Chapter 378: Masterful Deception
Vincent pressed his back against the stone wall as he carefully peered through a runically enhanced window. Down below in the Nightrose castle's courtyard lined by statues of him in his prime, he saw the few remaining Grand Elders of the Blood Lotus Sect who had stood on his side cowering before the Nascent Soul Realm shadow lich. He couldn't hear what the lich was saying to the Grand Elders as he was refraining from spreading his spiritual sense beyond the castle and possibly giving away his location.
"It looks like it's finally time," Vincent said in a deep, raspy voice that surprised even himself. It had been a while since his consciousness occupied his real body, and he had forgotten how far it had deteriorated.
He stepped away from the wall, and his long toenails scraped on the stone as he trudged into the depths of the dark room. His long arms reached for the shelves as he gathered body parts floating in large jars of murky brown liquid. While he could create clones from blood and have them appear genuine to weaker cultivators with a clever application of illusion and gravity Qi, they were nothing but disposable puppets that could command a fraction of his power. He had to carefully make a body from scratch if he wanted to create one capable of housing his many bloodlines and affinities.
"Hopefully, the eyes won't spoil before I can set up a new preservation array," Vincent grumbled as he took the jar containing his new eyes off the array built into the shelves. While spatial rings slowed down decay, they couldn't stop it entirely. "Wha—ugh," Vincent suddenly kneeled over and retched while desperately gripping the shelf to stabilize his shaking body. Wiping his mouth, he inspected the back of his hand with a frown. "Black blood? That's new..."
Pushing himself up to his trembling knees, he tried to calm his broken body down. "The killing of my clones had a more significant toll than I thought," Vincent grimaced as he looked within. His soul was an absolute mess. Three affinities competed for dominance, and since he had used much more blood and gravity Qi recently, he was unstable. Add some soul damage on top of that, and he seemed on the brink of going supernova.
This isn't good. I had hoped to strike an alliance with the Ashfallen Sect to buy some time to switch bodies, but those bastards seem hellbent on destroying everything I have built up and killing me, but for what purpose?
Vincent stabilized himself on the shelf as he thought through his long list of enemies and drew up the most likely.
Now that I think about it, there's no way for a Divine-level sect to appear out of nowhere.This must be a division or lapdog for the Celestial Empire. Maybe the Chairman finally decided to free himself from the council by establishing a shadow Empire in the wilderness? If that's the case, it would explain why the threads of fate with my highest survival rate would be if I headed to the Celestial Empire. The Chairman would rather let me live and recover than expose his secret branch to the Celestial Empire to hunt me down.
Vincent had a long history with the Chairman. They were like two old friends, just on the opposite side of a fence and with a dagger ready to slit the other's throat.