Chapter 984: Eventuality P8: Soul Lamp

Rumaal’s expression changed instantly.

"What?"

His voice carried genuine shock.

Anaah and Mirelle, who had been flying nearby, also turned their attention toward Kanis and their husband.

Rumaal and his wives had immediately begun investigating Kalina’s death the moment her Soul Lamp was extinguished. Their entire attention had been focused on finding her killer, and they had been moving from one lead to another ever since.

They hadn’t had the time—or the access—to pay attention to what was happening elsewhere in the empire’s campaign.

Yet the news Kanis had just revealed was anything but insignificant.

Prince Varesh had disappeared.

Rumaal’s expression became solemn.

Everyone among the empire’s top-tier cultivators knew the name Varesh. He wasn’t merely another Lord-level cultivator dispatched to Orveth. He was widely recognized as the Nascent Soul seed of the Swordfall Realm, someone who possessed an extremely high chance of eventually stepping into the Nascent Soul realm. That too within a few decades at most.

Because of that status, Varesh was often referred to as the Prince of the Swordfall Realm.

His reputation and position throughout the Shinayin Empire were far greater than Kalina’s.

Kalina had been an exceptionally talented cultivator and an important member of King Runiye’s faction, but her influence remained relatively limited compared to someone like Varesh. Varesh, on the other hand, represented the future of Swordfall domain.

If nothing unexpected happened, he was destined to become one of the faction’s future pillars.

And now, the tracking technique placed on him had suddenly disappeared.

Rumaal’s brows slowly furrowed.

"How long ago did the tracking technique disappear?" he asked.

"A few days ago," Kanis replied calmly. "My king initially waited to see whether Varesh would reappear on his own. When there was still no news, he became concerned and sent people to investigate."

Kanis’s gaze shifted toward the distant horizon.

"I was one of those people."

Rumaal fell silent.

For some reason, an unpleasant feeling suddenly surfaced in his heart.

He didn’t know why.

Perhaps it was simply because too many powerful cultivators had started disappearing in Orveth.

Kalina had died.

Now Varesh had vanished.

Rumaal subconsciously glanced toward the direction of Emerald Cove Island.

His expression gradually became complicated.

Could these things be connected somehow?

He immediately rejected the thought.

After all, what connection could there possibly be between Kalina’s death and the disappearance of a Swordfall prince?

Still, the coincidence was unsettling.

Especially when they were now flying directly toward the same place where Kalina’s killer was supposedly hiding.

Rumaal remained silent for a while, digesting the news about Prince Varesh’s disappearance. However, the more he thought about it, the more something bothered him. Eventually, he turned toward Kanis with a puzzled expression.

"Friend Kanis, if King Yuan is so concerned about Prince Varesh’s whereabouts, why doesn’t he simply check his Soul Lamp?"

The question wasn’t misplaced. After all, a Soul Lamp was a far more reliable means of monitoring a cultivator’s condition than an ordinary tracking technique.

A Soul Lamp was created using a fragment of a cultivator’s soul essence, allowing it to maintain a mysterious connection with its owner. As long as the connection remained intact, the lamp could reveal whether its owner was alive or dead. More importantly, changes in its flame could provide indications of the owner’s condition, including whether they were injured or had fallen into mortal danger.

That alone made Soul Lamps invaluable to cultivation factions.

However, their usefulness extended far beyond monitoring life and death. With the appropriate methods, a Soul Lamp could also be used to track the whereabouts of its owner. Even after the owner’s death, the residual soul essence could preserve traces of what had happened, allowing skilled cultivators to investigate the circumstances surrounding their demise.

With sufficient resources and specialized techniques, it was even possible to identify the person responsible for a cultivator’s death in many cases.

Some Soul Lamps could also be used to transmit distress signals, allowing their owners to request assistance from their respective factions during emergencies.

Of course, a lot of conditions needed to be met for cultivators to make use of the distress signal. Plus, it cost a lot more than ordinary Soul Lamps so it was not meant for every core member of a faction.

Kalina, for example, did not have a way to send distress signals to her faction using the Soul Lamp.

In short, such capabilities came with their own limitations. Nevertheless, Soul Lamps remained among the most important means through which major cultivation factions maintained contact with their core members and protected their interests.

Every major faction in the Shinayin Empire possessed Soul Lamps belonging to its core members. They served as a form of assurance for both the factions and their cultivators, providing the former with a means to monitor their important personnel while giving the latter an additional layer of protection.

At the same time, Soul Lamps acted as a deterrent.

Anyone who dared to kill an important member of a major faction had to consider the possibility that their actions would eventually be exposed through the victim’s Soul Lamp. Even if the culprit managed to erase every trace of the battle, completely concealing the truth was another matter altogether.

This was precisely how King Runiye’s faction had eventually managed to investigate Kalina’s death and identify Aksai Everwood as her killer.

Aksai had done his best to clean up the battlefield and eliminate the traces that might expose him. His efforts had indeed delayed the investigation, but they hadn’t been enough to prevent the truth from emerging.

Rumaal knew this firsthand. After all, he and his wives had spent considerable time and resources tracking down the person responsible for Kalina’s death.

Given all this, it seemed strange that King Yuan hadn’t simply checked Prince Varesh’s Soul Lamp instead of launching such a form of blanket search.

When Kanis heard the question, he fell silent.

For several moments, the young sword cultivator continued flying without answering. His expression remained composed, but his eyes revealed that he was weighing his words carefully.

Rumaal noticed the change and grew even more curious.

Is there some complication involving Prince Varesh’s Soul Lamp?

Eventually, Kanis let out a quiet sigh.

"To be honest, Lord Rumaal, it’s not that we didn’t want to use Prince Varesh’s Soul Lamp. It’s simply that we couldn’t."

Rumaal stared at him in surprise.

"What do you mean?"

"We don’t have his Soul Lamp in our faction," Kanis explained. "So, apart from finding him through our own efforts, we don’t have any reliable way to determine his current condition."

Rumaal’s brows knitted together.

That explanation only made the situation stranger.

How could the Swordfall Realm not possess the Soul Lamp of someone as important as Prince Varesh? Even if Varesh had been sent to Orveth on a mission, surely King Yuan would have made arrangements to monitor his well-being apart from giving him plenty of trump cards.

Unless, of course, Varesh’s circumstances were far more complicated than Rumaal had imagined.

Kanis seemed to understand the question forming in Rumaal’s mind. Before the older cultivator could voice it, he continued speaking.

"Um.... Let’s just say that Prince Varesh doesn’t really belong to the Swordfall Realm alone."

He hesitated briefly, as though considering how much he should reveal.

Then he lowered his voice.

"He... he has deeper ties to the Eternal Sea."

Rumaal didn’t know that he would be shocked to hear so many revelations from Kanis during such a short time.

The Eternal Sea.

Those two words alone were enough to make him reconsider everything he had previously assumed about Prince Varesh.

The Swordfall Realm was already one of the eight major faction powers within the Shinayin Empire. For its most promising successor to possess connections extending into the Eternal Sea suggested that his background was considerably more complicated than that of an ordinary imperial cultivator.

Rumaal looked at Kanis, waiting for him to elaborate.

However, Kanis merely shook his head.

"I’m afraid that’s all I can tell you for now, Friend Rumaal. Some matters concerning Prince Varesh aren’t mine to discuss."

How could Kanis just say outrightly that a major power in the Eternal Sea only used the Swordfall Realm domain as a sort of nursery ground for Varesh and that when he became a true Nascent Soul, Varesh was supposed to return to his roots?

Saying these things to someone outside Swordfall King’s faction would obviously put him in a bad light.

Rumaal understood the unspoken warning and didn’t press further on Varesh’s mysterious background.

Nevertheless, his curiosity had only grown stronger.