The Ink Clan had to originate from somewhere. The hierarchy of Ink Nests was extremely strict—higher-grade Ink Nests could birth lower-grade ones, and there was a unidirectional symbiotic relationship between them. The humans had their suspicions about this, and the Ink Clan itself was naturally aware of it too.
But an Acquired Domain Lord like Ge Chen had never had any contact with a King Lord's Ink Nest, let alone been qualified to enter that Ink Nest space. He truly knew nothing about the Mother Nest.
Furthermore, the theory of the Mother Nest had been proposed by the human side. Even if such a thing truly existed, who knew what the Ink Clan called it?
Innate Domain Lords like Che Kong, on the other hand, likely knew more about such matters, since they themselves were birthed from King Lord-grade Ink Nests and had inextricable ties to them.
Unfortunately, Che Kong was already dead—otherwise there would have been a chance to wring some answers out of him.
Still, this helped Yang Kai understand why certain Ink Clan Domain Lords possessed such overwhelming strength.
Under normal circumstances, a Domain Lord's strength was somewhat inferior to an Eighth-Order cultivator's.
But across the various war theaters, there were always exceptions.
Take Che Kong, for example—his power was no match for the human Eighth-Order. In a one-on-one fight, very few Eighth-Order Open Heaven cultivators on the Dayan side could have been his opponent, unless someone like Xiang Shan personally stepped in.
The fact that Yang Kai had managed to kill him was due entirely to the Domain Lord's carelessness—he'd been struck by a Soul-Sacrificing Thorn first.
Innate Domain Lords were directly birthed from King Lord-grade Ink Nests, so naturally they appeared more powerful. But their potential was likely already exhausted during the birthing process, meaning they could never advance to King Lord.
An Acquired Domain Lord like Ge Chen, on the other hand, was somewhat weaker but had much more room for growth and a genuine hope of one day becoming a King Lord.
Of course, advancing to King Lord for the Ink Clan was even harder than a human reaching the Ninth-Order. Otherwise, over the course of so many years, the Ink Clan would have produced far more King Lords than they had.
Innate Domain Lords like Che Kong had likely been numerous at first, but after countless years of warfare against the humans, most of them had fallen. Those still alive were now exceedingly few.
It could be said that the Domain Lords currently ranked in the top three by strength across the various war theaters were mostly Innate Domain Lords.
"Now tell me about the Origin Ground—how much do you know?" Xiaoxiao Old Ancestor asked.
Ge Chen was an Acquired Domain Lord. He probably didn't know much about the Ink Clan's most classified intelligence. From his words, it seemed that the Innate Domain Lords were somewhat exclusive toward their Acquired counterparts.
But even so, he knew more than the humans did.
Ge Chen thought for a moment and said, "The theory of the Origin Ground—I only heard it mentioned by other Domain Lords. The Origin Ground... should be the birthplace of our Ink Clan."
Xiaoxiao Old Ancestor waited in silence for a moment. When he said nothing more, she frowned. "That's it?"
Ge Chen replied helplessly, "That's it..."
The Old Ancestor nearly laughed in exasperation.
The Origin Ground was the birthplace—anyone could figure that out from the name alone. Did they really need him to spell it out?
"All of you surviving Ink Clan members are fleeing in this direction. Is the Origin Ground over here?"
"It should be." Ge Chen nodded. "I don't know exactly where the Origin Ground is, but at the Domain Lord level of cultivation, one can pick up a faint, subtle resonance from it. It's definitely in this direction."
Precisely because the Origin Ground lay in this direction, they had to flee this way—only by heading toward it was there any hope of survival. And yet who would have thought that he, a Domain Lord, would end up trapped here?
Yang Kai raised an eyebrow. The Ink Clan's situation was actually somewhat analogous to his Dragon Vein body.
Among the Dragon Clan, when one's Dragon Vein reached a certain level of purity, one could pick up a similarly vague sense of the Dragon Pool's location—because the Dragon Pool was the birthplace of the Dragon Clan.
Since the Origin Ground was the Ink Clan's birthplace, it was hardly surprising that Ge Chen could sense it.
"If the Origin Ground is your Ink Clan's birthplace, there should be no shortage of powerful experts there—probably many King Lords as well. Why don't they come out? Are there some kind of restrictions?"
It was now certain that the fifty Ink Clan King Lords they had encountered in the Ink Nest space were all experts from the Origin Ground. There was no other way to explain where those King Lords had come from.
They were confined within the Origin Ground, so even as the war raged across every theater, they remained indifferent.
It wasn't that they truly didn't care—they simply had no power to intervene.
Ge Chen shook his head. "I don't know."
"You just said that King Lords walked out of the Origin Ground and brought their Ink Nests with them. How did they leave in the first place?"
"I don't know."
"How far is this place from the Origin Ground?"
"I... don't know."
"In ancient times, what was the Ink Clan fighting against? What was the void behind the Royal City, and the region we're currently in—how did they come to be?" This time, the Old Ancestor didn't even wait for Ge Chen's reply before snorting coldly. "If you say 'I don't know' one more time, you'll lose your life."
Ge Chen's expression grew even more bitter. He genuinely didn't know the answers to those questions. Though he was a Domain Lord, he was merely an Acquired one—not highly ranked among the Ink Clan forces in the Dayan theater. How could he possibly know such deeply classified matters?
When Mo Zhao King Lord and the other Innate Domain Lords discussed these topics, they never informed the Acquired Domain Lords.
This was precisely why he was willing to answer Xiaoxiao Old Ancestor's questions. For so many years, Acquired Domain Lords like him had always felt excluded from the Ink Clan's inner circle. He already knew very little, and on top of that, he had a strong will to survive—he didn't want to die here.
"I'm not entirely certain, but it likely has something to do with your human race. The grudge between the humans and the Ink Clan stretches back to a very ancient era. This remnant battlefield was most likely left behind from a great war between experts of both races in that distant age."
That much aligned with the humans' own theories.