Hearing Ashmi's words, Bai Shi nodded.
There was indeed an Eternal City nearby.
It was the counterpart to Nokron, the Eternal City—the other Eternal City, Nokstella.
Naturally, Bai Shi had no reason to refuse Ashmi's request.
"Alright, let's go look for it later."
"It would be great if we could find the Teardrop Chalice."
"With the power of the Teardrop Chalice, your strength could improve even further."
Ashmi responded with great excitent:
'Yes! Host, the Teardrop Chalice is of the utmost importance to .'
'I feel that with just one more chalice, my mimicry can reach perfection.'
'When that ti cos, I'll be able to help you even more.'
Bai Shi stroked his chin.
Ashmi felt she was only one away?
That was fewer than he had estimated. He originally thought she would need at least three in total.
But it didn't matter how many she needed; he knew the location of every Eternal City in the Lands Between and how to reach them.
As long as Ashmi didn't need four or five Teardrop Chalices, it wasn't a problem.
After all, he only knew the locations of three Eternal Cities.
Bai Shi was already looking forward to the day Ashmi could perfectly mimic him and unleash his full strength.
When we two brothers fight together, who could possibly withstand a single blow?!
Bai Shi's own power was already imnse.
Once Ashmi could achieve perfect mimicry, every enemy would have to face the two of them ganging up.
Right now, Bai Shi could count the number of opponents in the Lands Between he found difficult to face on one hand.
Maliketh, Radagon, Godfrey, the Dragonlord, the Elden Beast...
But even those few wouldn't be impossible to defeat in a two-on-one fight.
Besides, even if ganging up on them didn't work...
When the ti ca, he could just call on lina and Ranni to join the fray.
And if that still wasn't enough... then they couldn't bla him for showing no rcy with Fengling Yueying.
Regardless, collecting the Teardrop Chalices for Ashmi was a must.
An increase in Ashmi's strength was an increase in Bai Shi's own combat power.
Since he was already here, he definitely had to pay a visit to the Eternal City.
Besides, it was a necessary stop on the way to the Baleful Shadow and the Lake of Rot.
Nokstella was filled with good things, a far cry from a remote backwater like the tower settlent.
Furthermore, Bai Shi had a weapon that had been collecting dust for a long ti.
It was the Starfall Shadow katana he had acquired from the Town of Sorcery, Sellia.
Starfall Shadow was made of a material similar to the Fingerslayer Blade, suggesting a common origin.
That alone was enough to make one anticipate its power.
Unfortunately, the power contained within the katana was sealed, preventing even its skill from being used.
Without access to its special power, it was just an otherwise high-quality, unenchanted weapon.
Since it was crafted in an Eternal City, perhaps a way to break the seal could also be found in one.
He hadn't found any relevant information in Nokron, so now his hopes lay with Nokstella.
Bai Shi looked at the seemingly endless path before him and shook his head.
The underground basin of the Ainsel River was truly massive, completely unlike the ga where it was just a short walk.
He had been flying all this way to explore, but even so, he had yet to see the end.
Bai Shi had no choice but to continue along the Ainsel River Main.
——
After a while, the scenery ahead finally changed.
The path suddenly opened up into a massive cavern, revealing the extensive ruins of a building complex.
Giant braziers still burned brightly.
The light from the flas was just enough to make out the shapes within.
Several strangely shaped humanoid creatures wandered among the ruins, like lingering souls of a fallen dynasty.
Their bodies were dark and stiff, their movents slow. They were tall but hunched over.
Their skin had the texture of dried mud, and moist, blue bubbles dotted their backs, as if they were the swamp itself.
The ice-blue glow emanating from the fishing harpoons in their hands seed to warn other creatures that even in ruin, they were not to be trifled with.
Bai Shi knew them. They were the last inhabitants of this lost dynastic ruin—the Clayn.
But more eye-catching than the Clayn was a terrifying monster.
At the far end of the ruins, two towering statues of sages stood on either side of a shattered stone archway.
Like others found throughout the Lands Between, the statues depicted unknown old n holding stone tablets.
Between those two towering statues, a Malford Star hung upside down, its long, slender body fully extended.
The mont Bai Shi spotted the Malford Star, it looked over at him.
Upon seeing a living creature, the massive pincers of its mouth clacked together with a trendous noise.
The next mont, a dense barrage of rubble lifted into the air under the influence of gravity magic and shot toward Bai Shi.
A vast field of purple magic materialized in front of Bai Shi, forming a barrier.
As soon as the rubble touched this gravitational magic, control over it was instantly reversed to Bai Shi.
Just as Bai Shi was about to retaliate and send the debris flying back, Ashmi suddenly erged from his body.
"Host, leave it to !"
Bai Shi lowered the hand he had just raised, nodded, and entrusted this Malford Star to Ashmi.
The uncontrolled rubble rained down from the sky.
It seed the Teardrop Chalice being so close had made Ashmi more eager than usual.
Seeing that its rubble attack was ineffective, the Malford Star reached a hand out and made a grasping motion toward the ground.
As it gestured, two enormous boulders materialized and hurtled toward Bai Shi and Ashmi.
After forming her body, Ashmi flew rapidly toward the hanging Malford Star.
This ti, the weapon in her hand was the Star-Lined Sword, once wielded by the Sword Saint of the Misbegotten.
Facing the oncoming boulders, Ashmi brought the Star-Lined Sword to her waist and her speed increased by another notch.
A cold magical light glinted along the curved blade of the Star-Lined Sword, and a single point of starlight traveled from the glintstone inlaid in its body toward the tip.
As the starlight reached the sword's point, Ashmi swung, and an icy chill instantly filled the dynastic ruins.
A dazzling storm of frigid sword slashes erupted in a ring, surrounding Ashmi in an impenetrable defense.
The boulders launched by the hanging Malford Star were all cut to pieces mid-air by Ashmi.
When the cold sword energy dissipated, the Malford Star had lost sight of Ashmi. All that remained was a ground littered with rubble and a frozen river.
The Malford Star twisted its body, trying to find Ashmi's silhouette.
But its untransford body was too slow; even a simple movent like this was sluggish.
By the ti the Malford Star located Ashmi again, she was already right in front of it. Using the power of the Star-Lined Sword, Ashmi had vanished into starlight, instantly closing the distance to the hanging creature.
Points of starlight lit up on the blade she held, arranged densely like a true constellation.
Deep blue magic spread from the sword's body, and a dazzling starlight ford an ethereal blade that repeatedly slashed at the Malford Star.
Mimicking the battle between Bai Shi and the Sword Saint of the Misbegotten back in the evergaol, Ashmi unleashed Ongyl's signature move.
The sword swept left and right with Ashmi's movents, easily slicing the Malford Star's body into several pieces.
As Ashmi spun through the air, a final downward slash split the hanging Malford Star's pale skull in two.
Watching Ashmi effortlessly replicate the swordsman's moves and even use the star chain technique, Bai Shi nodded in surprised approval.
Ashmi was no longer just blindly copying his own power; she now had the ability to learn on her own.
Due to the nature of a Mimic Tear, her learning speed was astonishingly fast.
Ashmi was becoming more and more like a real person.
In the beginning, Ashmi only had a mimicked appearance and the common sense instilled in her by the Nox Dynasty.
But fundantally, she couldn't understand any of it; she was just wearing human skin.
Now, through constant contact with humans, Ashmi was gradually becoming a true human herself.
The Nox Dynasty's Mimic Tear technology had, in fact, been perfected in its final stages.
Ashmi's existence was the best proof.
As long as there was a sufficiently powerful host to mimic, Ashmi could display incredible combat strength.
Even other Mimic Tears were far from weak.
Unfortunately, by that ti, the Eternal City had already taken certain actions that brought divine punishnt upon them.
Because of that unknown act, the Nox Dynasty had blasphed against the Greater Will.
A gap appeared in the Eternal City's combat strength. Such a powerful dynasty, yet in the end, it didn't even have anyone who could stand against Astel.
Without a subject to mimic, the Mimic Tears were rendered useless.
Whether it was the Mimic Tears or the Dragonkin Soldiers, none of them had the chance to show their might before they were buried deep underground along with the destruction of the Eternal City.
Otherwise, even if victory was impossible, the Eternal Cities wouldn't have been destroyed so easily by the likes of Astel.
After limbering up, Ashmi dissipated again, turning into a silver mist that returned to Bai Shi's body.
On her way back, Ashmi also brought a trophy she had picked up from the hanging Malford Star.
A Somber Smithing Stone [7].
Although Bai Shi wasn't particularly lacking in smithing stones anymore, a stone of such high quality was always welco.
After dealing with the hanging Malford Star, Bai Shi turned his attention to the ancient ruins here.
This civilization should belong to the Uru Dynasty, from the sa lineage as the Uhl Dynasty on the surface.
Unlike the Uhl Dynasty on the surface, which was now nothing but rubble, the Clayn wandering here, as the last residents, still offered a living trace that the ancient dynasty had once existed.
Furthermore, for so reason, these massive fire basins were still burning.
It was unclear whether it was because the Clayn were continuously adding fuel, or if it was so kind of ancient dynastic black technology.
So of the Clayn in the ruins were heading toward Bai Shi, but their movents were far too sluggish.
Bai Shi watched them for a while but couldn't tell if they were moving toward him or just wandering aimlessly.
He simply walked right past them, and they were completely unable to stop him.
Ignoring the Clayn, Bai Shi began to gather resources among the ruins.
Soon, he had collected a considerable number of various Grave Gloveworts nearby.
The quantity and quality of these gloveworts were quite good. He'd give them to Roderika later.
In addition, Bai Shi found the ashes of two Clayman Oracles.
Unlike the common Clayn who wielded harpoons, the Oracles could use the Oracle Bubbles and Great Oracle Bubble incantations.
Though he couldn't think of a use for them, he took them anyway.
After searching the entire ruin, Bai Shi walked toward the spot where the hanging Malford Star had been.
Between the two massive statues of sages, behind the great archway, lay the necessary path to the Eternal City, Nokstella.
However, there was one more place between here and Nokstella.
Bai Shi sighed.
So, it was finally ti?
If possible, he would rather not take this path.
Because just ahead was a massive ant nest, filled with giant ants.
Bai Shi didn't have a particular aversion to giant ants; at least they weren't giant cockroaches, he told himself.
If they were giant cockroaches, Bai Shi would have turned and walked away without a second thought.
Or he would have burned the place to the ground, not even leaving ash behind, before he would ever step inside.
But when the number of these giant ants beca too great, the ntal impact was not insignificant either.
Bai Shi summoned starlight above his head, and the path ahead was instantly illuminated.
Gazing at the brightly lit path, Bai Shi finally walked into the downward-sloping tunnel.
He had only taken a few steps inside when a dense rustling sound echoed from within the cave.
A swarm of huge red-and-white ants appeared before Bai Shi, dozens of them, completely filling the passage from top to bottom.
Seeing this, Bai Shi couldn't help but feel his scalp tighten.
He quickly released a sheet of fire from his hands. The surging waves of fla imdiately ford a vortex that swept down the passage.
After a brief struggle, the ants on the ceiling of the cave rained down like dumplings being dropped into a pot.
The carcasses of these ants smashed onto the bodies of their kin on the ground, and then they were all burned to ashes that scattered away.
The ground full of ash flowed with the stream of water, pouring back into the ants' nest.
A few seconds later, the entire cave began to tremble with the sound of countless footsteps.
Just from the noise, Bai Shi could feel the terrifying number of ants that were about to appear.
Bai Shi licked his lips, the flas from his hand never stopping as he relentlessly blasted the cave ahead.
A long ti passed before ants finally stopped erging from the cave in front of him.
Bai Shi remained vigilant until he confird that no more ants were coming out to die, only then did he relax.
Looking at the ant ash that even the flowing water could hardly wash away, Bai Shi let out a sigh of relief.
The number of ants inside the cave should be manageable now, right?
Bai Shi walked into the ant nest.
He saw that the nest was filled with piles of bones, and the ants themselves were now completely gone.
The ants had abandoned their invaded nest, choosing to relocate elsewhere, leaving only heaps of remains behind.
Spotting several crushed skeletons among them wearing pieces of Cuckoo equipnt, Bai Shi paused.
"Cuckoo corpses?"
"Hmm... and they're fresh..."
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