94: Chapter 94 I Don't Want to Walk the Path of the Thunder Ancestor

Xie Feng flipped the journal to the next page, which featured a drawing.

It was a charcoal drawing with clean lines, depicting two white-furred, six-legged creatures striking an extremely bizarre dancing posture, lifting their left feet simultaneously and extending their right arms outward at the same time, as if performing some ancient sacrificial dance.

Most of these creatures worshipped the "God of the Ivory Throne", while some also believed in the "Wind-Walker".

There was a line of notes at the bottom right corner of the drawing.

Every single word exuded an uncontainable excitement: "Seeing Noph-Keh live for the first time! So excited, so thrilled! They danced for about half an hour, emitting a low-frequency hum while dancing that couldn't be heard, but could be felt resonating in the chest cavity. I hid in the bushes and sketched it down with charcoal."

Xie Feng rolled his eyes: Has this damn transmigrator lost his mind? His very first reaction upon seeing Noph-Keh dancing was to pull out a charcoal pen to sketch, and even felt "so excited and thrilled".

Wouldn't a normal person's first reaction upon seeing two six-legged, one-horned giant beasts holding hands and dancing be to turn on their heels and run?

The Third Princess poked her head out from beside his shoulder and looked down at the drawing. "What is this thing? It looks like two monsters. Why did your ancestor draw this?"

"Noph-Keh," Xie Feng said.

"What is Noph-Keh?"

"A certain intelligent race." Xie Feng kept his words brief without mentioning the name of the God of the Ivory Throne, "Their dancing is usually a signal. The longer they dance and continuously emit a certain specific vibration, the easier it is for their master to notice this direction."

The Third Princess was silent for a moment. "Then your ancestor squatted in the bushes for half an hour, waiting for them to finish dancing?"

Xie Feng was too embarrassed to answer, but he knew the answer was "Yes".

Liu Yanqing had indeed squatted for half an hour, watching and drawing at the same time. After finishing, he even added a note on the side: "It would be great if I could bring pigments next time." He truly regarded this as a natural history expedition.

Flipping further ahead.

The further back this journal went, the thicker it became. As Liu Yanqing followed the expedition deep into the hinterland of Hyperborea, his recorded entries changed from daily routines into a detailed local gazetteer.

He had seen serpent-people, traded with the Voormis, and even visited a wizard, an old man living alone on the fringe areas.

Xie Feng flipped to the last page:

"Left for the predestined person. If you see this page, it means you can understand the characters I wrote, and you probably come from the same place as me. The following Spell is one I copied back from a certain ruin."

Xie Feng opened his three eyeballs and scanned it.

"Holy crap, good stuff? Anywhere Door?"

What was recorded above was a very versatile Spell: the Spacetime Gate.

It also recorded the casting method of a Spacetime Gate left behind by the ancestor, which required a very strange posture to activate. After looking at it repeatedly, Xie Feng felt that this thunder posture was also very familiar.

Hiss... Isn't this Amalthus? Why does my ancestor feel like Jiahao?

As for activating it, there's no need to think about it; Xie Feng was definitely not going to activate it. Is Hyperborea a good place? There were more than a handful of Great Old Ones up there, but how was he supposed to report back? He recognized it alright, but how was he supposed to tell this to the Third Princess?

My ancestor concealed his identity, followed your expedition team over, and satisfied his Cthulhu-enthusiast cravings, only to leave behind a thunder posture teleportation method. If I were to say this out loud, wouldn't the Third Princess organize an expedition team and drag me to Hyperborea?

Xie Feng thought about his super-attention-attracting Physique and shook his head vigorously.

"No way, I don't want such a bleak future!"

The Third Princess wore a puzzled look, not understanding what Xie Feng was suddenly shrieking about.

"What on earth is recorded there? Tell me!?" The Third Princess was a bit anxious, considering there was a strange thing sealed inside her body.

"Give me the bottom line first, Third Princess, why did you take on this mess of Ranhuo City before?" Xie Feng's mind spun. This Third Princess wasn't right either. If it were just monitoring, it could be understood, but later when such a big event happened in Ranhuo City, she actually returned and came back on the flying boat with Old Zhou to take a look?

As the saying goes, a gentleman does not stand under a dangerous wall. Coupled with the Third Princess asking him down below why the earthly fire wouldn't look at her, this old loli-turned-mature-woman definitely had secrets!

"Uh..." The Third Princess choked up.

"Sincerity for sincerity, Your Highness, tell the truth!" Xie Feng closed the book with a snap.

The Third Princess pondered for a moment, then she pressed her hand onto the cover of the journal that Xie Feng had closed.

"When this palace was six years old, a spiritual power enlightenment ceremony was held for me in the palace. The palace retainers detected something in my Dantian, and it was this very thing. Imperial Father said that was a part of the imperial Bloodline Legacy, and every member of the Zhou imperial family carried more or less 'things left by the ancestors', telling me not to be afraid. Ever since then, that thread had been sleeping. Every year when the palace retainers performed routine checks on me, it curled up quietly in the deepest part of the Dantian."

"Wait, what the heck?!" Xie Feng gave a start. What kind of ghost things are your royal family passing down in your Legacy?! "Master Zuo did mention before that your royal family's cultivation is different, how on earth do you guys Cultivate?"

"Direct Legacy, and then slowly Cultivate upward along the ancestors' path, just copying cats and painting tigers, and the spiritual power density is much higher."

"Holy crap, so awesome? What happened after that?"

"Until the anomaly in Ranhuo City."

She withdrew her hand from the journal.

"This thing twitched violently in my Dantian. I was Cultivating in the palace at that time, and it hurt so much that I rolled right off the futon. The spiritual power backlash shattered all the rune lamps in the entire cultivation room."

"Ever since then, it has never truly settled down. I've tried all the Spells I could try, and even had a great Cultivator from the palace come to take a look, but he said this thing doesn't belong to the Nine Provinces and he couldn't recognize it."

"So that's how it is. No wonder my mark had such a huge reaction to you back then."

"What on earth is the thing inside this palace's body?"

"I don't know either. There are too many missing clues. You guys must have been entangled by bastard gods like me, but there are simply too many of them, and I can't figure it out at all. However, if it's related to Hyperborea, the scope can probably be narrowed down to a dozen or so."

"Hyperborea?" The Third Princess recited this name once.

When she recited it, the tentacle deep inside her Dantian struggled a bit, as if responding.

"Right, is there a reaction?"

"How should I go there?"

What a heroine among women. Can you just leave for that place just like that? It would be passable if your name were Eibon.

"Hyperborea. It is not within the territory of the Nine Provinces, but in the place where my ancestor drew this picture."

The Third Princess lowered her hand from her Dantian and raised her head to look at Xie Feng. Her eyes were very bright—that was the gleam of finally seeing a direction after being lost for a long time.

"Route."

"Your Highness." Xie Feng slammed his blind staff against the ground, "There are more than a handful of Great Old Ones on Hyperborea. With a Physique like mine, going there makes me a fully automatic monster bait. I cannot go with you."

Mostly because he was also cowardly. Now that he had turned into this wretched appearance, if he took a trip to Hyperborea, would he even have a human form when he returned?

"Route." She said it again, her voice much softer this time, as if she were discussing it with him, or perhaps with herself.

"I can send you there, but you really must bring enough manpower, I..."

Xie Feng stopped abruptly here.

The fatal part had appeared. Xie Feng could completely rely on Yog-Sothoth's mark to reproduce the map, history, and cities of Hyperborea from his memory, but the problem was that even if he drew it, the Third Princess couldn't see it, nor could he articulate it. Did he really have to follow her there? Or let the Third Princess go risk her life alone?

Forget it. If all else fails, he would first learn this damn Spell, then go back and ask Old Zhou. He was an emperor after all, and must have some means. He would stay in the imperial city for a few more days and talk about it. He didn't believe that not a single expert existed in the entire center of the Nine Provinces!

Xie Feng gritted his teeth and looked at the final Spacetime Gate incantation:

"You only need an Amaterasu to get there, but you must let me learn this Spell first."

The Third Princess was stunned.

"A-what thing?"