Chapter 46: Harpy History

The bug hive continued to shriek painfully.

Su Chen watched on coldly.

“Are you not planning on doing anything?” Patelocke asked.

“I will eventually, but not now,” Su Chen replied. “This bug hive doesn’t just possess a powerful consciousness. There are also other unique properties about it, but most importantly, it can be subdued. Also, the secrets around those metal ores have not yet been fully unraveled. I need to wait until I understand more before I can make a move. Death’s Shadow, stop wasting time and bring Flowing Flame Oriole to me now!”

“Yes, Master!” Death’s Shadow replied from within Su Chen’s consciousness. In a few moments, he had reappeared next to Su Chen, with Flowing Flame Oriole wrapped up tightly in his white paper ribbons.

Su Chen grabbed Flowing Flame Oriole and shoved her head towards the spatial vortex.

When Flowing Flame Oriole saw what was in the vortex, she shrieked, “No! I cannot look at that! That belongs to the portion of my memories I am not allowed to remember!!!”

“I’m not asking you to remember, just to look!” Su Chen held her head firmly in place.

The secrets she was not allowed to remember were forcibly torn open, and Flowing Flame Oriole trembled as the secret technique installed in her body was assaulted.

That secret technique began to exert an immense pressure on her as punishment.

She was not allowed to remember, nor was she allowed to come into contact with it!

The pain shot through the Harpy female’s body like lightning. She frothed at the mouth, appearing as if she was going to collapse at any moment.

“Open your consciousness and follow my instructions!” Patelocke said.

“If you want to escape the pain, then listen to him!” Su Chen said at the same time.

He didn’t say, “If you want to survive”, but “If you want to escape the pain”. To Flowing Flame Oriole, the pain of the punishment was even greater than the fear of death. If Su Chen allowed her to move, she probably would have tried to kill herself immediately.

Upon hearing Su Chen’s words, she immediately dropped the defenses raised around her consciousness and relaxed her thoughts as much as she could.

Patelocke directed her consciousness energy, helping her erect Heart Walls.

Heart Walls wasn’t the best choice of Origin Skill to resist the effects of the secret technique, but it did mitigate the pain Flowing Flame Oriole had to endure.

At the same time, Su Chen’s hand forced her to continue staring into the spatial vortex. He said, “Your secret technique prevents you from accessing those memories, but I have now broken the technique’s restrictions. All you must endure now is the inevitable backlash. As long as you can hold on through this process, the secret technique’s chains will be broken.”

“But it could also greatly damage my consciousness as well!” Flowing Flame Oriole yelled.

“I don’t care about that,” Su Chen replied coolly. “If you want to survive, you and I must both take some risks, understood?”

“AH!!!” Flowing Flame Oriole cried out bitterly.

After an unknown period of time, the bitter pain began to gradually subside. Flowing Flame Oriole knelt on the ground, gasping for air as sweat dripped from her forehead, as if she had journeyed through a number of worlds and back.

“Seems like you finally managed to withstand the pain. How do you feel?” Su Chen said as he helped her to her feet.

“Like I was just sliced open by a thousand blades!” Flowing Flame Oriole said hoarsely. She stared at Su Chen angrily. “I will remember everything that you have done to me!”

“I hope you are also able to remember what your mission was. Can you tell me now?”

Flowing Flame Oriole’s expression became complicated. “That bug hive is the future Floating Point Six.”

“What did you say?” Su Chen was stunned.

Floating Points was the name given to one of the Harpies’ plans.

Similar to Kapius’s Radiation Plan, Gu Youhuang’s Shining Dragon Plan, and the Arcanists’ Resurrection Plan - it was a majestic plan that involved the entire race. The implications of its success were widespread and immense.

In order to fully appreciate the significance of the Floating Points plan, it was important to first understand some of the Harpies’ history.

That history went all the way back to the time period of the Arcana Kingdom.

After the Arcana Kingdom fell, the five races divided the Arcanists’ treasures. The humans obtained the Bloodline Extraction Instrument, the Astrals obtained the Consciousness Converter, the Ravagers obtained the Origin Energy Temple, and the Oceanids obtained the Freedom Wind, each of these treasures extremely valuable to that race. The Harpies obtained the most valuable item from the lot - Sark’s Energy Nuclei, the only city-grade source of energy amongst all of these items.

The Harpies had chosen that item mostly due to their surroundings. Just as humans required the Bloodline Extraction Instrument to grow stronger and the Ravagers needed the Origin Energy Temple to control Origin Energy, the Harpies had their own unique needs.

The Harpies possessed the strongest perception amongst all of the Intelligent Races, not even inferior to the Arcanists. The only thing they lacked was creativity. However, they were quite physically weak and had low fertility rates, so there were not many of them. Their greatest weakness, however, was their arrogance.

Their arrogance made it so that the Harpies refused to advance or adapt.

The humans, Ravagers, and Oceanids all didn’t hesitate to improve themselves for the sake of their race’s survival. The Astrals even went so far as to give up on their physical bodies.

The Harpies, however, were unwilling to change.

They didn’t want to change even a little bit.

They stubbornly believed that a change in culture was just a kind of extinction - if the Harpies lost their purity, what difference was there between that and extinction?

This was the way the Harpies viewed their own culture.

With this kind of thinking, there was no way that the Harpies would ever attempt to improve their physical bodies.

As such, they chose to rely on external aids.

In the 46000th year of the Chaos Era, the Harpies convinced the Arcana Kingdom’s great master, Isador Sark, to start a plan to create a series of floating cities. At the core of the floating cities plan was a need for a source of energy, one that could constantly extract energy from the surroundings.

At the end of the Chaos Era, the Arcana Kingdom fell into ruins.

The Harpies took advantage of the chaos to seize the incomplete source of energy for the floating cities.

The Harpies then invited some Craftsmen and Metalskins to design and construct the floating cities.

In the 946th year of the New Star Era, Sky City’s construction was completed, and the Harpies successfully established the Sky Country. Withered Edge became the emperor, primarily responsible for managing governmental affairs. He also established a separate religious system that worshipped a mother goddess and accepted divine edicts from her. Scarlet Dream was made the leader of the organization.

The Harpies, Craftsmen, and Metalskins took nearly a thousand years and an ocean’s worth of resources in order to complete this floating city, which became the most powerful existence amongst the whole Primordial Continent.

This city was built with incredibly powerful defensive and offensive capabilities. Its defensive Origin Energy formation alone could withstand the attacks of hundreds of Ultimate-Emperor Realm cultivators attacking it at the same time.

The powerful amount of energy contained within the Sark’s Nucleus gave Sky City a seemingly endless supply of energy. As a result, the city was also a location that even the most powerful experts considered impossible to conquer.

The Harpies became overlords very quickly because of this. Anywhere Sky City went, all enemies it encountered were easily defeated!

Yes, overlords. At their height, they were even able to use their city to single-handedly suppress a Primordial Beast.

However, this situation didn’t last for very long.

The Harpies’ arrogance and the might of Sky City quickly made it so that the Harpies offended everyone they could possibly have offended. These included the Craftsmen and Metalskins that had helped them build this floating city.

The Harpies reneged on their original promise once the city was completed, chasing the two subordinate races out of Sky City and taking control of the city. Then, they began to oppress all the other races without discrimination.

Because of this, the four races formed a rare alliance to fight back against the Harpies.

However, Sky City was too powerful. The floating fort had an endless supply of energy and impenetrable defenses. No matter what kind of attacks they launched at it, they were all rendered of no effect.

Even with the four races allying together, they had no way of defeating the Harpies.

For this, they were forced to think of any possible methods.

In the end, the Craftsmen were the ones who proposed a possible solution.

One of the greatest occurrences of sowing discord throughout the continent’s history took place.

A powerful Astral sacrificed his own spiritual body to control a Harpy Arcana Master.

The battle continued, and to raise the status of that Arcana Master, the humans, Oceanids, Ravagers, and Astrals all devoted lots of time and energy to help him produce countless achievements, as well as to help him find resources to increase his personal strength.

By relying on this method, the Arcana Master very quickly became known as a hero throughout the city, as well as a genius general.

At this point, the four races’ plan began to bare its fangs.

This genius general proposed a plan during a military strategy meeting: Operation Deep Sea Anchor.

Operation Deep Sea Anchor was based on some of the flaws that Sky City had.

Even though Sky City was incomparably powerful, and Sark’s Nuclei provided the city with an endless supply of energy, there was still certain drawbacks and bottlenecks experienced by the people living in the city.

The many years of fighting had made one thing clear: when defending against incredibly powerful attacks, Sky City’s consumption of energy far outstripped how much it absorbed.

This was inevitable.

Killing was always easier than giving birth, and spending money was always easier than saving up.

The only reason Sky City was still able to hold on was because the Harpies were going all-out as well - when faced with the pressure from the four races combined, the Harpies were still forced to pay quite a significant price.

It was in this moment that the general proposed Operation Deep Sea Anchor.

The plan was to convert Sark’s Nuclei’s somewhat ethereal connections with the outside world into a more solid, weighty anchor, allowing the nuclei to extract nearly ten times as much energy as before and making Sky City truly invulnerable.

The Harpies were incredibly moved by this plan, but they weren’t very skilled at remodeling.

That was when the general made yet another contribution - he volunteered to go to Craftsman and Metalskin territory to convince the two races to help based on his “majestic presence” to help them create the Origin Energy anchor.

The two races returned to Sky City, letting “bygones be bygones”, and began to work on creating this Origin Energy anchor.

During this period of time, the Harpies watched them closely to ensure that they weren’t trying to sabotage the city,

However, reality demonstrated that the two races didn’t make any attempts at all to sabotage the city.

They diligently completed the work that the Harpies had commissioned them to do, even doing a better job than the Harpies had anticipated - the Origin Energy chain of the Sark’s Nucleus was imbued with spatial powers that penetrated deep into the sea of Origin Energy, making it so that the rate at which it accumulated energy was twenty times what it was before.

The Harpies were incredibly excited by this prospect.

However, not long afterwards, they discovered a shocking situation.

Sky City couldn’t move anymore.

It was firmly locked in the southern regions of the Primordial Continent and could not fly to any other corner of the continent.

They even had no way of cutting the anchor chain because of how intimately connected it was with Sark’s Nucleus. Once the chain was cut, the nucleus would collapse on itself, and Sky City would come tumbling out of the sky.

While Sky City became invincible, it also lost its ability to move as a result.

In the end, the Harpies’ dominance shrunk from more than half of the continent to a small region towards the south.

Just like that, the Harpies’ reign of a hundred years crumbled away into nothingness.