The old bone dragon was nowhere to be found, the Githyanki were scheming a sacrificial plot, and Ryan was fracturing... There were many important matters in the world that required Anbaixiu's consideration.
Yet right now, something else occupied his mind even more.
Anbaixiu had turned the black ring in his hand over and over, yet he still could not completely grasp its purpose.
It was undeniably an artifact, capable of channeling the power of a conceptual deity within the Dragon Tomb, condensing vast quantities of dark mana, and imbuing that mana with miraculous, divine properties.
However, no matter how much Anbaixiu puzzled over it, he could only utilize a single function:
to use the ring to convert dark mana... But wasn't that second nature to a lich? Anbaixiu was a professional lich; he didn't need a ring to convert dark mana in the first place.
At most, the ring converted it slightly faster, but even that increase had its limits.
As for the divine power contained within this dark mana, it was far too sparse. Who knew how many years it would take to accumulate enough to unleash a strike like the one before the Dragon Tomb?
A millennium's worth of accumulation had been blown through in a single blow by Anbaixiu. The cost-to-performance ratio was truly underwhelming.
Unfortunately, when he quietly reached out to the President to ask how to use the ring, the President didn't reply at all.
This President seemed particularly fond of sleeping, routinely dozing off for decades at a stretch. From the time Anbaixiu had transformed into a lich until now, the President had only shown up once.
Presumably, short of the end of the world or the induction of a new member, the President wouldn't wake.
That made things somewhat troublesome. Unable to get answers from its master, Anbaixiu had no choice but to rely on trial and error.
"I don't believe this."
He could clearly sense the power brimming inside the ring, yet he simply couldn't tap into it. It was like having an entire vault sitting right in front of him, only for Anbaixiu to lack a lockpick!
This was intolerable. Anbaixiu could only keep trying to communicate with the ring using his own mana.
Or rather, "coaxing" might be a more fitting description—his mana constantly probed and sought to infiltrate the ring. The results, however, were lackluster. The ring remained unchanged, showing no sign of reaction.
Anbaixiu was in no hurry. He simply tucked the ring into his ribcage, waiting to see when he might crack it.
Once Canggu had escorted the remaining small bone dragons of the Dragon Tomb to the secret chamber beneath the Island of Eternal Rest, everyone boarded Aige's ghost ship and set off toward the islands where the other dragons dwelt.
Originally, only a hundred and two living dragons remained of the dragon race, and this sea had very few islands suitable for giant dragons to inhabit. Thus, the naturally solitary dragons had split among three dragon islands, with the Island of Eternal Rest—where the Dragon Tomb lay—counted as the fourth.
Forced into communal living, they had spent over a thousand years trying to adapt, yet shedding their instincts proved extraordinarily difficult. Even blood brothers raised together found each other intolerable upon reaching adulthood. Dragons frequently brawled, tearing at each other until blood and flesh flew.
Some dragons couldn't take it and flew off to live on isolated islets in the ocean, only to be found reduced to a few scattered bones mere months later.
The sea lacked neither monsters nor legendary figures, and the mighty power of the sea gods loomed large. They no longer had that mighty sovereign to protect them.
It was precisely because of this existential threat that the dragons grudgingly endured their innate solitary nature and lived packed together.
Yet seventeen hundred years was far too short a time, and crowding onto a few small islands was genuinely unbearable for them.
As a result, every single dragon yearned to return to that vast mainland. In their ancestral home, there were endless varieties of creatures to feast upon instead of fish day in and day out; there were grand, golden deserts under which lay real, glittering gold; there were countless sapient beings who could serve as slaves to provide the dragons with every resource imaginable... They desperately longed to return to the past, to the era when dragons still ruled the continent.
A major reason Anbaixiu considered Arthur Ryan foolishly naive was precisely this.
The nature of sapient beings dictated that they would only reminisce about their glorious eras while forgetting the grave mistakes committed during them. For any nation or race, there were only two ways to completely eliminate conflict.
The first was total extermination: when one side was wiped out entirely, conflict naturally ceased to exist. The second was complete integration: once populations lived together and intermarried, after a dozen or so generations, conflict would be thoroughly dissolved.
Any other superficial gestures were useless, doing nothing more than postponing the friction. A few years later, under some new pretense, both sides would inevitably resume fighting to the death.
In the end, it was simply a matter of scarce resources. A lack of abundant supplies forced every race to fight and plunder.
Over a thousand years ago, it was only because an Arthur Ryan had emerged that the war appeared comparatively righteous. Had that Holy King not been present, it probably wouldn't have differed much from any ordinary dynastic overthrow.
And since it had nothing to do with justice and was purely a struggle over interests, then things were negotiable.
Wasn't it just that the islands were too small? The World Weaving spell was tailor-made for reshaping terrain. With sufficient land, most problems would solve themselves.
As long as these dragons could offer enough, Anbaixiu was willing to sell anything.
However, there was currently a critical question: what had actually happened to the old dragon Sefris?
Reasoning normally, Sefris could be considered the patriarch who had raised this entire brood of dragons. No matter how ungrateful or vicious these dragons might be, they wouldn't go so far as to collude with outsiders to kill him off.
Yet the world was rife with abnormalities. If any accident truly befell Sefris, Canggu and Gareth would never spare those dragons or the Githyanki. In that case, Anbaixiu would have no choice but to reluctantly harvest a few dragon corpses as his combat fee.
Anbaixiu was not going to clash with Gareth over a bunch of ungrateful dragons; the math simply didn't add up. Thus, he could only hope those dragons' intelligence was functioning. If they were all morons, then they had simply dug their own graves.
Aige forged steadily ahead toward the largest dragon island. Just after traversing an entire underwater volcano, however, her speed slowed.
Aige said to everyone, "There's something ahead. A presence that disgusts me."
Anbaixiu extended his perception outward and quickly picked up a nauseating aura—the foul stench of demons.
"It's ixitxachitls, and quite a lot of them... How can this be? Is that Demogorgon's territory ahead?"
Demogorgon, the Prince of Demons of the Abyss, was a baboon-like fiend possessing two heads and numerous tentacles. Even the deep ocean harbored cultists devoted to Demogorgon—namely, these ixitxachitls. These mutated variants were massive enough to be captured and used as mounts, and their blood contained abyssal toxins capable of brewing liquor potent enough to intoxicate the undead.
Naturally, the habitat of ixitxachitls was Demogorgon's domain. Anbaixiu assumed Aige had charted a straight course to make haste and inadvertently strayed into Demogorgon's territory.
That would be troublesome, as a demon's toxic blood could poison an undead soul. A small quantity was fine—akin to getting drunk—but in massive quantities, inhaling it into one's body would inflict severe damage upon the soul.
In other words, against demons, Aige's ability to devour foes flesh, hide, and bone could not be employed.
"Let's detour around them. The extra distance won't hurt," Anbaixiu suggested.
Aige shook her head. "We're surrounded. It's an ambush they set."
No sooner had Aige spoken than those colossal ixitxachitls closed in from every direction.
At a glance, ixitxachitls resembled ordinary rays, albeit on an enormous scale. But a closer look revealed several rows of sharp fangs lining their mouths and thick, barbed tentacles sprouting from their backs.
This aligned perfectly with Demogorgon's aesthetic: a demon lacking tentacles was as hideous as a human without a nose.
The ixitxachitls blotted out the surroundings in astonishing numbers.
Moreover, as they converged, a colossal whirlpool formed in the sea, engulfing Aige's vessel within it as if intending to tear the giant ship apart with sheer currents.
Aige did not flinch; she could maintain an extradimensional traveling state for extended periods, so mere water currents could not harm her.
Yet Anbaixiu warned immediately, "Something's wrong. Quick, get out of here!"
"Why?" Aige asked, puzzled. "Shouldn't we figure out who's behind this first?"
The Githyanki had arrived riding ixitxachitls, and now they had run into an ambush by a massive horde of ixitxachitls. This certainly wasn't something the dragons could orchestrate; someone was definitely pulling the strings from behind the scenes, scheming against the members of the Elegy Poetry Society.
Aige was curious: what could a mere swarm of ixitxachitls possibly do to her?
Anbaixiu replied, "Remaining inside someone else's ambush is reckless. As you said, if there is a mastermind we know nothing about, keeping us right here is precisely what they want."
Aige agreed with Anbaixiu's reasoning and asked, "Then how do we handle this? Break out through the seabed?"
Aige could travel through the seabed itself; as long as an area was not completely devoid of water, she could traverse it in an incorporeal state.
Anbaixiu shook his head. "No, upward!"
Aige said in surprise, "But ixitxachitls can leap out of the water, and I can't fly. Submerging ought to be the best way."
Her limitless sailing capability required water to function; she was a ship, after all.
Anbaixiu shook his head. "I don't know, but it's my intuition."
Aige hesitated for a moment before finally saying to Anbaixiu, "All right, I trust you. Brace yourselves, I'm speeding up!"
The moment she spoke, the ghost ship shuddered. Having previously hovered level in the water, its prow now tilted upward, surging toward the ocean surface.
They were more than a thousand meters deep under the sea; breaching the surface was no easy task, especially with dense swarms of ixitxachitls above them.
It wasn't an easy option, but it was the right one.
Just as Aige accelerated upward in her charge, the seabed below suddenly erupted like a volcano—except what spewed forth was not magma, but blood carrying a foul, defiled aura.
Purulent blood accumulated over who knew how long gushed upward, surging in hot pursuit behind Aige.
Chapter 379