Chapter 164: Kapius the Eternal

“Nothing much, really. The organization has found a few more hidden ancient areas these past few years,” said Night Demon very ambiguously with her legs crossed.

“I’m not surprised at all,” Su Chen said.

Recently, the Immortal Temple had been deteriorating quite rapidly. For these past few years, if they weren’t setting up terrorist assassinations, then they were looking everywhere for treasure. These two things were actually closely related.

For instance, the Immortal Temple’s assassination of Yue Wuti was to safely open the Spirit-Burying Terrace, and that was obviously to obtain the Corpse Spirit Flowers. These flowers could be used to make a ton of medicine, which could be sold for lots of money, which could then be used to kill lots of people.

This was not a new concept.

No matter how you spun things, this was often the basic principle behind everything.

The Immortal Temple was no exception.

Even they scrambled back and forth every day over such trivial matters.

When Night Demon told him that they had found another hidden area they wanted to open up, Su Chen wasn’t surprised. He would have actually been surprised if they mentioned anything else.

“And why do you need the Chaotic Soul Medicine to enter this hidden area?” Su Chen asked.

“Because this hidden area has a master.”

“It has a master?” Su Chen was extremely shocked.

It was only after Night Demon explained some things to him that Su Chen finally understood.

It actually wasn’t a hidden realm that had been sealed by the sands of time, but rather one that had been excavated nearly a thousand years ago. The site was an ancient castle from the Illustrious Divine Dynasty’s time period, making it in and of itself a treasure just on its merit of surviving through tens of thousands of years.

Over the past thousand years, this castle had changed hands a few times already. Right now, it belonged to a leader of the Sand Race known as Pall.

The Sand Race was like the Cliff and Moon Race — they were a minority race that was, in general, grouped with the human race.

As such, the Sand Race couldn’t compare with the human race in terms of status as a whole.

However, to placate the various minority races, the human race had set aside a bit of territory for some of these races. The Sand Race was one of these lucky races. They weren’t wanderers like the Cliff Race, and they had a section of territory belonging all to themselves called the Lonely Swan Ramparts, located in Island Abyss.

Pall was the ruler over this piece of land.

In other words, he was the ruler of the entire Sand Race.

According to the Immortal Temple’s investigations, this castle had once belonged to a Spirit Race Master. He had left behind a lot of relics all throughout this castle, though the relics had all been divvied up by those who originally discovered the castle, only leaving behind the castle itself.

However, the Immortal Temple had also discovered that the Spirit Race Master’s most previous relics were still within the castle walls and had yet to be taken.

“How do you know that there are still treasures remaining?” Su Chen asked.

“We found out from the Spirit Race,” Night Demon replied.

The Immortal Temple had encountered a number of Spirit Race individuals in the past few years. After paying a tremendous price to exterminate those Spirit Race individuals, they finally discovered that these Spirit Race individuals were targeting West Laina Castle.

From the few isolated phrases that they had been able to get out of the mouths of those Spirit Race individuals and their targets, the Immortal Temple had concluded that Laina Castle, which had once belonged to the Spirit Race, still held many treasures that were yet to be extracted.

Those Spirit Race individuals were returning there now to try and retrieve those relics.

And based on the large numbers of Spirit Race individuals that they encountered, the Immortal Temple determined that these relics were obviously quite valuable.

“How does the Spirit Race know that there are still relics left?” Su Chen asked. “Most of them live a life of isolation. Even if these ruins were left behind by a Spirit Race Master, that’s not a good reason for all the other Spirit Race individuals to know about it, and especially not for them to come one after another for it.”

“That’s because this castle was very likely left behind by Kapius.”

“What did you say?” When he heard that name, Su Chen immediately sat up. “Kapius? Kapius the Eternal!?”

“There are only three people in the Spirit Race with four-character names[1. My translation of Kapius has four characters: 卡比俄斯.],” Night Demon said in a rare moment of clarity. “Apart from him, who else could it be?”

“Kapius the Eternal!” Su Chen’s heart jumped violently. He almost jumped to his feet, unable to suppress his excitement.

Who was Kapius?

He was the second leader of the Spirit Race.

Because of their ability to never grow old, the Spirit Race only had three leaders in the tens of thousands of years that they had been around.

Achilles the Immortal, Kapius the Eternal, and Menelaus the Wise.

Kapius was the second leader of the Spirit Race and had accomplished an impossibly large number of incredible feats. There were simply too many stories about him.

Kapius’s greatest contribution to the Spirit Race was his “Radiation” plan.

In the 8300th year of the New Star Era, the Spirit Race’s Origin Energy Mine had exploded. The Reproductive Temple was ruined and the Birth Mothers were injured. The Spirit Race thus began to convert their members to that of the Dark Spirit Race. As such, there were two kinds of Spirit Race individuals: the first were conceived from the remaining Birth Mothers, while the second were direct conversions of the Dark Spirit Race. Even so, the converted Dark Spirit Race individuals might not always be willing to completely align themselves with the Spirit Race. Not only was the success rate low, but their strength after the conversion would also be lower than normal Spirit Race individuals.

The Spirit Race, who were lacking in strength and had no way of replenishing it, thus began to sharply decline.

Plans for the Spring of Immortality were also put on indefinite hiatus because of this.

In the 9600th year of the New Star Era, the high-status Spirit Race individual Kase changed his name to Kapise, officially being inducted into the Elder’s Society.

That year, Kapise proposed the “Radiation” plan. He hoped to utilize the Origin Energy’s principles of radiation to greatly increase the Consciousness Converter Instrument’s operating constraints so that it wouldn’t only be restricted to the Dark Spirit Race.

If this idea had been proposed at any other time, it would have been rejected. However, after the Reproductive Temple had been destroyed, a few of the Spirit Race elders finally acquiesced.

Even so, many of the high-status Spirit Race individuals didn’t want to accept those who weren’t converted from Dark Spirit Race individuals.

Yet even in the face of vicious opposition, Kapise’s Radiation plan began to aggressively spread. The Spirit Race started attacking other races wantonly and experimenting on them. They transferred the tragic history they had experienced onto the other races.

In the 13000th year of the New Star Era, a young Spirit Race individual known as Silence accidentally discovered a member of another race who had failed to be converted yet was still alive and was very easily influenced by his own consciousness. That individual became Silence’s slave. More importantly, this kind of consciousness slave would last forever.

Silence realized that even though the Consciousness Converter Instrument might not ever be able to totally convert individuals of other races, it still had some effect on them. By emitting suggestions, it made it easier to control their targets.

This discovery stirred up the entire Spirit Race, and the goal of the Radiation plan slowly changed. It turned into a plan to produce large quantities of consciousness slaves.

From that day onwards, the Spirit Race’s consciousness slaves stunned the entire Primordial Continent.

It could be said that without Kapius’s Radiation, the Spirit Race wouldn’t have the consciousness enslavement technique that everyone hated and feared.

Now, the Immortal Temple discovered that the West Laina Castle was very likely to have been left behind by Kapius. Because of this, the appearance of these Spirit Race individuals was also taken much more seriously by the Immortal Temple.

They had enough reason to believe that the West Laina Temple definitely contained other hidden treasures.

If they wanted to scour the castle for relics, they would first need to take care of the territory’s ruler, Pall.

“So your plan is to find Kapius’s hidden treasures in a castle that belongs to the Sand Race leader?”

“Yes!” Night Demon nodded seriously.

“Then I need to correct you on one thing. Your mission this time is not to uncover a hidden area.”

“Then what would you call it?”

“It’s called robbery!”