Chapter 170 — Breeding in the Shadows

"Just as you thought?" Hedy was taken aback, not understanding what Gao Yang meant. "Do you know something?"

"I'm afraid I must go to Kant lands at once," Gao You said bluntly, having already made up his mind. "The sooner the better."

This time Hedy was truly stunned. "Go to Kant lands? What would you do there? Surely you don't mean to question Viscount Kant in person about the refugee matter? That sort of thing..."

"It's more serious than that," Gao Yang said gravely. "When I fought that Eternal Slumber cultist earlier, I came into contact with fragments of his consciousness. Just now the contents of those fragments surfaced. I saw the Shadow cultist hand a certain object over to someone in Kant lands—very likely the present Viscount Victor Kant. And that object is an evil thing. It has lain in that land for many years—a decade, perhaps several decades—and all the while it has been drawing nourishment from living souls, growing!"

"An evil thing that draws on living souls?" Pi Yun was greatly alarmed. "Then those refugees taken into Kant lands..."

"Most likely they were fed to it," Gao Qi said, frowning. "That thing has already grown to a most critical stage, but it has not yet completed its final transformation. Once it does... I fear every region—Tanzan Town, New Cecil, and even the Carol lands farther north—will be enveloped by its power."

Gao Yang was not speaking to frighten them. As that dream was drawing to its close, he had already clearly sensed the existence of a certain "object" that sustained that dream world and was ceaselessly growing.

He could feel the power radiating from that object, could feel its influence upon all human minds across a considerable range. Perhaps because he had devoured the consciousness fragments of the object's original owner, Gao Yang had already established some subtle connection with the thing, which let him be almost wholly certain: once it had absorbed sufficient energy, that cursed object the cultists had placed in the ancient Kant family castle would unleash a truly terrifying power—and the ordinary folk of New Cecil and Tanzan Town would be swept up in it, without exception!

It had already threatened him directly; he could not stand by and do nothing.

Gao Yang's grave manner infected Hedy as well. She grew tense in turn, and a trace of worry arose in her. "Ancestor, you already risked yourself once in Tanzan Town. This time..."

"No—this time it will actually be less dangerous," Gao Yang shook his head. "So long as I find it in time, it poses no threat to me at all. I have a way to control it."

His answer carried a fair measure of confidence, which put Hedy a little more at ease, though she could not help asking with concern, "But if Viscount Victor Kant has already been completely bewitched and controlled by the cultists, might he not move against you?"

"Throughout this entire affair, there is only one person with the power to threaten me," Gao Yang said, looking at Hedy's worried face, and smiled slightly, "but that person has already been destroyed by me within the space of consciousness."