'Duke' Farnburg (Part 2-Fourth Update 2)

I'm having a little burst of four updates today, so please vote for me! This is the second one!

Farnburg took a deep breath. Suddenly, countless wisps of black-red mist rose from the ground around him. An evil force of despairing aging, decay, corruption, and rot spread from within his body. Yin Xuege was still all right—he could remain standing upright—but every other Blood Demon present fell to their knees in trembling fear.

This was absolute suppression through rank! Blood Demons were a strange species with an exceptionally strict hierarchy. The distinction between those of higher and lower rank was as clear as a boundary between black and white. Aside from the legendary Sunwalker, there was absolutely no lower-ranking Blood Demon who could challenge the dignity of a higher-ranking one.

Yin Xuege was a prodigy spoken of only in legends. Thus, although he too felt the suppressive force bearing down on his soul, he could still stand firmly where he was. The other Blood Demons present, including the two Thousand-Year Dukes driving the carriage, were drenched in sweat as they knelt on the ground. They did not even dare to tremble.

"Back in the Blood Prison, I was treated rather well by those two little fellows!" Loud cracking sounds came from Farnburg's fingers. His nails grew inch by inch, soon reaching more than a foot in length. He slowly flicked his razor-sharp nails, producing a series of metallic clangs, then let out several cold, sinister chuckles.

"Originally, I brought people here this time to cause some trouble for the Great Berlin City-State. I never expected to catch them here!" Farnburg grabbed Yin Xuege by the shoulder and said indifferently, "Little fellow, why don't you give these two cuties to me as a present?"

Feeling the unfathomably evil demonic power within Farnburg, as vast as the sea and as deep as an abyss, Yin Xuege spread his hands and made a gesture of leaving the decision to him.

"Excellent!" Farnburg laughed happily. He glanced at the three Thousand-Year Dukes lying helplessly on the ground and gave a cold, merciless snort. "As for you, for the sake of my friendship with that old bastard Amley Vanek Brianburg, I can spare your lowly, worthless lives! But you must be punished!"

Farnburg lightly patted Yin Xuege's shoulder and said calmly, "This little fellow inherited my essence-blood. According to the laws of the oldest secret canon, he is the Bloodline Son of me, Faenborg Emple Stuttgart. As Thousand-Year Dukes, you should know what crime it is to plot against the Bloodline Son of a Scepter Prince!"

"Great Ancestor above!" One of the Brianburg Thousand-Year Dukes raised his head in despair. "Honored Prince, we didn't know he was under your protection! Your scepter mark isn't on him. This is unfair!"

"Bah!" Farnburg crouched down and spat a faceful of saliva at the Thousand-Year Duke. "Fair? Have you forgotten what species we are? You poor fool! It's true that I didn't leave my scepter mark on this little fellow. That's because I haven't had time to conduct the formal inheritance ceremony with him! But he inherited my essence-blood. That is a fact!"

His sharp nails pierced directly into the Thousand-Year Duke's chest. The duke let out a shriek of agony as his body convulsed violently.

"Whether or not he bears my scepter mark, he is under my protection! Even if you didn't know he had my protection, you still had no right to offend him in the slightest! Yet you foolishly committed such an act, so you must offer up all your essence-blood as atonement!"

The shrill screams continued without end. With a brilliant smile on his face, Farnburg slowly used a secret art to drain the essence-blood from the three Thousand-Year Dukes until not a drop remained. The three dukes lay on the ground, barely alive, their bodies shriveled and withered until they looked like three dried monkeys.

A ball of essence-blood, as large as a human head and shimmering faintly with golden light, floated above Farnburg's hand. He inscribed several sealing demonic runes into it, then slapped it into the top of Yin Xuege's head. Yin Xuege's face suddenly flushed crimson. His body trembled slightly as the blood and vitality surging through him gave him the illusion that his body was about to explode.

"It's a pity. I really couldn't bring myself to use a harsher hand. Otherwise, I wouldn't have merely drained their essence-blood. I would have extracted their life origins, the origin energy within their Natal Bat Wings, and every bit of life energy in their muscles, bones, and internal organs. If I had done that, Yin Xuege, my heir, you would have possessed all the power of three Thousand-Year Dukes in a short time!"

"All right, who can blame them for being Amley's descendants? And my wife is Amley's distant cousin. I truly couldn't bring myself to be too ruthless with them. So, giving them a tiny bit of punishment is enough! My Bloodline Son, the essence-blood of all three of them combined will still be enough to let you advance into a powerful duke!"

Farnburg made it sound effortless, but his words nearly made the eight Yin Clan Marquises behind Yin Xuege vomit blood from jealousy!

All the essence-blood of three Thousand-Year Dukes! It was a fortune capable of driving anyone mad—enough to let Yin Xuege break through and become a powerful duke in barely more than a month! Although his strength would be somewhat weaker than that of a Thousand-Year Duke tempered through countless trials, it still could not be compared to that of an ordinary duke.

As for the "harsh hand" Farnburg had mentioned, every Blood Demon understood just how terrifying that would have been.

A Blood Demon—especially a powerful Thousand-Year Duke—had only around twenty percent of his total strength in his essence-blood! Most of his power was stored in his Natal Bat Wings and his body! Unless a secret art was used to squeeze him into a pile of ash, extracting his essence-blood could yield no more than twenty percent of his power!

The combined essence-blood of three Thousand-Year Dukes amounted to roughly sixty percent of the strength of a single Thousand-Year Duke! Once Yin Xuege refined and absorbed this power, it would indeed be enough, just as Farnburg had said, to turn him into a powerful duke!

The Yin Clan was not short of duke-level combatants! The fatal point was that Yin Xuege was only eleven years old! He was merely eleven!

What shattered these Yin Clan Marquises even more was that Yin Xuege had actually become the Bloodline Son of Farnburg, the Scepter Prince of the Stuttgart Family! Under the various severe laws laid down in the ancient Blood Demon secret canons, Bloodline Sons were more important and more precious than biological sons!

In the future, Yin Xuege could not possibly become head of the Stuttgart Family, but he could unquestionably become the Supreme Elder of this Blood Demon aristocratic house—the "Protector" of the family!

A high-pitched wolf howl came from the distance, accompanied by a ceaseless barrage of explosions. Within Fanlu'er City, large numbers of soldiers and hunters from the Great Berlin City-State were scattering in disarray, and quite a few deserters were rushing this way.

Farnburg suddenly smiled. He waved at the fleeing human soldiers and issued an utterly merciless command.

"Kill them all! Capture those who call themselves descendants of the Deities alive!"

The second chapter of the fourth update! Please vote for me—does anyone have recommendation tickets? (To be continued)