple blessed by the Mother Goddess, while Night God Sun was the infidel.
Under the halo of holy light, Night God Sun’s extremely powerful arrows were rendered completely useless.
Inigo didn’t flip through the book any further. Instead, he waved his arm as he began to chant. The holy light surrounding his body began to glow even more intensely, radiating everywhere. Everyone watching suddenly had the desire to prostrate themselves and worship Inigo.
When he saw this, Night God Sun was infuriated. “Heresy! You dare profane the Mother Goddess!?”
This Arcana Technique was a unique one that belonged to the Arcanists — Divine Guidance.
Apparently, Divine Guidance had been created at the height of the Arcana Kingdom’s power, when they had dreamed of becoming gods.
This skill was actually a legendary Arcana Technique, and it was an incredibly powerful legendary Arcana Technique.
This skill was actually classified as a consciousness Arcana Technique. When used, it would affect all nearby lifeforms, making them want to worship and obey the user as if they were a god, becoming his disciples forever. By absorbing the faith of the entranced targets, the user could become extremely powerful.
This was a bit similar to an amped-up version of the Zhu Clan’s bloodline skills, but amped-up to an almost unfathomable degree.
This skill was one where describing it as “awesome” was totally appropriate.
Even though the Zhu Clan could control others, the various restrictions of their bloodline made it impossible for them to be totally invincible. The same went for the Li Clan and the Bewitching Butterfly Jin Clan.
However, the ridiculous area that Divine Guidance could cover allowed it to influence almost all intelligent lifeforms within that large radius.
This was why it was superior to even most other legendary Arcana Techniques, making it nearly a forbidden technique — something that was literally so powerful that people were forbidden from using it.
Some people believed that the Arcana Kingdom had been wiped out not because they had provoked the Origin Beasts, but rather because their actions had blasphemed a deity.
That deity had given up on them, which was what had driven the Origin Beasts to attack, ultimately resulting in the Arcana Kingdom’s destruction.
The reason that deity had given up on the Arcanists was precisely due to the creation of Divine Guidance.
For this reason, the Arcana Kingdom’s decline was also known by an alternate name: Divine Extermination.