In Anbaixiu's memory, his senior brother, Vladimir, was an idealist.
Back then, Anbaixiu had been nothing more than a half-baked alchemist and a clumsy mage—a bottom-feeder adventurer who knew only a single cantrip.
Vladimir, by contrast, had been a wandering young noble.
Anbaixiu had just managed to freeload a drink in a tavern and had been promptly tossed out into the street, crashing right into Vladimir.
And so the two of them became acquainted amid a flurry of curses.
Then the impoverished youth took the runaway noble scion on a tour through a brothel, and they became friends.
Vladimir harbored impractical ideals alongside a self-destructive impulse driven by the sins of his ancestors. Put simply, he was a fool ever ready to sacrifice himself to save the world.
Their friendship formally shattered after they discovered that stone slate.
Before long, Vladimir grandly declared, "We possess power like that of deities! We can change this world and make it a better place!"
Anbaixiu countered that he wanted to hit the casino and try his luck.
Naturally, an argument broke out over their sense of perspective. Vladimir accused Anbaixiu of profaning fate's gift by dwelling only on wine, women, and wealth. Anbaixiu retorted that a sheltered, silver-spoon heir could never grasp the perspective of someone living at the bottom—that he was merely a self-righteous idiot.
Then came their contest. In the end, Anbaixiu won. He didn't have to follow Vladimir around playing world-saving saint, and he won a thousand gold coins off him to boot—the largest sum of money he would make across the next several decades of his life.
Without that startup capital, Anbaixiu would hardly have been able to afford his first bottle of youth potion at sixty, and would have died of old age in some obscure corner long ago.
Vladimir, meanwhile, seemed to have dedicated his entire life to the Kingdom of the Unholy Hymn.
Without needing any divination, Anbaixiu could easily guess that the person who helped the tiefling kingdom resist Ryan was Vladimir.
Mortals found it exceedingly difficult to gauge the baseline of deities. To skirt the red line so precisely while establishing Gates of Hell was something achievable only through divine guidance or the hand of a divination wizard.
"What was the point of guarding the kingdom for all those years? In the end, they still chased you out and made you a wanted fugitive."
Vladimir had specified two months and three days. With such an exact timeframe, he must have foreseen something.
Yet would Ryan really wait two months before launching an offensive?
"That old bastard wouldn't be assigning me another task, expecting me to stall Ryan for two months, would he?"
Though he claimed otherwise, Anbaixiu could already sense it: Vladimir genuinely intended for him to stall Ryan for two months, or else he wouldn't get a thing.
Communication between divination wizards was always this convoluted—especially between two legendary divination wizards with such a complicated history.
Delaying Ryan's offensive was far easier said than done. Anbaixiu couldn't very well march up to the front lines and gas them directly.
After pondering for a moment, Anbaixiu pulled out the Necrotic Codex and sent a message to Rose of Decay: [Lady Rose, your legendary boon was just upgraded. Have you tested its effects?]
Catherine replied promptly.
[Rose of Decay: I tested it on some drow elves. The results were quite good. Why ask so suddenly?]
[Tiga Ultraman: I wanted to ask if you could use your power to help me kill someone.]
[Rose of Decay: Of course. Who do you want dead?]
[Tiga Ultraman: The commander of Ryan's southern frontier, Rachel Angelo.]
Rachel Angelo was a renowned iron-blooded general of Ryan. If the Silvermoon Knight was famous across kingdoms for his individual prowess, Rachel Angelo was renowned for his exceptional military leadership.
During the previous desert campaign, Rachel Angelo had been the true architect of victory.
Ryan had engaged in a prolonged war of attrition with the desert for years. When they launched their massive invasion, they specifically recalled this iron-blooded general from the frontier.
Rachel Angelo had not disappointed the empire. Advancing steadily, he had proved invincible, repeatedly wiping out enemy forces while outnumbered.
Yet precisely because everything had gone so smoothly, certain imperial higher-ups grew overly ambitious. They ordered the Silvermoon Knight to lead an army skirting the desert's Death Line in a bid to take Sweetdew City.
Rachel Angelo had staunchly opposed the maneuver at the time, arguing before the battle that win or lose, such an engagement was utterly pointless. Later, the Silvermoon Knight suffered defeat, his twenty-thousand-strong paladin army sustaining catastrophic losses. The dwarves seized on the Ryan troops' low morale to launch a counteroffensive, nearly reclaiming everything Ryan had won.
At that crucial juncture, it was Rachel Angelo again who turned the tide. By holding fast to the newly conquered cities, he cemented Ryan's ultimate victory.
Once the situation stabilized, the iron-blooded general departed the desert, returning to Liuyan City on the southern border to resume his post as frontier commander. By merit alone, he stood second only to the Silvermoon Knight. He was originally the prime candidate to become the Minister of Military Affairs in the recent selection.
Yet he was far too eccentric and uncompromising, commanding little goodwill even within Ryan's homeland.
The reason was simple: in war, he would stoop to any method imaginable. He was a paladin who adhered to the Oath of Conquest.
People often said that black knights who walked the Oath of Vengeance were anomalies among paladins, possessing flexible moral baselines. Yet compared to the Oath of Conquest, they were as pure and innocent as infants.
The tenets of the Oath of Conquest contained this maxim: "Your victory must be so absolute that it shatters the enemy's will to fight! Swords can only end lives, but fear can extinguish nations!"
Instilling terror in the enemy so they lost the will to fight before battle even began—thereby minimizing unnecessary casualties—was Rachel Angelo's tactical style.
When other paladin generals conquered a city, they usually singled out their human kin and sent them to temples where clerics of light could "correct their values." It was a long, rigorous process, but people rarely died.
Rachel Angelo was entirely different. He generally offered his opponents a chance to surrender before hostilities commenced.
Should they refuse, once the city fell, he would implement the strictest screening imaginable: a direct Detect Evil. If even a speck of evil was detected, whether you were human or any other race, you were executed—sparing not a single soul!
As everyone knew, only a toddler who had just learned to walk would register as purely uncorrupted under Detect Evil. Uttering a single curse word in your life was enough to be detected and subsequently beheaded by Rachel Angelo.
Rachel Angelo was also Ryan's most extreme human-supremacist. In the cities under his rule, no non-human races existed; there were not even slaves. In times of war, Rachel Angelo never considered non-humans to be prisoners of war; at best, they were breathing spoils of war, either sold off as slaves to other nations or chopped down on the spot and buried in the dirt.
One could say that a significant reason the tieflings had summoned so many Gates of Hell was that this iron-blooded general was eyeing them like a predator.
No one wanted a homicidal maniac glaring at their doorstep. Without erecting a few extra Gates of Hell, where were they supposed to find any sense of security?
Seeing the name Rachel Angelo, Rose of Decay replied to Anbaixiu with some resignation: [I can help you, but it's very difficult to pull off. Obtaining his hair or blood without him noticing won't be easy. A legendary paladin rarely sheds hair unless I send someone to steal it.]
The Holy Light was a wondrous thing: it not only prolonged life and warded off all ailments, but afflictions such as baldness, rickets, and impotence were virtually impossible for a paladin to suffer.
A legendary paladin simply did not shed hair like ordinary mortals. To obtain his hair, one had to yank it out by force.
Yet doing that was hardly different from sending an assassin.
Against a commander of Rachel Angelo's caliber, what assassin could possibly get close enough?
Anbaixiu replied with total confidence: [Don't worry, he'll be losing hair soon enough. How could any man escape the fate of baldness? Rachel Angelo is a workaholic who patrols Liuyan City every day. If your agents prepare along his patrol route, picking up a few fallen strands shouldn't be difficult.]
Rose of Decay could not fathom Anbaixiu's plan. How on earth was he going to make a paladin shed hair?
Still, it didn't matter. Whatever he claimed he could do, he always delivered; she needed only to cooperate.
Over the years, Rose of Decay had continuously planted spies inside Ryan. Though Detect Evil had rooted out the vast majority, when deployed in large enough numbers, a few invariably slipped through.
Especially with Ryan's aggressive expansion in recent years, imperial control over newly conquered territories had naturally weakened, allowing Rose of Decay to embed numerous operatives.
Sending these spies on an assassination mission had zero chance of success, but infiltrating Liuyan City simply to scoop up a few dropped hairs would be far from difficult.
With Rose of Decay's cooperation secured, Anbaixiu immediately set to work.
Destiny Weaving—starting today, shed your hair, Rachel Angelo!
This was Anbaixiu's third time using Destiny Weaving. The first time wiped out the Cerberus family, the second put Catherine to work for him, and the third was now aimed at this iron-blooded general.
Under normal circumstances, Anbaixiu could have directly woven a tragic demise for Rachel Angelo.
Yet the power of fate was like falling dominoes, a butterfly effect. It began with insignificant ripples, gradually nudging everything around it until the force amplified to produce its final result.
Rachel Angelo held too prominent a status; in other words, his presence in the tapestry of fate was simply too immense. Strongly warping the fate of such a figure would require a very long incubation period.
Ten years, twenty years, perhaps even thirty.
Anbaixiu couldn't wait that long. Baldness, by contrast, was much more manageable. If Anbaixiu acted now, the iron-blooded general would start losing hair by tomorrow.
The rest could be left to Rose of Decay.
Having woven the fate of baldness for Rachel Angelo, Anbaixiu set the matter aside for the moment. He needed to wrap up his current tasks first; once he left for the Kingdom of the Unholy Hymn, he would likely be tied up there for quite some time.
The primary issue facing him right now was neither the drow elves nor his business affairs in the desert.
It was the final divine portfolio in his possession—the Portfolio of Darkness.
As long as he hadn't sold this thing off, he could not utilize teleportation, nor could he access his personal demiplane.
Anbaixiu had briefly considered stashing the divine portfolio somewhere in this dungeon, but ultimately decided that keeping it around invited unnecessary complications. Selling it off as quickly as possible was the best way to be done with it.
The question was: to whom could he sell this divine portfolio to fetch a fitting price?
Chapter 303