[Tii Prayer Horn]
I am a member of the Black Feather assassination organization, a professional killer. My codename is Phoenix. At present, I am operating in Antares under the identity of a female thief named Tii.
My real name is already known to some people, so I will not mention it again here.
If I must explain my past, then I suppose I should begin with my race and the history of my country.
I often wonder what kind of feelings humans truly hold toward races that are far stronger than themselves. Is it disgust, hatred, admiration, envy, or a twisted longing?
I have never been able to fully understand this question, just as I have never been able to understand my own people, or my beloved family.
If we look back at the history of this world and trace everything to the very beginning of its creation, the origin god created three great races and allowed them to multiply endlessly across the world, giving rise to brilliant civilizations.
The Human Race, the Blood Clan, and the Former People. Among them, humans were by far the weakest. They were often deeply oppressed by the Blood Clan, so they prayed to the gods, who sealed the Blood Clan in exchange for a brief period of peace.
But not long after that, humans, driven by internal conflicts and selfish desires, broke the forbidden seals themselves, allowing the Blood Clan to see the light of day again. Humanity once more fell under their control.
Humans hate the Blood Clan, fear them, and call them dull-blooded monsters and abominations. Yet at the same time, those eerie beings perfectly possess everything humans desperately long for.
In Antares, where the average human lifespan is only around forty years, plagues, epidemics, and bacterial infections can easily steal the life of a healthy young adult. Floods, droughts, and bitter cold—any harsh natural condition can destroy an entire family’s year of hard-earned labor.
Humans are fragile to the point of despair. The Blood Clan, by contrast, possess power that surpasses nature itself: beautiful appearances, resilient vitality, abilities that go against natural law, and absolute rationality and self-interest unrestrained by emotion.
If this truly were a world where the strong reign supreme and the weak are devoured, then the Blood Clan would unquestionably be the rulers of this world.
Amid this mixture of jealousy and hatred, some humans developed a distorted form of love toward the Blood Clan. These people later became known as the Witch Tribe.
They loathe the Blood Clan more than anyone, yet worship their power more fervently than anyone else. They are a mad and childish group, obsessively studying beings far stronger than themselves as if afflicted by a sickness.
Why are their lifespans so long?
Why does simply consuming human blood make them so powerful?
What must be done to become like them, to never fear hunger and never die from chronic illness?
The Witch Tribe began relentless study and investigation, observing the Blood Clan’s lives, understanding their diets and daily routines.
Although the Blood Clan were cunning and powerful, the Witch Tribe eventually mastered methods to hunt and kill them—at the cost of hundreds of years of sacrifice.
Even danger could not stop the high priests’ obsession with power.
They even managed to capture members of the Blood Clan and used overwhelming numerical advantage to suppress them, dissecting and experimenting on them in hopes of extracting something valuable.
This fanaticism spread like a nightmare across the southern kingdom. In the capital of Valivadan, you could randomly see witches and young girls on the streets, holding glass jars filled with dark red liquid, showing you preserved Blood Clan organs inside and trying to sell them.
They would tell you that cut hair could heal wounds, dried fingers could be ground into medicine, and hearts soaked in alcohol could prolong life. Of course, all of this was nonsense.
Blood Clan corpses are extremely unstable. Without special treatment, they only dissolve into a pool of black sludge and a single dark red crystal-like heart core.
In short, in order to make humans as powerful as the Blood Clan, the Witch Tribe did many things. They established an organization called Black Feather and began imitating the Blood Clan’s lunar sacrifice rituals, researching ceremonies that could grant humans power.
Although these experiments consumed enormous resources and sacrificed countless humans, in the end, they did achieve some results.
Every Blood Clan member possesses their own basic abilities, and in addition, they often have innate talents. Humans cannot fully replicate these abilities, but by transplanting Blood Clan organs or tissues, they can obtain fragments of those innate powers.
I am one of their successful experimental subjects. I was injected with the Blood Wave of the Blood Clan King, gaining one of the Blood Clan’s innate talents: immortality. I became an undying girl.
Of course, all of this came at a cost. I was not the only experimental subject. My family was involved as well—my father and my younger sister.
Because we possessed a rare blood type that would not reject foreign blood, the leader of Black Feather chose us and recruited us into the experiment.
“Father, why? I don’t want any money. I just want to be with all of you!”
On the day I learned that I had been chosen, I could not understand it. I wanted to resist the Black Feather officials, but my father’s attitude was completely different.
“Child, be brave. We cannot live forever under those dull-blooded monsters. The priests have said that only by paying the necessary price can humans become strong again.”
He smiled gently, just as he always did. I do not know whether he was already afraid of death at that time.
But—
“I know this is very hard for you, a child. But in Valivadan, the number of people who can become experimental subjects is extremely small. I cannot refuse this responsibility to contribute to the country.” My father patted my head and interrupted me.
“If you succeed, do not betray everyone’s expectations.”
Those were my father’s last words, and they became a curse I could never escape.
Later, I survived and became one of the organization’s most valued assets. They used abundant resources to cultivate me, teaching me cultural knowledge and assassination techniques, and they fabricated an identity for me, ordering me to infiltrate Antares City.
Here, I was no longer that girl from the past. I became an ordinary maid named Tii. To avoid suspicion, I learned to speak, smile, and behave like a normal girl, presenting myself as gentle and harmless.
My disguise was successful. After layers of selection, I became Sista Anderson’s personal maid.
This was a good thing for me, because it allowed me to closely observe the lifestyle of high-ranking Blood Clan members and access various confidential intelligence. I regularly organized this information and transmitted it back to the organization at night.
The only time I nearly failed was on the third day after Su Ling entered the city.
That day, I received a piece of underground information saying that the Blood Clan had recently begun consuming a special tart made from a rare ingredient to enhance their physical qualities.
I believed it was necessary to sample this food, so I bribed another maid and had her secretly take a portion of Sista Anderson’s breakfast.
I thought such a minor detail would go unnoticed, but I did not expect that the mistress’s keen perception would immediately detect something wrong and order that I be punished.
Looking back now, if Su Ling had not been there at the time, I would certainly have exposed myself, and the mission would have completely failed.
That naive girl from the Former People race pleaded for me and endured Sista Anderson’s demands in my place.
I have always felt guilty about this. I wanted to make up for it somehow, so I helped her as much as I could at work. As a result, we interacted more and more, and I came to understand that strange girl better and better.
To be honest, she did not seem like someone from this world at all.
From her, I could not sense the shadow of being controlled by those in power, like my father or the humans of Antares. From beginning to end, she was an independent individual.
She thought and acted independently. Her personality was straightforward and pure. She trusted me completely and treated me as an important friend.
I was moved by that sincerity, and without realizing it, I began to rely on her as well. What she possessed was the kind of emotion I longed for. I liked listening to her chatter, teasing her, and watching her flustered expressions.
As long as I was close to Su Ling, my heart would start to race, and that colorless, tasteless life seemed to become a little more vivid.
During countless long nights in the underground rooms beneath the city, I lay alone, drifting into many illusory yet beautiful dreams.
In those dreams, I forgot the past. I was no longer an assassin of Black Feather. I was just an ordinary girl, the real Tii in Su Ling’s eyes.