Ten days earlier, Rollo Uhoris had left Torturer's Deep aboard an unremarkable, medium-sized oared ship.
Before he departed, Liu Qian had instructed him to spread the news that Torturer's Deep had changed hands once he finished buying the materials for repairs.
Rollo mustered a knowing smile. "Understood, my lord. You want to bait the fish into biting."
Liu Qian nodded. Torturer's Deep had only just changed hands. If any pirates were bold enough to come fishing in troubled waters, they would be playing right into his hands.
Watching the ship disappear into the sea mist, Liu Qian turned and headed deeper into Torturer's Deep.
Over the past few days, Janice had covered almost every accessible corner of Torturer's Deep, sowing seven or eight batches of seeds.
The results were the same every time.
The seedlings always struggled to poke their heads out, only for their leaves to be rapidly shrouded in a gray pall of death. Their veins blackened, and then they withered completely.
What lingered in the air was not the strange scent they had expected from a magical plant, but a bitter smell.
Liu Qian found Janice in the cold, gloomy storage cavern.
By the feeble light of an oil lamp, she was leafing through the Blood Warlock's thick parchment notes, which she had brought out of Tyria.
Her silver hair gleamed faintly in the dim light, and her brows were tightly furrowed.
"Still no luck?" Liu Qian's voice sounded particularly clear in the stone cavern.
Janice closed the notes, a trace of fatigue barely discernible in her movements.
"I've tried everywhere. The seeds can awaken, but they can't survive. Soil, light, humidity... I've adjusted everything I could. Nothing worked..."
She picked up the notes, her fingers tracing the obscure runes and diagrams.
"The Blood Warlock's notes don't contain any instructions for growing it, only records of gathering it."
She raised her eyes to Liu Qian, her purple gaze deep in the shadows. "I've been wondering about something. If the Blood Warlock knew how to grow it, he would have had the people of Tyria do it long ago. Why risk sending people out to search everywhere?"
Liu Qian leaned against a cold stone cabinet, his knuckles unconsciously tapping its rough wooden surface.
He had considered that too.
He paused. "But he used Ghost Grass to make the potion that suppressed your Blood Magic 'curse.' That method must have come from somewhere. Otherwise, how did he know about it?"
Janice offered a guess. "Perhaps the Blood Warlock lied. The potion wasn't made from Ghost Grass, and he used the grass for something else."
Liu Qian pondered this. It was certainly possible.
To conceal some unspeakable secret, the Blood Warlock had claimed that the Ghost Grass was gathered to make a potion that suppressed the Blood Magic curse.
What, then, had his true purpose been?
A possibility suddenly struck Liu Qian. The Blood Warlock's need for so much Ghost Grass might well have been connected to some forbidden form of Blood Magic.
The Blood Warlock had created a Chimera and tried every possible means to resurrect a Great Dragon. Could those endeavors have required Ghost Grass?
The Blood Warlock had claimed that he intended to seize Liu Qian's body. Could that bizarre, unheard-of magic have required Ghost Grass?
Liu Qian felt that the matter was becoming increasingly murky. Some enormous secret had to lie behind the Ghost Grass.
He shook his head, setting aside the unsettling conjecture for now. "Since our plan to grow Ghost Grass has failed, we need to prepare for the worst. If it comes to that, the Great Dragons will be crucial to us."
Great Dragons were not human. As they grew, the magic within them became ever stronger.
Liu Qian had previously speculated about many possible reasons, but Janice had found the answer in the books from Tyria.
Great Dragons grew by eating. Feeding accelerated their absorption of magic from the outside world, increasing their size.
Thus, if they hatched the Dragons, even during a low ebb of magic, their Magic Power would not grow at a snail's pace the way Liu Qian's currently did.
More importantly, the Flame Knights shared a Dragonblood Pact with Liu Qian and could ride Great Dragons hatched using his Magic Power. Once the Great Dragons grew up, Jelena and Janice could become dragonriders.
He led them toward his bedroom deep within the sea cave.
For safety, he had kept the nine Dragon Egg Fossils in an ironwood chest beside his pillow.
The heavy lid swung open. In the dim light, nine enormous stone eggs of different colors and patterns lay quietly on soft velvet, radiating an ancient, mysterious aura.
"Choose," Liu Qian said. "Which ones do you want to awaken?"
Janice's gaze lingered over the Dragon Eggs before finally settling on a pale purple one.
Fine purple markings resembling nebulae covered its shell.
She reached out, her fingertips gently brushing its cold surface.
"I choose this one."
A flicker of doubt crossed Liu Qian's mind.
A purple Great Dragon?
The extensive dragon records of House Targaryen did not seem to mention that color.
Still, a dragon hatched from an egg that color ought to be beautiful.
Jelena barely hesitated.
Her gaze swept over the Dragon Eggs before settling on a silvery-white one.
Its shell was smooth, its color as cold as iron beneath moonlight, with a sharp-edged beauty.
She picked it up with a steady motion.
There were still two more to choose for awakening.
Liu Qian's gaze was immediately drawn to the blood-red Dragon Egg.
Unlike the other Dragon Egg Fossils, it did not seem inert. In the dim light, a scarlet glow seemed to flow slowly within its shell, exuding a primal, dangerous allure.
Almost without thinking, he took it in his hand.
It felt icy to the touch, yet he could almost sense the savage power lying dormant inside.
His gaze shifted to the remaining Dragon Eggs in the chest.
He had intended to choose one entirely different from the blood-red egg, such as the bronze one or the one flecked with sea-blue spots.
But after much hesitation, his fingers reached instead for another egg, a deep black and red.
The egg was black all over, like the deepest midnight.
Its shell was not smooth, but covered in swirling dark-red patterns.
It radiated a deep, ponderous sense of power, as though it could swallow all light.
Liu Qian picked it up, thinking that its coloring bore some resemblance to Drogon's.
The four chosen Dragon Eggs were placed on the table.
Pale purple, silvery white, blood red, and black and red.
They lay there quietly, awaiting the chance to awaken.
Liu Qian nodded. He had prepared for this long ago.
Before coming here, he had moved all nine hundred bundles of precious Ghost Grass deep into a secluded sea cave outside his bedroom.
He went outside and began drawing on the vast magic contained within Ghost Grass
power contained in the Ghost Grass.
The Magic Power of the Ghost Grass Seeds surged into his body like an invisible torrent, guided by his will.
Forty thousand... eighty thousand... one hundred and twenty thousand... one hundred and sixty thousand... two hundred thousand... two hundred and twenty thousand!
The sensation of overflowing Magic Power filled every part of his body. This was the limit he could currently hold-a full two hundred and twenty thousand points of Magic Power!
Beyond his original forty thousand points, he had absorbed another one hundred and eighty thousand in a single attempt.
Since even his maximum Magic Power could only awaken three Dragon Eggs at first, Liu Qian immediately targeted Janice's and Jelena's eggs, along with the blood-red egg he had chosen first.
[Dragon-Rider Bloodline]!
Liu Qian's eyes snapped open, a molten-gold glimmer seeming to flash deep within his pupils.
An invisible pressure born of an ancient bloodline burst outward, making even the air in the room seem heavier.
Beneath the skin between his brows, a blazing point of golden light suddenly flared like the heart of a furnace.
Then three drops of intensely concentrated, blazing-gold dragon blood, radiating searing halos and an aura of primordial majesty, slowly seeped from between his brows and hovered in the air like stars granted life.
Each became a slender yet irresistible streak of golden light, slipping precisely and silently into one of the three Dragon Egg Fossils.
-Hum!
An enormous amount of Magic Power was drained away in an instant. The feeling of fullness rapidly receded like an ebbing tide.
Liu Qian's face paled slightly, and a trace of exhaustion from overexertion crossed his brow.
Yet there was still no hesitation in his eyes. He sank into meditation once more, and the remaining Ghost Grass in the sea cave released another surging torrent of Magic Power.
This time, he drew in precisely one hundred thousand points of Magic Power. Besides the seventy thousand needed to awaken the Dragon Egg, he also restored his original forty thousand points, replenishing his nearly depleted reserves.
Finally, his gaze fell on the black-and-red Dragon Egg, which looked as though it had solidified within midnight waves.
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