3 Chapter 3 - Curing and Revelations

~ 4 Years later ~

It has been 4 years since Ye Xen obtained his lovely yet a bit annoying assistant, Friday, his personal A.I. from that day forth, he has been plundering his library for all the secrets he could find in order to make his mark and guarantee the safety of his family and city. The results he has obtained have been extraordinary so far.

For a few decades now, Glory City has been following a stage of decline. Overtime, lesser number of people were showing potential to become demon spiritualists; the number of people who were cultivating and reaching the Black Gold rank had significantly diminished; many noble and aristocratic families were on decline; the Dark Guild was becoming bolder; and it was becoming more and more difficult to repel the demon beast hordes that attacked the walls of the city with casualties increasing with every wave.

The root causes for this were, first, the decline of the Alchemy Association and Inscription Association. No new elixirs were coming in and only a handful of people tried to even become an alchemist. The inscription association on the other hand was short on talented staff that could complete orders on time. if these two problems were solved, it would be a lot easier to deal with packs of demon beasts.

The second problem was the poor quality of cultivation techniques. Even the best techniques of Glory City had over a thousand flaws that Friday could find and fix (his second wish). They were bastardized versions of many ancient techniques that allowed a person to easily reach the pinnacle of Legend-rank in the span of 7-10 years. That is around half the time it took Ye Mo to reach Legend-rank.

The last problem might be the biggest though. People of Glory City stupidly believed that only people with a green soul realm or above could reach the top. That was not true. The color of the soul realm does not portray one's talent, it shows how quickly they can absorb and cultivate spiritual energy, thus increasing their soul force.

While people with a Red-Soul realm would take longer to reach the same stage as a person with a cyan one, but they will reach there. Next was Soul Attribute and Form, something they did not even refer too. No wonder so many people died to defend this city.

However, now these problems will be taken care. Ye Xen has almost reading all the books in his Family Library and in a week, he was going to present all of his finding to his Lord Father and Grandfather, thus consolidating his position as a genius and building up his influence.

The gift god had promised on his 5th birthday, had come in the form of a cultivation technique. The Elemental War God technique. If people thought that Nie Lie's technique was monstrous, they would faint after hearing about his.

This technique granted him the ability devour demon spirits at an alarming rate and steal their ability from their spiritual essence. He could hold up to 9 demon spirits at a time and when he did not need one because he found a better one, he could use his soul force to devour their essence and retain the abilities of the demon spirit, albeit a weaker version of their techniques.

Currently, we can see Ye Xen browsing through a few books from the Holy Spirit Empire Era that spoke of a few cultivation techniques. He was cut out of his musings by the entry of a frantic maid.

"Young master! Come quickly, Lady Long has collapsed and her health is failing!" she shouted.

Xen immediately got up and left with the maid, all the while thinking, 'And so it begins, the destruction of the Sacred Family.'

~ A few hours later ~

Ye Long could be seen in bed with Ye Zong and their daughter Ziyun by her side. Her health was clearly deteriorating as her appearance looked haggard, gaunt face and there were dark circles in underneath her eyes. Ye Xen had disappeared an hour ago and had not come back since.

"Zong, I don't know… how much longer… I have," she croaked out, pain evident in her voice. "Please… take care of the family and yourself… my love."

"No! Long, please! Don't say anything. I will find a cure for you so please just stay with us," Ye Zong spoke up, tears streaming down his face.

"Yes mother! Please, don't go! You have to see me and big brother Xen grow up and get married!" Ziyun cried frantically. She didn't want to lose her mother. Her father was already busy with work a lot and she had just lost her friend, Xiao Ning'er too. She did not know the reason but it had something to do with her engagement to the heir of the Sacred Family, Shen Fei. She only had her brother and mother now and she did not want to lose any one of them.

"I'm sorry… my darling Ziyun. Please… tell your brother I love him," Ye Long cried out.

"You can say that too me personally when you wake up tomorrow morning mother," Ye Xen spoke up as he entered the room.

Before Ye Zong or anyone else could say or do anything, Ye Xen quickly poured a vial of pink liquid down her throat. She instantly felt sluggish and went to sleep.

"Ye Xen you brat what did you do?!" Ye Zong cried out and moved to discipline his insolent son, but before he did, he laid his eyes on his wife and was shocked by the change in her appearance.

The color was returning to her face and she was looking a lot better than she did moments ago. He looked at his son questioningly and saw him gesture that they should discuss this in private. He simply nodded and hugged his daughter who started crying tears of joy after looking at her mother, thinking she was getting better.

~ An Hour Later, Ye Zong's Private Study ~

"So, son what did you do? Even the most advanced healers could not cure your mother. What is it that you did?" Ye Zong questioned his son, his older brother Ye Xiu was also present.

So, Ye Xen told him everything. How from his third birthday he has been reading everything in the library and how he can remember every single thing from the books. The two Black Gold rank experts were shocked. Nobody was able to translate half the books they had due to them not understanding the language and here comes a 7-year-old informing them that he has almost finished reading over at least 50,000 books.

When asked how did he do it he simply explained that the different languages of each empire were essentially just a bastardized version of the language of the people of the Empire before them. If one could correctly identify and translate characters between two different empires, they can easily learn it.

Needless to say, that stunned the two. When questioned what else he could do, he simply said he had formulas to many lost elixirs and profound cultivation techniques, instead of the shitty one they are practicing right now. He said he would explain everything else when his grandfather would return next week to test the soul realm of Ziyun and Xen.

"Father, before I leave, I should inform you that mother did not fall sick. She was poisoned," he said seriously.

"WHATTT!?" two voices rung out, followed by an enormous amount of soul force to be released, causing Xen difficulty to breathe.

Seeing him having trouble in their presence, the two experts calmed down and ask for an explanation. He told them that she had been poisoned with a colorless poison named Three Headed-Basilisk Herb which acts as a poison but is a 100 times more effective against people who are bonded to a snake type demon beast, much like his mother who owned an Ice-scaled Horned Serpent as a demon spirit.

"It is extremely hard to gather and cannot be found in Glory City as its records only exist during the Woodland Empire Era. Father, I believe it is the work of the Dark Guild. But even then, it would extremely difficult for them to sneak into the city. One of the families of Glory City definitely helped them."

This alarmed the two. They had to deal with the Dark Guild AND a traitor. When questioned who he thinks did this he simply said that a family with many Black Gold ranked spiritualists were the only ones capable of doing this since only they could sneak into the mansion. After saying that he left since his sister was calling for him.

He had pointed them in the direction, now it was their turn to deal with the traitors and he knew they both got the clue since he saw the look on their faces. A look that promised vengeance.