The raging Patriarch Void paused his fists to glare at Patriarch Heaven. Considering the heaving of his chest, it was clear that if the golden tailed family leader didn't have someone substantive to say that a fight might break out.
"Easy now." Patriarch Jikan spoke, cutting through the tension. "I've lost more than you have. At least there's a good chance your genius is alive. For me, even if mine is fine, he'll never be the same."
"What is it." Patriarch Void ignored the pacifying words.
"I had an interesting visitor the other day." Patriarch Heaven didn't seem to catch the threat in Patriarch Void's words and continued to tease apart the information as though he didn't have a care in the world.
"Spit it out."
"I'm just saying, don't you find it interesting how Saru Shruti is so willing to protect Alexandria Snow? Even to the point of risking more strained ties between us two overlording clans?"
Patriarch Void and Jikan frowned in thought but stayed silent. It was clear that Patriarch Heaven's words had caught their interest.
"It's especially odd that Saru Shruti would know Alexandria, don't you think? According to our information network, she was practically shipped off as a baby to go and complete that barbaric coming of age ceremony of theirs. Yet, she's already back and somehow had built a relationship with a young lady of our Kitsune Clans that we had never sensed until just 20 or years ago?"
"Wasn't Saru's interference just the Shruti clan trying to anger us? I had assumed that Saru Shruti never had any relationship with Kukan's seed holder." Patriarch Void snorted.
Most of the kitsune clan thought this way. For a Shruti to have a close relationship with a Kitsune was too ridiculous for anyone to believe. They thought that the Shruti were just taking advantage of the situation to suppress them.
Patriarch Heaven smiled mysteriously, a small smirk curling up his lip.
"Do you all remember that expedition we sent those few expendable youngsters on a few hundred years ago?"
"You mean the Dukes and Duchesses? Didn't they get nothing out of that?" Patriarch Jikan questioned.
Centuries ago, the Patriarchs had felt they needed to do something big to shake up the power struggle between them and Shruti. It was then that they turned their gaze toward their adjacent quadrant, the Celestial Deer Quadrant.
Dyon was right. Those Dukes and Duchesses, in order for them to toy with the best geniuses of his home quadrants, couldn't have come from the 98th quadrant, they had to have come from the 30th quadrant!
Dyon's home quadrant was on the edge, so it only had two adjacent quadrants. One was the 98th and the other was the 30th. When he learned about the attack of the Dukes and Duchesses from Patriarch Pakal, he had been questioning which quadrant they had come from, but in the end, the answer was obvious… The 98th quadrant simply didn't have enough Dukes to pull such a thing off.
"That's true." Patriarch Heaven nodded.
When they sent their Dukes and Duchesses, they had expected for them all to die. That's why they hadn't sent anyone higher leveled. But, who knew that they'd come back gloating about how pathetic the former glorious Celestial Deer Quadrant was?
Of course, this was an absolute top secret of the kitsune clan. With the unspoken rules of the tower quadrants, attacking another quadrant would land them in deep waters.
The reason they had done this in the first place was in hopes of gaining a key for themselves. The Shruti had owned the key of their quadrant for millennia and they were, quite frankly, tired of it.
But, who would have known that the Celestial Deer Quadrant had completely forgotten about the Epistemic Tower? Even they had no idea where it was!
Because of this, the kitsune had no choice but to pull back. It was impossible for them to expect a small team of kitsune to search thousands of gates by themselves… So, in the end, their dreams of owning an epistemic tower for themselves fizzled out and Celestial Deer Corner remained dormant.
When Dyon suddenly appeared almost 20 years ago, shooting up the rankings, the kitsune leaders began to question whether or not the information their Dukes and Duchesses brought back was correct. If those clans were as weak as they said, how could they give birth to a True God? It didn't make any sense…
The only explanation was that there was a hidden clan within the Celestial Deer Quadrant that their Dukes hadn't interacted with, a secluded one that kept the Epistemic Tower secret to themselves. After coming to that conclusion, their hopes were dashed entirely.
For obvious reasons, they never revealed this secret because of the methods they used to come by it. Even if they exposed that hidden clan, they'd also expose themselves, not to mention gain an enemy so powerful that they could raise a True God and the Demon Generals.
"You're right, we did get nothing out of it… But, I think after you listen to this theory of mine, those tunnels we built to reach them won't be so useless anymore… In fact, if all goes well, the Kukan seed wielder will be grovelling before us soon enough."
The eyes of the patriarchs sharpened as they listened intently.
The Heaven Clan's mention of tunnels was a complex one.
One had to remember that it sometimes took decades to travel from one quadrant to another. However, the kitsune had access to something no other clans in existence did: the supreme law Void.
Although it still sometimes took decades for the Void clan to reach a universe, the journey back would only take one or two years at the most, a fraction of the original time. These numbers were obviously significantly reduced if the quadrant in question was adjacent to their own.
One had to remember that Saru was only a young teen when she got news of Dyon's first trial results, yet she was already back home. If it really took so long, then how did this happen?
When Saru was born, the shattering of the soul seal had already reverberated through the universes. While the clans of Dyon's universe were too low level to pick up on it, the Shruti clan didn't miss it. Curious about the reason, when Saru was still a toddler, she chose the location of this disturbance as her coming of age ceremony grounds.
When Dyon fought Saru, thinking that she was older than him, she had really been only a little girl. Aside from how impressive her combat prowess was, the poignant point here is that it had taken her 8 years to reach Dyon's home universe, two more years to establish herself, yet less than a year to make it back to her home universe after being forced to leave.
How? The answer was simple. The Shruti clan had commissioned a Void Clan elder to make this so-called "tunnel" for them.
The blackhole-like characteristics of Void will was perfect for creating long lasting roads between universes despite being poor for travel in battle. And these roads could last hundreds of years if they were constructed properly.
"Do you remember what happened after those Dukes and Duchesses came back?" Patriarch Heaven said a slight smile.
After a moment of thought, Patriarch Void answered. "We decided to take the risk and sent Kawa to search for the Epistemic Tower… But, she disappeared for hundreds of years and it wasn't until the River Clan received signals that she was still alive that they went back and took her… It turned out that she hadn't come back because she found herself a husband and gave birth to a child, no?"
Patriarch Jikan spit on the ground in disdain. "To abandon your family for such frivolous nonsense. How ridiculous. Did she not know how important she was? Even worse, that husband of hers actually came here and passed the River Trial, we had no choice but to let her go at that point or we would be breaking the rules of our ancestors…"
Just like Soul Rending Peak, the kitsune had very strict rules to follow. If they broke these rules, they would lose the protection of their ancestors and thus the amount of faith energy they had would decrease. This was no joking matter for large clans.
"Why are you bringing all of this up?" Patriarch Void pressed.
