Harem Master: Seduction System

Chapter 482: Eight Months in the Dark and the Recording Crystal

Nine hundred miles northeast of the warm, blossom-scented gardens of Cloud-Mist City, a freezing gale howled across the jagged black peaks of the Scarlet-Frost Rift.

This desolate mountain range sat in the lawless northern buffer zone where the borders of the Celestial Dragon Empire, the Rimefrost Imperium, and the coastal territories formerly contested by the Rising Sun Empire met in a tangle of frozen glaciers and active subterranean volcanoes.

Halfway up a sheer cliff of black basalt, crouched beneath the perfect optical camouflage of a tattered Lightning-Insulating Void Cloak, a tall, broad-shouldered man with pale blue eyes and a scarred, wind-chapped face chewed slowly on a strip of dried spirit-beast jerky.

It was Corbin.

Nearly eight full months had passed since the snowy winter night when the Northeastern Vanguard had stormed the Eastern Iron-Cloud Citadel and broken General Tokugawa’s army.

During that final, chaotic night assault eight months ago, Corbin had detonated an explosive fire-talisman inside a collapsing watchtower, leaving behind a charred corpse wearing the armor and dog-tags of “Scouting Lieutenant Mo Chen” before slipping over the eastern sea-cliffs into the freezing wilderness.

Those eight months in the wild had been the hardest, most grueling period of Corbin’s second life since transmigrating into this world with his War-God System.

Cut off from his former base in the Iron-Blood Province—which Noble Consort Cui Yulan and the Imperial Court had confiscated and burned to the ground after Alaric framed him as the warlord who assaulted her in the Whispering Gorge catacombs—Corbin had been reduced to a nameless fugitive.

Yet Corbin had not wasted a single day of those eight months wallowing in despair.

Reaching inside the reinforced leather pouch strapped over his heart, Corbin’s calloused fingers closed around a palm-sized, eight-sided crystal of dark violet quartz that pulsed with a faint, sealed spatial glow.

It was the Void-Echo Recording Crystal.

Eight months ago, on that freezing night when the Eastern Iron-Cloud Citadel fell and Corbin faked the death of Lieutenant Mo Chen along the northern cliff wall, Corbin had crept up the snow-choked defile at the base of Frost-Fang Peak while fleeing toward the northern buffer valleys.

There, hidden behind a snowy crag two hundred yards below the shattered geothermal thunder-vents, Corbin had witnessed Shrine Master Saito and the four surviving Rising Sun Martial King array guardians attempting to break out down the northern ridge—only to be intercepted directly by the humble gray-robed physician “Alaric”, who dropped his disguise completely and unleashed terrifying Peak Archmage magic and a Beast Emperor bloodline alongside four devastatingly powerful women who slaughtered the Rising Sun Martial Kings and allowed Alaric to wipe Shrine Master Saito’s soul in minutes!

Before fleeing down the back of the mountain that night, Corbin had gritted his teeth and burned twenty-five thousand of his remaining thirty-four thousand System Points in a single desperate transaction.

First, he had purchased the high-grade Void-Echo Recording Crystal from the System Store to record the final three minutes of that battle from two hundred yards away without triggering Alaric’s spatial awareness.

Second—and far more expensively—Corbin had paid fifteen thousand System Points for his System to run a Deep Origin & Martial Aura Cross-Reference Scan on the four women fighting beside Alaric Steele, as well as the two merchant women managing Alaric’s affairs inside Azure Fall City.

Corbin still remembered the shock he had felt eight months ago when the System’s cold, mechanical text had identified the true martial origins and identities behind their suppressed auras and disguises:

The tall, silver-haired ice swordswoman was Grand Elder Yun Lan, the vanished former Sect Master of the Frozen Cloud Asgard in the Northern Prefecture!

The fierce, golden-eyed woman wielding royal serpent flames and lethal poison-venom Qi was Queen Cai Wei, the ruler of the Snake-Human Tribe of the Western Tagor Desert!

The blue-armored woman commanding deep-sea water dragons was Princess Hai Lan of the Eastern Sea Royal Tribe!

And the graceful sword-maiden wielding purified spirit-qi beside her was Mu Qing, the famous “Fallen Fairy” of the Western Desert sects!

At the time, just knowing their names and titles hadn’t explained *why* four famous beauties from the North, West, and East of the Empire were secretly serving an unknown foreign Archmage in a border town. Nor did Corbin’s System possess omniscience; it could only identify their cultivation signatures and public identities, giving him zero information about what happened behind the warded doors of Alaric’s estate or who else Alaric had targeted prior to Azure Fall City.

So, after escaping the Iron-Cloud Citadel, Corbin had spent the next five months traveling thousands of miles in disguise through the taverns, mercenary halls, and black-market information brokerages of the Northern Prefecture, Snow Moon City, and the border towns.

Living like a wolf in the wilderness—hunting rogue Fifth and Sixth-Rank spirit beasts and slaughtering isolated bands of Rising Sun deserters to slowly farm his System Points back up to forty thousand—Corbin had pieced together the puzzle bit by agonizing bit.

In Snow Moon City and the Golden City, every veteran mercenary and alchemist knew the old rumors: how the rising prodigy of Pill Valley, the “Flame King” Feng Xiao, had been closely backed by Chief Auctioneer Ya Su of the Gilded Lotus Family; how the former Sect Master of Frozen Cloud Asgard, Yun Lan, had gone into seclusion after protecting Feng Xiao; and how the mysterious destruction of Feng Xiao’s enemies in the Demon Flame Valley and Ten Thousand Poison Sect bore the exact venom and constrictor marks of Queen Cai Wei of the Snake-People!

And in the southern and eastern taverns, every bard sang of the massive, bloody war fought less than a year ago between the “Sea Devil” Long Chen and the “Soul Eater” Qin Wu—a war fought specifically over Princess Hai Lan of the Eastern Sea and the Fallen Fairy Mu Qing before General Bao stepped in to halt their slaughter by imperial decree!

‘When I finally connected the dots in Snow Moon City three months ago, even I couldn’t believe it,’ Corbin thought grimly, his pale blue eyes narrowing as he stared down into the smoking volcanic basin below his cliff ledge. ‘I have no idea why Alaric Steele targeted these men, or what method he used to make their women fight for him. Maybe he is holding hostages over their heads, or maybe he used some dark mental magic on them. Frankly, I don’t care how he did it.’

Corbin’s hand tightened around the hilt of his heavy black greatsword.

‘All that matters is that Alaric Steele has surrounded himself with an impenetrable fortress of soldiers, Imperial Consort guards, and Arch-level women in Azure Fall City and Cloud-Mist City,’ Corbin calculated coldly. ‘Even now that I have pushed my own combat level to the Peak Martial King stage over the past eight months, going after him alone is suicide. But if I hand this Void-Echo Recording Crystal to the three deadliest monsters whose women are currently working under Alaric’s roof—Flame King Feng Xiao, Sea Devil Long Chen, and Soul Eater Qin Wu—they will tear the sky apart to get at him!’

Just as Corbin finished that thought, a deafening, earth-shaking roar erupted from the bottom of the Scarlet-Frost Volcanic Rift half a mile below!

*ROOOOAAARRR—BOOOOM!*

A column of blinding, eight-colored fire shot three hundred feet into the freezing northern sky, colliding violently with a torrent of molten crimson magma spewed by a sixty-foot-long, horned Winged Magma Drake!

Corbin stood up on the cliff ledge, channeling a trace of Qi into his eyes as he watched the battle unfolding on the black obsidian flats at the center of the rift.

Down on the cracked obsidian floor, standing fearless before the thrashing, mountain-sized Sixth-Rank Peak Magma Drake, was a young man in torn, ash-stained blue robes with dark hair whipping wildly in the thermal gale.

It was the Flame King, Feng Xiao.

Compared to eight months ago when Feng Xiao had parted ways with Gu Ling and the imperial convoy at the edge of the Ten-Thousand Peaks Calamity Forest, the young alchemist looked leaner, sharper, and infinitely more dangerous.

For the past eight months, Feng Xiao had thrown himself into the brutal meat-grinder of the northern border on behalf of the Third Prince’s camp—fighting Rimefrost frost-wyrms by day, exploring deadly volcanic ruins by night, and risking his life a dozen times to devour an eighth Heavenly Flame and gather the supreme beast cores he had promised Gu Ling. His aura no longer sat at the Early or Mid-Stage Martial King level; it blazed at the absolute pinnacle of the Peak-Stage Martial King realm!

“You beast!” Feng Xiao’s voice rang like thunder across the volcanic rift as he leaped forty feet into the air, his right palm wreathed in four intertwined rings of white, purple, crimson, and black Heavenly Flames while his left hand spun a blazing seal of golden and cyan fire:

“Eight-Flames Controlling Art: Burning Sky Dragon Seal!”

*KRAKOOM!*

The eight distinct Heavenly Flames twisted together into a hundred-foot-long fire dragon that exuded a terrifying, law-warping heat!

As the Winged Magma Drake tried to sweep its iron-scaled tail across Feng Xiao’s chest, the eight-colored fire dragon slammed straight down into the beast’s open jaws, boring through its fire-resistant throat and detonating inside its chest cavity in a blinding supernova of rainbow fire!

With a final, convulsive shriek that shattered the surrounding icicles along the valley walls, the massive sixty-foot Magma Drake crashed dead onto the obsidian flats, sliding twenty yards in a shower of sparks!

Panting heavily, with sweat and blood trickling down his soot-streaked forearm, Feng Xiao landed lightly on the obsidian rock beside the dead beast’s head.

Without even stopping to bandage the deep claw gash on his shoulder, Feng Xiao drew a short jade carving knife and sliced open the drake’s skull, pulling out a fist-sized, pulsing crimson-gold Magma Drake Core along with a cluster of glowing Fire-Marrow Crystals that had grown around the beast’s heart!

As Feng Xiao held the warm, glowing core in his bloodstained hands, the fierce, murderous battle-intent in his eyes softened instantly into a look of deep, tender longing.

‘A Peak Sixth-Rank Magma Drake Core, and three stalks of Heart-Tempering Fire Marrow,’ Feng Xiao thought, a warm, earnest smile touching his cracked lips as he carefully wiped the blood off the treasures and placed them into a separate, velvet-lined spatial box reserved exclusively for Gu Ling. ‘With this core and the Glacial Lotus I seized from the Rimefrost scouts last month, I finally have enough ingredients to concoct the Eight-Revolution Foundation Pill for Ling’er! And my own cultivation has reached the Peak Martial King realm!’

He looked south toward the distant mountain passes leading back toward the central provinces and the Imperial Capital.

‘It has been eight months since we parted in the Calamity Forest, Ling’er,’ Feng Xiao murmured softly to himself, touching the orange spiritual resonance stone hanging at his waist. ‘Every time we spoke through the stone over the past few months, you told me you were still in deep, high-temperature meridian seclusion under your clan’s protection and urged me to focus on my cultivation in the north. Wait just a little longer—once I deliver my final border report to the Third Prince’s marshal next week, I am coming straight to find you!’

“What a touching sight,” a cold, gravelly voice echoed suddenly from the black basalt boulder thirty yards behind him. “The mighty Flame King, risking his life in a freezing volcanic pit to harvest cores for a woman, while the other women who staked their lives and fortunes on him are serving wine and fighting wars for another man.”

Feng Xiao’s entire body went rigid.

In a fraction of a heartbeat, the gentle warmth vanished from Feng Xiao’s eyes, replaced by a lethal, blazing inferno as he spun around on his heel—eight rings of multicolored Heavenly Flame roaring up around his shoulders like a furnace as his spiritual sense locked onto the tall, scarred warrior stepping out from behind the basalt crag!

“Who goes there?!” Feng Xiao barked, his right hand poised to launch a compressed sphere of bone-melting white flame. “A spy from the Rimefrost Imperium, or an assassin sent by the First Prince’s dogs?! Speak your name before I burn your bones to ash!”

Corbin stopped thirty paces away on the obsidian rock, keeping his hands casually away from the hilt of the black greatsword strapped across his back, though his Peak Martial King Battle Aura rose in a dense, dark-iron barrier around his frame to match Feng Xiao’s heat.

“Save your flames, Feng Xiao,” Corbin said evenly, his pale blue eyes calm and cold beneath his scarred brow. “I neither serve the Rimefrost Imperium nor the First Prince. You don’t know my face, because I spent the last year operating in the eastern and western border provinces under the name Mo Chen. What matters is that we share the exact same enemy—an enemy who has been dismantling your life behind your back for the past year while you were blindly hunting beasts in the snow.”

Feng Xiao’s brows furrowed sharply, his spiritual sense sweeping suspiciously over the surrounding cliffs to confirm the scarred warrior was completely alone.

“Dismantling my life?” Feng Xiao sneered coldly, though the stranger’s earlier words echoed unpleasantly in his ears. “Explain what you just said about my women serving another man! If you are trying to use some cheap psychological trick to shake my Dao-heart before a fight, you are wasting your breath!”

“A trick?” Corbin let out a dry, humorless laugh. “Tell me, Flame King—when was the last time you saw or spoke in person with Chief Auctioneer Ya Su of the Gilded Lotus Family in the Golden City? Or Grand Elder Yun Lan, the former Sect Master of the Frozen Cloud Asgard? Or Queen Cai Wei of the Tagor Desert Snake-People?”

At the simultaneous mention of those three names—Ya Su, Yun Lan, and Cai Wei—Feng Xiao’s pupils shrank to pinpricks!

While Ya Su’s name was known in the northern merchant circles, his deep personal history with Grand Elder Yun Lan in the Cloud Mist Mountains and his secret connection with Queen Cai Wei in the Tagor Desert were guarded secrets that almost no one in the Northeastern Border could possibly know together!

“How do you know their names?!” Feng Xiao demanded, taking a sharp step forward as the obsidian rock beneath his boots began to hiss and melt from his spiking temperature. “Ya Su has been managing the Gilded Lotus branches in the northern prefectures, Elder Yun Lan has been in closed-door seclusion in the Cloud Mist Mountains for over a year, and Cai Wei rules her tribe in the western desert! What happened to them?!”

“In seclusion in the Cloud Mist Mountains? Ruling her tribe in the western desert?” Corbin shook his head with a look of genuine, bitter mockery. “Wake up, Feng Xiao! Neither Yun Lan nor Cai Wei has been in the north or the western desert for almost a year! And Ya Su left Snow Moon City months ago!”

“You’re lying!” Feng Xiao’s voice rose in anger, though a sudden, cold dread pricked at the back of his neck. “I met Ya Su in the Cloud Mist Mountains less than a year ago before the Yao Clan tournament! She promised me she was searching for Elder Yun Lan’s seclusion cave!”

“She lied to your face,” Corbin stated flatly, reaching into the leather pouch over his chest and pulling out the dark violet, eight-sided Void-Echo Recording Crystal. “Because by the time you met Ya Su in those mountains, both she and Yun Lan—and soon after, Queen Cai Wei—were already working for the same man. Eight months ago, during the winter war against the Rising Sun Empire at Azure Fall City and the Eastern Iron-Cloud Citadel, I served as a scouting officer in the Northeastern Vanguard. I watched Chief Auctioneer Ya Su and Guildmaster Lin Ruoli personally manage that man’s household inside Azure Fall City—and on the night the Iron-Cloud Citadel fell, I recorded this with an ancient spatial crystal in the mountain pass three miles east of the fortress!”

Without waiting for Feng Xiao to interrupt, Corbin infused a surge of his Battle Aura into the eight-sided violet crystal and tossed it onto the flat obsidian stone ten paces between them!

*HUMMMMM—!*

A dome of clear, three-dimensional spatial light expanded ten feet into the air above the volcanic rock, projecting the exact, unedited scene Corbin had recorded eight months ago in the snowy mountain defile!