Chapter 1493: Primal-Level Curse

Phei’s golden-amethyst eyes narrowed.

Now imagine leaving those same descendants free to awaken. The prospect alone was terrifying enough, even before one considered what would happen when their Original Progenitors returned.

Without the curse, those generations would have possessed centuries to awaken their true Bloodlines, cultivate and refine the powers bestowed by their lineage. Those Bloodlines stood among the most exalted in existence, some beyond the ordinary ranks altogether.

With their ancestral arts, abundant resources and an unhindered path of cultivation, how far might they have ascended already?

Supreme Immortal Gods did not seem an absurd possibility.

He could imagine such descendants awaiting their Progenitors with might sufficient to render their present condition upon Earth pitiful by comparison. Then the Destined Day would arrive, and its thousandfold blessing would descend upon powers already tempered through centuries of cultivation.

An entire gathering of Supreme Immortal Gods receiving that blessing of the awakening of their progenitors might give rise to beings approaching Sovereign Concepts Immortals Realm.

Their Original Progenitors would return beside them, surrounded by descendants whose strength had flourished throughout their absence. Even the greatest powers in existence would have cause to hesitate before provoking such a powerful family.

Should some descendants have surpassed the Supreme Immortal God Realm before receiving the blessing, Phei could scarcely imagine what would follow.

Perhaps that was what their enemies had feared.

Suppressing the descendants until the appointed day would rob them of the very centuries in which they might have become such existences. Their Progenitors could return, the curse could lift, and the families would finally awaken the powers that had slumbered within them since birth.

All those lost years, however, would remain beyond recovery.

That was the cruelty he now understood. Their reincarnation could not be stopped, and their awakening would increase their descendants’ power a thousandfold.

The curse ensured, though, that when the inevitable finally came, those descendants would merely regain the right to awaken. They would have spent the preceding centuries deprived of the might they should have been refining.

Phei almost laughed at the cruelty of it.

Of course their enemies would want to prevent that. If they could not stop the appointed day, they could at least ruin everything the descendants might accomplish before it.

Whoever devised that punishment might have preserved seventeen lineages while laying waste to the futures they should have possessed. There would be children, heirs and descendants enough to welcome their ancestors, but far fewer powers capable of standing beside them.

That was his suspicion, at least.

Too much of the exile remained unknown for him to mistake it for the truth.

Phei needed only to consider himself. His Bloodline stood on the same rank as theirs and he had reached Sky Sovereign within a few weeks of beginning cultivation and following the Primordial Lotus’s anointing, had already entered the Half Divine Stage.

Granted, his System, Primordial Soul, extraordinary Bloodlines and numerous abilities made him an anomaly.

A rather magnificent one, if he did say so himself.

But these were also direct descendants of Original Progenitors with the same Bloodline Rank as them. If he could ascend so far within months, centuries might have carried them to heights their present lives scarcely allowed them to glimpse.

What would centuries have made of them if they had been allowed to awaken freely?

That thought returned him to another peculiarity of the Legacy Families: what happened when he killed one of them!

It explained so much about why a Legacy descendant killed by his own hands could return as a Supreme Immortal.

In some way, he was lifting the suppression placed upon them, releasing power that the curse had kept bound.

Now he wondered whether his involvement disturbed the curse.

Something about his existence, his power might interfere with the malediction bound to their Souls. Death beneath his hand could release Bloodline power sealed since birth, allowing a descendant to return with strength far beyond what they had possessed in life.

He could hardly claim to understand the laws behind it. The full workings of the curse remained beyond him, as did the reason his own involvement should affect it so strangely. Still, a broken or weakened seal offered an explanation he had never possessed before, and Cassiopeia gave him cause to examine it more closely.

Phei turned towards her.

Her fingers remained intertwined with his as she watched the horizon, where a faint amber glow lingered beneath the deepening violet.

She had stood in the Endless Forest when the Primordial Lotus descended, close enough to Phei that torrents of World Essence and the other sacred energies of his awakening had engulfed her. Their crushing abundance had poured through her and pressed into her Soul.

Her Soul had begun stirring afterwards. She could feel something buried deep within her struggling towards wakefulness, though she possessed neither the knowledge nor the experience to understand it.

The Lotus’s blessing might have weakened the curse, or those sacred torrents might have penetrated deeply enough to disturb its hold. Phei could not separate their effects from everything else that had unfolded around his awakening.

What he could see was that Cassiopeia’s awakening had begun long before the Destined Day.

His thumb moved over the back of her hand.

The World Essence, the Primordial Lotus and the other sacred energies of his awakening had crashed into her at such close range; their overwhelming descent had set the curse wavering, if it had not already broken portions of its hold, and the chains suppressing her Bloodline had begun to snap.

The only downside was that it sometimes hurt, and that was what concerned Phei. Fortunately, he could ease the pain with his Healing Essence.

Sacred Healing Essence allowed him to soothe her and tend to the damage whenever necessary. Knowing he could help made the changes easier to endure, though another Genesis ability had revealed what resisted the awakening within her.

Phei remembered when he’d guided Life Flame towards her Soul. But then the System had also revealed something else, something that confirmed the restraint upon the Legacy Families was indeed a curse.

He had discovered it while placing Life Flame upon Cassiopeia’s Soul:

[Ding! Life Flame successfully pressed onto Slave Cassiopeia’s Soul!]

[Ding! A Primal-level Curse is attached to Cassiopeia’s Soul!]

Phei had intended to heal whatever might need healing and grant her protection against future curses, corruption and other afflictions. Instead, the sacred flame had revealed a curse already fastened to her Soul, one she had carried before he ever thought to place his fire there.

Phei had stared at those words before looking deeper through his Genesis Eyes.

The curse lay entwined about her dormant Bloodline power, its dark strands sunk into the depths of her Soul, binding what should have been free to awaken.

His gaze followed the ancient affliction through her Soul, discerning how deeply it held her.

Cassiopeia had carried it from birth without ever being able to perceive it.

The distant history of the exile had become painfully intimate.

Whatever had occurred in the World of Power, whatever ancient quarrel had driven those families to Earth, its punishment remained fastened to Cassiopeia’s Soul. His expression darkened as he examined the dark strands.

What kind of bastard did that to an entire bloodline?

He found it in Sierra as well, and in Maddie, Yuki, Jade and Amber. Nastya carried it; so did Gianna. The same Primal-level Curse lay within the Souls of the Legacy princesses, including those who had never displayed any sign of extraordinary power.

He had only intended to protect his women against curses, corruption, poisons and Soul damage, allowing the sacred fire to heal whatever hidden afflictions they might already possess.

Instead, placing Life Flames upon them had revealed that they all bore the same ancient malediction. It clung within them like a leech, restraining their Bloodlines while their families awaited the day it would release them.

Phei had nearly lost his temper.

These were the women he loved, the princesses who laughed, argued and teased him, whose days held concerns far removed from ancient Progenitors. They had chosen no part in that old conflict. Yet its punishment had accompanied them from birth and sunk into their very Souls, whether they knew of it or not.

Each time, the same ancient malediction awaited him, clinging to their Souls like a leech