We slipped into the palace through secret passages, and another two hours later—two hours I spent in some luxurious room—the empress brought in an old man who was apparently from the Yun clan.
"Begin," she ordered, not allowing much time for bowing and scraping.
The old man's blue spiritual hand reached me very quickly, though I could have dodged if I wanted. The old man tried to read my soul right away, but what chance did he have against the soul of a true god? Let's not forget the dragon's gift.
"Your Majesty, I cannot read him. His soul is too strong," the stunned old man rasped.
"Can you at least tell whether he is speaking the truth?"
"Yes, Your Majesty. Only if this man does not resist. But yes, I can. I will catch the surface waves and emotional background if this man tries to lie."
"Very good. He won't." She gave me her signature look.
All I could do was roll my eyes at that, making the formidable cutie press her lips together before beginning the interrogation.
I just can't act serious in moments like that. It's my body's defense mechanism against the local pathos. Even knowing I'm standing before a crowned ruler, I still can't take it seriously.
In the little Phoenix clan, the chief behaved with exactly the same pomp, even though on the scale of not just a continent but even a small empire, he was nobody.
"Do you have any connection to the Sacred Grounds of the Profound Sky Continent?"
"No."
"Truth."
"Do you wish, by any means, action or inaction, to harm me or my empire?"
"No."
"Truth."
We had discussed all the questions in advance, and I have to say the Little Empress handled herself impeccably. She didn't ask a single unnecessary question.
Half an hour later, everything was finished.
"Elder Yun?"
"Your Majesty, I will need half a year to condense one drop of blood essence containing the inheritance."
"Lun Kuan?"
"That's fine. In that time, you can judge whether our cooperation benefits you."
"Elder Yun..."
"No one will learn of today from me, Your Majesty. I will enter seclusion and complete your task."
And that was the beginning of my fruitful cooperation with the Little Empress. And I have to say, what this girl needed first and foremost wasn't merely to get rid of excess powerful Yang energy. No. She needed a good psychologist and a masseur. This wasn't one of my jokes. It was a very accurate diagnosis. The stress from a job like hers was colossal. And her subjects...
I'd never seen a viper pit like this, though I hadn't seen all that much of this place. What I had seen and heard was more than enough.
By the second day, the entire capital knew the Little Empress had a lover, which was simply vile considering the woman was still sincerely grieving. All ladies-in-waiting and closest servants were immediately burned.
As I understood it, that was accepted practice here and happened rather often. Meaning the Little Empress had no close servants, no ladies-in-waiting, no friends. Absolute loneliness for decades.
What a horrible fate.
But I could think about this cutie's personal tragedy later. Right now, I didn't have time. I sincerely sympathized with her and was beginning to change my opinion of her, but I truly didn't have time for it.
My family, my daughter came first.
Several soul-related techniques were brought to me on the second day. Useless crap, if you want my opinion. But that wasn't the important part. I wanted at least to understand the basics of how profound energy could work with the soul.
All the techniques were naturally offensive. But all of them were too weak.
Still, the empress promised to search for more books among her servants, and I believed she'd keep her word. At least I fulfilled my own obligations completely.
At first we worked once a day, but later, at my insistence, three times a day. And that was for the girl's sake. That way, excess Yang energy didn't have time to accumulate in her body at all.
At first the girl resisted, frowning every time I touched her, but then she got used to it. And she couldn't hide the relief when the excess energy left her body.
After a month it became clear that the girl had even started growing, which meant the harm done to her body by the Golden Crow's fire had been reduced to a minimum.
My secondary benefit, which was actually pretty important? Building resistance to the Golden Crow's fire, of course. Trash Che and I were not going to become friends. Unless he stopped being a good little ass-licker for the goddess.
Hard to believe, so developing immunity to his strongest flame wasn't a bad idea.
But that was only the first layer of the plan. I needed the Golden Chicken's fire for something else too, together with the Yun clan's spiritual hand and the soul techniques.
My idea was something like a Horcrux. Except there wasn't a damn bit of dark magic here, and it wasn't for immortality either.
And yes, to create a new technique, I'm taking inspiration from old lady Rowling. Judge me or file a copyright lawsuit. I don't care. The only thing that matters is that it works and I can return to my family.
I wanted to distort my soul, change its imprint so even the goddess couldn't find me even if I were standing right beside her.
You can't harm someone you don't know. Even omnipotence won't help if the targeting is off. Unless you start firing area attacks and destroy this entire planet or one of the continents.
Golden Crow fire could scorch souls. That was the trick. The spiritual hand could enter a soul. From canon, we remember that Trash Che combined his hand with Phoenix fire and thus got a new attack technique.
I wanted to use the Crow's fire instead of the Phoenix's to operate on my own soul. At least, that was the idea.
The logical problem? Many of the techniques I found used Yin-polarity energy, while the Crow's fire was Yang. How and why? If it was specifically Yin energy that worked with the soul, then why could Crow fire burn the damn soul?
Some concept of mixing Yin and Yang? The concept of Golden Crow fire, like a Trojan horse, penetrates a Yin attack and ends up inside the soul, then burns the soul itself? I needed to think all of this through.
As an attack, it was promising, of course, but I had no reason to study something like that right now. I didn't need to create a spear. I needed a scalpel that would work specifically on my soul.
The deep thinking absorbed me so completely that I didn't notice half a year pass. Then an even older-looking Elder Yun, who had lost a couple of levels though remained at the Tyrant Profound Realm, came to the empress to give me blood essence containing the Yun clan inheritance.
And I'd been wrong. It wasn't worth it. The spiritual hand worked entirely on profound energy, so it was useless to me. But... it wasn't completely useless.
When I absorbed the inheritance, I broke through, which was absurd in itself. Outwardly nothing changed. My veins only became a little wider, and the pain from the goddess's suppressing energy became a little stronger. Yet I remained at zero cultivation of profound energy.
I'd thought this thing worked on soul power and that it could be used even without cultivation, as long as you filled it with energy. In reality, it was just a skill. A useful skill, sure, but still a profound-energy skill that required profound veins—which, in my case, were blocked.
As I said, I didn't come away empty-handed. Along with the blood, the elder brought me several more soul skills, one of which was forbidden. What a frightening word. A forbidden technique.
Isn't this exactly the kind of crap that usually makes a xianxia hero OP? So I practically tore the technique out of his hands, and it was exactly what I needed. A soul-absorption technique. Trash-tier, of course.
Pros and cons. With this technique, you could absorb an enemy's soul. Your own soul became stronger. That's a plus. It worked better in tandem with the hand. That's also something of a plus, though not one available to me.
A practitioner using this skill went insane. That's a minus. Memories mixed with the victim's memories, and you went insane.
That was why the technique was trash. Or rather, the Yun clan practitioners were trash for having a treasure like this and simply leaving it to gather dust.
My idea, since I'd already started taking inspiration from good old Mama Ro, was Obliviate. Use Golden Crow fire to damage the victim's soul so badly it lost itself—its memories, its personality—leaving only charred scraps of soul energy that I could then absorb with the Yun clan technique.
And once again, we hit a wall. To free myself, I needed to change my soul imprint. But to change the imprint, I needed to use skills involving profound energy. A vicious circle with no way out for anyone else. But not for me.
My idea? Duplicate the main channels of my profound veins with ice, my most material element. That would drain my little world severely. It was risky. But I had no other choice.
"Your Majesty, how about a short walk?"
"A walk?"
"Well, yes. We've been sitting in the palace for eight months and haven't gone anywhere. That's bad for your health."
"Speak clearly. What do you need?"
"I need to find a dragon. Any dragon, with strength no higher than the Sky Profound Realm."
"Why?"
"I want to absorb its soul."
"That is a forbidden technique. You'll go insane."
"I modified it. Everything will be fine."
The empress only frowned at that. Probably thought I was an overconfident fool. But over that time she'd gotten to know me fairly well, so she knew I couldn't be talked out of it.
"Then go."
"We can't stop the treatment. Everything will go to waste. You're coming with me."
And again, an incredibly weary sigh. A second of weakness she could show only in front of me. I'd earned that honor only because I was, in practice, her personal attending physician anyway.
"Impossible."
"Very possible. The empire won't collapse in three days."
"You don't understand."
"I don't need to. I simply know. About all those dukes' intrigues, and about more than half the Guardian Families being traitors. And they can't be blamed."
Now the girl was furious.
"What did you say?"
"I said they can't be blamed. Their concerns are justified."
"This empress will be kind enough to listen to your pathetic babble before you burn in the fire."
"Fine. You think everyone around you is stupid? You think nobody knows why your body isn't growing? Nobody suspects the Golden Crow's fire is devouring you? And then what? You're not immortal and you have no heir. The moment you die—tomorrow, in a hundred years, or even in a thousand—war begins. The empire splits. There will be a great many victims. Where am I wrong?"
"That doesn't give them the right to betray me."
"It doesn't. But it gives them the right to think about the future of their clans. That's why they're acting preemptively. Yes, they're all traitors who deserve death. But you can't refuse to see the picture from their side."
For a long moment, the Little Demon Empress fell silent, turning my words over in her mind.
"Your treatment helps. If you remain nearby, an heir can appear."
"Only in about ten years. At best. Your recovery won't be instant."
"You're wrong. There is much you don't know."
"About the traitors responsible for your family's deaths? I know. And no, even if I tell you everything, it won't be proof, and you don't yet have enough strength to punish them. I wasn't talking about them. I meant those who joined the traitors."
"Then what do you propose?"
"Let's talk about that only after the hunt."
"I can't."
"You can. Rest won't hurt."
Another few seconds of thought.
"I will order such a beast found."
"Preferably a dragon with a water element."
"Why?"
"The meat of such a beast will be useful for your body. Water will calm your body and cool the Crow's fire a little. The effect will be very weak, but together with my absorption, the benefit will be colossal."