The Divine Nine-Dragon Cauldron

Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio  Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio

Su Yu’s eyes glanced around nervously before returning to the master of the Ouyang Family. “So… how many have fled?” he asked.

Just then, Chen Xian showed himself. He was just about to teleport to Zhongzhou City.

“Not many. Perhaps a hundred or so, all in rapid succession,” he said to Ouyang.

A hundred or so? In a regional center, where the population was doubtless in the hundreds of millions, wasn’t this an insignificant number?

“An adult such as yourself ought not to underestimate a hundred people!” Ouyang shot back. “Zhongzhou, both the region and the city are highly developed and are within reach of all the other regions. Every scared and inadequate group will of course, then, choose to flee to here! The Tiandao group is probably nearly within reach of us, and they’re probably only one percent of the total! When you factor in all of the other crowds that are likely fleeing toward us right now, we could be dealing with tens, even hundreds of thousands of people! It will be a huge, huge mess!

Even a group of a hundred thousand was much smaller than the total population of Zhongzhou, yet his reasoning that their arrival would cause a commotion was not unfounded.

“With that in mind, it seems that the Blood Demon King must be only fueling a minor rebellion;- otherwise, the people would be in a panic, and the numbers fleeing would not just be in the hundreds. If I were to leave right this moment, and rush off in any direction, chances are I would not encounter the Blood King,” said Chen Xian.

Su Yu breathed a sigh of relief. Unless his luck was to truly bottom out, Chen Xian would not have to meet with the fearsome king.

“I commend your kindness. Now, I must ask you to make haste. Tiandao is not a region to linger in for long.” Su Yu gracefully bid Chen Xian farewell and ordered his troops to leave.

Then, in the blink of an eye, Su Yu teleported straight to Zhongzhou City.

This city was the imperial capital and regional center of Zhongzhou. Chen Xian served as the emperor’s guard.

Su Yu arrived outside the imperial palace, and a quick glance revealed that the gathered crowd was quiet and collected. There was no rioting. “Could the news we received be false?” he thought.

Then, a harsh voice suddenly rang in his head. ‘Little one, why have you come to Zhongzhou City, to the home of your rivals? Are you not afraid of being captured and imprisoned?’

Calmly and reassuringly, Su Yu replied, “They are looking for me as I once was, not as I am now. No-one here should recognize me, so what do I have to fear?”

“And as for returning to Zhongzhou…’ he let out a resigned sigh under his breath. “Tthe heavenly struggle has already come to pass, so naturally, now is time for the earthly struggle to begin. Master Zeng once told me that in order to persevere through a struggle of men, there would need to be help from a phoenix. That was his word, and he said that it would be of great importance.”

“I don’t know much of places, but I do know a lot about people, and my knowledge of people tells me that the phoenix – in other words, the queen that we seek – is to be found here, in the east. But she could be anyone. She could be a commoner! So, as Yun Yazi pointed out, there is an eight in ten chance that the queen is here, in the east, and if she isn’t, well, then she is at least somewhere on the eastern continent.”

The harsh voice laughed cruelly, and spat back, “Well, then you had better set out soon! That old codger wasn’t very much help, was he?”

Hearing the Evil God’s voice, Su Yu realized something. “It seems like he already knows about Yun Yazi, so does that mean Yun Yazi knows about him as well?”

“Hahaha…”

Su Yu turned over one of his hands. In his upturned palm, there was a small crystal shard. Engraved on the crystal, in minuscule detail, were the nine regions, and the locations of the teleportation portals.

On this chart, Su Yu could see that Zhongzhou had a few spread out portals.

He could see that there were two of them at opposite ends of the city: one for arriving, and one for departing.

The arrival portal was to the north of the city – precisely where Su Yu was.

The departing portal was to the south – precisely where he wanted to reach as quickly as possible…

From there, he could find a teleportation portal so ancient and powerful that it could take him over to the Eastern Continent in no time.

Suddenly, a voice burst out from behind Su Yu, and he felt somehow illuminated by someone’s gaze. “This is an important place; it’s not for intruders such as you! Leave here at once!”

Su Yu turned around and found the voice belonged to an old man, with a long and wise white beard, and an aged complexion.

“What he just said…” he thought. “It’s like he knows everything! Is he a Three-fold all-knowing being?’

Of course, an ancient and powerful hub of teleportation was bound to be home to an ancient and powerful creature.

Su Yu thought, “So, what kind of teleportation portal is this? Supreme-level? God-level?”

Su Yu’s heart dropped. He took the Master’s words very seriously.

At first, it had been the Blood King who knew everything, and now this old master before him? Su Yu had not expected that reaching the Zhongzhou teleportation hub would be such a serious matter.

“My humblest apologies,” he said, bowing to the old man. He then ducked away and continued walking.

The old man looked after Su Yu as he left. There was a strange light in his eyes.

Entering the city, Su Yu looked around and observed the people on the streets. “No one seems to be in a panic about the Blood King!” he thought.

“How big is this city, in all? From north to south, isn’t it at least as vast as the Shenlong Continent? Doesn’t it take dozens of hours for news to spread here?”

“Well, then, perhaps the Blood King may still cause problems here yet.”

As Su Yu looked around, his eyes came to a halt when they reached the sky over the south of the city.

“Everything seems calm down there too. It seems to be nothing like the scenario Chen Xian was suggesting.”

If the Region of Devouring Beasts had decided to lash out and use all of its power, this certainly would not be the result.

With doubt clouding his mind, Su Yu hurried on towards the palace.

In the midst of its Golden Age, Zhongzhou City was a thriving metropolis. Its palace was bustling with activity, with crowds of people filtering in and out all day. Its teleportation spot was quite exceptional compared to others.

“There are portals of all sizes, and not one is ready for use!”

As Su Yu looked around, he saw that every teleportation hall was home to its own crowd of prospective users.

The exception was one old and decrepit portal, which had no one near it whatsoever and looked as though it had been that way for quite some time.

Yet this was the ancient portal, capable of taking someone to any of the other ancient portals. In total, there were nine of them.

Su Yu did not immediately rush forward though. Instead, he stood and waited, keeping an eye on the crowds.

That was until a group of silvery figures emerged from a teleportation portal and glided over to him. They stopped quite nonchalantly.

“How may I help you, masters of the palace?” Su Yu asked. He tried to look at the face obscured within the orb but found it was just out of reach. Each figure wore a conical hat.

“We were sent here by our superior, a Five-fold all-knowing ancient being, who sits here in this city.” The figure who spoke to Su Yu raised its conical hat, and he could see that the person’s skin truly did shine like silver.

‘A five-fold all-knowing ancient being?’ Su Yu frowned. This whole time, he had been leaning on a small fence outside of a restaurant.

If he were somehow able to ascend to the same level as this ancient being, it would require untold, impossible strength.

Such was the problem he faced those days. His losses were many, and his task grew ever-harder.

He wanted to make a fortune, and the price of doing so was not small.

“Do you have any proof of rank?” he asked. His fear was that he would have to painstakingly figure out everyone’s rank one-by-one, as he had done in Tiandao.

Since Su Yu was perhaps unfamiliar to most of the people around, his hope was that perhaps the ancient guardian had not been shown his portrait in advance,

“Report back to the master that Xiao Bai is unable to ascertain the facts because the portal is closed, barring entry,” one of the group said.

“What? Entry is barred?” Su Yu asked, his brow furrowed into three deep lines.

“A declaration was posted in the palace. It said that the ancient portal was to be closed for a fortnight, so as to bar the forces from Tiandao from using it to escape the Nine Regions.”

Hearing this, Su Yu sneered. ‘So, this is all to hold onto a thief!

“The King of Tiandao is probably locked up deep beneath the imperial palace, in a dungeon so remote and dark that escape would be a miracle. So, why do they feel the need to block off the ancient portal? It must be to keep everyone else from the Nine Regions from using it.’

“So then, where is the supreme portal?” he asked. Supreme portals allowed one to teleport to neighboring regions.

“Also barred, for the same reason I just told you. It’s also protected by high-level guards.”

“Oh, this is all very deliberate,” Su Yu thought.

Gazing up at the transportation hall, he thought things over for a time.

“Entering by force is out of the question. All of Zhongzhou’s expert guards are gathered here, keeping watch. And among them, there’s a Five-fold All-knowing Ancient Being. Surely alerting even one of these guards means facing the combined strength of the lot of them.”

The Evil God knit his own brow, too, and his voice sounded in Su Yu’s head. “Well, little one, it looks like your path is blocked. What are you going to do now?”