Chapter 809
The Triumphal Chariot of Antimony
“A child of one and a half years old… shouldn’t be able to speak yet.”
Beyad lightly tapped his fingers on the amber wine glass, saying with some surprise.
“More or less. One or two words are fine, but complete sentences are indeed impossible.”
Franz Pomanach nodded. “I could kill before I could speak. That was the first time I drank blood from a living person, not from a blood bottle.
“When I grew a little older, I discovered… it was as if everyone knew about it. It was as if everyone knew… that I had personally killed my own sister when I had just learned to walk. Hahaha…”
He laughed heartily, but there was no joy in the sound.
He placed his wine glass back on the table.
Even though the wine in the cup was the finest in the world, he had no inclination to drink it.
“Do you remember what people used to call me?”
Pomanach did not wait for Beyad’s reply, as he was asking and answering himself. “That ‘monster from the Pomanach family’.”
“So, you became a true monster? Killed your entire family?”
“Is there any reason why not?”
Pomanach said frankly. “My brother killed my sister, and my sister killed my brother. My father killed his brother, and I myself killed my sister. Since the education I received from childhood was like this, and people’s expectations of me were also like this, how could I not become such a person when I grew up?
“Besides, I didn’t completely kill them…”
As he spoke, Pomanach reached out and caressed his chest and abdomen.
Alistair realized something. “You don’t mean…”
“Oh, it wasn’t as simple as eating them.”
Pomanach smiled. “At that time, all the servants in the household were killed by us as ‘blood bags.’ They fought each other until their bones turned to ash… and I was the one who ultimately won.
“But I myself was severely injured and on the verge of death in that ‘civil war,’ and I received a curse from my mother. So, I prepared a resurrection ritual—I channeled the remaining blood from within myself. Mixed with the little remaining blood I had collected, I used it to revive myself… thereby dispelling the curse.
“At that time, I had a sudden idea—because I was worried that if I failed to be resurrected due to lack of blood, what if they were coincidentally resurrected by someone else?
“So, I smashed all the statues of my family members. I gathered a portion of their bone ash around me. I took away a part of them, thereby preventing them all from being fully resurrected.
“And when I died and was reborn, I merged with them. At that time, I still had one sister, two brothers, plus my father and mother, a total of five portions, plus myself as the sixth portion… which was the ‘Number of Adaptation.’ The blood at that time was not even enough for one person’s resurrection, let alone six portions of bone ash. I think… perhaps it was the favor of the Lord of Scales and Feathers that allowed me to survive that state.”
— So, that’s why he called himself “Pomanach.”
Alistair understood.
It wasn’t because he was estranged from people, nor because he, as a fallen noble, remembered his surname. Because for him, it wasn’t just a surname… it was “family.”
He was not purely “Franz,” but the ultimate fusion of all the “Pomanachs.”
That’s why he liked men and women, was gentle yet violent, conservative yet radical… because what constituted “Pomanach” was not a single consciousness.
“Since only I was left of the entire ‘Pomanach’ family, all the family assets naturally belonged to me. Although my family was considered noble, they had long lost their fiefdoms… they were just a fallen noble. So, I simply sold all of the family’s assets and indulged myself.
“People hated and rejected me. Although they all respected me on the surface, I knew… they just wanted my money.”
Pomanach scoffed. “They want it, so I give it to them. Watching them fight to the death over such things, slandering and framing each other, I simply take pleasure in it—who is the monster? Is it me? Is it them? Or is it those shiny little round coins?
“After all, I didn’t care about such things. Rather, I had already prepared for death. I was not a Ritualist, and that resurrection ritual was merely a mechanical device. If something went wrong, I might not be able to be resurrected; even before I did this, I didn’t know if I would be resurrected as myself, or as some chimera.
“Until I met Basil. He was a rather interesting human… I could feel that he was one of the few who didn’t fear me, nor mock me—he dared to come directly to me for money the first time we met.”
“…Oh?”
Alistair couldn’t help but laugh.
So, it was the development of ‘This man is so special that he caught my attention’?
But Pomanach’s words refuted Alistair’s guess:
“To support his research with money, he was even willing to die. Not as a blood slave, nor a platitude like ‘I am willing to die for you’… he directly came to me with a contract certified by the Silver Crown Dragon, entrusting his life to me in exchange for money.
“Even after he became a monarch and established a kingdom… this contract remained with me. He never asked for it back, nor did he ask me to destroy it.”
“You must have agreed.”
“Of course, I gave it to him! It was just a small amount of money; how could it be as interesting as this matter!”
Pomanach laughed heartily. It was impossible to tell how much of his laughter was genuine and how much was exaggerated performance.
It was like a child telling a joke and then trying hard to laugh.
In a sense… Pomanach, who was born a Child of the Moon with permanent crimson eyes, never experienced a ritual of true adulthood.
The adult transformation of the Children of the Moon occurred when they realized they were no longer who they were in the past. In that instant, emotions and desires suppressed by morality erupted instantly… and thus the [Beast] triumphed over [Love], and the Child of the Moon completely turned into a bloodthirsty beast.
— So-called adulthood was the abandonment of one’s innocent past self.
And for Pomanach, he “matured” too early and “became an adult” too late—from the moment he could remember, he had been doing things that adults did; in his teens, he inexplicably gained parts of his family’s personalities and memories.
But perhaps until now, he had not truly matured.
Because he had no innocence to abandon in the first place.
Seeing that “Lady Beyad” did not laugh, Pomanach’s laughter gradually stopped.
He was silent for a moment, his mood calmed down, and then he continued to speak. “I was very curious about what he was researching… that made him so desperate. Do you know what he said?
“—He said that I was researching Children of the Moon. But I couldn’t find any Children of the Moon to research, so I had to buy their bone ash at a high price.”
Even Alistair couldn’t hold back this time.
… Is Basil that amazing? The person in front of you is a Child of the Moon!
At this point, Pomanach laughed again. “Because at that time, Children of the Moon had not yet fully dominated the high-level positions in the Empire.
“At that time, some ‘vampire hunters’ harbored hatred towards us. To deceive other nobles into targeting us, they colluded with the Physicians Association and spread a rumor—claiming that the bone ash of Children of the Moon could enhance virility.
“…I have to say, this widely spread rumor caused great obstacles to our infiltration. Many nobles hired ‘vampire hunters’ at a high price to hunt Children of the Moon. Although many fakes were mixed in the black market, genuine goods occasionally existed. At the same time, some nobles would also try to keep Children of the Moon.
“In most cases, Children of the Moon are young, beautiful, immortal, and extremely lustful. Since Children of the Moon cannot cross flowing living water, when they are imprisoned underground and surrounded by underground rivers, it forms a one-way existence and an inescapable cage.
“So, some nobles would buy ‘bone ash of a complete young female Child of the Moon’ at a high price and then scatter blood to revive them; some people yearned for immortality… Although some warned that the resurrection of Children of the Moon was not what they wanted, it did not prevent some from wanting to imprison Children of the Moon to force out the method of transformation, or to use contracts to restrain them into becoming their enforcers—this is also why I specifically smashed my family’s bone ash.
“It is precisely for this reason that Children of the Moon with higher ‘backgrounds’ are fine, but those with lower backgrounds are often mercilessly hunted by hunters. Even so, the price of Child of the Moon bone ash in the black market was driven very high… so high that Basil could never afford it with his income alone in his lifetime.”
“So, you gave him the money?”
Alistair asked.
“No,” Pomanach shrugged. “Although I don’t care about money, such a degree of waste is unnecessary.”
“…Waste?”
“Yes, I gave him all my family’s bone ash.”
Pomanach smiled very happily. “His ‘Bewitchment Dispelling’ would completely shatter their possibility of resurrection—if I had known this earlier, I wouldn’t have needed to use such a method to fuse them.
“Perhaps because I often sighed, saying ‘Why didn’t I meet you sooner,’ that child probably considered me a confidant or a close friend.”
But obviously, until then… Pomanach did not regard Basil as someone with whom he could communicate as an equal. It was just that the emotionally unintelligent Basil mistakenly thought ‘the two of them were already friends.’
“—Until he gave me his research.”
Pomanach said softly. “Only then did I marvel at his talent—he analyzed the method of becoming a Perfect Being through the Bewitchment Dispelling of Child of the Moon’s bone ash.”
“…’The Triumphal Chariot of Antimony’?”
Alistair knew what “research” he was referring to.
Valentin l’s “The Triumphal Chariot of Antimony” described the transcendence alchemy of sublimating animal nature into divinity.
If this alchemy could be thoroughly completed… it would mean he had created an ability to “stably become a Heavenly Envoy.” In Xianxia novels, it would be a cultivation method that could be used from Qi Refining to Ascension.
But obviously… perhaps because the material Basil consumed during his research was Child of the Moon, Pomanach believed that this book described the path to reaching “Perfect Being.”
“Let a fierce gray wolf devour the body of a king, and then burn it in a great conflagration to ashes. Repeat this three times, and the lion will triumph over the wolf, and there will be nothing left within it to be devoured.
“Then the lion purifies itself with the wolf’s blood, and the color of its blood most beautifully matches the color of the lion; when the lion’s hunger is appeased, its spirit becomes more powerful than ever, and its eyes shine like the sun…”
Pomanach recited the words from “The Triumphal Chariot of Antimony” without hesitation. “The lion is the ‘golden spirit,’ and the color of the moon is golden. This sentence, on the surface, talks about a method of purifying gold, but in reality, it describes the predation and sublimation of the Child of the Moon.
“As a transfigured beast, the stronger lion is the Child of the Moon. The gray wolf is the mortal, and it also symbolizes the Alchemist—mortals draw divine power from the Dream Realm, and in the Ascension Ritual, they burn themselves to ashes. After repeating three times, they will ascend to the Fourth Tier… and the human body will be purified.
“By tasting the golden blood, the lion’s hunger will be appeased. The predation of Children of the Moon can only quench their thirst; only blood above the Fourth Tier possesses the sacred efficacy to completely pacify Children of the Moon…”
…So that’s how it is.
Alistair finally understood why Isabel’s and Eivass’s blood could bring him peace. But Selene’s blood only made him more excited and restless…
For a moment, even Alistair himself began to doubt—had he misunderstood?
Did “The Triumphal Chariot of Antimony” implicitly describe the method of becoming a Perfect Being?
“And at the same time… he also prepared his own path to Ascension. ‘The King travels through the six regions of the sky, and establishes his residence in the seventh region. There, golden tapestries adorn the Royal Palace. If you understand my meaning, this key will unlock the first lock and push open the first bolt’…” This was the first of the twelve keys proposed by Basil in the book. After reading this, when one becomes an Alchemist, they will become a Star Antimony-style Alchemist.
“The ‘Stone and Gold Knight’ will change his soul seven times. The first six Tiers have already reached the limit of the World, and the Seventh Tier has undoubtedly reached the divine realm.
“This book simultaneously recorded his Ascension technique and my Ascension technique. When in the mortal world, he was the King, and I was the wise minister… and when we ascend to the Dream Realm, I will be the Immortal Human King, and he will be my Stone and Gold Knight.”
Pomanach said softly. “From then on, I regarded him as my true friend.
“Closer than my own family… my only friend, my companion.”
(End of Chapter)
