As she watched the scene play out before her, the Grand Elder felt confused.
The others didn't know much about the blood purity test. In fact, they only knew that the jade could test blood purity, but they understood nothing of the principle behind it.
The Grand Elder, on the other hand, did understand. She had been given the jade long ago by her own father.
This jade, nad Blood Stone, was actually very weak, but it could activate the power hidden within the blood. If the hidden blood power was strong, then the stone's coloring would change.
Notably, the Blood Stone could do more than just test the Nine Li race's blood. It could equally test the blood of other races. The arrays arranged for the multiple tests were different and had their own respective colors.
The Grand Elder herself had blood at the top of the eighth grade—almost at the ninth, to be more specific. Once, she had dripped her blood on the Blood Stone, and the stone changed into a deep red hue!
She was her father's first-generation successor, and her blood's purity far surpassed that of other Nine Li mbers!
Now though, the Blood Stone had turned dark red, but it broke. What could this possibly an?
“Zen, stay here. I'll be back soon.” The Grand Elder took a long, aningful look at him before reaching out her hand to gently touch the broken stone fragnts. In the blink of an eye, all the pieces of Blood Stone fragnts imdiately collected in her hands.
Whoosh!
With a slight twist of her feminine waist, she quickly turned into a streak of white light, silently retreating off into the distance.
At that mont, one could hear many people discussing with low voices in the square. A quiet mumble rolled over the small crowd.
The Nine Li mbers weren't foolish though, and they understood Zen's special characteristics. Many warriors watched him incessantly with uneasy expressions on their faces.
“Hey brat! Tell , how did you break the stone, huh?” Giacomo laughed mockingly.
The Blood Stone's color change could prove that Zen's blood was also at the ninth grade.
In all, only two people had ninth grade blood, and that was including the Grand Elder. It was extrely rare.
“I don't know either,” Zen was also confused. He had no logical response.
The Grand Elder walked through the cave for a while before entering another small and narrow cavity. A short while later, she had reached the front of a jade wall.
She stood her ground steadily and called out in a low voice, “Father?”
“Adele? What's going on?” A faint voice replied from behind the jade wall. It sounded exhausted, but solemn.
“The Blood Stone has been broken,” Adele, the Grand Elder, told her father faintly.
“It doesn't matter. The Blood Stone is extrely fragile. You may break it if you aren't careful enough. Besides, with so much wear and tear over so many years, I knew it'd break eventually. I'll make you a new one soti soon,” said the man in a light voice, clearly not taking the situation seriously.
Adele frowned and continued, “The Blood Stone broke, but not because soone dropped or smashed it.”
“Oh! Really? How did it break, then?” the man asked in a more curious and eager tone.
“Today, Giacomo brought a warrior back from the wilderness. He told that the warrior had our race's blood, so I prepared the blood purity test in advance. Unexpectedly, when the stranger's blood was in the process of being tested, the Blood Stone turned a deep, dark red and then broke suddenly...” Adele explained to her father what had happened during Zen's blood purity test.
“Are you telling that the Blood Stone actually broke during the blood purity test?” Her father's voice was now flat and serious. “The blood of an outsider can shatter the Blood Stone!”
“And what does that an, exactly?” Adele asked curiously, her eyes wide.
“It could only an that the blood from the guy you tested is far beyond the tenth grade!” The voice didn't sound exhausted or flat anymore, but contained a trace of excitent. Her father was clearly trying to control his tone.
Adele was still puzzled as she asked for clarification. “Far beyond the tenth grade, you say? But Father, you've told before that our Nine Li race's blood only has nine grades.”
“Ha-ha! And that's true. As for our race mbers, there are only nine blood grades. The highest blood grade of the Nine Li mbers in this world can only be the ninth. The reason for such is because we are the exiles and our blood isn't very pure.” Her father's voice revealed a hint of helplessness.
Their blood had been inherited over generations and generations, from their parents and ancestors.
Most of the Nine Li people's blood, at least in this world, had been inherited from several Nine Li exiles.
Adele's father was an exile from the Source World. Thus, Adele's blood was actually much purer than that of the other Nine Li mbers!
That said, if Adele married a mber of the Nine Li race and had a child, her child's blood wouldn't be as pure as hers.
Although there was a chance that Adele's newborn child's blood might be better than hers, it was extrely slim. The baby would probably have a weaker blood line.
“The Blood Stone that I gave you can only test a warrior's blood up to the tenth grade, because no one in our race has blood that far surpasses the latter. I didn't expect that anyone would ever cause the Blood Stone to break. I must go see this warrior,” the voice said in a factual tone.
Adele's eyebrows shot upward in surprise. “Father! Are you sure you want to co out of here?”
The man behind jade wall was silent for a brief mont, and then he smiled faintly. “I'm one of the exiles and I've been cursed by the Chaos Ancient God. I can only survive if I hide here, in the bone tower. Cultivating in seclusion is just an excuse I've made...”
Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!
Cracks imdiately appeared and spread on the surface of the jade wall. The whole jade wall rapidly collapsed, all at once.
A bony middle-aged man appeared behind the jade wall's rubble. His gaze seed calm, but he looked rather exhausted. In certain ways, he looked like Adele.
As her eyes fell upon her father's appearance, Adele felt stunned.
It had been countless years since the last ti Adele had actually seen her father.
Ever since she had been very young, she had known that her father was here, behind this jade wall.
That said, she could only ever hear her father's voice. Never could she see him, not even once. When her mother died, her father still refused to leave the cover of this jade wall.
The sa rang true for the other exiles hiding within the bone tower. They had all sealed themselves inside the jade wall and rarely showed up anywhere, if at all.
There was once a ti when the Nine Li race was in danger, and an exile had escaped the bone tower, taking imdiate action.
Adele rembered that the exile had revealed an incredible power, breaking hundreds of mbers from the Yellow Emperor race into pieces in the blink of an eye and thus dissolving the Nine Li race's crisis.
In other words, all this ant that her father wasn't actually forbidden from leaving the jade wall... He was just unwilling to do so.
Adele took this matter to heart very seriously, all the ti. After all, she had grown up and she still didn't even know what her father looked like.
Never had she expected that her father would leave his precious jade wall just because Zen had broken the Bloody Stone!
She was stunned and stared at her father's strange face. She couldn't believe what was happening.
A bitter smile appeared on the middle-aged man's face. He walked up to touch Adele's fair, soft cheek and said faintly, “It's not that I didn't want to leave the jade wall. As the exiles, we're suffering from Chaos Ancient God's curse at all tis. Our only option is to curl up here, in this small, solitary space...”
“Oh...” Adele blinked her eyes. She wasn't sure what to believe. Although her father's appearance ca off strange to her, his voice was very familiar.
After all, he was still her father, and he was trapped in this world without any way to escape. It wasn't before long that Adele caved and took her father to see Zen.
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