“Click-clack, click-clack.”
After a while, the carriage finally left the narrow forest path and rolled onto the main road.
The dense woods fell away, revealing in the distance a towering city wall and, closer at hand, the endless stream of wagons and travelers.
This place lay to the southwest of the Radiant Sun Empire.
It was the border stronghold of the kingdom infamous as the “Scourge of Magical Beasts,” the heavy city guarding the royal capital of the Ross Kingdom — Rossfar City.
Ye Xu pulled the hood of his coat lower, slightly concealing that signature head of black-purple hair.
Only a pair of eyes, brilliant as amethyst gems in the midnight sky, remained visible.
Just enough to keep from standing out too much.
—Even though this place was already extremely far from the empire.
Yet on the entire human continent, who didn’t know that the empire’s next emperor, the “Night Princess,” Emperor’s Daughter Ye Lalar · Tianluo, possessed such striking features?
On this vast supercontinent “Delayer Continent,” whose explored landmass alone was three times the total land area of Earth in his previous life, human history was cleanly divided by the year 9998 of the Tianluo Calendar.
Before that year, humanity — frail in body — had once been driven to the brink of extinction by countless magical beasts averaging four meters tall, and by terrifyingly powerful non-human races such as dragons and vampires. Humans could only scrape by in the forgotten corners of the continent.
Then came the first great unified empire of mankind.
The founding emperor, Delas · Tianluo, together with the twelve greatest sages in human history, discovered the hidden potential of humanity.
They found that the source of all power in this world — the magic that governed everything — originated from the innate spirituality contained within the souls of all living things.
The greater the spirituality in a soul, the more colossal the magic it could wield.
On average, the magical capacity within human souls was no less than that of any top-tier race on the continent.
But the feeble human flesh severely restricted the output of that power; humans could only release it at a frequency far below the soul’s true strength.
Yet humanity’s unique physiology granted them one extraordinary gift.
Their bodies possessed exceptional compatibility with nearly all magical substances in the world.
Thus, the Thirteen Sages gathered every elite among mankind and pooled all human knowledge — magic, magitech engineering, alchemy.
Using alchemy, they melted metals into alchemical fiber muscles to form a shell.
They embedded mithril and other highly conductive materials to simulate the circulation of magic within a human body.
Through magitech engineering, they shaped it into gigantic armor.
Then, with magic, they animated it.
Bypassing the direct link between body and soul, the flesh became merely a vessel for storing and channeling magic, working alongside the magitech core to deliver output efficiency far beyond what any physical body could achieve.
Thus was born the revolutionary weapon exclusive to humanity — the Magitech Knight.
With the aid of Magitech Knights, Delas · Tianluo and the Twelve Sages led the humans of that era in a thunderous counteroffensive against the non-human races.
From that moment, humanity officially became one of the continent’s dominant powers.
To commemorate that glorious history, mankind named the new calendar after the founding emperor’s surname. The empire was established, and the great Tianluo Calendar began.
Today was:
“Tianluo Calendar, Year 9998, 7th Month, 13th Day.”
To this day, the Radiant Sun Empire still occupies roughly 37% of the explored central-to-eastern region of the continent — vast and fertile lands.
One can imagine the place the empire holds in the hearts of humanity.
Had its corruption and tyranny not become utterly intolerable, the people would never have wished to overthrow this great nation that had sheltered human civilization for nearly ten thousand years.
Beginning several decades ago, riots broke out constantly across the massive country.
Plagued by internal strife and external threats, the empire’s territory shrank from 45% to 33% of human lands.
This continued until two years ago, when the nearly three-year-long “Eternal Night Great Rebellion” erupted.
The one now known to the world as the “Night Princess,” Ye Lalar · Tianluo, defected from the imperial family.
Under the alias “Ye Xu,” she founded a rebel army centered on the Eternal Night Knight Order at the border, once pushing the empire into desperate straits.
There were even rumors that the Eternal Night Knights, led by the Night Princess, stormed the imperial palace and forced the royal family into reforms.
Afterward, the Night Princess was named Emperor’s Daughter and became the first in line to the throne.
Relying on the overwhelming might of the Eternal Night Knights, the empire began sweeping reforms.
Two years later, the empire that had once teetered on the brink of collapse began showing signs of rebirth.
The “Night Princess” who brought about this near-miraculous turnaround naturally earned the reverence of all human society.
There were even rumors that in remote regions, fanatical commoners who had been saved by her during the rebellion were spontaneously forming churches to worship the Night Princess.
These were the publicly acknowledged facts released by the empire.
But regarding all of this, Ye Xu himself had a very different opinion.
The Eternal Night Knight Order was real, the rebel army had indeed cornered the empire, the knights had stormed the palace, and now the Order served the imperial family and spearheaded reforms — all true.
But everything concerning the “Night Princess”…
Tch.
The moment those memories from the past two years resurfaced, Ye Xu felt a throbbing pain in his temples.
[Mother, are you thinking about what happened back then again?]
A neutral, ethereal voice laced with mechanical tones rang inside Ye Xu’s mind.
Ye Xu showed no surprise, merely gazing at the carriage as it merged onto the main road, drawing ever closer to the royal capital, and gave a silent nod.
[…]
Receiving the answer, the mechanical voice fell silent for a moment.
[I am truly sorry about what happened back then. I…]
“It wasn’t your fault, Night God.”
Toward the creation now drowning in self-reproach, Ye Xu only shook his head slightly with helplessness and resignation while staring into the distance.
“Night God” — the magi-spirit of the Night God Throne, the only one Ye Xu had personally given birth to.
Unlike ordinary magi-spirits, it could exist independently outside a magitech core.
Possessing the highest spirituality and intelligence, it even had its own autonomous six-meter-tall magitech knight body. When needed, it could dissolve into pure magic to follow at Ye Xu’s side or transform into a mechanical wolfhound.
Back then, when the emperor had suddenly appeared at the rebel army’s headquarters, Night God had tried to protect him.
But by that point, Ye Xu had already been completely controlled by the royal bloodline magic.
Calling itself the guardian of its creator, the most loyal servant — yet Night God could only watch as Ye Xu was seized, thrown into the dungeon, his spine cracked open, alchemical agents of purified bloodline forced into him, and the Royal Crest carved into his flesh.
Ye Xu had never once blamed this child.
After all, “cannot disobey the master’s orders” was hard-coded into it and into the other twelve Eternal Night Knights — even when the master at that time had already been puppeted.
Right now, the only thing Ye Xu wanted was to escape for a while — escape the bloodline inside his body, escape the empire that had brought him endless suffering.
“Hey, young master, we’re almost there!”
The coachman’s voice came from the front.
Ye Xu snapped out of his thoughts and noticed the colossal city wall looming ahead.
The carriage had already left the main road again and was heading toward the staging post outside the walls.
When they stopped, the coachman cheerfully came around to the back, lowered the tailboard, and invited Ye Xu to alight.
“Thank you, coachman.”
Taking a deep breath and steeling himself for a new life,
Ye Xu stepped slowly down from the carriage.
From a storage gem embedded in the choker around his neck, he withdrew a single gold coin and handed it to the kind coachman as final payment for carrying an identity-less passenger all the way from the empire’s border to another kingdom’s royal capital.
“No no, it was my pleasure!”
The coachman’s face nearly split from grinning at the gleaming gold coin.
A thousand copper coins made one silver, a hundred silver made one gold.
He had only carried this young master for a month, yet earned more than he would in half a year of ordinary work.
So what if the boy had no identification papers?
The timid starve; the bold get fat.
With those looks, that speech, that bearing, that generosity — even if the boy claimed to be an imperial prince, the coachman would believe it.
For anyone who found the coachman’s attitude incomprehensible, Ye Xu’s own understanding explained it perfectly.
[“The purchasing power of copper coins here is roughly 1:1 with Earth’s RMB.”]
“Then thank you for taking care of me these past days.”
“My clansmen will come pick me up shortly.”
“If you have other business, please feel free to go.”
Refined speech and noble bearing — this wasn’t the result of two years of imperial tutoring alone.
Even back when he had founded and led the rebel army as its great young master, Ye Xu had always paid great attention to his image.
After all, on the relatively orderly Delayer Continent where magic existed, proper manners often brought considerable convenience.
“Right, right, then I’ll be off!”
“If the young master ever needs carriage services again, just come find me at this station!”
Hearing Ye Xu’s words, the coachman didn’t press further. After one last attempt to secure a future regular customer, he turned and walked into the station.
Ye Xu took another deep breath, glanced once more at the road outside the station and the distant city wall.
Then he walked over to the waiting benches by the station and sat down, quietly awaiting the person who would come to meet him.