Lord of the Truth

Chapter 2332 The secret

"...Wha--!!!" Zavaros staggered a full step backward, sheer horror spreading uncontrollably across his face as the meaning of Robin's words finally began to sink in.

The Seer... that unfathomable existence... actually wanted him dead because he had been poisoning the universe?

"What have you been doing?!" Kiryan strode forward without the slightest hesitation, grabbed Zavaros by the collar with one hand, and shouted directly into his face. "You've been extracting the blood of your own infected children and selling it to people throughout the universe?!" Then he violently shoved him backward. "Does your greed truly know no limits?!"

Zavaros knew perfectly well that his children had completely transformed into beasts. He knew there was something fundamentally wrong with them, something even he couldn't stop. And despite knowing all of that, he had continued selling their blood—the blood of diseased individuals—to countless cultivators across the universe?!

"How was I supposed to know this would become a problem?!" Zavaros immediately tried to defend himself, his expression becoming increasingly frantic. "Everyone knows the blood that comes out of my galaxy is the finest available anywhere in the universe! It's been tested countless times over millions of years, and there has never been a single recorded case of anyone transforming because of it!"

Then he turned toward Robin almost pleadingly, as though desperately hoping he would reconsider his conclusion. "How could my children's blood possibly be the reason I've been targeted? I've been selling it for millions of years without interruption, and not once has anyone ever come back to complain or accuse me of anything!!"

"There are no obvious cases of transformation because they're injecting themselves with blood of lower purity. As generations continue to pass, the influence carried by the Reapers' blood grows significantly weaker with every dilution, but it never truly disappears. It remains buried beneath the surface, quietly passing from one generation to the next."

He continued calmly, "And the factor that weakens the Reapers' blood the most is the fact that you deliberately bring genuine beasts to mate with your children. Afterward, you harvest and sell the blood of their offspring from the second and third generations—in other words, the blood of your own grandchildren. They inherit powerful Reaper blood while simultaneously receiving different Laws and unique affinities from their true beast mother or father. That's correct, isn't it?"

Robin explained without the slightest trace of emotion, "As far as I understand, the Reapers are nothing more than disposable creations manufactured for the purpose of besieging universes and carrying out punishment. They're creatures created with a single clear objective, and their growth has obvious limits built into their very existence. If even those creatures possess inherent limitations by design, then what do you think happens to those who continuously rely on their blood in order to become stronger?"

Then he slowly shook his head. "Your galaxy has quietly placed invisible shackles upon everyone who has walked the second cultivation path." He continued, "Even those who initially cultivated using the blood of beasts that never came from your Garden most likely returned sooner or later to purchase your blood in order to strengthen their own bloodlines, or those of their descendants, families, and followers. Unfortunately, I made that exact same mistake myself in the past when I asked you for it back then... But that's fine. I understand that you genuinely didn't realize the magnitude of the mistake you were making, so I won't hold that against you."

"There are no obvious cases of transformation because they're injecting themselves with blood of lower purity. As generations continue to pass, the influence carried by the Reapers' blood grows significantly weaker with every dilution, but it never truly disappears. It remains buried beneath the surface, quietly passing from one generation to the next."

Then he pointed directly at Zavaros. "You're the reason the number of users of the second cultivation path who have successfully reached the strength of a Behemoth is practically nonexistent. Nearly every Behemoth in existence is either human or a human-derived mutant. Only two or three possess Beast Blood in their veins... and you're one of them."

His expression gradually darkened. "And that pitiful number comes from a universe where nearly ninety percent of all cultivators follow the second path—the Beast Blood Path. Just imagine the extent of the damage that single cultivation path has inflicted upon the entire universe because of this hidden flaw... If the Dreamer Galaxy crippled the universe where Soul Strength is concerned, then you've crippled it to exactly the same extent through what you've unknowingly done to the second cultivation path."

"No..." Zavaros unconsciously retreated another step, his face growing increasingly pale as countless memories flashed through his mind.

"You really are a beast—no, you're even worse!" Kiryan shoved him once again, unable to contain his anger. "You breed your own diseased children with beasts, then harvest and sell their blood afterward? Which part of that sentence could possibly be forgiven?!"

"What do you know?!" Zavaros swung his arm violently, his voice rising with frustration and desperation. "You can't even begin to imagine the amount of debt crushing my shoulders every single day. If you were standing where I am, carrying everything I carry, you wouldn't have stopped at selling a few bottles of blood!!"

"Debt? Debt to whom, you liar?" Kiryan pointed accusingly at Zavaros without backing down. "You don't buy anything from anyone, and every piece of equipment your forces use is manufactured right here inside your own territory. You command the largest army of beasts, Kings, and Emperors the universe has ever seen, meaning you don't even need to invest resources into raising a conventional human army. You have no real need for Emeralds or any other resource that you can't already produce with your own forces. On top of that, you're the primary supplier sustaining the entire second cultivation path, which should make you one of the wealthiest beings in the universe. So why do you keep pretending to be poor? Why are you acting as though you're struggling just to survive?"

"..." Zavaros merely gritted his teeth harder and slowly turned his gaze away, offering no immediate answer.

"....." The moment Robin caught that particular look in Zavaros's eyes, his own brows slowly drew together, sensing there was something far more significant hidden beneath his silence. "Zavaros."

"...?" The elderly man in the purple robe reluctantly turned toward Robin, obvious hesitation filling both his expression and his movements, as though he had already guessed what question was about to be asked.

"Why don't you tell me exactly how you used a Young Space Beast Crystal, and how you injected its blood into your own body?" Robin asked, a broad smile gradually spreading across his face, his tone remaining calm and almost conversational despite the weight of the subject, as though he had finally arrived at the answer he had been searching for all along.

"Hmm?" Kiryan immediately turned toward Zavaros, the hostility in his eyes becoming impossible to conceal. "Answer him."

Had the two of them not supposedly been standing on the same side now, Kiryan wouldn't have hesitated for even a single moment before attacking him on the spot and separating his head from his shoulders.

"...." Zavaros slowly lowered his head, his eyes remaining wide open while countless thoughts collided inside his mind. "Does that... really matter?"

"It does." Robin nodded without the slightest hesitation. "As for the corpses of the Space Beasts, enormous numbers of them were scattered throughout the battlefield during the war and across countless worlds after it ended. Their blood was everywhere once that nest had been breached and its contents spread across the universe. As for the crystals, even to this very day, Young Space Beast Crystals continue to be bought and sold. Their prices are astronomical, certainly, placing them beyond the reach of almost everyone, but they undeniably exist and can still be obtained."

He continued wearing the same faint smile. "Forgive my rather rude choice of words, but you aren't the smartest person to have ever walked this universe, and judging from everything I've learned today, your character certainly doesn't qualify you as someone possessing the strongest will either... so what exactly allowed you to accomplish what every other cultivator ultimately failed to achieve?" His smile broadened even further. "Especially since I've personally researched methods of achieving a breakthrough through those crystals and understand better than most just how impossibly difficult the entire process truly is. I even created highly sophisticated formations merely to make it theoretically possible... so what exactly did you use?"

Zavaros stared directly into Robin's golden eyes for several long moments. Anger, humiliation, and wounded pride all surfaced plainly within his own gaze, yet after silently struggling with himself, he ultimately forced every one of those emotions back down, lowered his head once more, and answered in a subdued voice. "...That old man from the mountain."

"...?" Robin's brows furrowed deeply, the answer clearly falling outside every possibility he had considered.

"Which old man?" Kiryan demanded immediately, his sharp voice carrying both suspicion and impatience.

"...." Zavaros remained silent for several moments, carefully gathering his thoughts before finally speaking. "It happened a very long time ago, shortly after I left my family behind and set out to explore the world in search of opportunities to become stronger... to become the strongest individual ever born from my humble bloodline." His brows gradually tightened as memories buried beneath millions of years resurfaced one after another. "That was when I found it... the corpse of an enormous Young Space Beast resembling a dragon. Its body had suffered remarkably little damage despite its death, and the crystal still embedded within it remained completely filled with energy, almost as though it had only recently fallen."

"I was overjoyed. At that moment, I thought my future had finally arrived. I was already preparing to contact one of the major powers so they could recover the meat, bones, and crystal in exchange for enough resources and protection to let me pursue everything I had dreamed of since leaving home... but then something completely unexpected happened." Zavaros continued, an unmistakable sense of reverence unconsciously finding its way into his voice. "Someone called out to me from the mountain standing beside the corpse. He was an old man whose face had been mercilessly weathered by the passage of time, to the point where almost every wrinkle seemed to tell the story of an entire lifetime. He told me he had spent his entire life studying that corpse and had eventually discovered a method of claiming its blood for himself, along with a way to use the crystal as a stabilizer throughout the process. But death had already begun knocking on his door, and he knew it wouldn't be long before it finally claimed him."

Then he slowly raised his gaze once again. "He told me that I was the chosen one... that he intended to entrust me with the fruit of his entire life's work so I could inherit everything he had accomplished and become one of the leaders destined to change the universe—or at least, that was how he described it." Then his eyes slowly dropped toward the ground once more before he quietly added, "...in exchange for continuously destroying fifty percent of my total wealth."