Redemption of a Born Demon

Chapter 463: Chapter 310: The Oceanic Vortex Anomaly Reveals a Startling Secret (Middle)

A fair, jade-like hand pressed lightly, and the person within the coffin sat up.

His skin was as flawless as jade, and he was strikingly handsome. He had a neat mustache on his upper lip, and his black hair was tied up in a style reminiscent of a Daoist or an Alchemist. While his appearance gave no clue to his age, the depths of his dark, tranquil eyes held a weariness that spoke of countless years.

He wore a Western-style suit from the Republican era, giving him a strange, blended aura of antiquity, youth, and retro fashion.

This man was the true "Alchemist"—the ancient being who first discovered Penglai Immortal Mountain, one of the Sleepers who spent long years in slumber.

The one Yi Beidou had killed on Penglai Immortal Mountain was merely this man’s descendant and Daoist Child, who had walked the world in his name as the Alchemist.

To distinguish between the two, the Pioneer Group had another codename for this man—a name that had once been legendary among many hidden existences in ancient times.

East King.

"I wonder what year it is..."

The East King sat up in the stone coffin and looked up at the cavern ceiling, hundreds of meters high. A faint glimmer of light could be seen pouring down from above, enveloping the coffin.

That was the exit to this secret place.

This secret place was also an ancient ruin, buried a thousand meters underground, nearly impossible for the Mortal World to detect.

SWOOSH!!

With a light tap of his foot, the East King shot out like an arrow. He leaped dozens of meters in an instant, landing atop the head of a massive nearby statue.

Then, with another light step, he launched himself toward a higher cliff face. In just two flashes, his figure vanished into the narrow, light-emitting crevice of the exit.

「Sometime later, in the mountains outside Tokyo, Japan.」

The East King’s figure flickered into view, emerging from a cliffside cave. He took a moment to get his bearings by sensing the surrounding auras, then headed toward the urban center.

Soon, the East King neared the Tokyo City District.

Standing on the edge of the urban area, he could already see skyscrapers looming and vehicles of all sizes driving along the streets.

"It’s a bit livelier than in my time," the East King muttered to himself. "It seems the Mortal World has developed a great deal over the years."

He strode into the city, noticing many pedestrians staring down at their phones as they walked. Some had earphones in, looking like a generation with their heads bowed.

’Seems to be some kind of communication device? Have the wired telephones from my era already evolved to this extent? Hmm, long-distance communication via True Qi (magnetic fields)... no wonder the True Qi in the sky above the city is so chaotic.’

’Interesting. I wonder how far the conventional weapons of the Mortal World have advanced.’

A look of interest appeared in the East King’s eyes.

"You, come here."

After observing for a short while, the East King beckoned to a young housewife who was walking past, apparently on her way back from grocery shopping.

The woman looked over, her expression puzzled, but in the next moment, her eyes glazed over. She obediently walked up to the East King and lowered her head, exposing her fair neck like a lamb to the slaughter.

The East King didn’t do anything to the woman, however. He simply asked her a few questions.

Soon, he had a clear understanding of the current era, some information about the state of the world, and a basic grasp of how to use a mobile phone.

Over a hundred years had passed since his last full awakening.

The Mortal World had changed dramatically, and Japan in particular had recently undergone a massive upheaval.

However, the young housewife was just an ordinary person. All she knew was based on rumors and hearsay, and apart from some information about the key figure, Yi Beidou, she couldn’t provide any deeper, secret intelligence.

"The Martial Arts Dao is flourishing, secrets are being revealed, and Yi Beidou achieved Ascension at twenty-seven? He challenged Japan all by himself and is hailed as the number one person in the Mortal World? Truly astonishingly brilliant. It seems the matter of Penglai Immortal Mountain is related to him."

"I’ll need to look into this more thoroughly," the East King muttered. With a flicker, he then vanished from the street. Incredibly, the surrounding pedestrians barely noticed this shocking scene.

"Huh?"

The glazed look in the young housewife’s eyes vanished instantly. She seemed to have no memory of what had just happened and rubbed her head in confusion.

Within the city, atop the skyscrapers, the East King’s figure flickered like a phantom as he followed a certain perception of his own toward a location in the Tokyo City District.

「The Fukuda Family’s secret manor.」

Its previous Patriarch, Fukuda Hisao, had been slain by Yi Beidou along with the Emperor of Japan. The current successor to the position of Patriarch was a middle-aged man named Fukuda Moto.

After Fukuda Hisao’s death, this man became the Fukuda Family’s only Saint Realm expert.

The Fukuda Family had a long history in Japan. Their bloodline shared a common origin with that of the Emperor of Japan, and they possessed immense power and influence.

At the same time, the family was also a pawn left behind by the Alchemist to conveniently control Japan.

However, ever since Sakagawa Satoshi, the founder of Extreme Explosion Karate Dao, assassinated Japan’s "Number One," he had used the great turmoil stirred up by Yi Beidou to rally support and bring about a massive shift in Japan’s upper echelons.

And as representatives of the old guard, the Fukuda Family had naturally come under immense pressure during this time.

"These bastards from the New Martial Arts Club have gone too far!!"

Fukuda Moto slammed the intelligence report in his hand onto a desk, his face incredibly grim.

The New Martial Arts Club was a group recently formed by Sakagawa Satoshi, along with new-faction Saint Realm experts and other masters within Japan.