Chapter 44: Blackbeard Invests

When Lin Qi woke up groggily, it was pitch black outside the window. Only the applewood logs in the fireplace were burning fiercely, emitting warm heat and crackling softly. Two large silver-wrapped candles stood on candlesticks, but only one was lit, its light just enough to illuminate the enormous bedroom.

It was indeed huge. This bedroom was fifty times the size of Lin Qi’s dorm room at Fifth University. Just the large bed covered in silks and satins that Lin Qi lay on was bigger than his university dorm. Heavy gauze curtains hung all around, embroidered with delicate rose patterns.

This bedroom originally belonged to Lin Qi’s mother. A few years after giving birth to Lin Qi, his mother fell ill due to poor health and passed away. Since then, Lin Qi had taken over the room, with all the furniture and decorations remaining exactly as they were when his mother was alive. From these familiar surroundings, Lin Qi could still find some warm comfort that he could never get from Blackbeard.

After staying curled up under the thick down quilt for a while, Lin Qi reluctantly climbed out of bed.

There was a small warming stove on the bedside table with a bowl of sobering soup on it. Frowning, Lin Qi drank the sobering soup in one gulp. A wave of heat spread through his body, quickly dispersing the alcohol. Lin Qi took a deep breath and immediately felt refreshed and full of energy.

Putting on an elegant black robe that was placed by the bed, Lin Qi stepped onto the thick carpet and quickly walked to the corner of the bedroom. He rapidly knocked on the wall nearly a hundred times, then pushed open a hidden door. After walking through a passage just three meters long, he entered a massive study.

It was hard to imagine that there could be such a study in the core of the Black Tiger Family’s Main Keep. One could imagine granaries, oil storages, and armories here, but a study should have nothing to do with the Black Tiger Family. Yet it indeed existed, and this study was extremely large, surprisingly so.

The circular dome was nearly twenty meters high with a diameter over fifty meters. Bookshelves lined the walls, filled with dusty books. Some books were made of stone slabs, others of lead or iron plates, and a very rare few were extremely ancient clay tablets, carefully protected under crystal covers.

The books in this study were not the popular texts found elsewhere. They were all handed down from ancient times, recording various unimaginable and bizarre theories. There were several badly damaged clay tablets that, according to their records, actually came from the middle to late period of the legendary Destruction Calendar. They recorded stories of how the “Deity” brought calamities to destroy the world.

If these clay tablet texts were accidentally leaked, the Church would immediately send troops to wipe out the entire Black Tiger Family. So these clay tablets remained safely hidden in this study, protected by numerous mechanisms and traps.

Carefully avoiding the bookshelves storing those clay tablets, Lin Qi walked around several rows of shelves and reached the center of the study. A strangely shaped Magic Array was carved on the ground here. This array was completely different from the multi-pointed star magic arrays popular in the Western Continent, having a sinister, ancient, and heretical style. Lin Qi stepped onto the array, softly chanted an incantation, and the array flashed with a bright light, causing Lin Qi’s body to instantly vanish without a trace.

Deep underground, nearly one hundred meters below the Main Keep, in a spacious secret room, Blackbeard sat beside a crystal coffin, quietly gazing at the slender, frail woman inside who resembled dried flower petals. With black hair and yellow skin, she appeared to be of pure Eastern descent. Although life had left her body, she still possessed a stunning beauty.

Not incredibly beautiful, but gentle and kind, making people happy upon seeing her and instinctively feel close to her. This woman was Lin Qi’s birth mother—a generous, gentle woman who, like a cup of warm water, made it impossible for anyone to harbor ill will toward her.

Lin Qi appeared from the Magic Array beside the coffin. He quietly looked at his mother in the coffin for a while—still the same gentle and kind face from his memories. Compared to Blackbeard’s fierce, ugly face covered in black hair, it was truly like an angel versus a magical beast.

“Mother must have been blind to marry you back then!” After staring at his mother’s body for a long time, Lin Qi couldn’t help but mock his father. In front of his mother’s coffin, Lin Qi didn’t use the common language of the Western Continent but instead used the language of the East.

Blackbeard rolled his eyes and snorted, “What’s wrong with me? I’m wealthy, upright, brave, and loyal. Where else could you find such an honorable man like me?”

Squinting, Blackbeard also spoke fluent Eastern language as he scolded, “Back then, your grandfather came to the West with a small merchant caravan and encountered pirates at sea. If your dear father hadn’t happened to pass by and intervened, where would you be, you little brat?”

Lin Qi mercilessly exposed Blackbeard’s scar: “But the pirates who robbed Grandpa’s caravan seemed to be subordinates of our family, right?”

Hit right on his weak spot, Blackbeard glared at Lin Qi in shame and anger, wisely changing the subject. That incident from back then—yes, indeed, the pirates who robbed Lin Qi’s grandfather’s caravan were subordinates of the Black Tiger Family. Blackbeard just happened to be passing by with a group of brothers who had just completed a big deal when he suddenly saw Lin Qi’s mother on the deck, so he rushed in to be heroic and save the beauty!

Such old embarrassing matters were naturally not suitable to discuss with his son!

Scratching his thick beard, Blackbeard said in a muffled voice, “Still thinking about that matter with Arthur?”

Lin Qi picked up three light yellow sandalwood incense sticks from the altar table in front of the crystal coffin, lit them, and placed them in the incense burner at the center of the table. Then he respectfully kowtowed three times to his mother. Standing up, he bowed deeply to his mother three times before walking over to Blackbeard and saying coldly, “One day, I will kill him!”

Blackbeard somewhat awkwardly scratched his nose and chuckled dryly, “He is, after all, the only son of Red-Haired Ghost, my steadfast ally. The old ghost was unlucky, ran into the Berserker fleet from the Five Great Archipelagos and got killed. As his old brother, of course I had to adopt his only son!”

Sighing softly, Blackbeard said seriously, “After a while, I’ll send him away to inherit his own father’s territory. What do you think?”

Lin Qi rubbed his nose and still said grimly, “Then pray to the Gods that he doesn’t run into me later, or I will kill him!”

Seeing that Lin Qi was dead set on making things difficult for Arthur, Blackbeard had no choice but to change the subject again.

“Well, your Iron Fist Brotherhood is pretty good, but if you want to expand it, you’re short on money, right?”

Lin Qi’s eyes suddenly lit up, shining as brightly as Gold Coins.

He said joyfully, “Dad, are you going to give me activity funds?”

Blackbeard raised his eyebrows and chuckled dryly, “Not for free. I want to invest!”

Pulling out a bank Gold Note, Blackbeard stuffed it into Lin Qi’s hand.