118: Chapter 118 There's a reason why the royal family uses black.

After giving everyone a thorough scolding at the Chiwu Sect and letting Qiao Song extort a sum of Spirit Stones, that powder keg was finally sent away.

Xie Feng leaned against the porthole of the flying boat, his cold crystal blind staff resting horizontally across his knees, completely sunk in a fatigue that seeped out from the marrow of his bones.

From the Imperial City to the western border of Qingzhou and then to the Chiwu Sect, he had been running and bouncing around recently, and even beating up several blind Loose Cultivators with his blind staff. Now that he could finally sit down, the cool breeze blowing across the deck of the flying boat made drowsiness surge straight to his head.

He yawned, tilted his head, and swept his spiritual perception across the slightly trembling deck beneath his feet.

The flying boat was moving again.

Hiss... Once or twice was fine, but the third time was not right.

Even if his sanity had already been hardened and he wouldn't suffer sanity loss, he couldn't keep seeing problems with the flying boat over and over again, right?

Mental solidification is also called the tempering of mythos. When an investigator's Cthulhu knowledge exceeds their sanity points, their perception of the Universe, themselves, and their place in the cthulhu mythos shifts. Afterward, the sanity loss they face will be halved, and even if their sanity recovers, this attribute will still remain.

Therefore, Xie Feng always felt there was something wrong with the flying boat. He hadn't dared to ask back at the Qingyun Sect, but now that he had a bit more on his plate, he cared a bit less.

"Senior Brother Qiao, let me ask you something." Xie Feng leaned his blind staff against the side of the hull. "Don't you think the movement of this flying boat is a bit strange?"

Qiao Song was squatting nearby, organizing the leather pouch for his rune carving knives. Hearing this, he stopped what he was doing. He didn't answer immediately, but instead inserted the last carving knife back into the leather pouch, fastened the buckle, and then raised his head.

"You can perceive that? The core driving device of the flying boat is called the 'Levitating Wood Core'. Right now, the only place in the entire Nine Provinces that can manufacture this material is the Imperial City's Ministry of Works. The material comes from a semi-living timber in the Imperial City. After being felled, the wood still retains an extremely slow metabolic reaction. The Ministry of Works Seals it inside the keel of the flying boat using rune Formations, and the spiritual fluctuations generated by the metabolic reaction are the core power for the flying boat to levitate."

Xie Feng listened in silence for a moment.

Turns out that every time he rode the flying boat and felt something slowly wriggling underneath, it wasn't an illusion; something was actually moving down there.

And it was alive, or at least had been alive before.

The Imperial City's Ministry of Works monopolized the supply of this material, and the keel of every flying boat was made of that semi-living timber.

"No wonder every time I ride the flying boat, I feel like something is crawling underneath."

Qiao Song rolled up the rune carving knife leather pouch and stuffed it back into his rucksack, casually adding:

"Speaking of which, the imperial family's flying boat specifications have been uniformly painted in ebony black since The Tenth Emperor. The previous imperial flying boats were bright yellow, but after The Tenth Emperor reformed it, they were all changed to dark black, which the common people later called the 'Black Dragon Robe' color."

Xie Feng's left eye, which had almost been closed, suddenly snapped open, and the three-lobed pupil shrank violently beneath his veil.

The Tenth Emperor.

Changing the color of the dragon robe.

Changing bright yellow to black.

In the underground Seal, Cthulhu's blessing had decreased...

"No way? You guys don't wear yellow probably just because yellow doesn't look good, right?"

Xie Feng allowed everything to happen, but you had to take them one by one!

Activating the Yog-Sothoth mark, all the information about the emperors of the Nine Provinces in his brain flipped out simultaneously. He slowly turned his head, the three-lobed flames beneath his veil staring straight at Qiao Song.

"Senior Brother Qiao, which year was The Tenth Emperor?"

Qiao Song was slightly stunned by his tone, and there was a trace of extremely subtle confusion in his voice at the moment.

"Several hundred years ago. Your Majesty didn't reign for long, but he could be said to have achieved monumental exploits—the color of the dragon robe, the flying boat paint, the Ministry of Works' material supply system, and a series of other things. What's wrong?"

Xie Feng reached his hand into his bosom, his fingertips touching the blue cloth bundle that Emperor Zhou Weixi had stuffed into his hands before parting.

The bundle was not large, neatly tied on the outside, with no Seal, only ordinary hemp rope.

Xie Feng stood up from in front of Qiao Song and turned to walk towards his own cabin.

Qiao Song called out to him from behind, and Xie Feng waved his hand to signal that he was fine.

Don't mess with me. Your imperial family couldn't have used the black dragon robe just because someone wore yellow, right?

Xie Feng closed the door, placed the blue cloth bundle on the low desk, pressed his fingers against the surface of the bundle, and scanned it layer by layer from outside to inside with spiritual perception.

He couldn't scan through it.

Damn it!

Forget it. His Elderliness is still quite friendly; he had to face it sooner or later.

No wonder Emperor Zhou Weixi wasn't worried about this and that; as it turned out, they still had this entity at home?

Xie Feng carefully untied the hemp rope and unfolded the blue cloth layer by layer.

On a thin square stone slab, a symbol was clearly imprinted.

The moment Xie Feng saw it, he began to curse in his heart with every swear word he could think of.

yellow sign!

So that's how it was, The Tenth Emperor! What on earth did you do!

Xie Feng closed his eyes tightly, and the information of that entity in his mind resurfaced:

Lord of the Deep Space Starry Sea, The Unmentionable One — Hastur.

The true form of this Great Old Ones was imprisoned in a great lake named Lake Hali, located on a black celestial body in the constellation Taurus of Aldebaran.

If they couldn't wear yellow... presumably the one in the imperial family's home should be Hastur's most famous Incarnation, right?

The King in Yellow is in the imperial palace, huh?

Xie Feng had no doubt that the Zhou family had been able to unify the Nine Provinces for so long because they probably had built a Carcosa pavilion in their backyard.

"Damn it, Emperor Zhou Weixi's family hasn't been worshiping The King in Yellow all this time, have they?"

Xie Feng's deduction was reasonable, because Hastur could be considered a Great Old Ones who was very friendly to believers as long as you didn't fight him; he wouldn't proactively attack you.

However, the summoning conditions were very harsh. Generally speaking, the summoned Hastur could only stay for one night. As Aldebaran ceased to appear in the night sky, Hastur would also return to his cage.

However, if the imperial family worshiped Hastur...

Setting up nine boulders in a V-shape, then calling three hundred and fifty people to begin chanting, and finally directly triggering the Hastur release spell on the night of Aldebaran, could allow Hastur to stay on the ground for a whole year.

Then finding a lake surface of more than one mile, having nine imperial family members chant fragments of The King in Yellow to dye the lake water black, and then Hastur, along with the lake water and this Carcosa pavilion, could stay permanently in the Nine Provinces.

The weight of Emperor Zhou Weixi's words, "Better that I die first," was much heavier than Xie Feng had understood at the time.

The emperor died, but The King in Yellow remained, and the imperial family's Foundation would not be broken.

No wonder in the underground Seal, Cthulhu's power had decreased. It turned out that the Great Old Ones who was at odds with Lord Cthulhu was in the imperial palace, and it was probably even his true Incarnation form.

Xie Feng didn't care much about the yellow sign; as long as it wasn't on him, it didn't matter.

As for seeing the yellow sign causing people to see The King in Yellow in their dreams and gradually go mad...

Hehe, you want to enter Xie Feng's dreams, huh?

Go line up and take a number.