Xie Man’s inspection report was soon submitted.

    After reading it, Su Nan was quite satisfied.

    Knight training wasn’t something that could be achieved overnight.

    Although there were Dragon Blood Fruits, most of them were used to supply the Shining Light Territory army and students at the base. Only a small portion could be supplied to the Dragonheart Knight Academy, which was not enough to make hundreds of people become knights in just four years.

    Su Nan had already prepared himself for a long war.

    After all, a complete training system required a long time to establish.

    Temporarily putting aside the matter of the Dragonheart Knight Academy, Su Nan turned his attention back to cultivation and research.

    But just then, Kei suddenly found him.

    “Something is not right.” Kei placed a piece of intelligence on Su Nan’s desk.

    Su Nan picked it up and looked at it, his eyebrows slightly raised.

    The intelligence mentioned that in the past three months, more than ten nobles in the Starry Constellation Duchy had died, either from illness or accident.

    They all shared a common characteristic: they had strongly resisted accepting the Starfire Sect’s faith.

    Besides them, their direct bloodlines had also died for various reasons.

    As a result, when they died, either their titles were immediately inherited without obstruction by their remaining heirs, or their titles and territories were directly taken back by higher-ranking nobles because all of their heirs had died.

    While similar things had happened before, it was famously chaotic in the noble circle. But to have more than ten incidents in just half a year was truly chilling.

    There was no doubt that the Starfire Sect was behind it!

    They were using the same methods as Duke Jinyan, but they were even more ruthless and blatant.

    “The Starfire Sect doesn’t even bother to cover up their tracks anymore. Aren’t they afraid of retaliation from other nobles?” Su Nan’s eyes flashed with surprise.

    Kei shook his head and said, “These newly-ascended nobles, and the nobles who annexed lower-level territories, have all publicly accepted the Starfire Sect’s faith. With the support of the Grand Duke, perhaps this has given the Starfire Sect the confidence to take such blatant measures.”

    “Now that I think about it, you might be right. The Starfire Sect really did promise the Grand Duke a longer lifespan. Otherwise, the Grand Duke wouldn’t allow the Starfire Sect to do this. This is completely digging the Duchy’s foundation!”

    The Starfire Sect wasn’t comprised of good people!

    Su Nan had realized this a long time ago.

    He wasn’t surprised that the Starfire Sect used violence to promote their faith.

    What surprised him was why they were so eager.

    They could have used more gentle and covert methods, instead of this approach that was likely to provoke widespread hostility and retaliation from the nobles. ????A??Ο????E?S?

    After thinking for a while without any answer, Su Nan shook his head and stopped brooding. He turned and asked,

    “What do you plan to do?”

    Kei gritted his teeth and said in a deep voice, “I won’t compromise with my father’s murderer, and I won’t just sit and wait for death. Since the Grand Duke is determined to help the Starfire Sect, then I will simply overthrow this whole system and let the Duchy have a new master!”

    Anyone else hearing Kei’s words would likely change their expression.

    But Su Nan remained calm, as if he had expected Kei to say this.

    In fact, he knew that the Shining Light Territory had been expanding its power rapidly in recent years.

    As far as he knew, the Blackrock Cavalry had already surpassed a thousand members, reaching the terrifying number of 1,300!

    Remember that this was a cavalry regiment of all knights, riding knight-level puppet steeds!

    This regiment alone had the strength to flatten any province!

    Not to mention the Magic Puppet Legion.

    Others may be unaware, but the Shining Light Territory’s current strength had already become the strongest among the seven provinces of the Starry Constellation Duchy.

    It had the power to overthrow the Duchy!

    More importantly, there was Su Nan.

    This was the biggest reason why Kei dared to confront the Starry Constellation Duchy.

    Kei was confident that as long as Su Nan was present, the Shining Light Territory would be invincible.

    Even if they couldn’t overthrow the Starry Constellation Duchy, becoming a local hegemon would be no problem!

    “What does the Marquis of White Tower say?” Su Nan asked.

    “I’ve already talked to him, and he supports my idea.” Kei’s expression was serious.

    Su Nan nodded knowingly.

    The Marquis of White Tower had already married his daughter to Kei, so it was no surprise that they were cooperating.

    Of course, this wasn’t the main reason.

    A mere daughter was far less important to a figure like the Marquis of White Tower than the interests of his family.

    The military power displayed by the Shining Light Territory was the key factor in convincing the Marquis of White Tower.

    Next, the defense.

    In terms of defense rating, it was roughly between 3200 and 3500, far exceeding the defense of the Extreme Protection Ring!

    Su Nan estimated that any opponent below the official wizard level would be unlikely to break through such strong defenses instantly—assuming his spiritual power wasn’t depleted.

    What surprised Su Nan was the negligible increase in spiritual power consumption from the Magic Emblem Core.

    Although it didn’t reduce consumption, compared to the doubled attack and defense, it was still a significant improvement.

    Otherwise, if the spiritual power consumption also doubled, then the Magic Emblem Core would be almost like a one-time rechargeable magical item, like the Calamity Ring.

    That would drastically reduce its practicality!

    Thankfully, the worst-case scenario didn’t happen.

    After constructing the twelfth Star Ring, Su Nan’s spiritual power had increased by a significant amount. Now, at full capacity, it was enough for him to use the Magic Emblem Core for three minutes.

    Even in intense battles, two minutes would be sufficient.

    With the power enhanced by the Magic Emblem Core, two minutes would be enough for Su Nan to take down a three-ring legendary knight!

    “With this, my trump card has become even stronger.”

    Su Nan was overjoyed.

    With the Magic Cube, the Magic Emblem Core essentially had unlimited growth potential.

    The only requirement was for his physique and spirit to keep up.

    When he merged the 2nd-Level Magic Emblem Core, Su Nan could already feel his body and spirit experiencing significant strain.

    Obviously, he couldn’t merge a third Magic Emblem Core right now.

    Thankfully, collecting and refining the materials for the third Magic Emblem Core would take time. During that time, he could continue to strengthen his physique and spirit until he met the merging requirements.

    Su Nan then checked his spatial rings again.

    Besides the Magic Emblem Core, his trump cards included magical items and high-level rune gems.

    In terms of magical items, now that he was financially comfortable, Su Nan had recently manufactured six Calamity Rings and placed them in his spatial ring, all of them being at the maximum level of reinforcement. Combined with the Calamity Rings he already had, he now had ten in total.

    This way, if he used up the four Calamity Rings he wore on his left hand during a battle, he could instantly take out replacements from his spatial ring.

    The ultimate strategy was to crush the opponent with money!

    The Extreme Protection Ring was the same. He had collected ten in total, keeping them for replacements during battles, just in case.

    As for the high-level rune gems, with Su Nan’s spiritual power increasing, the number he could synthesize had increased to twenty-six, and their power had also increased.

    He currently had twenty high-level rune gems in his spatial rings.

    Using all of them would be enough to overwhelm a three-ring legendary knight.

    In addition, there were twenty elite Stone Magic Puppets and a Double-Bladed Spider synthesized and reinforced to legendary knight level in the Magic Cube.

    These could also be considered as trump cards.

    Overall, Su Nan’s current overt strength, among third-rank wizard apprentices, could only be considered to be in the middle tier, with the most outstanding thing being his spell casting without incantation.

    However, taking into account his numerous trump cards, he could be ranked in the upper tier.

    Even against the most elite group of third-rank wizard apprentices, he would have a fighting chance.

    “It’s a pity that the number of materials needed to synthesize a two-ring legendary-level puppet is just too much. Otherwise, if I synthesized one, it would be a genuine trump card.”

    Su Nan had specifically tested this, and the number of Stone Magic Puppets required to synthesize a two-ring legendary Stone Magic Puppet was as high as four hundred and fifty-six!

    That was almost ten times the amount required for synthesizing a one-ring legendary elite Stone Magic Puppet!

    Apparently, once you reach the legendary level, the number of items needed to synthesize increases exponentially for each subsequent level.

    In the end, the cost of one two-ring legendary Stone Magic Puppet was close to twenty thousand gold coins!

    Even if you used the Shining Light Territory’s entire annual tax revenue, you wouldn’t be able to synthesize more than a few.

    But at the two-ring legendary level, value could no longer be measured by money.

    If you asked Kei or any other marquis to choose between twenty thousand gold coins and a two-ring legendary combat force that would obey every order, without a doubt, everyone would choose the latter.

    To be honest, if he really decided to synthesize it, Su Nan could actually synthesize it.

    But the problem was that there were too many places where he needed to use Stone Magic Puppets right now, and he couldn’t spare so many at once.

    The other reason was that he preferred to synthesize agile Double-Bladed Spiders instead of clumsy and heavy Stone Magic Puppets.

    The number of peak knight-level Double-Bladed Spiders needed to synthesize a two-ring legendary one was relatively less, only one hundred and eighteen.

    But Su Nan still needed to save up for a while.

    “Take it slow.”

    “The several mines are far from being exhausted. Money isn’t a problem. As long as there’s enough time, I’ll be able to synthesize two-ring legendary-level puppets eventually.”