Chapter 110.1: Magic Kingdom
Cheng Qisheng’s gaze immediately locked onto the two words [Floating Farmland].
She had already known that the various facilities and items in the Safe City Mall were probably based on technological knowledge from different worlds.
But this was the first time she had ever seen a “technology provider.”
Before this, Cheng Qisheng had always assumed that the Floating Farmland belonged to the technological side. Who would have thought that it actually came from the magical side?
Cheng Qisheng was filled with anticipation.
If the Floating Farmland had been brought by the Kingdom of Lilith, did that mean the Kingdom of Lilith possessed the ability to manufacture Floating Farmland?
First, she would check whether they had any.
Well, no.
Strictly speaking, they used to have the ability.
The reason was that manufacturing Floating Farmland required a tremendous amount of magic power, and nowadays, there was simply no one in the Kingdom of Lilith who possessed that much magic power.
This was quite strange.
For the people of Green Billow Star, the Soul Sea had only arrived thirty years ago.
But for the Kingdom of Lilith, they had already lived on Green Billow Star for five hundred years.
Yes, the flow of time within that space-time rift was different from that of the outside world.
Cheng Qisheng: This, I’m familiar with.
For Green Billow Star, only five years had passed since the Soul Sea arrived. But for the Kingdom of Lilith, they had genuinely spent five hundred years living inside that space-time rift.
Five hundred years was enough to change a great many things.
Did they still remember what City Lord Duxi had said—that ability users needed an environment in which to grow?
Magic was essentially another form of evolution, so naturally, it also required the right environment.
The Kingdom of Lilith had originally been a magical civilization. Although it had a large population of ordinary people, its kingdom’s magic apprentices could live for 150 years, while Grand Magi had a lifespan of at least a thousand years.
But after the entire kingdom was inexplicably swept into that space-time rift, the magical power of all the mages gradually began to decline.
A Grand Magus of the kingdom who, under normal circumstances, would not have begun to age until the age of eight hundred suddenly began to grow old at an astonishing rate.
At the time, the Kingdom of Lilith had already realized that if things continued this way, the kingdom would eventually devolve into a nation of ordinary people with no magic at all.
At that time, the space-time rift leading to the outside world was still open. The kingdom organized many mages to venture outside and explore, eventually reaching the conclusion that “the outside world is extremely dangerous. The magic power is chaotic and mixed with large amounts of unstable energy. Anyone who comes into contact with it will be torn to pieces.”
That conclusion had been correct at the time. Because of the influence of the space-time rift, the entire area outside was filled with space-time turbulence, making it genuinely unsuitable for anyone to venture out.
And so, with the combined efforts of the entire Kingdom of Lilith, they took advantage of the fact that the mages still possessed their magic power and created a “key,” sealing the “door” leading to the outside world.
At the same time, they built more Floating Farmlands and a large number of everyday items based on magical technology.
The people of Lilith discovered that it wasn’t only the mages whose magic power was fading. The magical power within many magical products would also rapidly dissipate over time.
However, objects created by alchemists, as well as certain magical constructs with limited intelligence, could be preserved for a very long time.
Tudou was a magical construct created under these circumstances.
They had no gender. Grand Magi created them using soil and large quantities of alchemical materials stored by the Kingdom of Lilith.
The Tudou had originally been created to perform labor for the people of Lilith.
In magical worlds, there were actually quite a lot of magical constructs of this kind. They could handle all sorts of dirty and exhausting work, such as carrying heavy objects, working the fields, mining ore, and operating enormous magical machinery.
However, ordinary magical constructs required large amounts of magic power, and they too would gradually lose their magic power over time.
Thus, after pouring countless hours of effort into his research, the Grand Magus developed the Tudou—a type of magical construct that moved slowly but required no magic power to operate. All it needed was to eat dirt.
Taking into consideration that the people of Lilith would eventually lose their magic power and become incapable of protecting themselves, the Grand Magus conducted numerous studies and gave the Tudou sturdy bodies and tough skin, intending to equip them with combat capabilities as well.
Although they moved slowly, ordinary weapons could not hurt them. So when faced with an enemy, even if the Tudou couldn’t inflict much damage, they could at least protect the people of Lilith while they retreated.
—That was what the Grand Magus had envisioned when designing them.
But while copying magical constructs was simple, creating a magical construct was extremely, extremely, extremely difficult.
It required mastery of a vast array of fields, including enchanting, alchemy, runes, soul studies, puppetry, elemental studies, and many, many others.
She was, after all, merely a Grand Magus from a small kingdom. Normally, creating magical creatures was something only Saint Magi could accomplish.
So although the Grand Magus had exhausted everything she had learned throughout her life and painstakingly managed to create the Tudou, they had an innate defect.
They could indeed fight.
But during combat, the Tudou would lose consciousness. They would cease functioning as magical constructs and become more like soulless magical objects, unable to distinguish friend from foe. They would attack whoever they saw and use whatever weapons they could find.
Simply put, it was an “if I die, you die, everyone dies” kind of attack.
The situation nearly spiraled out of control. The Grand Magus hurriedly added another feature to the Tudou’s physical structure: a ring-shaped crystal beneath their chins to strengthen their enchantments.
But after their enchantments were strengthened, the Tudou lost their ability to fight.
At this point, the Grand Magus didn’t dare make any more modifications. She was afraid that the more she changed, the harder they would be to fix. At least the Tudou could function properly in their current state, couldn’t they?
And so, they ultimately became this:
—When the crystal is in place, the Tudou remain in their normal state. They diligently perform their work and can understand simple commands.
—Once the crystal is removed, the Tudou immediately enter a state of indiscriminate attack.
What had originally been envisioned as “replacements for the people of Lilith on the battlefield” had ultimately become “a means for the kingdom to take its enemies down with it when faced with an extreme national crisis.”
The original vision had been beautiful.
After the first generation of mages gradually passed away, their descendants slowly lost their magic power as well. With each passing generation, only the occasional supreme genius was capable of wielding even a small amount of magic.
The Kingdom of Lilith gradually returned to an ordinary life. Magic-related textbooks were removed from the curriculum, and after several hundred years, many ordinary civilians didn’t even know that their ancestors had come from a magical world, much less that another world existed beyond their borders.
With the Floating Farmlands left behind by their ancestors, the Kingdom of Lilith was indeed able to sustain itself and live in peace and prosperity.
That was until, twenty-five years ago, the flow of time within the space-time rift suddenly returned to normal. Around the same time, the sealed “door” also began to grow unstable.
That was when Kansidang entered.
At the time, he was being pursued by a sea monster and fleeing for his life. By sheer coincidence, he happened to be traveling with his ship when the “door” became unstable, allowing him to barge into this sealed-off domain.
Kansidang’s ship was already on the verge of falling apart at the time and nearly sank into the sea. It was the people of Lilith who rescued them.
By then, the Kingdom of Lilith had already been isolated from the outside world for five hundred years. Their historical records explicitly described how dangerous the outside world supposedly was. These people were the first outsiders to set foot in Lilith’s territory in five hundred years, so the kingdom wanted to learn about the current state of the outside world and summoned them to the royal palace for questioning.
In theory, there was nothing wrong with this decision.
After all, Kansidang’s group consisted of only a little over twenty people, while the Kingdom of Lilith had grown to a population of tens of millions over the generations.
By any reasonable measure, Kansidang and his people should have been the ones who needed to worry.
But the Kingdom of Lilith’s mistake was that they trusted the information left behind by their ancestors too much. And because they had sufficient resources, they had not sent anyone outside to explore for hundreds of years.
Naturally, they had no idea that Green Billow Star was full of all sorts of strange things.
“There were no sea monsters in the domain where we lived, nor could we fish anything strange out of the water. So when my father began behaving differently back then, no one realized that he had been replaced.”
In the video, the young girl calmly recounted this unbearably painful chapter in the history of the Kingdom of Lilith.
“At the time, I was only two years old, so I don’t really remember what happened. But my mother once told me that her husband—my father, the king of the Kingdom of Lilith—was no longer himself after a certain ball.”
The Kingdom of Lilith loved holding balls. Whether royalty or commoners, people would hold one every so often, gathering friends and family together to dance, celebrate, and rejoice over a bountiful harvest.
Kansidang and his companions quickly integrated into the kingdom by explaining the situation in the outside world and expressing their desire to establish friendly relations with the Kingdom of Lilith.
Many people in Lilith knew about them at the time. They also knew that Kansidang and his companions had decided not to return to the outside world, but to remain here and become people of Lilith.
Naturally, they were invited to that royal ball as well.
It was from that day onward that the king grew increasingly “close” to Kansidang. He gradually became consumed by pleasure and indulgence, living an increasingly extravagant and hedonistic life.
The change wasn’t sudden. It happened little by little.
He began interfering in state affairs and started showing wariness toward his eldest daughter.
According to the longstanding traditions of the Lilith royal family, the eldest child could smoothly inherit the throne as long as they were not excessively incompetent.
The king had always been satisfied with his eldest daughter before this. But at some point, he began cutting off the people who supported her and openly expressing his dissatisfaction with those who followed her.
At the same time, he began treating the Third Prince with newfound favor.
The eldest princess had been raised as the heir from childhood, only to find herself suppressed by her father. Meanwhile, the Second Prince should have been next in line if his sister lost her right to inherit, yet he too was neglected by their father. And then there was the ambitious Third Prince.
The three siblings were driven into a bitter struggle under the “king’s” manipulation, and the Kingdom of Lilith gradually descended into a political power struggle.
Similar incidents had naturally occurred in the Kingdom of Lilith over the course of several centuries. Precisely because of this, although the people of Lilith were filled with anxiety at the time, everyone simply assumed that this was an internal struggle within the royal family.
But gradually, things began to change.
“The ‘king’ used this political struggle as an excuse to purge a large number of powerful old officials, killing many loyal and capable ministers. He also announced that the Kingdom of Lilith would wage war on the outside world, sending many people out and bringing back a large number of people from Green Billow Star.
—Looking back afterward, those people were probably all Kansidang’s men.
By then, there were already growing voices of protest against the Kingdom of Lilith. If history had followed its natural course, the next step should have been widespread dissatisfaction with the king’s tyranny, with the people supporting one of the princesses or princes to ascend the throne.
And, in fact, things did develop more or less that way.
The king announced that on [XX date], he would abdicate before the entire nation and hand his throne over to the heir he had chosen.
Naturally, this was a momentous occasion for the Kingdom of Lilith. People rushed to the “viewing platforms”—that is, the various Floating Farmlands officially designated for the event.
And then came explosion after explosion.
The explosions in Kansidang’s domain were stopped in time. Only one Floating Farmland fell, and even that one was caught by the Blue Sea people before it could sink into the sea.
But back then, no one in the Lilith domain was able to stop the series of massive explosions.
Who could have imagined that the “king” intended to destroy the entire Kingdom of Lilith?
Countless Floating Farmlands, along with the people of Lilith upon them, plunged into the sea.
The Kingdom of Lilith, with a population of more than ten million, was wiped out in a single day.
The entrance to the domain was opened, and countless pirates poured in. Even the people of Lilith who, for various reasons, had not gone to watch the ceremony were hunted down and killed by pirates who climbed onto the Floating Farmlands one after another.
Cheng Qisheng flipped through the files, then glanced at the video again.
This description of the king being replaced sounded a lot like the Replica Mask, didn’t it?
She then had Aether pull up the interrogation records of Kansidang’s confidants.
Sure enough, this incident was mentioned there as well.
From Kansidang’s perspective, he had stumbled into a Shangri-La, and then decided that he wanted to make it his own.
At first, Kansidang had planned to put on the Replica Mask himself and directly take control of all of Lilith by assuming the identity of the kingdom’s king.
But he soon discovered Lilith’s magical history.
This had once been a magical kingdom. It possessed all sorts of tools capable of using magic to detect blood relations, and every now and then, one or two people would still appear who could wield magic.
Kansidang didn’t dare bet that he would never be exposed.
Moreover, the people of Lilith had no desire to leave this domain, nor did they have any tradition of enslaving people. If the “king” suddenly said, “Let’s ensl*ve our subjects,” the ministers of Lilith would be the first ones to object.
Kansidang didn’t believe he could keep up the disguise for the rest of his life. He still wanted to conquer all of Green Billow Star, after all.
So he sent one of his subordinates to put on the Replica Mask and impersonate the king.
Once they had someone with the king’s identity, doing things became much easier.
For example, they could simply throw the real king’s corpse into the sea.
By the later stages of the plan, Kansidang actually hadn’t intended to kill all the people of Lilith. He wanted to keep some of them as sl*ves.
And he wanted all five hundred Floating Farmlands as well.
But around this time, Kansidang and the “king” came into conflict.
After playing the king for so long, the “king” had gradually grown fond of being surrounded by people and enjoying the highest status wherever he went.
The “king” suddenly realized that if he killed Kansidang and the other pirates, no one would know that he was an impostor.
Kansidang wasn’t content with living only within this domain, but the “king” was.
After all, which would you choose: remaining a pirate’s subordinate, or becoming the king of a kingdom with tens of millions of subjects and no shortage of food or supplies?
It wasn’t exactly a difficult choice.
The two sides came into conflict, but the subordinate realized the situation far too late. By then, most of the people in the royal palace had already been replaced by Kansidang’s men. After the confrontation, the subordinate was killed.
Kansidang had another subordinate put on the mask and continue impersonating the king. To prevent another unexpected incident, Kansidang decided to go all the way and kill every single person of Lilith.
After all, they had once been a magical kingdom.
What if?
What if someone with magical abilities emerged and overthrew him?
For the sake of preventing that possibility, Kansidang was willing to sacrifice more than five hundred Floating Farmlands.
And the subordinate who had newly put on the mask also disappeared amid the chaos. Some said he had died. Others said Kansidang had killed him after he had served his purpose. Still others believed that he had used the Replica Mask to disguise himself as someone else and slipped away amid the confusion.
—Cheng Qisheng believed the last possibility was the most likely.
It was possible that after escaping with the mask, the pirate was later killed by other pirates outside.
Otherwise, how else would the Replica Mask have ended up in the Green Skull Pirate Group?
In any case, the territory Kansidang now occupied belonged to Lilith. The domain key belonged to Lilith. The farmlands belonged to Lilith. Even the crystal balls they used for communication were alchemical creations of Lilith. And those indiscriminately attacking Tudou—all of them belonged to Lilith.
It could be said that Kansidang had built his position as the Pirate Emperor of Green Billow Star by standing upon the blood and flesh of the Kingdom of Lilith.
Amid the chaos that day, the people of Lilith smashed the enchanted crystals, causing the Tudou to enter their indiscriminate attack mode. This gave some of them an opportunity to escape.
Because the only children who were too young to participate in the ceremony that day were the kindergarten-aged ones, most of the people of Lilith who managed to escape were children.
The small number of surviving adults struggled to survive alongside the children on Green Billow Star and eventually rebuilt the Kingdom of Lilith, pledging their allegiance to the only surviving member of the royal bloodline—the little princess who had been two years old at the time and was now twenty-two.
The Kingdom of Lilith was, as its name suggested, founded by a woman named Lilith.
To show their respect for Her Majesty Lilith, the founding monarch, every emperor of the Kingdom of Lilith would change their name to Lilith upon ascending the throne.
And this young woman was the current Queen of Lilith.
“More than ten million people, along with more than five hundred Floating Farmlands, sank forever into the sea just like that. This is a blood feud. Every surviving person of Lilith has family members who died at their hands.”
“But we’re too weak. So although we hate Kansidang, we never planned to seek revenge or anything like that. We only wanted to keep the people we had left alive. But Kansidang wouldn’t leave us alone. He kept sending pirates to hunt us down and search everywhere for traces of the remaining people of Lilith. A few months ago, a group of pirates found us and killed some of our people. The rest of us were separated in a storm.”
“We had already retreated again and again, but Kansidang was determined to wipe us out completely. So I brought some people and infiltrated the conference, intending to assassinate him.”
