Chapter 396: Butchered
Two pink eyes of blazing bloodlust peered through the darkness and bore down on Vincent Nightrose as the golden threads of fate spiraled upwards into infinity. He tried to grasp at them, but like silk threads, they slid through his fingers. No matter which threads he attempted to follow, they all ended in loose ends.
Vincent cursed as he dismissed the divination and wiped a trail of blood from the corner of his mouth. Despite his efforts to fix up this body that he had stolen from Valandor, it didn't live up to his standards. While he could use the full extent of his Qi without breaking the body as he had improved its spirit roots, bloodlines were another issue. While they technically carried over between bodies, due to the sheer number of them it was taking longer than he expected for this new body to adapt to a few of them.
Luckily, he could still tap into the threads of fate bloodline he stole from the Starweaver family. As an inferior version, it would give him vague visions rather than any concrete information. But the fact that almost all threads ended in this all-consuming darkness illuminated solely by two eyes manifested from sheer bloodlust gave him a solid clue as to who would cause his end.
He knew their identity not from the color of the floating eyes but from the smell of the bloodlust radiating from them.
"How is this possible?" Vincent bit his nail as he sat cross-legged on the cold stone floor. "Stella Crestfallen is just a Star Core cultivator. How could she be the one to kill me?"
Standing up, he looked at the bloodied floor all around him. Body parts, cut-up bodies, and more were shown haphazardly strewn around the room. A large coffin turned into an operating table dominated the center, covered in silver tools stained red with dried blood. Lying on the table was a body that was a perfect mirror image of him.
A blood clone modeled after Valandor, and the last blood clone he could make that was combat-worthy. He had made a few low-effort blood clones that he controlled in Darklight City to lay the foundations for a backup plan if the meeting with Stella in Tartarus didn't go according to plan. While he could transfer his infant soul to those should his main body die, it would be less than ideal as they hadn't been designed to handle his bloodlines.
"One worthy blood clone and five backups. This is definitely the most vulnerable I've ever been." Vincent paced around the table, a feeling of unease seeping into his bones. Despite no present threat, he felt his looming demise. He flexed his hands in frustration. This body isn't as strong as I need it to be. My backup plans aren't foolproof, and my path moving forward is clouded with death according to the threads of fate. Am I being blinded by greed? Is going after the Crestfallen bloodline a mistake?
He leaned on the table and drummed his fingers. Life as it had been was over. His bloodline farm, the Blood Lotus Sect, had crumbled beneath his feet to an outside power—a Divine-level sect, the Ashfallen Sect. A powerhouse he could not fight alone, at least not in this inferior body and without his arrays. His only way of growing stronger in this Qi-starved layer of creation had been gathering bloodlines, which had been ripped away from him. What choice was he left with? He was stuck at the peak of the Nascent Soul Realm and likely would be for an eon at this rate.