Chapter 582: Dynasty
“Those who enter the Yang Gate are of Yin nature.”
Fisher chewed on the words that Fischer had read, then looked up at the two lines of text above him, which still appeared to him as the “Competitive Gate,” and at the mirror-like door.
“In other words, is it possible that there are actually two doors here? My side is the Yang Gate, and your side is the Yin Gate. Do we need to switch to open the door?”
Fischer was silent for a moment, then walked up to the door and lightly touched it with his hand, but it was as if he had fallen into water, unable to touch the physical door.
She quickly shook her head and said, “No, I still can’t open this door.”
The Book Princess pondered for a moment and said, “Could it be that you need to go to the Yin Gate while Fischer stays here at the Yang Gate, and you both open it at the same time to succeed?”
Emhart quickly flew onto Fischer’s shoulder and whispered to him, “Are you sure you want to go over? What if this is a scheme by the Competitive Gate, and we get trapped inside the door forever?”
“Haha, what a timid little thief. Although Fischer usually doesn’t think much, at least she has the courage to come directly for Baemon. Does your Fischer not have this little bit of courage and trust?”
The Book Princess coldly sneered, standing on the shoulder opposite to Emhart’s and mocking him.
Fischer patted Emhart on the shoulder, who wanted to say something, then turned to look at the door and said, “Let’s go.”
“Fischer.”
“Even if we don’t get through, we’re stuck here anyway. I still have to get the base; I can’t waste any time.”
“Okay, I’ll listen to you.”
Fischer nodded and gently reached his hand into the door. Under the gaze of the two figures behind him, who were completely opposite to him, he gradually sank into another world within the Competitive Gate.
The process of entering was slow, and it wasn’t until several seconds later that he barely entered another unscathed cave that looked identical to the spot he was previously standing in.
“Strange feeling. Why is it like this here?”
Emhart murmured uncomfortably, but Fischer frowned in confusion and looked at him, “What did you say?”
Emhart’s expression became even more surprised, and he hurriedly said, “What do you mean you don’t feel anything?”
“Wait, don’t speak for now. There’s definitely something off here.”
Fischer squinted his eyes, took a deep breath, and sensed the extremely bizarre aura around him. After a long while, he murmured, “This is… Chaos.”
Yes, here he felt an extremely intense aura of chaos once again, but it was different from any chaotic feelings he had encountered before.
This was a kind of chaotic power with a nature he had never seen before, and it was incredibly rich.
“I’m… unable… to withstand this… can’t you see the door opening?”
Emhart was so uncomfortable that he couldn’t breathe, his words sounding like they were painfully clawing their way from his throat and stomach to escape, but Fischer remained completely unaware of anything wrong; he felt nothing at all.
Yet he still furrowed his brow and quickly turned to the door, only to see that a layer of faint mist had once again covered it, seemingly isolating him from the previous world.
The figures of Fischer and the Book Princess became increasingly indistinct on the gradually frosted door, swaying like reflections in water, as if mocking silently or guiding him in some unfathomable manner.
Had he been tricked?
Had he been played by the Competitive Gate?
The Book Princess on his shoulder grew redder and began to flicker with a dangerous golden light; clearly, this environment was more torturous than he had imagined.
His heart began to grow anxious without him realizing it, a heat and urgency erupting within him, gradually dispelling the calm he had inside.
He hurriedly approached the door and pressed his hand against it. This time, it didn’t sink like before, but the door remained utterly still, as if it were the hardest wall in the world, waiting for a true god-like opponent to challenge it.
“I don’t want to leave without you.”
“…”
Fischer did not comfort the increasingly weak Emhart, who could no longer stand; he simply wrapped him in his arms and suddenly lifted his head to look at the two lines of text on the door that were supposed to read “Competitive Gate.”
Sure enough, as Fischer had seen earlier, the text changed once again.
This time, the two lines read:
“Fifth Sea”
“Yin”
Sea?
Another sea?
Fischer’s mind suddenly burst with confusion, but right after that, the strange second line of text sparked an insight in his mind.
Perhaps he hadn’t been tricked; his direction was correct. It was just that the Competitive Gate had made him mistakenly think he had been ensnared.
He remembered that the key to entering the door was “to defeat the undefeatable.”
But inside the door, or rather, within this peculiar Yin-Yang Sea, everything was inverted. Thus, the actual key was not “to defeat the undefeatable,” but “the victor may be without defeat!”
The moment that thought emerged, his expression became somewhat abstract.
Then, he tentatively cradled Emhart in his arms and reached out his hand to the door again, but this time he didn’t push; instead, he pulled.
The door was still incredibly heavy, making him doubt whether he was pulling a mountain rather than a door.
“Click, click, click.”
But just when he was doubting his life, the door before him miraculously began to tremble uncontrollably, gradually being pulled by Fisher, leaving marks where it had scraped against the ground.
The door slowly opened, revealing an exceedingly deep space before Fischer, as if it led to another blazing world.
The rich aura of the Authority of Death was all too familiar to Fischer, as if an invisible yet intensely heated black veil was rushing toward him, enveloping him within it.
His body uncontrollably fell backward toward the door, quickly being engulfed by the darkness within, disappearing from the spot.
The door behind him rumbled shut, leaving only the heat wafting from the crack to linger in the cave.
“Buzz, buzz!”
“Chirping!”
“Chirp, chirp.”
“Halu.”
“Fischer!! Aaaah!”
After entering the darkness of the door, the profound space could no longer provide space for walking; Fischer and Emhart fell continuously downward.
Below them came a rich scent of sulfur and an invisible heatwave, accompanied by a sound similar to a small animal’s howl entering Fischer’s ears.
Emhart’s words finally returned to normal from earlier, but the previous uncomfortable feeling made it hard for him to react, resulting in him spinning in mid-air like a top, screaming as he fell downward.
In Fisher’s peripheral vision, amidst the accelerating descent, the darkness and depth were slowly breached by light, spreading from the center of darkness, gradually revealing a vast space filled with boiling magma and tiny creatures with long tails swaying upward like monkeys.
“Chirp, chirp!”
The group of small, gnome-like creatures that looked like monkeys stood on the black rocks amidst the ocean of magma, staring wide-eyed at the person and book that were falling from above. They were initially quite curious, but upon sensing the terrifying aura of Fischer’s mythical rank, they panicked and scattered, struggling to swim away from the spot where Fischer was about to land.
“Boom!”
With a loud noise, the Demon Dynasty, which had only echoed with the chattering of tiny demons and the bubbling of magma for ages, finally welcomed a visitor it had never seen before.
In the black, sulfurous smoke, Fischer was holding the dizzy Emhart with one hand, looking around at his surroundings.
“So this is… the Demon Dynasty?”
He saw that it was a tremendously wide, cave-like space high above, filled with reflections of the glimmering, undulating magma on the ground, casting a shimmering light on the black stone walls. But upon closer examination, it appeared that the source of the shimmer was not water-like, but a multitude of eerie ∞ symbols floating densely above the magma, resembling an invisible cage binding the magma in place.
On the seemingly endless sea of magma, large, wide black rocks, some scattered and some connected, formed a series of isolated islands and archipelagos. In this scorching and dim environment, Fischer also observed many vague traces of vast buildings and civilizations.
Many of those buildings either hugged the mountains, or hung upside down on the stone walls, or stood alone on the isolated rocks, appearing to be homes for some powerful beings.
Among the buildings, there were also many small structures, from which numerous tiny demons with red, blue, and black skin cautiously hidden away were watching Fischer, bound by chains.
“Fischer, I… I really want to throw up.”
While Fischer was surveying the environment, Emhart could no longer bear it and weakly rolled over, falling onto a nearby rock, starting to vomit golden characters.
“We just entered the door, which is an opposite space formed by chaotic power, causing your rules to start collapsing, so it’s uncomfortable. It should be better now; we’ve arrived at the Demon Dynasty.”
“That’s not the reason. I… I’ve been to this place before; it was here that I met Baemon. Although I can’t remember what happened then, I still feel very uncomfortable.”
“Hela.”
Indeed, as a member of the Demon Gods, Hela should also have a palace here. It’s just that this place is behind the Competitive Gate, and he didn’t know how far it was from here.
Could it be possible that the base meant to influence the Mother Goddess’s seal was hidden in her palace?
Fischer turned his head again to survey the surroundings, but noticed that behind the black rocks were many tiny demons that had been hiding, who instinctively shrank away from his gaze like ostriches as he looked at them.
He ignored the tiny demons of roughly the same rank as ordinary humans and felt a twinge of confusion.
Since he had already come in, where had Jasmine and Holland gone?
Had they entered?
“Chirp, chirp.”
Just as Fischer was surveying the surroundings for his companions, a small demon with red skin and tiny horns, unwillingly crawling toward him, suddenly appeared from ahead.
The little demon was small like a monkey, without any sexual characteristics, seemingly lacking any reproductive or excretory functions, smooth-skinned, appearing extremely peculiar, and only muttering indistinct words from its mouth lined with sharp teeth.
It was extremely scared, not daring to look at Fischer even for a moment, continuously circling the surroundings. After hesitating for a long time, it finally ran toward Fischer, raising its hand towards him.
Fischer frowned but saw the demon’s three-fingered hand slightly spread, revealing a dirty piece of cloth.
“For me?”
“Chirp, chirp.”
“…”
Fischer reached out to take the cloth. The moment he grabbed it, the little demon hurriedly jumped away as if it had completed a task, scurrying off to hide somewhere.
Fischer glanced at the direction the little demon fled, hesitated for a moment, and then unfolded the cloth, revealing a crooked line of text written in ancient human script, resembling the language of Cardu today.
“To the esteemed and powerful guest, I sensed your arrival. No matter what your identity or purpose for coming to the dynasty, I implore you to come to the nearby black hut for a discussion; perhaps we can offer each other assistance.”
“An invitation from a bound prisoner, I hope you will not refuse.”
Fischer crumpled and discarded the yellowed cloth, which had been stored for who knows how long and was ripped from somewhere, into the nearby magma, allowing the high temperature to immediately consume it.
He looked up at the ceiling, strangely noticing that the rock walls were intact, with no passages or hollows whatsoever, as if he had just slid out from somewhere in thin air.
So, he could hardly confirm whether Jasmine and the others had passed through the Competitive Gate or where they would enter the Demon Dynasty.
And that hut…
Fischer looked forward and soon spotted a gigantic shadow at the end of the black rock he was standing on, seemingly the outline of a building hidden beneath the rocks, while the black hut mentioned on the cloth was not far from that giant building.
Compared to the hut, that place looked more like a small shed built of rubble.
“…”
After hesitating for a moment, Fisher still gently tapped the ground with Emhart at his side and leapt toward the little black hut.
“Guest… guest, I’m here!”
At a distance, Fischer heard a hoarse and frail shout. He looked up to see a thin figure wrapped in yellow oil-stained white cloth waving at him with a stone cane.
When Fischer stopped, the figure hurriedly approached, limping with excitement, sizing up Fischer from head to toe. The one exposed eye, which was visible through the cloth, was filled with shock. After hesitating for a moment, he asked in the ancient human language, “Are you… human or something else?”
“I am human.”
“Ah, this is… unexpected. How could a human… ah, unless you have borrowed that kind of power.”
The figure awkwardly propped himself up with his cane, mumbling to himself.
Meanwhile, Fischer placed Emhart back on his shoulder, looking at this thin figure who resembled a skeleton.
“That kind of power…”
“You should know, it’s…”
The figure cautiously, fearfully glanced around at the magma, as if afraid something terrifying would hear what he was about to say, “…Chaos.”
“…”
Fischer did not respond, avoiding prolonging the topic. Instead, he looked at the very crude black hut behind him, inside which were stacks of tools made of unknown materials. He also vaguely saw remnants of some arthropods with green viscous fluid resting on the dining table, serving as food.
The entire little hut exuded a difficult-to-describe stench, not much different from the smell on the figure, both rotten, similar to stones in a latrine.
“Who are you, and why did you call me over?”
“Oh, I…”
His long fingers wrapped in white cloth rubbed his head as if undergoing the difficult process known as “thinking.”
“Sorry, I’ve been here too long, and some things… I am Solomon, yes … If I’m not mistaken, you have the ‘Scroll of the Dynasty’ I wrote in your arms.”
Fischer was slightly taken aback and took out the guide scroll he had received from the Supplement Handbook for Sub-Humans. At the sight of the scroll, Solomon’s eyes brimmed with disbelief.
“Yes, yes, that’s it! But… how could this be? My son was supposed to have burned it in front of me, leaving not even a bit of ash.”
Solomon—Fischer found this name somewhat familiar. Emhart beside him widened his eyes, equally astonished while looking at the thin old man.
“Wait, what did you say? You are Solomon? The king from thousands of years ago during the Central Empire?”
Fischer suddenly recalled that this king was known in history for his worship of demons, having built numerous establishments benefitting them, like brothels and wine pools.
Oh, the grandson of that trio, who had been ensnared by the demon god Cidi, was the Solomon king before him. The story concluded with “the grandfather dying of illness, the father dying in battle, and the grandson inheriting”—but unfortunately, by then, the demon god Cidi had ceased to appear.
Yet perhaps it was that enticing demon god Cidi that left such a deep impression on the human king of the Central Empire that he became so obsessed with demonology.
Legend has it that he used the power of demons to transform the Central Empire into an unprecedentedly powerful nation, having never lost in foreign wars, only to perish in internal strife during his later years.
Solomon’s son betrayed him, locking him alive in the palace, burning him to death to seize the throne.
This was yet another story of “filial piety,” but none of that concerned Fischer; he was more curious as to why this supposed-to-be-burnt king appeared in the Demon Dynasty and why he had called himself over.
“Ah, yes, that’s me.”
He bowed his head slightly in shame, while awkwardly using the cane propped up against his already cloth-wrapped face to shield it, but he couldn’t stave off Emhart’s probing questions.
“How could you be here? All the books record that you were burned alive by your son.”
“Ah, yes, but in my lifetime I made a contract with Baal. I promised to serve as a servant day and night after my death in exchange for the strength of my empire during my lifetime. Before I was burned to death, Baal took away my death, casually sending me here—Demon Dynasty. You know, I named this ghostly place during my reign. By the way, how do you have my destroyed scroll, and it looks so new, as if it hasn’t been damaged at all?”
He still couldn’t help but look at the scroll in Fischer’s hand, but Fischer was unable to answer him.
Fischer obtained it from the Supplement Handbook for Sub-Humans, he didn’t even know it belonged to King Solomon, let alone how it was stored.
Fischer didn’t respond to that inquiry but continued with the main subject, “Why did you call me here?”
“Oh, oh, it’s like this… Although Baal made a contract with me, turning me into a servant, in reality, they merely want to use me—the former king of the empire—to curse my bloodline. Thus, my son, who does not revere demons, along with his descendants, would become the providers of sustenance for the demons, spreading throughout the empire, until one day it meets its end.”
Emhart gaped in shock and mumbled, “Ha, no wonder your descendants are either disabled or insane; it turns out to be because of the demons.”
King Solomon’s usurping son died young, and after that, all of his descendants became all sorts of demons and monsters; his grandson fell in love with his biological mother and sister, his great-grandson was a pervert who liked eating human flesh and torturing others, and his great-great-grandson was one who loved to dance naked in public.
Historians referred to this period as “a rapid downturn,” marking the point at which the once-flourishing Central Empire began its decline.
Of course, legends suggest that it was precisely because King Solomon borrowed the power of demons that he required his descendants to repay the price, and the truth certainly seemed to align with that.
Solomon sighed and nodded, saying, “That’s right. I, too, did not anticipate this. Demon God Baal deceived me in the contract, or rather, this was part of becoming a servant. After the fall of my Central Empire, I was utterly useless, reduced to livestock just like the little demons, until they were collectively sealed by the great Mother Goddess, putting the Demon Dynasty into a deep slumber.”
Fischer interrupted Solomon’s discourse, saying, “Get to the point; why did you summon me here?”
“Oh, yes, so, I was reduced to livestock after losing my purpose, yet I was deprived of death and unable to die, and thus I could only wander throughout the dynasty. Most demon gods do not welcome me, this disgraced livestock, pushing me around. Only the demon god residing here does not mind me temporarily settling down here. I am grateful to her; during her time being sealed by the Mother Goddess, I have been guarding this place for her, even as just a guard dog. But even so, I still feel it isn’t enough.”
As he spoke, he glanced gratefully at the magnificent building beside this black hut. Then he pointed to the building with his cane and said, “Not long ago—I don’t know exactly how long it’s been; I’ve lost all sense of time—but it shouldn’t be too long ago. I heard… some movement inside, as if that demon god lady was regaining consciousness! I want to ask you to confirm whether she has awakened from her seal, and to deliver this letter of gratitude and my last treasure to her as thanks.”
Solomon hesitated for a moment, then turned back into the shabby black hut, delicately retrieving a lustrous pink gem that sparkled like stars, along with a neatly wrapped, clean envelope under the gem.
Then, Solomon continued to Fischer, “If she hasn’t awakened, it’s fine; just leave these two items inside. I am bound by the contract and cannot approach the homes of the demon gods as their master, so I must ask you for this favor. In return, I am willing to tell you everything I know about the Demon Dynasty, which someone like you would certainly be interested in.”
Fischer hesitated for a moment and did not immediately take the two items he handed over. Instead, he looked back at the building he had just mentioned.
But he noticed that the building wasn’t particularly magnificent. Although it could be referred to as a “palace” in the traditional sense, it appeared quite plain compared to the other buildings Fischer had seen earlier.
Moreover, Fischer noted that this was the only palace he had seen in this place with a fence.
“Was the demon god you spoke of previously residing here?”
“Ah, yes.”
“But you clearly came to the Demon Dynasty before they were sealed. Does that mean you’ve never seen this demon god?”
“To be honest… no. I’ve seen most of the other powerful demon gods, but only this one.”
Solomon gazed at the simple palace with regret and said, “Legends say this demon god governs war, and perhaps because I am not skilled in this regard, I have never received a response from her. Hehe, but to my knowledge, no one has ever summoned her… the demon god Eil. I would very much like to adoringly gaze upon her greatness. What a pity…”
“…”
Both Fischer and Emhart slightly paused, then simultaneously turned to look at the thin, skeletal-old man beside them.
