Chapter 1383 - 645: Assassination Divine Position, Ice Glacier Kiss

"The Emperor of the North Sea Empire, who by his own strength re-forged the Bayfolk Five States into the North Sea Empire, and condensed the supreme Crown—Byron Lancaster?!"

"This..."

In truth, he had already steeled his heart: every single Resentful Coin had, to some extent, altered the continental balance and wrought far‑reaching consequences. If one was not a great figure, one simply did not deserve to be killed by them.

So even if this time the mission target was the current Sultan of the Star Moon Empire (roughly equivalent to a King), that Muhammad II who in 1453 completely reclaimed the Holy City, bearing the Kingly Title "Lord of Two Lands and Two Seas".

The Mountain Elder would still remain unflinching.

Yet in this instant, it was as if the ones struck numb were not those Death Soldiers, but himself; his whole being went numb.

"How could the target be him? Who in the end is the employer?"

Every assassin organization must first be an intelligence organization; their information must flow with utmost freedom.

The Assassin Sect, which had forged its fearsome renown over dozens of generations, understood better than anyone how each scrap of legend surrounding the various Legendary figures on the Silver Continent had come to be.

The battle record of this assassination target was simply too terrifying.

As a Pirate he had nearly slain the Puppet King, and by that act crowned himself the Pirate King, the Uncrowned King.

Thereafter he regained the throne of Hightins, unified the Five Bay States, and withstood two colonial wars launched by the Abaddon Secret Teachings and the Six Old Gods’ Churches...

He dealt at one stroke with "Calamities" of Sixth Order rank—Touch of the Kraken and Noah’s Ark—and was the first to completely open up the Second Circulation Belt...

The Protestant Doctrine had even already taken the lead in recognizing him as the Messiah, a Follower of the Holy Spirit.

The Fifth Order High Sequence combatants—or those of equivalent might—who had perished by his hand, in the cases that could be verified, already neared double digits.

The intelligence division of the Assassin Sect had once done a tally: the number of Humans he had slain in the mere few years since his debut was likely far greater than the total number their own Assassin Sect had assassinated over dozens of generations.

This Emperor was one who, through war after war, had trod upon countless corpses to seize the second Crown of the Silver Continent.

"Most crucial of all, he is young!

A great river often overflows and changes its course; a village stands thirty years on the river’s eastern bank, thirty years on the western. Youth signifies Infinite possibility.

All the more so for such a being, who has already revealed his sharp edge and soared straight into the heavens.

No one knows what Mandate of Heaven he has unknowingly inherited from the collective subconscious of Humankind. To say ’whoever bars his path shall die’ may be exaggerated, yet each such one is supremely hard to kill."

The Mountain Elder seemed to recall some not‑so‑beautiful memory.

"In the trade of assassins and killers, we have encountered far too many of these figures favored by Fate. There are Prophets who even mockingly call them: protagonists of the era.

The whole family dies and only he survives; a blade pierces the heart, yet his heart grows on the right side; driven by a great swarm of pursuers he leaps off a cliff and not only does he not die, he gains secret forbidden knowledge or potent Magic Potions, and his strength leaps forward...

Examples of this sort appear again and again in the failure‑case summary reports of the Assassin Sect.

Many bizarre happenings are fantasy tales to others, but to us assassins they are horrifying realities—each one a lethal mishap.

To assassinate such an existence is far more difficult than to kill the already aged and frail "Lord of Two Lands and Two Seas", Muhammad II."

Only after quite some time did the Mountain Elder recover his calm; his gaze grew sharper:

"Yet no target whatsoever may bar the sleeve sword of the Assassin Sect!

The ritual which began seven hundred years ago cannot be permitted to break upon this final step.

My own Power may be limited, but the Power of the ’Mountain Elder’ is Infinite."

He slapped the Storage Miracle Object at his waist and drew forth a Cursed Object—The World’s First Glass Mirror.

Upon the mist‑veiled glass, the reflection revealed another garden Secret Realm of peerless Beauty, though faintly tainted by a smear of murky blood‑shadow.

This was in truth a world existing within the mirror. Judging from its realism, it was scarcely inferior to Byron’s Flower Mountain Celestial Kingdom.

In the finer details, however, many discrepancies from reality remained.

Most peculiar of all was that amid the mountain‑ringed landscape within the mirror, there now stood thirty‑four tombs piled of giant stones.

Set into the stone pillars before each tomb was a Skull Mask identical to the one upon his own face, emblem of the Mountain Elder’s identity.

Most were marred by scars, some even stained with dried blood, proof that every one of them had fallen in the course of assassination, not died in bed of old age.

The thirty‑fifth Mountain Elder did not look to his ancestors, but raised his gaze to the blood‑red Sun of that small world.

Faintly one could see within it a sleeve sword whose shape ceaselessly shifted, from which thirty‑five chains extended forth to bind upon the bodies of all thirty‑five Mountain Elders.

Upon each chain there exuded a thick reek of slaughter and blood.

If Byron were present, he would discover that this sleeve sword, like the Divine Position of the craftsman which, after losing its master, had manifested as a Forging Hammer, and like the Divine Position of Disease which had manifested as a red‑cap white‑stem poisonous mushroom, likewise radiated a similar aura.

This thing was actually a Demigod’s Divine Position, preserved who knew for how many ages!

The Mountain Elder gazed upon this Divine Position; confidence returned to his features:

"The Assassin Sect may know temporary defeat—but why is it that the ones who ultimately attain Victory are ever we?

It is precisely because if I cannot prevail, then there is my father; if my father cannot prevail, then there is my grandfather; if my grandfather cannot prevail, then there is the First Mountain Elder!

No object is eternally true; no method is bound by shackles.

That which seems an invincible elephant may yet be slain by a small venomous serpent’s bite.