Chapter 1399: The Progenitors’ Reincarnation Begins!

For every stare in the greater hall, every whisper that stopped when he walked nearby, every old bastard who had suddenly rediscovered the courage to question him because for once Danton had returned without victory, all of it had been accumulating somewhere deep beneath his ribs.

He had spent the last weeks being treated as the future of everything they were building, praised when plans succeeded and held above everyone else because of the Progenitor he was.

Apparently expectation was very affectionate right up until the day it turned around and started biting.

Danton wanted to walk back into that hall, release his cultivation aura and ask every person who had judged him to demonstrate exactly how much better they would have performed against an Immortal God!

Instead he smiled.

"Would you prefer I call it the end?" he asked softly. "Because those are the choices. We call Anarctica a disaster we can recover from, or we accept that centuries of preparation died there and spend the rest of our lives explaining why this generation became the one that finally ruined everything our ancestors preserved."

The Lord’s expression changed, which told Danton he had struck exactly where intended.

"The Coffer has to be recovered," Danton continued. "There is no argument there. Without it, much of what we intended becomes far more difficult, but the treasure itself is not our most immediate problem. The truly dangerous part begins when the other Legacy Families discover we no longer possess the Coffer."

The Lord’s avatar’s face darkened.

Danton began pacing through the same hall the Lord had paced moments earlier, stealing the rhythm of the room almost without anyone noticing. "They do not know is that the Coffer is gone."

His eyes sharpened.

"That ignorance is currently worth more than half the treasure we lost."

The Lord frowned, and Danton turned toward him. "As long as the families believe we still possess the Coffer, they will act as though we still possess what holds this treasures; their very heirlooms, their sealed resources, ancient weapons and cultivation treasures; all of it remains something we could theoretically hold over them. They cannot do anything recklessly because they do not know what response we might pull from the vault."

Danton’s smile slowly died:

"But the moment they discover we lost it, that threat and advantage disappears."

He did not need dramatic pauses or clipped little declarations.

The danger was large enough without them.

"The World Transcendents are gone. Whatever prowess advantage we expected them to provide to us should things get out of had has vanished with them too. Our direct strength is now far closer to the other families than it was ever supposed to become during this stage of the plan, and most of the resources we intended to use to create new powerhouses were inside the Coffer as well. If the Romanos, Montgomerys, Castellanos, Moreaus, Kapoors, Howards, Sinclairs and Abram-Mansons discover we secretly took their treasures and then somehow managed to lose the entire vault, they will realize two things at once: we no longer possess their property, and we no longer possess enough overwhelming strength to frighten them into backing off."

The Lord already understood where that road ended.

Danton decided to decorate it anyway.

"The Romanos will demand blood immediately because subtlety has never been their favorite hobby. The Montgomerys will demand compensation first, then blood once they realize our answer is probably going to be embarrassing. The Castellanos will request negotiations while quietly checking whether three assassins can fit through the western barrier.

"The Moreaus will probably send flowers before trying to kill us because apparently civilization must survive even attempted extermination."

Despite himself, the Lord’s mouth twitched. ℓ.

Danton pointed at him. "See? Even you know that’s exactly what they’d do."

The twitch vanished. ℯ𝐥.

Danton almost enjoyed himself.

"The others will make their own calculations, but eventually they all arrive at the same conclusion. If the Coffer is gone, there is no longer anything stopping them from taking revenge directly."

The Lord slowly turned away.

Danton knew better than to push immediately. He allowed the image to live inside the Lord’s head, 13+ plus furious Legacy Families learning that centuries of wealth had vanished because the Maxtons helped the Heavenchilds and stole something they swore to protect.

They did not even need to know the thieves had lost the Coffer themselves, in fact that revelation would only make the escalation into a full-out war!

There were nightmares with better endings.

"We can preserve the lie for a while," Danton continued after several moments. "Days, perhaps longer. Everyone is too cautious to move immediately because none of them understands what happened there. But eventually somebody will know what really happened and then somebody will immediately test our weakness. And by the time they do, we need something more terrifying than pretending a vault we lost is still sitting safely in our hands."

The Lord’s thoughts were already moving beyond the other families.

The Lins existed too—

—and Phei.

’That name has become increasingly unpleasant.’

The Young Dragon had remained strangely quiet since Anactica, and silence from Phei was becoming difficult to interpret as peace. The last time the Heavenchilds allowed him even a short stretch of time to breathe, the bastard somehow returned with another impossible power, another monstrous advancement and made their very Progenitor ruin his pants in public!

Several days had already passed.

For all the Lord knew, Phei had spent those days accidentally discovering the secret to cultivating through breakfast.

At this point, dismissing the possibility felt irresponsible.

Their situation was rotting from several directions simultaneously. The other Legacy Families could become enemies the moment they learned the truth. The Lins remained another complication, Phei continued existing, which increasingly qualified as a strategic problem by itself and an Immortal God might now stand somewhere behind him, and the Heavenchilds had lost the very assets meant to make the coming Destined Day their absolute advantage.

The Lord finally turned back toward Danton.

He had questions.

Too many.

Most no longer changed what needed to happen next.

"What do we do?"

Danton felt the smile trying to break across his face.

He barely contained it.

Those four words were the true victory of the entire conversation.

The Lord was no longer asking why Danton failed.

He was no longer demanding explanations.

He was asking Danton what came next.

The direction of power inside the room had shifted so cleanly that Danton could almost taste it.

He turned his head slightly and allowed himself just enough time to hide the satisfaction before facing the Lord again with the expression of a man reluctantly offering the only reasonable path forward.

"There is no reason to wait anymore," Danton said. "We accelerate the plan."

The Lord’s brows drew together.

Danton stepped toward the center of the hall. "The other families still believe we can bring their Progenitors back before the Destined Day, exactly as we promised."

"We can!"

"Then we use that." Something sharpened inside Danton’s eyes. "That promise is now worth more than the entire Coffer."

The Lord understood before Danton finished explaining.

"We begin awakening the Progenitors early. The moment the first two return, everything changes. Even if the other families discover we stole the Coffer, every family still waiting for us to help them awaken their own Progenitor will face a very simple choice:

"They can attack us and gamble away the only path they currently possess to awaken the Progenitor of not only their family and superior bloodline but of their race!— or they can swallow their rage, remain cooperative and receive something infinitely more valuable than whatever treasures they lost."

The Lord’s expression deepened.

Danton smiled faintly.

"We both know which option they take."

Of course they did.

A treasure, even an ancient one but it could eventually be replaced. Materials could be found again, weapons could be forged again and lost wealth could return after enough centuries.

A Progenitor could change the destiny of an entire family overnight.

The Progenitors returning would change far more than the strength of the Legacy Families. They had lived in an age whose knowledge had been buried beneath millions of years, and every memory they recovered threatened to drag pieces of that forgotten world back with them. Things the modern era had lost, feared or never even knew existed could begin appearing again simply because their original masters were alive to remember them.

The return of the Progenitors would mean far, far far more than simply adding powerful cultivators to their side!

With Danton’s brothers reunited, replacing the Coffer’s treasure and wealth would become a matter of time.

The balance became even uglier once names entered it.

Romanos. Montgomery. Moreau. Kapoor. Howard. Sinclair<anno data-annotation-id="481304d6-1942-21eb-2889-a53f88f108e2" data-title=".">.¹</anno>

Combined with Maxton and Heavenchild, the return of their promised Progenitors would transform a fragile alliance of greedy families into something the rest of the existence could scarcely oppose. If those Progenitors awakened before the Destined Day while the rest of rival families like the Parks, Whitmores, Ashfords, The Roth-Fairchild, Tanaka remained dormant, the advantage would become obscene.

And there was Bret from the Castellano and Anderson from the Price family, Zack from Preston family; which meant they’d join Danton and Marcus and of course they counted Kyle as part of that force! Although the Castellanos, the Abrams-Manson, the Prestons and the Price might not need the two families to awaken their Progenitors by sacrificing anyone since they all had male last generations name; Brett, Kyle, Zack and Anderson, these same boys are Progenitors part of the Danton-Marcus cohort which means they’d side with them if their families wanted it or not!

Of course neither knows Kyle is already owned by Phei.

The Lord’s wings brightened slightly as hope finally began creeping back into the avatar.

Danton saw it and immediately tightened the hook: "There is one change we should do though!"

The Lord looked toward him.

Danton folded his hands behind his back. "The preparations we already completed are enough to awaken the Souls themselves. What we’re missing are only several treasures required to strengthen the awakening."

The Lord’s expression hardened. "Treasures that were inside the Coffer."

"Some were." Danton smiled. "But the ones we need now are not unique."