DKIE CH37: The Banned Book

The ancestors of every race have countless beautiful tales passed down through the ages.

Before the demon race’s ancestor had risen to power, an astrologer had read his fate, proclaiming him to be the most brilliant Shining Star fate of an era.

At that time, the place of divination was right here in Red Banyan City.

That is why to this day, the ten central cities radiating outwards from Red Banyan City still place great importance on the fate of the crown princes.

After delivering his call to action that “to forge iron, one must be hard oneself,” Luka clearly saw the expressions on the faces of the nearby demons. The high-status royals were all incomparably grave, while the commoners discussing below were in a state of sustained excitement.

The Second Highness, Eve, actually took the initiative to send a telepathic message to Luka: “Look, Princess Mary is about to explode with anger.”

Luka said faintly, “So what? Let her put up with it.”
It won’t jinx her to death.

“?”

Luka looked again at the astrologer and the chief witch. “May I ask, am I the most brilliant jinx star of this era?”

Even the chief witch wouldn’t dare to say that a divination could cover the breadth of an entire era.
She said, “The first of this age.”

The witch’s gaze constantly lingered on Luka, not understanding how such a fate could have survived to this day.

The astrologer, who had always been at odds with the witches, seemed to have the same question. In an incredible tone, he said, “A miracle.”

This was a true miracle!

He temporarily stepped down from the astrolabe, eager to transmit this matter to the guide on his path of growth—the greatest astrologer currently residing in the Holy City.

The surrounding reporters became even more excited upon hearing these words.
If it weren’t for the presence of the royal family, they would have shoved their memory stones right in Luka’s face.

This explosive news was definitely the best in the Demon Realm this year!

Luka had thoroughly stolen the show. After a polite gesture to the Red Banyan City Lord, he prepared to leave.
To become a legend, one must know the art of leaving things unsaid.

Under the starry sky, the young crown prince who had been least favored was accompanied by dragons on both sides. The silver-haired youth beside him also seemed to have an extraordinary background. Behind him, the complex gazes of witches, astrologers, and royal forces followed like shadows.

At this moment, the impression of Iliad as a natural-born waste was completely erased from the minds of the demon citizens present.

“I heard his speech at Keli Sentry Tower was a great success.”
This was something the other highnesses of past generations had never achieved.

“Why didn’t I notice before? This highness is actually quite outstanding.”
No matter how good a fate was, it always sounded somewhat ethereal. Iliad’s was very down-to-earth!
He looked very promising.

Facts speak louder than words. Alec’s loss in the duel, the Demon King’s inexplicable clash with the dragon clan at the Grand Assembly of Ten Thousand Courts, and so on—everyone believed he really was a jinx to his six closest relatives!

The fact that Iliad was still alive today was in itself a manifestation of his strength.

Among the countless gazes fixed on Luka, one was particularly cold and gloomy.
After entering her twilight years, Princess Mary had become even more capricious, regretting that she hadn’t nipped this variable in the bud back then.

The starry sky was a silent shackle, a rule set by the demon race’s ancestor, eternally covering the Demon Realm just like the stars.
Let alone her, not even the Demon King could rashly intervene excessively during the Hunt.

“I hope that little bastard takes the initiative to leave the Demon Realm for a trip.”
In a place not protected by the ancestor’s will, there would be many more opportunities to act.

…

“I’ll be that stubborn nail house, nailed to the Demon Realm.”

At this time, Luka was on his way back to the guild hall, vowing never to move away easily.
He could imagine how many pairs of eyes were staring at him from the shadows right now, attempting to launch an assassination.

The Green Crystal Dragon stated霸气, “No one can launch an attack under the noses of the dragon clan.”
After speaking, he looked at Luka with a very rare gaze. “With such a powerful fate, if it weren’t for the fact that astrologers never lie, I would have thought you bribed them.”

Luka couldn’t help but ask, “Aren’t you afraid of being jinxed by me?”

This one sentence made the other dragons burst into laughter simultaneously.
The Green Crystal Dragon laughed so hard he couldn’t speak. In the end, it was Grover who said with a hearty smile on his face, “We’re too busy finding it interesting.”

He possessed a resilient soul and carried some secrets. If a little danger was added to the mix, it was a perfect combination of all the things the dragon clan liked!
A child who suited their tastes even more than the cub in the book.

Everyone walked and talked along the way and soon arrived at the guild hall.

“If we stay up any longer, it will be dawn. Early to bed and early to rise will help you grow.”
Berlanie seemed to have worried himself sick over the other’s height.

“The condensed are the essence,” Luka said, standing at the door. He glanced at his reflection in the puddle of water; he wasn’t that short.

He turned his head. After the dragons had left, he asked Quill, “What about you? Are you afraid of being jinxed?”

Quill was expressionless. “I’m already half-dead anyway.”
From a malformed heart to the first bucket of blood for redevelopment, it was all given by him.

Luka: “…”
He had been worrying for nothing.

Just as he was about to say something more, a dazzling bright light stabbed out without warning, interrupting their conversation.
Had the sun risen?

However, the light was not coming from the sky, but from himself! Luka looked down. His chest was shining exceptionally brightly.
Before it could attract the attention of the patrol guards in the other building, Luka quickly flashed back into the room and at the same time took out the source of the light: the space scroll he always carried with him.

This scroll was given by the Saint. He had never put it back in his storage ring, for ease of escape.
“Why is it suddenly glowing and getting hot?”

“A bit of special essence blood was left when drawing the scroll, supplemented by magic patterns, it can be used as a communication medium.”
Quill responded very skillfully. “…After you open it, you should be able to see the Saint’s phantom.”

Luka simply and crudely understood it as the other party making a video call.
“You used to write your diary like this, right?”

Quill was at a loss for words for a moment and temporarily hid his form.

The night wind outside the window was bleak.
Red Banyan City had undergone a forced dispelling of clouds and chasing of the moon, and the temperature was abnormally low.

To prevent the chat from going on for too long, Luka first sat down at the table and made some preparations before leisurely opening the scroll.

Almost at the instant the scroll was unfurled, a figure of holy brilliance appeared in the room.
Endless silver hair almost touched the ground. Seeing the steaming tea on the table and Luka’s small blanket, the Saint was slightly startled. After a moment, he smiled and said, “It seems you’ve been doing well during this time.”
He’s taking good care of himself.

Luka’s household registration was still unsettled, so he didn’t need to stand up and bow like an ordinary human. He nodded very politely, “Lord Saint.”

“The energy of the scroll’s patterns won’t last long, so I’ll be brief,” the Saint’s tone was still as refreshing as a spring breeze. “I am already aware of the results of tonight’s fate observation.”

Luka secretly sighed at how amazing the spies were these days, to be able to track and report in real time.

As if he knew what he was thinking, the Saint shook his head. “I happened to be playing chess with an astrologer at the time. It was a junior he had mentored who sent the message.”

Luka listened quietly.

“What’s a bit troublesome is that the Holy Court, from somewhere, has also heard about this matter. They have proposed that I ban your books that are circulating in the market and at the same time stop the development of related industries.”

Luka couldn’t help but frown.
The Saint wouldn’t lie about such a small matter. It seemed the Holy Court really disliked him.

The Saint: “The Holy Court believes your stance is problematic. In the future, when you grow up, you will be a huge hidden danger.”

“After some discussion, it was finally decided that I would use the Eye of True Knowledge to ask you some questions. The results will be recorded with a memory stone and fed back to the Holy Court.”
Once locked by the Eye of True Knowledge, any lie would be immediately detected.

Luka gave a faint smile upon hearing this.
Back then, he could risk blowing up the guild hall to avoid being a pawn. Now, he was even less likely to be controlled by others.

He calmly picked up his teacup, his long eyelashes hiding the coldness like shattered light. “What if the results of my test are not satisfactory?”

The Saint’s gaze slightly hardened. “Then I’ll just edit it.”
Rearrange all the words to form the standard answer.

Luka spat out a mouthful of tea.
This world is tattered and torn, are there always people patching it up?

Fortunately, he turned his head in time and didn’t spray it where the phantom was.
Luka’s gaze darted around, hoping Quill wasn’t currently invisible in this space.

He wiped the water from the corner of his mouth and looked at the Saint again. “I don’t understand.”
Why help me?

The Saint waved his hand. “Because they are all bored.”
Making trouble for themselves.
Jinxing his father, such a beautiful virtue. It’s clearly the Demon King’s problem to worry about. Why is he getting involved?
If he really gets jinxed, I’ll be overjoyed.

“…”

The Saint: “If there are no problems, let’s get this done.”
He had always been a man of action. Before his words had even landed, ripples like water had already appeared in the air.

The next second, the Saint disappeared, and a bottomless black hole appeared in front of Luka. Deep within that black hole, some light could be vaguely seen. Luka realized he was right in front of an eye.

After being firmly locked by the void-like gaze, the Saint’s voice came through.
Compared to his usual gentleness, this voice now carried a natural majesty:
“I ask you, if the two races were to go to war one day, what would you do if the demon race was defeated, and what would you do if the human race was defeated?”

Quill, invisible in the space, his hair damp, coldly considered whether to help Luka eliminate the influence of the Eye of True Knowledge.
Although the Saint had promised to help cover for him, if the answer was too outrageous, it would probably be disadvantageous.

However, Luka had already given an answer without thinking.
“If the demon race is defeated, I am willing to go to the human race as a hostage. If the human race is defeated, I am willing to go to the demon race as a hostage!”

The whole room was silent.
Before the Eye of True Knowledge was withdrawn, Luka further revealed his inner thoughts: “If conditions permit, I am also willing to send all the other crown princes, the Demon King, and the Demon King’s mother, Princess Mary, to the human race as hostages.”

The whole family bucket, on the road this Thursday. He could even provide a subsidy for the shipping fee.
The silence fermented further.
Send them all away, and then you become the Demon King?

The space scroll unknowingly reached the limit of its projection capacity. The Saint gave Luka one last deep look, and the phantom disappeared in an instant.
The black hole in front of him, along with the feeling of being窺ed at, vanished.

The pressure around Luka lessened. He looked around, confirming that the Saint had really gone.
He took a deep breath. “Is that it?”
No more questions needed?

“You’re even going to send the Demon King away. What else is there to ask?”
Quill reappeared, his expression cold, a dried flower petal hanging from the sharp tip of his hair.

Oops.
Luka guiltily reached out to take it off for him. That mouthful of tea had indeed sprayed on him.
Quill’s expression softened slightly.

“How strange,” Luka sat down again, recalling his earlier conversation with the Saint. “Why did the Holy Court suddenly start targeting me?”

Quill had been dormant underground for a period of time, but the diaries that carried his will had been dancing around outside endlessly. “For a long time, the Holy Court was favored by the World’s Will and had even transmitted a few divine oracles.”

Luka frowned. “Heaven is trying to mess with me?”

“That’s all in the past. The current Holy Court has long lost this advantage.”
“The Saint specifically held a meeting to suggest they change their name, from the Divine Court to the Holy Court.”
Under the nice-sounding pretext that the word “divine” should not be used lightly, and that forcibly taking the name without recognition could easily bring bad luck.

Luka: “So it’s actually that Heaven couldn’t stand the Holy Court trying to mess with me and ignored them?”
Do you have to make everything about you?

“…You hadn’t been born at that time.”
Luka drooped. “Oh.”
So he wasn’t the child of the universe.

The two speeches had been effective. Luka stopped joking and began to cultivate.
The positive feedback accumulated in his body was constantly being converted into his own power. What amazed Luka was that a small part of it was exceptionally pure, comparable to that of the dragon clan.
It wasn’t there when he was at Keli Sentry Tower, so did it come from the demon people of Red Banyan City?
If it was beneficial to him, even feudal superstition was acceptable.

During a break, Luka expressed that they should believe in fate and brought up this matter.
Quill pondered for a moment. “It’s more likely that the belief power came from the astrologers and witches.”
No prophet could not be fascinated by such a fate.

Even he had never seen such an extreme jinx star. Quill even had a premonition that the Holy Court suddenly starting to target Luka was inextricably linked to this fate.

…

The temperature the next day still hadn’t returned to normal. Luka added a cloak to his attire.
With his current strength, he was actually not very afraid of the cold, but wrapping himself up gave him a strange sense of security.

Seeing him wrapped up like a pink dumpling, Quill couldn’t help but poke him.
Luka, who was concentrating on his cultivation, swayed back and forth under the spell for a while, then sat cross-legged and became as steady as Mount Tai again.

The harmonious morning time did not last long. A knock suddenly came from outside.
Luka went to open the door and didn’t speak for several seconds.
Quill: “Who is it?”

“A voter who supports me.”
The Red Banyan City Lord coughed lightly. He hadn’t said anything about support.

Seeing Luka wrapped up like a tangyuan, and the silver-haired youth in the room who seemed to be acting as his personal guard, and the warm beast milk on the table, the Red Banyan City Lord strangely felt a bit of a homey atmosphere in the room.

Dismissing this strange thought, the two sat on the couch by the window and talked.
After some conversation, Luka preliminarily understood the Red Banyan City Lord’s intentions.
This was an old fox.

Many years ago, Alec’s biological father had been seriously injured in a plot by Prince Aman, but due to Alec’s existence, he still retained his position as a prince.
Clearly, the Red Banyan City Lord had been coveting this position for a long time.

He vaguely indicated that he would provide support in secret, but not too much. As for the reward, the Red Banyan City Lord did not ask for anything.
Anyone could see that Luka and Alec were already sworn enemies.

Luka cautiously made a request. “If possible, I would like my works to be shown smoothly in the ten central cities.”

The Red Banyan City Lord had vaguely heard about it. A few days ago, something called a movie was shown in the Dark City, and it seemed the reception was not very good.
“Are you sure?”
If it wasn’t a good work, forcing it to be shown might lead to criticism.

Luka nodded. “I’m sure.”
He wanted the wind of “The Real and Fake Young Masters” to blow across the land.
For one, to make money. At the same time, it could provide enough resentment for Quill and re-emphasize that he was the ‘real young master’.

The demon race valued bloodlines. Mixed-bloods were not at an advantage. But by slightly changing the concept and shifting everyone’s attention, there were only benefits and no drawbacks.

Throughout the conversation, Luka only made one request. This surprised the Red Banyan City Lord and made him think more highly of him.
“Showing it is not a problem. I will invite other city lords I am familiar with to watch it together, which can also be considered as promoting it for you.”

When the Red Banyan City Lord was leaving, he noticed that the youth standing in the shadows was looking at him with a strange expression.
“Take care,” Quill said.
“…”
The Red Banyan City Lord left, completely bewildered.

The moment the door closed, Quill turned his head and saw that Luka had seamlessly started writing again.
Having spent a long time together, it had long since discovered that the person who talked about taking things one step at a time was actually a hidden workaholic.

At this moment, Luka was writing furiously on “My Demon King Father.”
Quill: “Why didn’t you just get the Red Banyan City Lord to promise to distribute the book?”

“These princes and power-holders, they privately both respect and fear the Demon King,” Luka said without looking up. “The movie can skirt the line, but this book, just by its title, is destined to become a banned book in the Demon Realm once it is published.”

But this was the effect he wanted.
When something is banned, its value skyrockets.
Luka wished he could make this book the number one banned book in the history of the Demon Realm!

Halfway through writing, he stopped and began to design the cover.
What is a banned book?
The content must be sufficiently unhealthy and have a sufficiently adverse political influence.

Luka, with a flourish of his pen, added a line: Bloody content, likely to cause extreme discomfort. Forbidden for those under eighteen!
Below that, he added:
[Unveiling the cruel truth behind the marriage of the prince and princess.
Digging deep into the shocking conspiracy that emerges from the conflicts between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law, and sister-in-law.]

In the end, he didn’t forget to pair it with a part of the preview released at the Grand Assembly of Ten Thousand Courts: [Only then did I know the real purpose of the Demon King marrying me was nothing more than…]

“How is it?” Luka paused his pen and looked at Quill.
There was nothing to criticize about this.
Quill had to admit that if it involved a continental celebrity, even he might be tempted to buy a copy if he saw such a cover.

His gaze fell on the note about the sufficiently unhealthy content. He frowned. “Are you going to write about your own birth process?”

Luka’s ears turned red with anger.
“This unhealthy refers to violence!”
In order to plunder resources, the Demon King had committed no small number of massacres. Writing a little about that would meet the threshold for violence.
All living beings are equal.

Of course, he hadn’t forgotten about his own Holy Court.
Luka wasn’t sure how many diaries Quill had written. If there were enough, as one of the top powers, perhaps someone in the Holy Court had also secretly obtained one.
“Do you know any secrets about the Holy Court?” he wanted to include them all in the novel.

Quill did not disappoint Luka. As if he had thought of something, he said with a cold smile, “After the Holy Court lost the favor of the World’s Will, they conducted a few experiments.”

“They believed that extremely pure souls were more likely to gain the favor of the main will. For this, they specially cultivated a batch of saints, instilling various virtues in them from a young age.”

“…Later, the saint plan did not achieve the desired effect, so they began to create so-called omniscient ones, trying to imitate the bloodline inheritance of the dragon race, so that infants could also be born with knowledge.”

It sounded like two very ordinary experiments, but a little thought revealed the cold side of it.
Quill hesitated for a moment, as if he wanted to say something, but in the end, he didn’t.

Luka, however, was silent for a moment and took the initiative to speak. “The Boulder City Lord once said that the marriage of the Saintess and the Demon King did not face much opposition from the Holy Court.”

It was true that they were in love, but they were definitely not some “pure love warriors.”
 

The demon race also had bloodline inheritance, it was just that the inheritors were extremely rare. The current Demon King was one of them.
 

No one knew what ‘high hopes’ were placed on the child born from the union of the two strongest bloodlines.

Seeing that he was still calm, Quill said, “Perhaps they thought you could reclaim everything they had lost.”
 

Reclaim my ass.
 

Luka cursed his parents in his heart and asked, “Does the Saint know about this?”

“The Saint has long since detached himself from the Holy Court.”
Quill thought for a moment. “#1778, #9321, and #10009 were all arranged by the Holy Court to be placed in the upper echelons of the human race, trying to twist into a single rope and intercept some of the Saint’s authority. #10009 died in a failed breakthrough. #1778 and #9321 later began to support the Saint instead.”

Luka didn’t react at first. A short while later, his expression became wonderful.
 

“These numbers, they can’t all be people who have read your diary, can they?”

If one number represented one person, didn’t that mean Alex had written at least ten thousand diaries?
Holy crap, what kind of pervert?!

__

Author’s Note:
 

Excerpt from Luka’s Diary:
Teacher Lu, with a smile like a blooming flower: Readers, I’ve got you!
“My Demon King Father” please forward. Randomly dropping one hundred small red packets~