On the other side of the door was a wide corridor stretching deep inside, along which lay the meeting and waiting rooms. The two chambers were perfectly clean and orderly. It would seem someone had been cleaning the place every day. There seemed to be nothing special here, but Qianye scanned every nook and cranny in the room. This was the flagship of the Demonkin Vice-Duke Linken—even something she had thrown away casually might fetch a good price.
In the end, Qianye found a stack of unprocessed documents in the meeting room, containing information about the current Evernight politics, the recent deployments of the Masefield family, and Linken’s own plans for her properties and troops.
These documents were of great help in better understanding the demonkin, especially the Masefield family. The empire and its scholars would definitely be interested in them, but that was the extent of their value. At the very least, Qianye couldn’t figure out any major secrets at his level.
He put the documents into a box, prepared to move them away after the exploration.
There was a large door at the end of the tunnel. It was entirely grey with a bit of dark green peeking out from beneath. Every pattern and carving was extremely deep, intricate, and magnificent. It was also much heavier. Qianye reached out to push the tight door, but it wouldn’t budge in the least. He tried punching the door, but it wouldn’t open despite the entire cabin trembling. Additionally, it was different from the previous doors in that the wall and frame were barely warped from the impact. It would seem breaking-in from the sides wouldn’t be any easier than demolishing the door itself.
Qianye knew after the punch that this door was at least half a meter thick. Such a heavy door couldn’t be opened or closed manually; there had to be some kind of mechanism. It was just that the warship’s kinetic force had been lost entirely, so the door was now locked in place. All secret mechanisms were out of order, so even Linken herself would have to use brute force to enter.
Qianye gave it some thought and realized that he had to do things the hard way. He took two steps back and summoned East Peak into his grasp. This was his first time using the sword after entering the warship.
Qianye took a deep breath and immediately entered a state of bloodboil. Auric flame blood coursed through his veins as a raging scarlet blaze danced around his body and boundless energy seeped out from everywhere. At this moment, Qianye had transformed into a pure-blooded ancient vampire. Following a roaring swing, the airship trembled violently from the impact as the door was slashed through.
The defect on the door was covered in a mysterious dark green light, almost as though it were built entirely from demonic steel. The value of this door alone wasn’t inferior to Song Zining’s box of metal alloys.
The door had been cut open through the middle, revealing its internal structure. The locking mechanism was made up of four fist-sized bars arranged in a cross shape. Without forcibly cutting it open, Qianye would have to demolish the walls all around the door to enter. Feeling quite curious about demonic steel, Qianye reached out to bend a corner of the defect. To his surprise, he could only deform it a little bit!
Qianye couldn’t help but feel surprised. One had to know that he was going all out in a state of blood boil—even a steel plate half a meter in thickness would be crushed into a ball, yet this scrap metal was only slightly bent. Such a sturdiness would’ve taken Qianye ten or so ordinary slashes to get through. So, how had he managed to accomplish the destruction in one blow?
Qianye wasn’t in a rush to enter. Everything in Linken’s residence was in his grasp, anyway, so it made no difference. This door, on the other hand, was something worth studying.
He meditated on the slash for a good while, and then suddenly reached out to grab the defect. This time, however, Qianye’s hands weren’t shrouded in Venus Dawn but the sanguineous flames of the dark golden blood energy instead. Qianye’s blood energy flame erupted violently when it came into contact with the ash-green aura of the demonic steel. The two energies began destroying one another in a spurt of grey ash.
It was just that the demonic energy was far inferior to Qianye’s own. Despite struggling with all its might, it melted down like snow in the sun.
This time, Qianye used only eighty percent of his force to bend the demonic steel entirely.
He withdrew his hand and fell into deep thought once more.
This was a showdown between the dark golden energy and the demonic energy. The two powers started destroying one another on sight, almost as though they were great enemies. The two energies seemed to restrain one another, and there was no telling which was more powerful. It looked like Qianye’s dark golden blood energy had the advantage, but the demonic energy used to manufacture the steel was also limited in quality. No duke would spend the effort to produce large batches of demonic steel.
If it was against a powerful enemy like the Demoness, there was no telling who would win.
Qianye had also exchanged blows with demonkin before refining the dark golden blood energy. However, he had never encountered such a scene before. As members of Evernight, the effects of demonic energy and blood energy would be greatly reduced against one another. Hence, Qianye had always attacked with daybreak origin power and defended with blood energy. The two were highly incompatible, so the effects would only increase.
After cultivating the dark golden blood energy and obtaining the inheritance of the River of Blood, Qianye would always use Venus Dawn to attack his enemies. After all, this was the highest level of daybreak origin power and an incurable poison to the demonkin. Eden had almost died on the spot after taking a blow from Qianye.
This time, however, the dark golden blood energy seemed almost equally effective as daybreak origin power. This meant that the ancient vampire race, especially the pure-blooded nobles, shared some sort of interesting relationship with the demonkin.
This kind of attribute relationship was inherent and factional; there was no evading it. The same for how human daybreak origin power would always oppose Evernight.
Qianye rolled the metal about in his hand while thinking, and had soon turned the entire sheet of steel into a ball. He was somewhat startled as he looked at the steel ball in his hand, feeling somewhat regretful. This demonic steel had turned into ordinary steel, losing its value entirely. Judging from the size of the steel ball, Qianye seemed to have wasted tens of thousands of gold coins with this roll.
He tossed the steel ball away and entered Linken’s core living quarters.
There was a small library behind the steel doors, filled with all kinds of rare classics. There were a couple dozen books piled up on the central table, and one of them was open. It would seem Linken was still reading here when the fighting began and she didn’t even get the time to close the book.
Past the library was the study which served as Linken’s personal office. The study was naturally one of the most important of places, so Qianye decided to come back and explore in detail after roaming around.
Next up was the personal armory, collection room, and the actual living quarters.
Qianye only scanned the armory and collection rooms briefly. The collections were highly valuable and diverse, but it wasn’t quite enough to shock him. He had seen the riches of the Song and Zhao clan after all. After entering the bedroom, however, Qianye was completely startled, and his expression turned odd.