A faint excitement stirred in Li Yan's heart. He had originally asked Ming Feng to help investigate news of other clans related to the Undying Underworld Phoenix on the Heavenly Demon Grassland, but that had only been a conjecture of his.
That conjecture had arisen from the silver sand Donglin Tingyue had traded-the source of the Undying Underworld Phoenix bone marrow. Li Yan had visited that place, only to come away empty-handed.
Yet during his conversation with Sima Zimo today, he had unexpectedly heard the name of a clan that startled him-the Ink-Blood Thunder Roc clan! It was the clan of the demon cultivator who had used Yun Qinghua's daughter as a furnace cauldron and ultimately devoured her.
To find news of the Undying Underworld Phoenix and Qiongqi, Li Yan had carefully studied both kinds of demon beasts. Rocs and peacocks were the offspring of male and female phoenixes; unions between different varieties of phoenix produced either rocs or peacocks.
Among Ming Qi's Phoenix Four Clans, for instance, past intermarriages had resulted in rocs and peacocks within their ranks. The four clans existed to preserve their own lineages, so they still called themselves by their original phoenix designations, unwilling to acknowledge that they were rocs or peacocks.
Doing so would mean acknowledging the dilution of their bloodlines. This was their last stand, in a sense, which was why leaders like Ming Feng still tried to minimize intermarriage. After obtaining Undying Underworld Phoenix bone marrow to purify their bloodlines, they had become even more attentive to this matter.
Li Yan had begun collecting information about phoenix races back in the Mortal Realm. Thus, he knew of several close relatives of the Undying Underworld Phoenix, including the Ink-Blood Thunder Roc clan.
These were the offspring of the Undying Underworld Phoenix and the