Chapter 146: Enthroning Tamerlan, Awakening the Blessing of a Thousand Hearts

Hall of Starfire.

Beneath a crystal dome reflecting countless battles like a celestial curtain, twelve towering prismatic pillars stood upon a bronze floor, their torches blazing fiercely.

Among them, the crimson pillar carved with murals, resembling flawless jade, burned with the brightest flame.

In this grand hall, three figures waited in silence.

One had golden hair and blue eyes, standing with a sword in hand, tall as a pine, his handsome face always bearing a faint, gentle smile that instantly won favor.

One stood immovable as a mountain, his muscles forged like bronze through countless trials, his face supremely heroic, his entire being perfect as a god-era hero—merely standing there inspired awe.

One had blue hair and emerald eyes, skin as white as snow, beautiful as an exquisitely carved ice sculpture; though a woman, her brow radiated martial spirit, giving the impression of a valiant knight.

Time slipped away second by second until

A torch flame suddenly appeared in the hall, and a tall figure slowly emerged from the fire.

Seeing this, all three could not help but smile, bowing slightly in unison toward the figure.

“Your Highness, good evening.”

“Good evening,” Xia Mingyu replied, smiling faintly as he looked at his waiting companions.

After brief pleasantries, they took their seats before the bronze table.

Snap!

Xia Mingyu snapped his fingers, and the cold bronze surface instantly filled with steaming delicacies.

“Ha ha ha, cheers!”

Xia Mingyu raised a cup brimming with lemon water, drained it in one gulp, and laughed with unbridled joy.

Having rid himself of the torment of twilight tea and achieved a leap of 1.4 billion blessings, now he drank with trusted friends who shared his ideals.

Even he, usually calm and perpetually anxious about the future, could not help but feel a surge of joy so great he wanted to laugh aloud.

“When life grants you joy, seize it fully—let no golden cup face the moon in vain,” he murmured softly.

“Your Highness, you seem very happy—has something good happened?”

Tamerlan, seated to his right, asked curiously.

He remembered that just days ago, though the prince smiled, there had been an undercurrent of anxiety—now, he radiated pure, unmistakable delight.

“I resolved a crisis that would have destroyed the entire city, and brought to justice the perpetrator—a greedy, mad Clay merchant,” Xia Mingyu said with quiet pride.

This might well be the most impactful good deed he’d done since arriving in this world, aside from summoning the Crimson Flame across time to bless countless lives.

“Saving the people from fire and water, punishing the utterly wicked—no wonder you’re so joyful,” Tamerlan praised.

“Clay merchants,” he then frowned slightly and said:

“Your Highness, as a Holy Knight of the Sun Church, I should not discriminate against any group—but in the Church’s recorded cases, Clay merchants have often been the source of the people’s suffering.”

Watching the faint revulsion on Tamerlan’s face, Xia Mingyu realized he now understood the Clay merchants’ reputation far more deeply.

To make even a Holy Knight who preached equality view a group with prejudice—on some level, that was truly impressive.

“No good person becomes a slave owner—and in the Slave Capital, Clay merchants make up the majority of slave owners,” said Hagekex, seated to Xia Mingyu’s left, his tone cool.

He meant, plainly, that no Clay merchant was good.

“In the Northlands, whenever famine strikes, Clay merchants swarm like locusts into villages, scheming to drive down the price of human lives—often securing a child for just a sack of grain, even when they know the child, swollen with hunger and weeping, refuses to leave his parents, and will starve again.”

Dolove’s slender fingers clenched, her knuckles whitening, her voice icy, each word carrying a hint of murderous intent.

After silently listening to all this, Xia Mingyu decided that if he ever met another Clay merchant again, even if he didn’t kill them, beating them first wouldn’t be unjust.

At the same time, a flicker of doubt stirred in Xia Mingyu’s mind.

Usually, people were divided by nation—Sosians, Rhines, Milans—so why was there this odd, separate category called “Clay people”?

“Who exactly are the Clay people?” he asked Tamerlan.

After all, as the grandson of the Pope of the continent’s most widespread church, Tamerlan’s knowledge should be far clearer and truer than his own.

“According to Church records, the Clay people originated a millennium ago, from the first human kingdom established by King Joshua of the Stars—the Clay Kingdom.”

Tamerlan paused, then spoke slowly.

“King Joshua of the Stars, legend says, was raised by the Seven Gods themselves—courageous, kind, just, merciful—he possessed nearly all human virtues known, the brightest hero of the god-era.”

“The Clay Kingdom he founded was magnificent, at its peak controlling one-third of the entire continent before its division, its influence spanning the whole land.”

“During this time, once-powerful races—elves, dwarves, goblins, orcs, merfolk—were crushed by the Clay Kingdom, retreating into forests, underground, ice deserts, and deep seas, where for a thousand years they never recovered their former glory of sharing the continent.”

“Then, for reasons still unexplained, King Joshua of the Stars suddenly died—and immediately, the Great Cataclysm erupted. The war among the Seven Gods destroyed the Clay Kingdom. The displaced upper-class Clays, stripped of their realm, adopted ‘Clay’ as their surname and gradually became the Clay people.”

“Thus arose the Clay people. Because the Seven Gods’ war destroyed their kingdom, they reject the Seven Gods and worship only the Creator.”

“Over time, somewhere along the way, a twisted myth emerged within the Clay people: that the Creator had become the world itself and gifted it as a paradise to the Clay people, while all other lifeforms were mere parasites upon that paradise, destined to be their slaves.”

“Thus, without faith, Clay people are born without the moral restraints others possess, making fraudsters and villains far more common among them than in normal populations.”

After finishing, Tamerlan sighed softly, as if mourning the birth of such a corrupted people.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

Xia Mingyu frowned, his fingers drumming steadily on the bronze table.

This people reminded him of a certain group from his blue star—equally rotten at the root.

But something felt off—why had King Joshua of the Stars died so suddenly? Why did the Great Cataclysm erupt immediately after?

And what caused such a twisted myth to arise within the Clay people?

More and more questions piled up in Xia Mingyu’s mind, yet he could not form a single plausible theory.

But that was normal—if it were truly easy to guess, it wouldn’t have remained an unsolved mystery of history; scholars who devoted their lives to studying it would have uncovered it long ago.

“Forget it. When the cart reaches the door, the road will appear.”

“As long as I keep walking toward my ideal, these questions will eventually be answered.”

Xia Mingyu exhaled deeply. Without torturing his mind, he instantly felt lighter.

Then, looking at the golden-haired youth before him, he smiled and said:

“Tamerlan, thank you for your explanation. For this, I have decided to grant you a reward.”

Tamerlan was about to wave it off—he felt such a small favor hardly deserved the prince’s praise, not even a verbal one.

But Xia Mingyu slowly removed the crimson ring from his finger, and in the gasps of the others, deep purple text appeared: Heir to the Kingdom of 1,409,670,292 Citizens.

Tamerlan, sharp-witted since childhood, instantly understood the prince’s “reward.”

“Your Highness—are you appointing me as your Companion?” he exclaimed, his handsome face lighting up with joy.

Seeing Xia Mingyu nod with a smile, the Holy Knight—widely regarded as the most gifted in Sun Church history, even called “Son of the Sun” by the people of Solar City—trembled with excitement.

Regaining his composure, he rose without hesitation, knelt on one knee before Xia Mingyu.

“After being appointed my Companion, your noble blessings will vanish. Are you certain?” Xia Mingyu asked.

As the grandson of the current Pope, Tamerlan’s own noble blessing undoubtedly surpassed all lords of the Southern Region, possibly even reaching New Moon or Crescent Moon rank.

But once transformed into a Companion, he would likely drop to Dawn Star rank.

“To become your Companion is a honor greater than any blessing the world has ever granted me,” Tamerlan said softly.

His blue eyes shone brightly—anyone could feel his sincerity and openness.

This guy… he’s too good at speaking!

If I’d been this eloquent on my blue star, I wouldn’t have been abandoned in an orphanage all my life.

Xia Mingyu took a deep breath, suppressing all inner distractions. He raised his right hand, and a longsword materialized before him.

Seeing this, Tamerlan’s expression turned solemn, his voice resolute:

“Before the Creator, before the Sun and the God of Justice I worship, I, Tamerlan Rhine, swear—”

“From this day forth, Prince Xia Mingyu is my sovereign, and I am his right arm. I shall revere him as I revere my god.”

“My sword shall serve him for life; my blood shall flow for him.”

“His enemies are my enemies; his laws are my creed.”

“I am willing to sacrifice all I am, so that he may reach the shore of his ideal—for that shore is mine as well.”

“If I break this oath, may the Sun God punish my soul to eternal damnation, burn my flesh in solar fire, and let my most cherished honor rot into dust.”

“Enough, enough,” Xia Mingyu interrupted, slightly exasperated as Tamerlan prepared to continue.

“Even the most vicious oaths about things that will never happen hold no meaning,” Xia Mingyu said calmly.

Tamerlan froze, then his lips curved into a radiant smile.

Under his earnest, hopeful gaze, Xia Mingyu draped his outer robe over Tamerlan’s shoulders and laid the sword’s blade across his right shoulder.

“Tamerlan, I swear to you: I will forever regard you as my companion in life and death, cherish you as I cherish my own right arm. May we together realize that absurd, endless ideal—to make every person in this world live as a human being!”

“Who says we have no armor? I share yours. When the king calls for war, I mend my spears and shields—side by side with you!”

Thud. Thud.

He struck Tamerlan’s shoulder twice with the flat of the blade.

In the next instant, as the robe dissolved into glowing particles, deep purple text appeared above Tamerlan’s head: Companion.

Then the text slowly shifted to ice-blue, then back to deep purple.

Under the astonished stares of all, Tamerlan’s noble blessing flickered like a glitch between deep purple and ice-blue.

After a long while, the blessing stabilized as: Companion (Purple) and Ice Blue.

Everyone: “???”

Could such a colored blessing even exist?

“Tamerlan, have you ever heard of this?” Xia Mingyu asked, baffled.

The man himself only shook his head, utterly confused.

Though he had read nearly every book in the Sun Church’s library, he had never encountered such an unheard-of phenomenon as a multicolored blessing.

After all, since blessings first appeared, their ranks and colors had always corresponded clearly and unchanged for countless millennia.

"It seems I’ll need to equip a disguise-protecting item like Your Highness, or else those fanatical mages from the Star Tower might just dissect me." Tamerlan joked.

To him, the rank of his protection didn’t matter at all—as long as he became a companion of Your Highness and could walk beside him on the path to saving the world, that was enough.

This was, for a Holy Knight, the noblest and happiest thing possible.

"You’re truly optimistic!" Xia Mingyu couldn’t help but exclaim.

For the vast majority of beings in this world, protection was one of the most important things—and yet Tamerlan could still crack jokes even after his protection turned multicolored, showing an almost absurd level of calm.

"I am still a little worried, but whenever I think that I’ve become Your Highness’s companion, I can’t help but feel joy no matter what." Tamerlan said calmly.

Then, as a surge of information flooded his mind, his expression suddenly turned utterly stunned.

"Your Highness, I think I’ve awakened an incredibly extraordinary blessing." Tamerlan stared blankly for a long while before finally stammering out the words.

Ten Thousand Hearts: Based on your actions, experiences, insights, reputation, and all other connections with the world, you have a chance to randomly gain a blessing—up to ten thousand blessings in total.

(End of Chapter)