Anbaixiu was ultimately invited into the city with outward respect.
No matter how deeply the people of Ryan loathed liches, they still had to honor this imperial pardon from the imperial capital—unless they intended to rebel.
And General Rachel Angelo, the "Iron-Blooded General," happened to be the staunchest royalist in the military, the sort of man who placed the royal house of Ryan and his faith on the scales to weigh against each other.
There was no need to ask which weighed more; the very act of weighing the Holy Light against the Ryan royal family was already bordering on sacrilege.
Regardless, Rachel Angelo remained a formidable legendary paladin. When he met Anbaixiu, the intense Holy Light radiating from his body made the lich deeply uncomfortable.
Seeing Anbaixiu halt a considerable distance away, Rachel Angelo wore a contemptuous sneer. No matter how arrogant an undead might be, it was still just an undead. An imperial pardon could not change the fact that the undead were naturally suppressed by the Holy Light.
What Rachel Angelo did not realize was that while Anbaixiu appeared to be shielding his eyes with his hands, he had actually spread his senses wide to scrutinize the general.
The Iron-Blooded General stood well over two meters tall and was built like a lion. However, he wore a full-face metal helmet. His originally thick hair was pressed flat beneath it, sticking out awkwardly from both sides of his neck.
Clearly, this general was not in the habit of wearing a helmet. What had prompted him to don one for his meeting with Anbaixiu?
Anbaixiu chuckled inwardly. It seemed the man hadn't merely lost a few strands; half his head was probably bald by now, which was why he had covered it up.
Still, the old fellow had to be seventy or eighty years old, so why did he look so young?
Though Anbaixiu had personally woven the future that left Rachel Angelo bald, he had no idea what had caused a legendary paladin to lose his hair in the first place. He could only guess it had something to do with him growing younger.
*Went bald and got stronger?*
*Surely not. That'd be a raw deal.*
Like a glowing lightbulb, Rachel Angelo deliberately strode over to Anbaixiu, offering a smile that did not reach his eyes. "Welcome, welcome! If it isn't Master Ultraman! I've heard your name. They say you taught Silvermoon quite the unforgettable lesson. Truly astonishing."
Anbaixiu blinked. Had word gotten out about him traveling to the past to stitch up the Silvermoon Knight?
No, that couldn't be right. If they knew, wouldn't the imperial pardon have been revoked long ago?
Anbaixiu tensed, ready to strike and flee at a moment's notice.
To his surprise, Rachel Angelo went on, "Had you only disciplined Silvermoon, I wouldn't be this pleased. He is, after all, a hero of Ryan. But I heard you also gave that traitor Alan Watson a thorough thrashing. For that, I wouldn't mind sharing a drink with you."
So he was talking about the time Anbaixiu set up Alan. Anbaixiu had nearly panicked enough to summon the Golden Throne.
Rachel Angelo barked a laugh, swinging a right hand gleaming with Holy Light straight toward Anbaixiu's shoulder.
*The sly old bastard!*
The slap came out of nowhere, an unmistakable sneak attack.
Fortunately, Anbaixiu's reflexes were equally sharp. With a slight twitch of his fingers, two slender spikes sprang from his shoulder pauldron.
Before entering the city, Anbaixiu had swapped into the seventy-eighth version of his mithral mecha, packed with enough hidden weapons and contraptions to assassinate the same person a hundred times over. These two small spikes were forged with anti-magic properties, blended with a touch of adamantine, and coated in Anbaixiu's custom lethal poison. *Come on, let's see if you've got the guts to bring that hand down!*
Rachel Angelo's palm descended with fierce momentum, only to halt less than half an inch above Anbaixiu's shoulder.
Pulling his arm back, Rachel Angelo maintained his smile. "Haha, I forgot you're undead. I almost hurt you. My apologies."
Anbaixiu chuckled as well, replying with total nonchalance, "Not at all. I was actually curious to see how it would feel if you followed through."
Rachel Angelo did not display the slightest hint of embarrassment, acting as though he hadn't heard the remark at all.
Anbaixiu immediately felt a headache coming on. This was by far the thickest-skinned paladin he had ever encountered.
He didn't fear brash, hotheaded types who charged in shouting for blood; what he dreaded was someone utterly shameless and capable of anything.
Still, he had his ways of dealing with such people.
"General Angelo, I came here today to make a friend. I happen to have a piece of intelligence concerning the Kingdom of the Unholy Hymn—consider it a greeting gift."
"Oh? And what might that be?"
"To hold off Ryan's advance, Unholy Hymn struck a bargain with a hell lord. Once open war begins, Hell will aid them against Ryan."
Rachel Angelo scoffed dismissively. "What kind of secret is that? With so many Gates of Hell lined up along the border, Unholy Hymn would have been swallowed whole by Hell long ago if they hadn't negotiated with a hell lord. Master Ultraman, your information seems a bit behind the times."
"Then do you know which hell lord made the deal with them, General Angelo?"
Rachel Angelo's expression finally shifted. "You know?"
Anbaixiu chuckled. "Of course. If it were something everyone already knew, how could I have the nerve to offer it as a token of friendship?"
Rachel Angelo inherently despised the undead. He had only permitted Anbaixiu inside due to the authority of the imperial pardon, and had even intended to thoroughly humiliate this reckless fiend.
Now, however, he was forced to reconsider the value of this "intelligence." There were vast differences among hell lords, and the assistance they could provide varied wildly.
If they could ascertain in advance which layer of Hell these gates connected to—whether their forces specialized in long-range spellcasting or poisons—they could prepare the appropriate divine spells ahead of time. That alone would drastically reduce Ryan's casualties.
Rachel Angelo smiled at Anbaixiu. "You'll share this with me, won't you? My friend."
"Naturally, my friend," Anbaixiu replied smoothly. Internally, he thought: *This old fellow still has no clue that Ryan is going to deploy the Dragon Tyrant Armament.*
In the prophecy, the Dragon Tyrant Armament rewound time and caused all the Gates of Hell to vanish completely. In that case, it wouldn't matter which layer of Hell the gates drew from; those fiends would never appear in the first place.
There was still about a month and a half before Ryan launched its full-scale offensive. When would Ryan notify the front lines about deploying the armament?
Although the prophecy confirmed the armament would definitely appear, its effect on the Gates of Hell had merely been deduced by him and Mister Misfortune. What if unexpected variables arose?
Oblivious to Anbaixiu's thoughts, Rachel Angelo pressed on, "Which hell lord is cooperating with the tieflings, then? And what are the terms of their agreement?"
Just as Anbaixiu was about to fabricate a name, an intuition struck him. He looked at Rachel Angelo and said, "I can't easily speak the name, but as for the terms... General Angelo, have you ever considered that one day, your friends might turn into your enemies?"
Rachel Angelo's brow furrowed in confusion. "What do you mean by that? Have they prepared charm spells?"
On second thought, that seemed improbable. A paladin's will was extraordinarily resolute, granting formidable resistance against standard charm magic. Even if a hell lord acted personally, controlling paladins on a mass scale was virtually impossible. Even if someone fell under a charm, clerics of light possessed numerous divine spells to purge such influence.
Anbaixiu shook his head. "Of course it isn't an ordinary trick like charm magic. It's a curse that defies all defense."
The moment his words fell, several shouts of alarm echoed from outside the parlor.
Startled, Rachel Angelo didn't wait for a report and hurried out the door.
Stepping into the corridor, he found his guards with their longswords drawn, forming a tight circle around one of their own—one of his personal bodyguards.
"What is going on?!" Rachel Angelo barked. "What happened to Frodo?!"
Hearing the general's voice, a guard hurriedly reported, "General, Frodo... he's turned into an undead!"
Rachel Angelo's eyes widened. He shoved his way through the crowd to look.
The young man named Frodo knelt on the ground in agony. Brilliant Holy Light flared from his right hand, yet it could not halt the ash-gray hue creeping up his flesh.
Rachel Angelo immediately sensed a sickening pulse of dark magic.
Nearly half of Frodo's right forearm had already turned the grayish-black of the undead. The violent clash between Holy Light and the necrotic limb drew gut-wrenching shrieks of agony from the young man.
Rachel Angelo drew the longsword at his waist and severed Frodo's right arm cleanly at the shoulder with a single swing. Blood spurted forth, but the flow was swiftly stanched by the power of Holy Light. Frodo had lost considerable blood, but his life was no longer in immediate danger.
Turning around in a fury, Rachel Angelo raised his blade toward Anbaixiu. Dense Holy Light condensed into a solid sheen, extending the blade's reach several times over as it pointed straight between Anbaixiu's brows.
"Lich, is this your doing?! Don't you dare think an imperial pardon can truly save your life!"
Anbaixiu could feel the ultra-condensed Holy Light scorching his forehead, nearly making it smoke.
Yet he remained entirely unflustered, speaking with calm composure. "If I tell you it had nothing to do with me right now, you won't believe me anyway. Why don't you check on your subordinate first? He isn't out of danger yet."
Puzzled, Rachel Angelo turned his head, only to find Frodo—who had just regained a shred of awareness—thrashing across the floor once more.
He wailed in sheer torment, wildly flailing his left hand. The same ash-gray corruption was spreading again, starting right from his fingertips.
This time, Rachel Angelo did not swing his blade to sever the left arm. Without identifying the root cause, hacking off limbs was utterly useless.
When Rachel Angelo turned back, his face remained dark, but he no longer treated Anbaixiu as the culprit.
He had regained his composure. Anbaixiu couldn't possibly have cast necromantic magic right under his nose to turn a living person into an undead. Moreover, Frodo was his personal guard, a high-ranking paladin; transforming a paladin into an undead while alive could never happen without a trace of disturbance. Given a paladin's sensitivity to dark magic, Anbaixiu could never have deceived him.
If Anbaixiu possessed such terrifying power, he could have slaughtered everyone in Liuyan City all on his own.
"What on earth is happening? You know the inside story. Tell me the truth, or else..." Rachel Angelo ground his teeth, stripped bare of his earlier smug, hollow composure.
Anbaixiu's smile never faded. Reaching up, he gently rubbed the scorched patch on his brow and met Rachel Angelo's gaze.
"General Angelo, earlier I came to make friends with you, and the intelligence was supposed to be free. But after that sword of yours... since we're no longer friends, let's talk business. How much are you willing to pay for this intelligence? I'll offer you a friendly baseline price: twenty billion gold coins!"
Chapter 323