Chapter 823: The Complex Thousand Shapes Painting and Xia Fei’s New Mission

Finally, the Wolf Butcher Fire began to weaken. The Rending Yang Fire went on the offensive, and this sort of attack quickly became devouring. The savage nature of the Rending Yang Fire suddenly erupted with a giant tongue of flame that devoured the Wolf Butcher Fire.

One second later, the Rending Yang Fire began to undergo a bizarre transformation. Two different colors appeared on that dim ember, one navy blue and the other fiery red. The ember split in the middle, one side remaining cold and sinister while the other side projecting savagery and fierceness!

*Whoosh!

All of the lights in the room lit up at once. This warrior, who had subdued both the Wolf Butcher Fire and the Rending Yang Fire, proudly raised his head. He had a very ugly face, with a scraggly beard and protruding teeth.

If one looked carefully, one would find that he shared some of the traits of the Moonward Clan. For example, his eyes were sinister and cunning, almost identical to those of the number one Moonward expert, Golcen Ward!

The warrior strode out, quickly making his way to the ship’s command deck. As he sat on the wide captain’s chair, he grabbed a picture. The person depicted on this picture was none other than Golcen Ward!

When comparing the two, it turned out that he really did have the exact same eyes as Golcen Ward!

“Father, I’ve already did as you ordered and subdued the two Fire Immemorial Mystical Armaments. Let your son wash away your humiliation!” said the warrior gravely, a savage light in his eyes.

…

Xia Laoshi’s artificing classes had already begun. Artificing first required the Law of Artificing—a force that was a branch of the Law of Matter. Besides that, it required an understanding of various kinds of metal and various methods of law infusion.

Xia Laoshi started with basic knowledge first. The books covering the metals of the universe alone took up an entire bookshelf.

Unlike other law warriors, Xia Fei liked reading. Be they the annals of history, military affairs, or even just reference books, Xia Fei could read them all. Before the cultivation could begin, Xia Laoshi had requested that Xia Fei read through all these books first. Besides that, he also needed to cultivate the Law of Artificing to level 2.

Three days went by with Xia Fei spending every day cultivating and reading books. When he was free, he would go to the Half Moon Villa to keep Avril company. These were relaxed days, and he felt like he had returned to the Heaven Execution Training Camp.

At night, Xia Fei lay in a bend, a thick and old book in his hand. This book was called ‘A Comprehensive Overview of Metal Extraction’, and it concerned how to extract various metals from ore.

Frankly speaking, it was a very dry book, but Xia Fei read it with much gusto and was soon immersed into it.

Xia Fei had a secret when it came to reading, which was to flip through pages constantly. When he saw a place he did not understand, he would only slightly think about it before moving rather than thinking long and hard over it as if he was researching a difficult problem.

When a book was read one hundred times, its meaning would become evident. Xia Fei was very confident in the words of the ancients. If twice was not enough, he would read it thrice, all the way until he smoothly understood everything.

*Thoom!*

Xia Fei closed the book and threw it onto the carpet of his room. There was already a small mountain of books there, all of them part of the homework Xia Laoshi had assigned to him.

“You’re done so quickly?” Oro laughed and asked. Reading books was torture to him. He really did not get how an outstanding warrior like Xia Fei could have such a bad habit as burying his head in books.

“Mm.” Xia Fei nodded and sat up on his bed. “It’s quite pleasant to just read some books quietly every once in a while. I never knew that there are 6.74 billion known types of metal in the universe, and that more than twenty million are important for the Law Realm. It seems that artificing is as complicated of a field as pharmacology. Just the knowledge needed as the foundation is quite impressive.

“Still, I don’t think that this is what’s most important for the Law of Artificing. What matters is the ratio of metals and their integration—”

Oro felt like his brain would melt, so he hastily interrupted Xia Fei’s highly theoretical talk and sternly said, “It’s fine. You can just discuss all this with Xia Laoshi tomorrow. After all, you’ve already reached level 2 in the Law of Artificing, so it’s about time you started putting it into practice.”

Xia Fei smiled. Oro restricted his reading purely to the history of the Law Realm, various martial techniques, and the records of his own clan. When it came to artificing and pharmacology, he did not have the slightest interest. However, Oro was still a major figure of the Demon Race and had an extensive circle of friends, so he knew many secrets about artificing and was able to be of some assistance to Xia Fei.

Stroking his spatial ring, Xia Fei took out the Thousand Shapes Painting.

He unrolled the long scrolls, and a complicated diagram appeared before Xia Fei’s eyes.

The Thousand Shapes Painting was the legacy of the Thousands family’s ancestor, a max-level celestial artificer, and contained the essence of his learnings. Xia Fei had counted and found that the Thousand Shapes Painting did not actually have ten thousand images. To be more precise, the Thousand Shapes Painting had 9,981 images.

They were all very abstract drawings, and a normal person would have found it impossible to understand what they meant.

Oro sighed. This painting gave him a headache even more than books.

“This Thousand Shapes Painting shouldn’t be a scam, right? A legacy of a celestial artificer? It looks more to me like a pile of meaningless lines. I really don’t get it. What does this have to do with artificing?” Oro grumbled.

Xia Fei replied, “If it were that easy to solve, it wouldn’t be the Thousand Shapes Painting. I’m sure that this painting is connected to artificing. It just depends on how it’s analyzed and read.”

“Then what’s your initial reading?” Oro asked, unconvinced.

“I’m guessing that only a small part of the painting is actually useful, with the rest serving as a disguise. Once the disguise is removed, the truth will become evident,” Xia Fei indifferently said.

“Just like how you found a piece of music in that fractal diagram?”

“Not exactly. The fractal diagram has rules while this painting doesn’t seem to have any rhyme or reason.”

Oro turned over and said no more. He did not want to waste his energy on this headache-inducing Thousand Shapes Painting. It was better to use this time to plan out what he would do after Xia Fei killed him. Actually, he had already considered this plan countless times; alas, Xia Fei was unwilling to deal the blow.

Oro had tried provoking Xia Fei into killing him, but Xia Fei was very cunning. To keep the richly experienced Oro at his side, he not only did not get angry but also took out the Blood Crystal and waved it in front of Oro. This cursed blade could absorb essence blood, and if Xia Fei used it to kill Oro, he would really die!

‘Want to reincarnate? Not a chance!’

As the hour grew late, Xia Fei continued staring at the Thousand Shapes Painting, utterly enchanted. The complicated diagram seemed to take Xia Fei into the endless sea of stars, making one dizzy. Fortunately, Xia Fei had excellent focus, so he was barely able to hold on.

Intense curiosity spurred Xia Fei to analyze the composition of the painting, removing the useless parts to try and discover the true painting left by the artist.

This was like picking through sand in a desert or searching for a needle in a haystack. It was not long before Xia Fei started feeling dizzy.

Furling the scroll, Xia Fei fell asleep.

“This Thousand Shapes Painting really isn’t easy to solve,” Xia Fei mumbled.

…

Xia Fei went to sleep very late and woke up very early. The morning was still dim and lazy when Xia Fei stretched and went to the back garden.

Xia Wuye had already finished making breakfast consisting of a few popular snacks from the White Horse Constellation and several small dishes. At this level of cultivation, one ate just enough so that one’s stomach would not grumble, since such minuscule amounts of energy could not make up for what was lost. Moreover, breakfast was a time for the members of the Skywing Clan to run into one another. Xia Fei, Xia Wuye, and Xia Zonghai—the three members of the clan who stayed in the Wind Garden—could meet up and state their plans.

Xia Xiaobo, the fortieth Law Emperor of the Skywing Clan, had been staying in the Wind Garden for a bit, but he was just as restless as everyone else in the clan. In a moment of impulse, he said that he needed to go for a walk and rushed off to who knew where.

There was nothing to be done. The Skywings all had this sort of free and laid back personality, so there were always few people at home. Wherever there were rare treasures or interesting things, one would definitely be able to find a gaggle of Skywing elites.

As the three ate, Xia Wuye chuckled and said, “Our investigations showed that the extermination of the two religions and one clan was very clean, but our clan spies report that Golcen Ward might have an illegitimate son.”

“An illegitimate son?!” Xia Fei and Xia Zonghai both became nervous. The extermination of the two religions and one clan could permit no remnant dangers. Last time, when they failed to exterminate the Moonward Clan, the Moonwards had colluded with the Old Gods Cult and Primordial Cult and counterattacked, pushing the Skywings into a passive position.

If Golcen Ward had an illegitimate son, then he would undoubtedly be an enemy of the Skywings, and an enemy had to die.

“Correct.” Xia Wuye nodded. “Golcen Ward very skillfully hid this illegitimate son. When our spies were investigating Golcen Ward’s past movements, they found out that he would head to the Exiled Grounds at certain intervals. At the start, they thought that he’s going to the Exiled Grounds to contact mercenaries. After all, he did hire mercenaries last time to deal with our clan.

“However, after further investigation, we learned that Golcen Ward, besides contacting mercenaries, would also meet someone else. His name is Wu Yuming. This is a picture of him.”

Xia Wuye pulled up a screen, which showed a middle-aged man.

“Very similar! This Wu Yuming has the same eyes as Golcen Ward. It’s no wonder you suspected him of being Golcen Ward’s illegitimate son,” Xia Zonghai sternly said, putting down his chopsticks.

Xia Fei was rather astonished. “He hid it so well, but you still managed to dig it out?”

Wuye smiled. “Young Master Fei, there are some things you are unaware of. While the battle is over, our thorough purging of the two religions and one clan has never ended. Our clan spies have been working in the shadows to uncover the remnants of these three groups. Let alone the Exiled Grounds, even if he’s hiding at the very ends of the universe, we still would have found him eventually. Still, the ones left are mostly minor characters, so there’s no need to tell you.”

Xia Fei was taken aback. This was truly a ruthless attitude. The battle had been over for so long, but the purging still continued. This was probably in compliance with the grand ancestor’s words: ‘Don’t even leave a blade of grass behind!’

“Wuye, since you’ve found him, hurry up and kill him! Whether or not he has any actual blood relation to Golcen Ward, he must be killed!” Xia Zonghai said.

Wuye shook his head. “This Wu Yuming is a level 3 Law Emperor, and our clan’s spies can’t guarantee that they can kill him. You two are the only Law Emperors in the Wind Garden, as everyone else is out, so I must trouble one of you two to go out. After all, reporting this matter to the patriarch is a bit like making a mountain out of a molehill.”

Xia Fei and Xia Zonghai glanced at each other, upon which Xia Zonghai hurriedly scarfed down some food. “What are you looking at me for? I’ve already arranged to play chess with Wolf Jiulin today. There’s a lot at stake, too!”

Xia Fei shrugged, turning to Wuye and saying, “Alright, then once today’s class is over, I’ll get on it.”