Chapter 188 : Chapter 188
Chapter : 188
Beastmen and humans weren't actually that different in essence. It was just that compared to humans, the racial talents beastmen were born with were more powerful, and their lifespans varied.
Correspondingly, powerful and long-lived beastmen weren't as good as humans at reproducing offspring, and they rarely had the idea of unifying the continent.
They seemed to be inherently uninterested in the life and death of living beings other than their own kin.
This point seemed to be engraved in the beastmen's genes from the beginning of their birth. This was also why, after the Demon King disappeared, the Eternal Empire, managed by only a few beastmen, quickly fell apart and was eventually destroyed by the two great empires.
It was like some unspeakable rule of the world.
After all, given the beastmen's innate strength and longevity, if they intended to unify the continent, there would hardly be any space for humans to survive.
That Mermaid Prince was exactly like this. His combat power was very strong. In his prime, he was equally famous as the Archangel Theodore and the Dragon King Seraphis, being one of the three strongest combat forces in the Demon King's team.
The Dragon King fell in the final battle with the God of Light, and the Mermaid was heavily injured.
The Demon King defeated and slew the God of Light at a painful price.
Later, facing Kien's final counterattack, the Mermaid nearly fell, and the Archangel was heavily injured.
When the Demon King established the Eternal Empire, the Mermaid's injuries were already very severe. Finally, in the fifth year after the Eternal Empire was established, the Mermaid fell.
Before the Mermaid fell, he chose a branch of mermaid bloodline from a side lineage to become the royal family of the Sea Tribe at that time, signing a new contract with the Demon King in his stead.
As for the Dragon King, before the final battle, her son and daughter, Isabel and Divic, also signed kin contracts with the Demon King.
These were the only two UR cards Yan Yunqing tore up before quitting the game. Yan Yunqing had a deep impression of this.
Today's Isabel already had some of the heroic bearing of the Dragon King Seraphis back then, while the royal branch chosen by another old friend was killed by a mixed-blood mermaid, causing Yan Yunqing to feel somewhat emotional.
Yan Yunqing looked at Merlin for a moment, reading some similar emotions in his eyes, and suddenly realized.
"So Cornelia killed the current mermaid royal family?" Yan Yunqing asked curiously. "I remember her level—it's not high, right? How could the mermaid royal family be killed by a mixed-blood mermaid?"
Even though so much time had passed, Yan Yunqing hadn't forgotten that when he finally dragged two burdens out of the Augreer Auction House with great difficulty, he looked back to find one was level 45 and the other level 60.
And he, a poor, weak, and helpless level 1 Demon King, just dragged two big shots out of the auction house like that.
Yan Yunqing couldn't help but want to sigh whenever he thought of this.
But Cornelia was only level 60. Yan Yunqing was now level 74, so he naturally had a concept of level 60 strength. It was very powerful—among ordinary people.
But facing other races, especially the royal lineage of the Sea Tribe, it was still not enough. It couldn't be that the mermaid royal family didn't even have a single guard, right?
"Too much time has passed." Merlin shook his head, implying something. "The branch chosen by that Mermaid Prince back then wasn't the most powerful one in the Sea Tribe to begin with, but the one most loyal to the Eternal Lord."
"Perhaps because of this, two forces formed within the mermaids. One was the Elder branch with more powerful forces, and the other was the Royal branch chosen by that Mermaid Prince, which held more authority over the Sea Tribe for generations. What that mixed-blood mermaid killed was this Royal branch."
"Although they controlled the Sea Tribe, their strength was indeed not that great. The highest was only in the nineties... it seems to be the mermaid clan leader at the time. I heard that when killing the mermaid clan leader, that mixed-blood mermaid even used a secret technique—killing the opponent at the cost of damaging herself, and she lost quite a few levels because of it."
Merlin shrugged. "But these are all rumors; I didn't inquire carefully."
Of the three strongest races in the past, one had long been in seclusion hiding on the Floating Island, one's era had ended and disintegrated from within, and the Giant Dragon race was no better. Even though they had returned to the Dragon Valley, due to the special effects of dragon bones, they suffered secret encirclement and suppression for over a hundred years.
Unknowingly, countless dragons had been surrounded, killed, their tendons pulled out, and bones stripped by those rats in the gutter from the Eternal Divine Sect, their flesh and blood devoured completely.
Listening to the gossip Merlin told him, Yan Yunqing couldn't hide the surprise between his brows. "...Then the sister Cornelia said she was looking for?"
Merlin recalled for a moment and told Yan Yunqing with certainty, "If the sister Cornelia told you about isn't wrong, she should be talking about the mermaid princess she grew up with."
"The Mermaid King who was killed was a philanderer. He had several lovers, including humans—the Cornelia you mentioned, that mixed-blood mermaid, was born from the Mermaid King and a human."
"She said they grew up together and she was about to inherit the mermaid clan to become the next King. Then it could only be that mermaid princess. Rumor has it her personality was perverse and violent..."
Merlin gave Yan Yunqing a look, and Yan Yunqing felt dazed.
Huh? Was the description of the sister also a lie Cornelia told him? No, was there a single sentence Cornelia said that was true?
Wait...
Following this logic, Yan Yunqing was surprised: "So the sister Cornelia was looking for was actually killed by herself?"
He could indeed tell at the time that Cornelia was hiding things from him, but Yan Yunqing could clearly feel the emotions Cornelia revealed—they didn't seem fake.
"Why did Cornelia kill the royal branch?" Yan Yunqing asked curiously.
"That I don't know," Merlin said. "After all, it's this kind of matter."
True, after all, the royal family being killed by a mixed-blood must be a humiliation for the mermaid race themselves, right?
Yan Yunqing sighed. The gossip stopped halfway, making him a bit depressed.
But this was no longer his business. Although the Demon King later signed a contract with the King chosen by the mermaid race, that mermaid had long died, and the contract had correspondingly lost its effect. The Sea Tribe couldn't even be considered the Demon King's kin now.
Not to mention Yan Yunqing was no longer the Demon King.
"Alright, what did you mean by the strange players, Descenders, you mentioned before?" Yan Yunqing was melancholy for two or three seconds before regaining his spirits.
"If you mean those Descenders who covet your pants or drag you to accept the Traveling Merchant's order, then I'm leaving."
"Of course not," Merlin denied. "Descenders don't covet my pants, and the one whose pants were pulled down before wasn't me either!"
Yan Yunqing looked at him with a gaze that said 'Is that so? I don't believe it', and Merlin shattered a little inside.
So why did those Descenders have such a special fondness for his pants?!
Merlin really wanted to question them, but for the sake of his character setting, he held back. He rummaged through the parchment on the table, found a piece, and placed it in front of Yan Yunqing.
"Of course, it's not those Descenders who insist I take the order and enthusiastically mine for me either. It's this."
Yan Yunqing took the parchment and looked. A string of text was written on it in Ancient Ailman language.
For someone like Yan Yunqing who came with a translator, he recognized the meaning of these characters at a glance.
Just one glance, and Yan Yunqing couldn't help but twitch his brow.
Because what was written on this parchment in complex and formal flowing Ancient Ailman script were game IDs: [Disaster], [Don't Eat Chocolate], [Yin Lai], [Slug's Blue Mackerel], [MistyWon]...
Yan Yunqing: ...
It felt very formal but was actually utter nonsense.
He knew these were the strange players Merlin mentioned, but just from these names, how could Yan Yunqing tell where they were strange?
Yan Yunqing put down the parchment and asked straightforwardly, "So, what's special about them?"
Merlin stroked his beard. "I don't know either."
Yan Yunqing: ?
But Merlin immediately added, "However, they gave me a feeling of being very orderly."
Yan Yunqing: ???
What kind of description is this?
"They carry an imposing aura, inadvertently revealing it as they walk, and they are very orderly. They are like a small group with organization and leadership."
"At first I didn't notice, as these people were scattered," Merlin said. "But this time many new Descenders were added, and among them, quite a few people like them gathered together, which caught my attention."
Listening to this description, Yan Yunqing hesitated.
This adjective sounded a bit familiar...
Very orderly, organized with leadership, and carrying an aura different from other players...
"Speaking of which, they look even more imposing than some Royal City guards."
Yan Yunqing blinked, and a possibility popped up in his mind.
...Uh, official personnel?
Or rather, the military?
As soon as this thought emerged, Yan Yunqing couldn't help rubbing his chin, feeling this guess was very likely.
What kind of game was "Return"?
A large-scale, epoch-making, holographic online game.
Just the word 'holographic' was enough to cause a sensation in the whole world, let alone this world of Ailman, which itself was an extremely realistic world—or perhaps it was a real world.
Such a world, with such flesh-and-blood NPCs, the impact it could bring to players could be imagined. Yan Yunqing had browsed the forum and could understand some things from the players' few words. The so-called Blue Star outside indeed had a technology tree similar to the Blue Star he was previously on.
Most likely it was the same Blue Star.
In this way, the launch of a holographic game couldn't fail to attract the attention of the State Father, especially since this game company obviously had problems—
If the Return Game Company was as Yan Yunqing guessed, capable of controlling and influencing this world to some extent, then they were definitely not an ordinary game company.
Most likely, both the company and the game were illegal. Such things would not be allowed in the Flower Country where Yan Yunqing used to be.
Heaven knows the police station has a monthly quota for 'beware of telecom fraud'! This kind of holographic game, which looked illegal at first glance and was extremely likely to be fake and exaggerated, would probably have been raided by the internet police uncles as soon as it started promoting.
But Yan Yunqing had seen posts on the forum. This game inexplicably became popular when it was just a simple webpage. Yan Yunqing believed that seeing the word 'holographic', there would be witty little internet police officers striking out. Regardless of whether it was true or not, report it first and see?
However, the State Father had no reaction.
—This was the feedback given by the forum. They actually allowed a game that was obviously from a three-no company (no production date, no quality certificate, no producer name), operating under the banner of holographic technology, without even knowing if the game helmet contained a brain microwave device, to go online for closed beta!
Yan Yunqing was thinking before that this wasn't right. Since when was the State Father's reaction so slow? Was it because this Return used some special method to block the State Father?
Now looking at these special players, Yan Yunqing couldn't help being dumbfounded.
The State Father is still your father. Sure enough, they moved quietly. Even the first batch of closed beta registration at midnight had their people. One could imagine how many of the State Father's people would be in this second batch of seven thousand players.
But...
Since the State Father had already arranged for people to enter the game, there must be actions in the outside world too. They couldn't possibly let ordinary people log into an unknown holographic game that might have problems at will...
Yan Yunqing believed that with the State Father's strength, blocking information was simple, but Return still exploded on the forum...
Was it because information about Return couldn't be blocked?