Chapter 426: Blueprints of the Sky Castle
Translator: Atlas Studios Editor: Atlas Studios
Naturally, the ones who returned from the Scar of Death were treated differently. The four of them from the Tower of Dusk were each assigned a spacious and comfortable tent. While it could not compare to the one that Sendros stayed in, it was vastly different from what the other adventurers enjoyed.
The four tents were all at the edge of the campsite. They were about a dozen meters apart from each other, neither too far apart nor too close together—clearly all Adelo’s doing. The sun had just set, and the bustle had yet to die down at the campsite. The adventurers gathered around the campfires as they drank and ate, chatting with old friends and new acquaintances.
However, not one of them dared to go near the four tents at the edge of the campsite, as they were closely guarded by 20 Death Knights who were dressed in black armor and armed with blades, looking like statues. The chilly death aura they gave out could be felt from a distance, and thus not a single adventurer was willing to bother them.
Even the braver ones only stared from a distance before talking about it with their friends…
Their conversations did not differ much in content—Lin Li and the rest who came back from the Scar of Death had been a popular topic of discussion ever since they returned. The adventurers discussed their origins, why they were given such exceptional treatment, and how powerful the black-armored Death Knights were. So diverse was the range of topics that it could have been compiled into a book.
Meanwhile, the main topic of their discussion was now wrapped in a blanket as he studied the map on the table.
It was the treasure map of the Immortal King. Lin Li had been studying it fervently ever since he returned from Sendros’ place.
Lin Li was someone who had seen many things, but after studying it for a good part of the day, he could barely even recognize the material the map was made of. It was delicate and smooth, and was neither paper nor leather, but not silk, either. The map was squarish and about a meter in length. There were streets and houses depicted on it—as far as he could tell, it was a city he had never seen before. Apart from the pictures, the map was covered in fine High Elves Print, and it looked like there had to be at least 10,000 words.
The High Elves Print was known for being simple and concise; hence, many complicated spells had to be cast using High Elves Print. If it were done using everyday speech, even chanting the spell would take days, and the mage would have died from exhaustion before the magic was even released…
One could only imagine how much content 10,000 words of High Elves Print contained. When Lin Li saw the map covered in fine print, he was shocked, and thought that he had hit the jackpot. Who knew how many secrets he’d uncover after reading it all…
But after reading it closely, he immediately cried foul.
“Damn it, is this a joke…?”
There were thousands and thousands of High Elves Print words, but none of it made any sense…
T-t-this… This is simply incorrigible!
Which bastard came up with this damned treasure map that was covered in thousands and thousands of High Elves Print words? It would take half a day to even copy it down, yet there was not even a comprehensible sentence in the lot—not even a clue as to how the words were connected…
Lin Li did not believe that it was entirely incomprehensible at first, and was determined to uncover the hidden message. Unfortunately, that did not end well, as he had only managed to decipher the meaning of a few commonly used words after spending half a night on it.
That was how the High Elves Print worked—there was only a few hundred words in the whole vocabulary, but each word had a different meaning depending on where it was used. In the case of the treasure map, there were thousands and thousands of words, but not a single complete sentence. Even if a true High Elf was present, he would not fare much better than Lin Li.
After a torturous night, Lin Li decided to give up, and tossed the High Elves Print he had scribbled down aside as he decided to focus on studying the drawing on the map.
After working on something else, Lin Li finally made a small breakthrough as he realized that the city depicted on the map seemed to differ from an average city. The layout of the city was overly complex as it was completely unnecessary in some places, but it seemed as though someone had insisted on building streets in a certain location even if it resulted in having to walk all the way around the city when the place they were heading to was only a few steps away.
Of course, not all the streets were like that as it was only a few of them on the outskirts. However, Lin Li still realized the importance of it.
Could it be that these streets signify something?
Lin Li stared at the map for a long time before he suddenly discovered that there were quite a few towers in this city, and the strange winding streets linked all the towers together.
“My God, Conquering Mageweath!” Lin Li clapped his hands as he suddenly recalled a Guru-level mageweath…
That was right, there were 36 towers on this map, and they coincided with the 36 magic nodes of the Conquering Mageweath, while these strange intersecting streets formed a perfect magic circuit. If there was a source of mana as well, this would be a huge Conquering Mageweath!
Even amongst Guru-level mageweaths, the Conquering Mageweath was at the top. The Inscribers in the Endless World even had a saying that if one completely mastered the Conquering Mageweath, they would be able to touch a trace of the realm of the Divine Smith. Of course, that was an exaggeration—Lin Li had already completely mastered the Conquering Mageweath, but he still knew nothing about the realm of the Divine Smith.
However, this still went to show how important the Conquering Mageweath was in the hearts of Inscribers.
The Conquering Mageweath was commonly used in magical weapons—in the extremely powerful ones, at that. For instance, when Lin Li got ahold of the Stars of Fury in the Well of the Sun, he had personally drawn a Conquering Mageweath on it, thanks to which the power of the Stars of Fury was intensified to an extreme. Not only did its attacks come with all kinds of magical attributes, it even allowed the Stars of Fury to combine with Lin Li as one so that Lin Li would be able to tap into its power anytime, anywhere. When the Conquering Mageweath was activated, Lin Li was the Stars of Fury, and the Stars of Fury was Lin Li…
Lin Li was basically invincible then…
But even the invincible Lin Li had never thought of using the Conquering Mageweath in a city…
This was an insane plan. When the Conquering Mageweath was magnified and drawn in a town, every resident of the town would be able to combine themselves with the town and tap into its power anytime they wanted to. What kind of a concept was that?
It was way scarier than a Lin Li who held the Stars of Fury…
The Conquering Mageweath had a peculiar feature—the larger the area it spanned, the more powerful it was. This was because the Conquering Mageweath was drawn using Wyrm’s blood, and the blood of the Wyrm itself was filled with terrifying power. Hence, the more Wyrm’s blood was used, the more powerful the Conquering Mageweath was.
It was not an exaggeration to say that this Conquering Mageweath was capable of making every resident a living deity…
“What a lunatic…” Lin Li stared wide-eyed at the map in his hands. This was something that only a lunatic could come up with. Looking at these intersecting streets and the 36 towers, even over 100 Wyrms would barely suffice if they all required Wyrm’s blood…
In other words, hundreds of Wyrms would have to be killed in order to build a city like that…
What kind of concept was that? Even during the prehistoric times when the Titans and Wyrms ruled over Anril, 100 Wyrms would have been a formidable force, one powerful enough to tear open the sky!
Moreover, the amount of mana required for the Conquering Mageweath to operate was beyond what Lin Li could imagine. How many Legendary magical crystals were needed to form the source of mana?
What was the Eternal Furnace compared to a city like that? The life’s work of Osric was merely a toy in front of such a city. As for Lin Li’s Tower of Dusk, it was nowhere near a toy, but more like a negligible speck of dust in the air…
This city would be invulnerable if it was ever built.
Wait, unsinkable? When he thought of this Lin Li drew a breath of cold air.
Wasn’t the Sky Castle supposed to be invulnerable?
In the distant Dark Ages, the High Elves had combined forces to build seven Sky Castles and ruled over the whole of Anril from them. Nobody knew how many attempts to take down the Sky Castles had been easily foiled over the long and gloomy era. It was only 1,300 years later, when the others could no longer stand the cruel rule of the High Elves, that they started a war, with the humans leading the rest. Six of the once “invulnerable” Sky Castles fell, leaving the last remaining one lost between the cracks of time and space…
Lin Li’s hands trembled as he held the map as he stared closely at every building in the city. Time passed, but Lin Li felt more and more emotional as he looked—it was truly a miraculous city, and the wisdom of the High Elves was perfectly evident in it. Architecture, Alchemy, Epigraphy, Engineering, and Forging… almost every form of art was expressed in this city, the out-of-the-box thinking and the raw talent of them easily apparent. This city could only be described as miraculous.
This was only what Lin Li could gather from the map—the true Sky Castle was probably worlds apart from this.
“I understand now…” Lin Li finally put down the map after an entire hour as he had finally understood this time.
The Immortal King’s treasure was hidden in the final Sky Castle.
SIx Sky Castles had fallen during that war, but even after the war had ended, there was no news of the treasure. It was a war that took the whole Anril by storm, and nothing was spared from it—not even a Three-eyed Demon Wolf living in a ditch…
A war of that caliber had no secrets to speak of, as every minute detail would be recorded down in history, much less the Immortal King’s treasure! Even the God of Mages Geresco was unable to hide the fact that he had taken it for himself.
In the end, the last Sky Castle fell through the cracks between time and space with the Immortal King’s treasure in it. That was the only logical explanation…
“This is it, this is it…” Lin Li paced around the tent uncontrollably after setting down the map on the table as he repeated the same thing to himself over and over again.
This map was worth far more than the Immortal King’s treasure to Lin Li.
This was because Lin Li knew that the map on table was the blueprint of the last Sky Castle!
After all, however precious it was, the Immortal King’s treasure was merely an intangible existence. Even if one found enough clues to lead them to it, they would still have to enter the cracks between time and space in order to have a chance to look for the last Sky Castle. That was the realm of the spirits, and even if someone from the Sanctuary-realm forced their way in, they would be shredded instantly due to the distortion.
The blueprint of the Sky Castle was much more practical in comparison. It was tangible, after all, and given enough time and resources, he might even be able to build another Sky Castle based on this blueprint!
Of course, it would be unimaginably difficult…
In Lin Li’s opinion, building another Sky Castle would not be much less challenging than to enter the crack between time and space.
FIrst of all, it was going to take too long…
The High Elves prided themselves on being living gods and the most perfect beings in the whole of Anril, but even they had taken more than a thousand years to build seven Sky Castles.
Let me see how long it’s going to take if it was me… Lin Li looked at his fingers and his toes before coming to a conclusion that it would be better if he just used his hair to count…
Then there was the problem of procuring materials. Everything else aside, just the fact that it required the blood of a hundred Wyrms would be enough to drive anyone from the Sanctuary-realm insane.
But to Lin Li, the worse thing was that the blueprint in his hands was not complete…
If he guessed correctly, the High Elves Print also included instructions for constructing the Sky Castle apart from clues about the last Sky Castle.
Unfortunately, the person who crafted the map was some lunatic who scattered the most crucial content. Lin Li could hardly even piece together a sentence, much less find the way to build a Sky Castle!
Indeed, this blueprint was filled with all kinds of flaws like taking too long, requiring insane materials to build, and also missing keywords. It was impossible to build a Sky Castle based on it.
But even then, the blueprint was immeasurably valuable to Lin Li.
This was because Lin Li himself was a miraculous existence, the only one in the world who was a Guru of all five trades. There was a lot that Lin Li could gain from this incomplete blueprint, and while he would not be able to recreate the glory of the Sky Castle, there were many aspects that could be applied in the Tower of Dusk and even to the Eternal Furnace. Even 10% of the skills would be sufficient to make the Tower of Dusk and the Eternal Furnace unmatched in the Breezy Plains.
Of course, Lin Li was probably the only one in the whole Anril who had the ability to make use of the blueprint as the skills needed to build the Sky Castle were too advanced. Almost every aspect was at least at the Guru-level, and the areas involved spanned from Inscription to Architecture to Alchemy and Metallurgy. Any of them would require a lifetime of studying for anyone else, so who else besides Lin Li who was naturally a Guru in all these aspects would be able to showcase the skills needed to build the Sky Castle?
Hence, Lin Li was not worried about the Malfa Family at all. So what if Adelo made a copy of the blueprint? They would find themselves on one hell of a ride trying to figure out the Conquering Mageweath, much less make use of the skills on this blueprint. Which one of them was beneath Guru-level?
If there’d been such an able figure in the Malfa Family, Cheyenne would not have foolishly been injured at the altar all those years ago…
Then again, if the Malfa Family had such a figure, Lin Li would not mind working with them, either, as this blueprint was an endless treasure, and it would be better to enjoy it with someone than to spend his entire life working on it. There was a limit to how powerful one person could be, after all.
Of course, he would have to ensure that the Malfa Family would listen to him before he decided to work with them…
Besides, the High Elves Print here was the most crucial, and he had to find a way to decipher it—even a few words would be great. He would be able to uncover more advanced skills with just those few words.
“Seems like I will have to pay Teacher a visit. I wonder how are his pharmaceutical skills now…” Lin Li mumbled to himself while he carefully rolled up the blueprint lying on the table before placing it back in the Ring of Endless Storm.
When this was done, the sky had just begun to brighten, and Lin Li finally felt sleep coming. Thus, he wrapped himself in the blanket and fell asleep at the table.
He was woken up by the sound of frantic footsteps the next day.