Chapter 1197: Eivass’s Plan to Break the Stalemate
June 24th. Ancient Kingdom of Anxi, Dawn City.
When Eivass made up his mind, he immediately displayed astonishing efficiency.
The affairs of Dawn City were meticulously arranged: the matter of the Goblin Merchant Guild building the underground sewage system was delegated to Isabel, while the Harpies were handed over to Lixia. He personally penned several articles for propaganda and entrusted them to Ibn, a local, for revision.
The ritualistic defenses of Dawn City were personally overseen and established by Eivass and Zhu Tang, while the education and discipline of the slaves and Free People who came to pledge allegiance were assigned to Senior Haina.
Sherlock was tasked with maintaining the city’s water supply through magic until the underground sewage system was completed. He would also act as the Lord of Dawn City, “Hope Eivass,” in Eivass’s absence.
Everything was arranged in an orderly fashion by Eivass.
And this was merely the preparation—
As for Eivass himself.
He brought Lily along and rode the now increasingly colossal Leviathan, quietly heading towards Heaven City.
Selene’s Energy Level was not particularly high, so Eivass did not bring her, taking only her summoned creature, Sharky.
The Leviathan, nicknamed “Sharky,” could be considered a child of Alistair and Selene in a sense—its life was created by Selene, the Moon Witch, and its material originated from Alistair’s blood. Now that Alistair possessed the authority of the Blood Heavenly Envoy, she had the ability to reconstruct this “offspring” of hers.
Alistair did not reshape the Leviathan into something terrifying and monstrous like a dragon. Instead, she gave it a second, human-like body—The reason Sharky could be brought along and stuffed into the carriage with Selene was precisely this “traveling form,” similar to Eivass’s great beasts.
In its current monstrous form, the Leviathan resembled a creature with a tail like a scorpion or a shark, its body covered in deep blue and purplish scales. It possessed two scythe-like claws that could easily cleave, sever, and mince enemies. Its usual pupils were as deep blue as the sea—but once it entered a combat state, both its pupils and scales would turn blood-red, and it would lose the ability to speak.
Eivass, however, was quite fond of Sharky’s traveling form—a little girl with long, deep blue hair and eyes.
Her appearance was as tender as her voice, looking no more than seven or eight years old, full of innocence and curiosity about many things.
As for her appearance… perhaps due to Alistair’s personal touches and obsessions, or perhaps because Selene primarily provided moonlight during the Leviathan’s creation, Sharky bore at least seven or eight parts resemblance to Alistair, only more tender. She resembled Alistair to the extent that if they appeared together, they would be mistaken for sisters.
Lily, as usual, remained hidden within Eivass’s shadow. Thus, judging solely by appearance, Eivass seemed to be traveling alone with Sharky.
He had minimized the scale of his excursion to the greatest extent possible, even creating the illusion that he was still in Dawn City.
And this was the strategy Eivass had devised after discussing it all night with Sherlock—
Sherlock helped Eivass organize his thoughts.
The Red Hand and the Lord of Dawn were locked in a mutual destruction mechanism akin to a Cold War nuclear deterrent: whichever side was about to lose would activate the Ouroboros Ring to summon the Abyss Heavenly Envoy. Either both would live, or both would die, with no third outcome.
This also meant that Eivass could not side with either party.
From the very beginning, Eivass had to stand against everyone.
—And the crucial point was that Eivass’s core demand was not to prevent the Abyss Heavenly Envoy’s descent. Because he himself needed the Abyss Heavenly Envoy’s descent to complete the first cycle of the Ouroboros Ring.
Eivass’s core demand was that he did not want the Abyss Heavenly Envoy’s descent to cause the simultaneous death of a large number of innocent people.
The main difficulty in achieving this was that the Lords of Dawn would not allow the populace to leave during the Red Hand’s rampage, nor would the populace follow Eivass.
Given this, the breakthrough lay in—how to achieve Eivass’s objective while circumventing the will of the Lords of Dawn and the populace.
The answer was simple.
—It was the ritual recently developed by the Lord of Dawn City!
That destructive ritual capable of petrifying the entire city and stopping time!
Eivass, Zhu Tang, and Ibn, three Fifth Tier Ritualists, should be able to perform this ritual together. If not, Eivass could participate in the Ascension Ritual, temporarily discarding the balance of his Path and ascending his Transcendent Path to the Sixth Tier. Alternatively, Viness’s power could be used to transform the Lord of Dawn City into a demon obeying her commands, making him perform the ritual himself.
And by obtaining the core of this ritual, Eivass would possess the possibility of freezing other city-states—
Just like Eagle Cape Village, city-states solidified by the power of Amber would naturally possess the power to “preserve phenomena.” The Twilight Path inherently triumphed over the Forbidden Path, akin to Adaptation triumphing over Hunting, Authority over Strength, and Might over Consumption.
These dominance relationships were mostly clear, with the only exception being the mixture of the Path of Love and the Beast Path—the concept of “Love” after all did not fully overcome the instinct of “Beast.”
Thus, the destructive power of the Abyss Heavenly Envoy would be difficult to affect under the protection of Amber’s power. Since the Abyss Heavenly Envoy’s purpose was not to kill everyone, the possibility of successfully resisting the aftermath increased.
Much like the submerged city of Atlantis… these city-states would remain in a petrified state, submerged by the sea.
Once Eivass slayed the Abyss Heavenly Envoy and obtained the Heavenly Envoy Fragment, he could command the sea to recede. At that time, he could use the inverse ritual developed earlier to un-petrify these people.
As for the Troll Sorcerers who had distributed contracts as “child nodes of the mother-child routes,” Eivass could also use Viness’s power… to summon or transform some demons to take their place.
This was not even a substitute or a lower-tier substitute. After all, compared to Troll Sorcerers, demons were more purely Transcendent Path Phantom Demons.
Now that the demons had lost their Mark of Sin, their power had greatly diminished. The power of most demons would gradually drop below the Fourth Tier, and the power of the Upper Demons would constantly shrink.
Although, with the death of the Fallen Heavenly Envoy, the profession of Demon Scholar lost its power and thus the ability to summon demons… but if a Demon Scholar couldn’t summon demons, what did that have to do with me, the Sin Scholar?
—My profession does not originate from a Fallen Heavenly Envoy, but from a Ring Heavenly Envoy!
And the decline in demonic power, in this situation, became a good thing—it was easier for Eivass to summon these weakened demons and easier to control them through Viness’s authority.
Upon thinking of this, Eivass felt an inexplicable irony:
Curses ignited by life and soul as fuel;
Blasphemous rituals that stole the Pillar God’s power without permission;
Forbidden knowledge tested by countless lives without the slave owner’s knowledge;
Warfare specifically designed for efficient slaughter;
Demons formed from the transformed Great Sins of the deceased;
Coupled with Eivass’s planned actions of theft, snatching, violence, and coercion—
—All these utterly sinful things, when gathered together, paradoxically became the only way to save Anxi!
