Returning to the Mysterious Era-Chapter 380 - Southern Dipper Waterbird Fist

In today's era, it's called the Hongli Federation. However, a hundred and fifty-six years ago, the land was a vast empire. The Hongli Empire was divided into two periods: an early absolute monarchy and a later constitutional monarchy, divided by the Dawn Revolution.

After the revolution, the Hongli Empire was no longer under royal autocracy but shifted to a system that shared power between the king, prime minister, and parliament. It became a de facto republic, though not in name.

Later, an even greater revolution took place. The royal family vanished completely and the Hongli Empire transformed into the Hongli Federation.

Since Cassius had the ability to travel back in time through antiques, he naturally needed to understand the customs, power dynamics, and language changes of the era he was about to revisit. Otherwise, if he went back to a distant era and couldn't understand the old language, it would be utterly embarrassing.

Fortunately, the land of the Hongli Federation has used the same script for thousands of years. At least he could express himself through writing. Of course, that was just a joke. Cassius had now formed a sect, with organizations specifically collecting antiques with lingering attachment and legendary antiques, giving him more choices at hand.

Under normal circumstances, he wouldn't enter a remote era. Cassius needed to communicate normally with others to complete the lingering attachments in his time-travel. If he couldn't even communicate, he'd be creating trouble for himself. Regardless, he had legendary antiques from more recent timelines. He had the option to choose which era he wanted to travel to.

The sky was a wash of azure, with wisps of white clouds clustering like petals, shading half of the blazing sun. Today was a rare sunny day in the past month. The sunlight was strong but didn't feel scorching on the skin. Instead, due to the relatively cool air, it just felt warm. Cassius sat on the sofa, his muscular upper body bare.

His sweat-drenched muscles had a faint honeyed hue, appearing full and textured. However, the sweat soon began to evaporate, turning into a puff of white mist and dissipating.

Cassius's rock-white body became dry again. He pondered for a moment and flipped through the document once more. The intelligence was about the mask, since the investigation into the other legendary antique, the firearm, was still in progress. The standard firearm was evidently more challenging.

The intelligence described the mask's name to originate from what was known as the "Dark Hunter." Coincidentally, this "Dark Hunter" also had another name: Black Ops Agency.

Though, this Black Ops Agency was not the same as the current one. The Black Ops Agency during the Hongli Federation period had merely inherited the name from the Hongli Empire, adapting it to be the agency's title.

To avoid confusion, Cassius preferred to call the organization associated with the mask "Dark Hunter," which was the agency's original nickname, to avoid confusion.

The Dark Hunter Organization, like the Black Ops Agency during the Hongli Federation, was an official supernatural force. In the early stages of the Hongli Empire, Dark Hunter only obeyed the imperial family's orders. In the later stages, it was under the jurisdiction of the king, parliament, and prime minister, serving the role that the Black Ops Agency played. Its main duties were to combat dark creatures and, to some extent, monitor supernatural forces within the Hongli Empire.

The mask that Cassius obtained belonged to a combatant of the Dark Hunter Organization. Some of these combatants had been trained by the Dark Hunter Organization from a young age, while others were outsiders who passed assessments.

The masks' patterns and emblems differed between the two. Cassius had obtained the mask of an outsider who had joined later. The Dark Hunter Organization seemed to have a supernatural method of training its own members. It wasn't Covert Martial Arts, but a kind of sacred spring water that seemed to contain special powers. Drinking it could greatly enhance physical strength.

Thus, it gave birth to various incredible abilities. Combined with Secret Techniques recorded in ancient books from the royal library over centuries, the organization's overall strength was formidable.

However, according to the data, the Dark Hunter Organization entered a significant period of decline in the late Hongli Empire. The strength and number of its members drastically decreased over several decades, planting the seeds for the empire's ultimate downfall.

Cassius personally analyzed the reasons. He believed that the sacred spring controlled by the empire had likely encountered problems. Such external things are most prone to fluctuations.

One might temporarily gain explosive power by relying on external forces or objects, but there will inevitably be backlash over time. Of course, unreasonable cheatcodes were an exception.

The sacred spring of the Dark Hunter Organization was no longer just an external object or force; it served as their foundation. When the foundation grows unstable, the house built upon it naturally becomes shaky. Cassius speculated that the sacred spring had probably entered a dry period or had diminished effects in the late empire.

Moreover, this association could extend to the Black Ops Agency during the Hongli Federation period. Why was there no Black Ops Agency when the Federation was first established, but managed to appear later?

Perhaps because the sacred spring had completely dried up in the early days of the Hongli Federation and could no longer serve as a source of power. It wasn't until decades or even a century of recuperation that the sacred spring slowly regained vitality, and the Black Ops Agency re-emerged accordingly.

This is also why the federation's Black Ops Agency borrowed the name of the supernatural organization from the imperial era. They both derived their power from the same source.

Additionally, Cassius made another discovery. He had interacted with the Black Ops Agency in two different stages spanning fifty years. By observing the ordinary agents of the Black Ops Agency, one could find that the sacred spring's water was not abundant, and its efficacy was weak. At least, the quantity was insufficient, meaning it was perhaps only provided to some personnel.

This is also why the lower-level personnel of the Black Ops Agency were not much stronger than ordinary people. Well, excluding Reaper Amos, who was not trained by the Black Ops Agency but joined later. According to snippets Cassius heard, Amos had a great vendetta with the Gate Organization during his youth; his Gate Fragment might have come from that. He later joined the Black Ops Agency, which opposed the Gate Organization, seeking revenge.

Amos's cultivation of the Violent Storm's Three Limits Secret Technique might have been something he already had without relying on the sacred spring's power. It wasn't that Amos did not utilize the power of the Gate Fragment. Although he possessed the fragment, he didn't know how to use it.

In other words, Reaper Amos's strength, which was comparable to a top-tier combat artist, was something he had cultivated step by step by himself.

All of the above were Cassius's deductions based on the Black Ops Agency’s intelligence and Dark Hunter Mask information he had collected during this period. Some of the information might have been inaccurate as it was his subjective judgment. Regardless, that was all the intelligence about the mask.

Though it claimed to be detailed, the understanding was actually quite limited.

However, there's nothing to be done. After all, the mask came from the Dark Hunter Organization of the Hongli Empire. Such national secret agencies involving supernatural powers were hard to investigate, even from past eras. The personnel and treasure hunters Cassius sent to investigate had racked their brains, probing deeply before barely extracting some half-truths from history through indirect methods.

Some treasure hunters had even tried to interpret the differences in the patterns and styles of the Dark Hunter Masks to determine the specific age of the mask. However, too few similar masks were collected, making the control group extremely limited.

They could only simply conclude that it was a product of the late Hongli Empire. The timeline was roughly from one hundred and sixty five to three hundred years ago, more specifically, the last one or two hundred years before the fall of the Hongli Empire.

The owner of the mask was even harder to find. However, for Cassius, the identity of the antique mask's owner and the approximate era was already sufficient. After all, many things were just embellishments. What truly mattered was one's own strength. When one had sufficient strength, everything else falls into place.

After carefully pondering, Cassius put the mask's information back into the file and placed it in the hidden compartment of the bookshelf. He had two things to do before the time-travel.

First, he had to wait for the information on the firearm. Cassius would wait for three more days at most; if it still didn't work out, he wouldn't wait any longer. He had initially intended to compare the files on the two legendary antiques to decide which one to enter first.

However, the intelligence on the mask had come earlier. The progress on the firearm was slow, and it was unclear when it would succeed. Naturally, Cassius couldn't wait indefinitely—three days at most.

Second, the Rune of Wisdom had been recharged. This was bad news. He had already had some ominous premonitions about, and facts proved that Cassius's intuition had been accurate.

Cassius had ordered that captives be taken alive as much as possible during the three-day hunting operation; killing was a last resort. He could have ordered them to take captives alive at all costs, but that would have been too demanding, and the casualty rate of the Ace of Spades and the Shadowless Clan would have increased significantly. Cassius had weighed the pros and cons and decided against it.

Even so, the Golem Sect still captured many live dark creatures. Cassius personally took action to kill them one by one. The Rune of Wisdom absorbed so much essence of calamity that it quickly exceeded its full state. It had surprisingly reached two and a half full progress bars.

According to the original rules, the Rune of Wisdom would refresh when returning to the real world from the time-travel nodes. So Cassius tried to use the Blood of the Spirit from the Rune of Wisdom.

However, the whole process failed. The Rune of Wisdom had seemingly been operating in overload previously and was now overburdened. It needed time to recover. After all, the Rune of Wisdom during the time-travel and the real world was the same entity.

Cassius could cleverly exploit software loopholes but couldn't exploit hardware ones. The hardware was the foundation of everything. Once it was worn out, it was worn out; it couldn’t be continuously refreshed like software.

The Rune of Wisdom was now in that situation. Cassius had used the Rune of Wisdom too heavily in the last time-travel. If it had been just two or three full progress bars, it would have been fine and wouldn't affect its use in the real world.

But he had been in a life-and-death crisis as he frantically deduced the Golem Covert Martial Arts at all costs. By continuously absorbing the essence of calamity from the soon-to-be-born Golem embryo, he had rapidly filled the progress bars of the Rune of Wisdom. The Golem is one of the five Dark Ultimate Forms in the Endless Calamity; its essence of calamity was extremely rich. It had filled nine progress bars of the Rune of Wisdom.

This resulted in the rune overclocking nine times, and producing nine units of the Blood of the Spirit for Cassius to use. Once it returned to the real world, the Rune of Wisdom had already crashed and could not extract the Blood of the Spirit for the time being. It needed time to recuperate.

Cassius had no choice but to use the essence of calamity to feed the Book of the Devil in exchange for one question. However, using the Book of the Devil would bring misfortune to the owner. Once Cassius asked the question, he would fall into an extremely unlucky state. This state would last for quite a long time, possibly around half a day or even a full twenty-four hours.

He hated that situation where it felt like the world was targeting him. However, the question Cassius wanted to ask was very important.

That is, the exact location of the Southern Dipper Waterbird Fist!

Just like when he asked about the Southern Dipper Sonic Snake Fist, Cassius felt that asking the Book of the Devil a similar type of question would most likely yield an answer. He was about to enter the time-travel era; even if he encountered danger, it wouldn't be certain death. It was the perfect time to search for the third Southern Dipper Fist technique.

The Southern Dipper Waterbird Fist was very important to him. Although his Killer Persona and Cold Persona had achieved balance through the Southern Dipper Fist techniques, it wasn't the perfect state Cassius envisioned. The most perfect form of the three core principles and three personas should be a triangle where each corner was strong. Not like now, where the two sub-personas are strong but the Main Persona was weak.

It was abnormal, and it might pose hidden dangers over time . Cassius needed the third Southern Dipper Fist technique to support the foundation of his Main Persona, thereby achieving a true balance of the personas.

Additionally, he also wanted the resonance among the Southern Dipper Fist techniques. The resonance of the Southern Dipper Red Falcon Fist and the Southern Dipper Sonic Snake Fist allowed him to cultivate at twice the normal cultivation speed of the Southern Dipper Fist techniques. If he mastered another one, perhaps he could increase it to three times.

Cassius could steadily break through the body's acupoints in one or two months with twofold speed. If he increased from twofold to threefold, that time would be almost halved!

If he cultivated for two or three years in the time-travel era, he might reach the fourth or fifth stage. That would be the same level Feng Liusi had once reached. His Force was so strong that it couldn't be suppressed. Wherever Feng Liusi's palm touched would disintegrate. It took him a long time to force himself to adapt and stabilize.

As a practitioner of the Southern Dipper Fist techniques, Cassius naturally yearned for that. Moreover, he had an advantage over Feng Liusi—the resonance of the Southern Dipper Fist techniques meant they improved together. If his Death's Fang Force reached the fifth stage, then his Sonic Snake force would naturally also reach the fifth stage. If he obtained the Southern Dipper Waterbird Fist, then all three special forces would reach the fifth stage together. What a terrifying scenario that would be—just thinking about it made his heart tremble.

Putting aside fantasies and returning to reality, the first step to acquiring the third Southern Dipper Fist technique was to obtain information about the Southern Dipper Waterbird Fist. Cassius planned to use the Book of the Devil for this. Therefore, he needed to choose a good place.

A remote wilderness—sparsely populated, flat terrain, and wide-open views. Cassius wanted to see how unlucky he could be after taking such precautions! If the Book of the Devil had the ability, let it throw some natural disasters or catastrophes at him!

Cassius felt that this time he had victory in hand!