Condemning the Heavens

"I am sure that you are confused," Li Chen chuckled when she saw Xue Wei's expression. "This is actually not all that uncommon," she continued, and the younger man waited patiently for the rest of the explanation.

"Here in Cloudsoar City and within the Chengzi Kingdom as a whole, Earth Knights are considered heavyweights. In fact, they are quite something here, able to establish a power that can dominate a whole region or city. However, back in the center of the continent where he came from, he was nothing more than the lowest ranked Primordial Beast Hunter."

"When he could not compete against the Primordial Beast Hunters in the center of the continent, his only other option was to seek further out where the Primordial Beasts were also weaker."

"In the end, he, like many other Primordial Beast Hunters, has been tempted by the black markets located in the various cities to participate in these cage battles against Primordial Beasts."

"No one here minds that the fighters are Primordial Beasts. In fact, they root for them during the battles, but this is also a Primordial Beast Hunter’s dream as the beasts are on their own, unable to gather support from Fierce Beasts or other Primordial Beasts."

"Not only this, the rules state that the winner of the match can take anything off their opponent, including their corpses. So if they manage to bring down a Primordial Beast inside one of our arenas, their earnings will not be limited to merely what was available to them in the wild; they will also receive their winnings from the cage battle."

"In the center of the continent, many Primordial Beast Hunters engage in cage battles against Primordial Beasts. In fact, some of the best hunters are very active in the black market society."

Xue Wei took a moment to digest the information. He was actually a little astonished. "Do the Primordial Beast Hunters always face Primordial Beasts or are they sometimes up against humans too?" he could not help but ask curiously.

Li Chen looked at him praisingly.

"Not too dumb are you?" she chuckled. "Yes, they are also put up against normal humans. In those situations, they often choose to fight and give it their all as well. Although they are the hope of humanity, many Primordial Beast Hunters have a bloody past; more than half have already experienced killing another human."

"I see." Xue Wei was not shocked by this fact. In fact, he himself was rather numb to the feeling of killing by now, and since he had accepted the fact that he was a Sovereign Beast, he felt no special connection to either humans or beasts. They could carry on their little war with one another as they pleased. All he wanted was to get his revenge against the Ice Harpy and return Wang Xiaoyun to his side.

Xue Wei had been listening to Li Chen's explanation of the two fighters, Lu Yuping and Jia Lu, but now he returned his focus to the fight that was ongoing in the cage.

At the start, Jia Lu had held the upper hand because of his outstanding physical strength, but after Lu Yuping had transformed into his true form as a Golden-Furred Cloud Leopard, he had regained some of his momentum.

Lu Yuping was from the leopard family, which naturally meant that he was extremely agile and fast. Where Jia Lu previously had been able to hold Lu Yuping down, he could no longer even touch his tail and was constantly a step too late to intercept him.

However, moving at such rapid speeds was also taxing for Lu Yuping. Constantly pushing his senses to the limit to figure out where the club might hit next in the rather narrow space of the cage tired him out, so Lu Yuping slowly began to slow down.

Lu Yuping was tired and started making mistakes, showing openings to Jia Lu. One of them was so big that Jia Lu started laughing as he rushed in with his club.

Right at that moment, Lu Yuping's eyes turned blood-red. Lu Yuping was a Primordial Beast with the strength that equaled a seventh layered Earth Knight. It was impossible for Lu Yuping to be without innate abilities, but up until now he had used none of them, only fled.

Unfortunately, this realization came too late for Jia Lu. An instant after he had charged at Lu Yuping, whose eyes had turned red, a red crescent moon blade appeared above the latter’s head that descended straight on the former.

This crescent moon blade moved so fast that Xue Wei only saw a blur before both Lu Yuping and Jia Lu came to a standstill.

Lu Yuping seemed extremely worn out. His golden fur was soaked with sweat and he was out of breath. Jia Lu, on the other hand, stood completely still, his eyes showing disbelief.

For a few moments, the only sound you could hear was Lu Yuping's hurried breathing. Then, suddenly, Jia Lu collapsed, his head severed neatly from his body.

Silence enveloped the place for only a brief moment, but then a loud cheer erupted, followed by an uproar. Although the odds for Lu Yuping winning were rather high and the payout from the betting quite small, every little bit mattered to these people, so they were ecstatic now.

Lu Yuping left the cage in his beast shape. He was larger than any mortal leopard by more than three times and his figure was awe-inspiring as it moved through the underground world’s cave.

He vanished into a room that was carved at the end of the cave. After around half an hour, he reemerged as a human, neatly dressed in new robes with a haughty expression on his face.

He swept a glance through the cave and suddenly his eyes landed on Xue Wei. A bit of hesitation was evident on his face, but he seemed to eventually gather courage and walked towards the younger male.

Xue Wei frowned. He had never before met a Primordial Beast who could sense his bloodline as a Sovereign Beast before, but then he was reminded of Wan Qiang’s ability to see through him despite him wearing a face mask all those months ago.

Was his cultivation rank too low to keep himself disguised? He was unsure, but when he saw the veneration in Lu Yuping's eyes, he knew that he was not in danger right now at least.

Lu Yuping walked towards Li Chen and Xue Wei with graceful steps that were almost as light as air. His bearing was that of a sovereign coming to visit his subjects, but his entire demeanor changed the moment he stood in front of Xue Wei.

He bowed slightly, something that the rest of the experts within the cave had never seen him do before, and then he straightened his back.

"Your majesty," he said respectfully with compressed voice communication to Xue Wei, "I recognized you right away. Your demeanor is that of a god descending to the mundane world, your aura so overwhelmingly powerful that even I, a Primordial Beast with a strength equivalent to an Earth Knight of the seventh layer, feel great pressure."

"Your majesty, please listen to the prayer of a humble servant – please bestow upon me some of your blood. I have been stuck at this layer for many years now. If I wish to advance, then I need to rely on external resources."

"It is because of these external resources that I went to these cage battles. Here I get pills, medicinal herbs, spirit fruits, and even essence stones, but after relying on them for some time, I have realized that it is impossible for me to advance normally. I need something much more powerful. Something sacred for every Primordial Beast. I need the blood of a Sovereign Beast."

Xue Wei was taken back by the request that Lu Yuping made. He narrowed his eyes. "I do not seem to know you though," Xue Wei replied and did not deny the fact that he was a Sovereign Beast. Instead, he acknowledged it wholeheartedly and spoke with Lu Yuping as one would with a business partner. If Lu Yuping could take out something that was of use to him, then a bit of blood was no big deal.

Xue Wei did not know exactly what marvelous changes his blood caused to Primordial Beasts, but he was not completely clueless either. He had seen how Hei Gou had transformed from an average beast into a top-notch one.

Not only had it changed his bloodline, but it had also mutated his body. His strength had risen and he had gained a higher Qi-level than before. He could imagine that the same changes happened to every one of the Primordial Beasts if they were to get their hands on his blood.

"I am a loyal subject to your majesty!" Lu Yuping said eagerly. "I have been so ever since I heard about the resurgence of a Sovereign Beast."

Xue Wei frowned. "Resurgence of the Sovereign Beast? Where did you hear this?" He was unhappy about the fact that these Primordial Beasts seemed to know about him, or more precisely, they seemed to know that the Sovereign Beasts had returned. But where had they returned from? Xue Wei was puzzled.

Seeing his frown, Lu Yuping quickly went on to explain, "We have not had a Sovereign Beast to rally and control us for the last thousands of years." He sighed. "Back when they united the continent and made the beasts the leading race, they ruled it for a few hundred years, but after that they all seemed to vanish."

"No one knows if the Sovereign Beasts decided to seclude themselves deep within the danger zones where even the Primordial Beasts cannot enter, or if they died out, or even whether they left the continent or not."

"Then a few thousand years went by and we ended up having the humans rebelling against us. The Sovereign Beasts never emerged in all that time. They only watched as we were overwhelmed." There was the slight trace of a grudge in Lu Yuping’s voice.

"Since then, Sovereign Beasts have only appeared every now and then to save us from extinction. They have not been an active part of our lives, or so I was told."

"But the funny thing is that a few days ago, I heard a rumor from my friend, a Blue-Blooded Heavenly Lion, about how a young Sovereign Beast had appeared on the continent."

"I did not believe it, but I was hoping for it," Lu Yuping admitted readily. "Now that I have seen you, I feel that the royal air coming from you can only come from a noble being such as a Sovereign Beast."

Xue Wei had received quite a bit of information from this conversation, but he did not trust it completely. Lu Yuping was not weak, but he was far from being one of the high-ranking experts in the Primordial Beast world. His knowledge was likely to be flawed. It was better to wait for the information he could get from Li Chen and the Intelligencer.

Returning to the subject at hand, Lu Yuping wanted his blood, but Xue Wei was not going to just hand it over. Although he had a body filled with it, he understood that it was rather precious.

At the same time, he was aware that flat out declining the request could possibly push Lu Yuping to forcibly steal his blood with force out of desperate need. It was a difficult position.

Sensing Xue Wei's hesitation, Lu Yuping understood what was going on in his mind and quickly smiled. "I will not ask for it for free," he said sleazily, "I will, of course, compensate you for everything. I can give you pills and essence stones."

Xue Wei narrowed his eyes ponderously. Then he agreed after a few moments. Although he was not short on pills, the ones he had were mainly either suitable for Heavenly Warriors or meant to provide a smoother breakthrough into the Ordinary Knight rank. The pills that Lu Yuping possessed clearly contained energy fit to benefit the cultivation of an Ordinary or even an Earth Knight.