Chapter 1020 — The Winter Hunt
Blade of Dawn · Page 1 of 5
One phantom after another was dragged out of the air by Luo Yan and cast into the blazing brazier like firewood fed to a bonfire — some of the phantoms dull and vacant, some vivid and alive, some silent amid the roaring flames, others pouring out frantic, raving curses, and still others emitting shrieks that no human throat could produce or comprehend, shrieks steeped in a powerful corrupting force — a sound that could set the bravest warrior trembling and drive ordinary folk to madness. Yet whatever they did, in the end they could only be hurled into the brazier without the slightest power to resist, and the flames took on layer after layer of iron-grey hue, burning ever more fiercely.
At last, even the phantom of Malm Dunite rose within the flames, growing ever more lifelike, and it cried out in a loud voice:
"Luo Yan! I curse you! You apostate who has betrayed the gods! You will come to no good end — there is no good end for one who sets himself against the gods!"
"Stop this, stop it now — you are doomed to strive in vain. How could a great god be manipulated by a mortal? Your arrogance will drag you into eternal ruin... Stop! Your blind self-assurance has no foundation!"
"What is the meaning of this? You labor so hard to make an empire strong, only to plunge it into the abyss at a moment like this? Look at what you are doing... You have destroyed so many who were once loyal to you..."
The voice in the flames raged by turns, grieved by turns, now denouncing him with righteous indignation, now softening into desperate pleading — yet Luo Yan merely carried out his movements with unhurried calm, and only after more than a dozen phantoms had been cast in did he lift his eyelids and glance at the fire: "Do you know why I have captured so many of your incarnations?"
"You..."
"You trust your god too much, but the gods are not as invulnerable as you imagine — the Augustus family has dealt with 'gods' for two hundred years. I could smell the stench of an 'Ascendant' possessing a mortal with my eyes closed... Once I realized the influence you were exerting on Pei Yi and separated the first 'incarnation' sample from him, every move you made in Typhon lay completely bare before me."
"You..." Deep within the flames, the phantom of Malm Dunite suddenly went wide-eyed. As though waking from a long dream, he finally cried out in shock, "It is that curse... the curse that has plagued the Augustus family... You actually came to terms with Him?!"
"No," Luo Yan gazed calmly into the flames as yet another incarnation of Malm Dunite coalesced out of the air, and without hesitation he pushed it into the brazier, "This is merely a transaction."
"A transaction... a transaction..." The projection of Malm Dunite in the flames suddenly bowed its head and began to mutter, and the muttering quickly turned into uncontrollable laughter, "Haha, hahaha... A transaction! Luo Yan, you have finally taken this road too! You think you can profit from a bargain with a god, but there is nothing in this world more absurd! You — and your ancestors, who fell one after another across those two hundred years — you are all equally arrogant and foolish... Luo Yan, it seems there is nothing special about you after all..."
Luo Yan Augustus seemed not to hear the mockery coming from the flames. He simply and quietly dragged the last of the Malm Dunite incarnations he had captured out of the air, unhurriedly cast it into the brazier, then walked with a blank face to a long table nearby and reached out to take up something that lay upon it.
It was the iron scepter that had once belonged to Malm Dunite — the symbol of the Popes of War across the generations —