Badge in Azure

Saleen laughed smugly, no one was able to replicate what he had done. This was because even though quite a number of mages knew how to use the current cutter, he was the only mage that had the Shenhe. The current cutter within that calabash only required his focus to control it and did not require any magic chords. Even though it might be a little slow in combat, it was the strongest when it came to cutting anything.

Even though a level-4 magic could not be considered indestructible, it was hard for something to not be able to be cut in this world. So long as Saleen cut it repeatedly, even gold and silver could be crushed by the current.

“Let’s talk here, no one will find out.” Saleen did not stock up on many lifestyle products in this giant warehouse. He had already prepared a table and chairs, though, and he let Lex sit down.

“You trained the soldiers to prepare them for war?” Lex sat down and asked Saleen a question first.

“Yes, the Eastern Sea Allied Army killed over a hundred of my swordsmen and sealed the sea, making this city cut off from the outside world. I intend to harass Lianyun City, using the advantage of the combat vessels to create trouble for them.”

“Saleen, you are wrong.”

“Oh? Why?”

“If you are at the peak, you shouldn’t put such things to heart. What you need to do most importantly right now is to protect this city. The Eastern Sea Allied Army will be defeated by Holy Rock City in no time. Once the war puppets are transferred over, they will become a joke. Do you think they can take down the entire Qin Empire with three-hundred combat vessels? If that was the case, Cloudflow Empire would have conquered the entire mainland and would not be struggling to survive. The wealthy are waiting to watch a scene right now, reminiscing on the events of the Fourth Dynasty to fill the emptiness in their hearts. Qin Empire’s problems are because of its internal affairs, this is something we both cannot solve. What we need to do right now is increase our powers and wait for opportunities to come.”

“Increase our powers?” Saleen gave a rare bitter laugh and said, “I have had a lot of chance encounters, but I have been stuck at grade-5 recently. I think it will be hard to break this barrier in the next decade. I can already taste what it is like to be a sorcerer, but I am nowhere close to being grade-6. There really isn’t any shortcut when it comes to magic training.”

“Sorcerer? I mean combat powers. Let me ask you, with the two of us, are you confident we can kill a grade-7 sorcerer?”

Saleen thought for a while before saying, “Yes, if the environment is in our favor.”

“That’s right, we have so many soldiers, they are a form of power too.”

“Talking about powers, I need to tell you something.” Saleen immediately told Lex about the rough stone. She was shocked by the news too.

She said slowly, “If that is the case, we need to do my plan.”

“Your plan?”

“Yes, there are many secret rumors floating around about the Grukos royal family. In the family history, there is something about a unified dynasty on the mainland. I will not analyze the complicated parts of it. A conclusion that I have gotten over the many years is that from the first to the fourth dynasty, the ruler didn’t use any high-end powers to defend the huge country but rather, used magic techniques.”

“Magic techniques?”

“Of course, the war puppets were passed down from then along with the Sky City, magic cannon, magic chariot, combat vessels, and flying puppets that could carry people. With these things, humans who were weaker in terms of strength could possess huge amount of power. The humans back then called magic a technique.”

“Many people thought that the decline of magic would bring about a rise in alchemy, but that didn’t happen. Alchemy then cannot be compared with alchemy now.”

“That is natural.” Saleen nodded in agreement. Humans then could cross over dimensions, so they could gather many things that could not be found on the Myers Mainland. It was rumored that the real war puppet was controlled by giants, they were hundreds of meters tall and could smash any city with a single step.

Even though the war puppets now were strong, they needed many mages to control them at the same time. A mage was physically weaker than a giant and could not let the war puppets unleash their original powers. Some of them even had to modify these war puppets for them to be suitable for humans to control.

“Do you remember back then when I gave you teacher’s Heart of the Sky?”

“Yes.”

“The blueprint of the Sky City too? I had gotten all of them from the temple of the Myers Goddess. You had also received the drawings of the twenty-five magic arrays, the one given to Joey. Those were taken from the temple of the Myers Goddess too. I am thinking, techniques from the ancient times might still be preserved in the temple. So long as we gather all of them, we would grasp the secrets of the Fourth Dynasty.”

Saleen furrowed his brows and said, “You want to find the remaining temple? According to my analysis, we might have found one each. There are still at least twenty-two temples hidden away somewhere though. By the time we find all of them, we will be old and it might even affect our magic training.”

“You said it yourself too, the mages from Sregl Island will take at least two years to come here, we cannot build the magic towers now. In this time, we still have a chance to go elsewhere.”

“Only one place? You don’t mean the Purgatory Desert, do you?” Saleen’s face turned pale.

“Of course I meant the Purgatory Desert, it is rumored that that is where the Goddess had fallen. That must be the center of the Myers Mainland, I guess, the core temple must have been built there.”

Saleen kept quiet for a moment, he had said that there were twenty-four locations of the goddess temple. In actual fact he was intentionally avoiding the core temple, the twenty-fifth one. The location of this temple was definitely not a secret and many mages could deduce it too. No one dared to take the risk, it was already incredibly dangerous and on the fringes of the Purgatory Desert.

To try to find any treasures in such a huge desert, was not much different from seeking death.

The temperature there could go above seventy degrees in the day and under negative eighty at night. In such frigid weather, even a mage would quickly use up his magic chords and would not be able to release any magic to protect himself.

“Lex, the Sikeqinya people have a saying; ‘To get wealthy, one must take risks.’ You are already a viscountess though, is there a need for that?” Lex did not reply. Lex’s words were direct, but finding the general location of the goddess temple required luck.

“I know what you are afraid of.” Lex smiled, looking relaxed. She took out a map then laid it on the table and said; “This is a map I got when I returned this time, it is the address of one of the temples. Let’s go to this temple first and find its general location.”

Saleen understood in an instant, the distribution of the goddess temple was systematic and it could be precise up to a meter. If they could get the general location of three of the temples, they could repeatedly deduce the location of the one at the center using a magic formula.

He and Lex each had the coordinates of one of the temples. So long as they went to see the third one and placed the coordinates of it on the map, they could deduce the core temple.

If that was the case, they would not need to make any wrong turns in the Purgatory Desert. They could walk in a straight line until they reached the temple.

Even though such calculations were incredibly troublesome, Lex had brought over one-hundred mages with her this time and they could split up the job.

“Using my one-hundred mages, it will take around three months to calculate the position of the core temple. Are you coming along?” Lex looked at Saleen with a special gaze as he felt a gush of feeling welling up in his heart.

“I’ll go, but what about the safety of this city?”

“I have brought an entire camp worth of soldiers, your city walls are decent. Even if one-hundred-thousand people were to attack, it could last up to half a year. What person would use half a year to attack a city that isn’t of any use to them?”

Saleen immediately thought it through. He was constantly worried about his city being taken down before it was completed, but he had neglected something. Any country or power needed a motive to attack this city.

Attacking a city for no reason and using up half a year to send out hundreds of thousands of soldiers and horses and not getting any benefits from taking the city down. Who would do something like that? Besides the sacred knights of the Holy See that was.

Even if the Holy See wanted to attack there, they did not have any combat vessels to go by the sea route. It was still early and when they could reach there, the mages from Sregl Island would have arrived. By then, the thirty-six magic towers would be up and running and even Alchemy City would not be able to do anything about their city.

“There’s another thing, we both aren’t sorcerers. When we enter the Purgatory Desert, we might need some powerful magic equipment. You have the Gods Ring but I don’t have anything.”

“Don’t you…” Lex took a look at Saleen’s finger before she realized that the Ring of Gifts was gone.

Saleen gave an awkward laugh and said calmly, “I gave it to Sika, she has become a warrior priestess and can use her focus to open the space in the ring. She can’t use any other spatial equipment.”

Lex said calmly, “The ring is yours, you can give it to whoever you like, its none of my business. If we want to enter the temple, I’m afraid we might still need it, however.”

“Then how did you enter the first time?”

Saleen thought back to when he first entered the Goddess Temple, it was indeed because of the Ring of Gifts. Lex should have one for herself too.

“I made use of the last of the god’s powers in the Gods Ring, there isn’t any left now that I have used it.” Lex did not hide it. Her Gods Ring was an important treasure in the Grukos family and it was given to the most important person when it was passed down to every generation. The ring had another purpose, it represented the position of the user in the Grukos family.

Emperor Chanake had given the Gods Ring to Lex which had enraged Safilos. Back then, he had incited the emperor of the Cloudflow Empire to ask for her hand in marriage because of this. If Lex married someone else in another royal family, she would have to give up the Gods Ring. To continue keeping it, Lex would either need to stay single forever or have the guy marry into her family. The child born would have to take the Grukos surname.

“This is troublesome.” Saleen had already given the ring to Sika and he would not ask it back no matter what. This ring was the key into the temple, though. The problem was that Saleen did not want to bring Sika into the Purgatory Desert, it was too dangerous there.

If it was in the past, it did not mean much if Sika were to risk her life with him. After having such relations with each other, Saleen started being overcautious.