After reaching the royal palace, Tang Yue dismissed her palace aide, Lotte, and locked herself in her private chambers.

With the abundant items in her hand, she was now confident that she should be able to cross off a few things from her to-do list.

She sat down on the cool and comfortable marble palace floor and opened up a few packages of herbs.

"The birds are going to take a while to digest, I might as well finish the herbs before starting the meat course." Tang Yue murmured.

Unlike the unsolvable mystery of her inevitably doomed future, she could only hope that the mystery of the suddenly paused quest notifications was easier to resolve.

The last quest that Tang Yue had received was quite a while ago.

She summoned her status screen to take a look at the quest and her current status.

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Name: Tang Yue

Level 2 (200/800)

Species: Blue venomous serpent

Grade: Spirit beast

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Body constitution: Bronze mortal body

Poison resistance: Level 11

Heat resistance: Level 6

Cold resistance: Level 6

Lightning resistance: Level 8

Agility: Level 1

Strength: Level 1

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Attributes:

Health points: 30/30

Health regeneration: 0.1hp/hr

Mana points: 30/30

Mana regeneration: 2mp/hr

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Bloodlines:

Phoenix (High-grade): 0.001%

Storm dragon (Epic-grade): 0.0001%

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Skills:

[Illusion magic] - Passive skill, Able to cast illusionary disorienting spells

[Evolution] - Passive skill, Able to constantly improve and upgrade the body

[Lesser regeneration] - Passive skill, Able to regenerate and recover completely over a period of time, provided vital organs are unharmed.

[Armor] - Passive skill, Body is enveloped in a thick protective layer

[Venomous bite] - Active skill, Level 11, Toxicity depends on the poison resistance of the body

[Venom spit] - Active skill, Level 11, Toxicity depends on the poison resistance of the body

[Startle] - Active skill, Level 0, Disturb an enemy's concentration

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<New Quest Available: Upgrade your body constitution attributes to level 10>

<Reward: 50 Experience points>

Due to various circumstances, she still hadn't completed this quest. So she could only guess this as the reason for her currently lacking constant influx of new quests.

Now that she had worked hard, and bought the required herbs with her 'hard-earned' money, Tang Yue would finally be able to complete this quest.

The herbs were not particularly fine tasting delicacies, so she cringed after chewing some for a few seconds.

Shaking her head, she decided to spare herself the bitterness and swallowed the entire packets of herbs, one after the other.

Now all she had to do was wait patiently for her iron stomach to do the job and continue her study of Herbology in the meantime.

Unlike her ridiculous cheat method for cultivation, the basics of alchemy still had to be memorized and understood in the hard unpopular way.

While Tang Yue was trying to stuff her brain and stomach in seclusion, the entire royal palace was in an uproar.

Three of the Dwarven emissaries who had traveled from the south for the royal feast gathering were found murdered in a remote corner of the royal palace with their throats slit open.

This in itself was a piece of unbelievable news since dwarves were usually decked in high-grade armors and weapons.

Just like how elves practiced nature magic and snakes practiced illusion magic, dwarves relied on craft magic for their survival and trade.

They are able to instill spirits into inanimate weapons, instantly upgrading a normal high-grade weapon to a spirit-grade weapon that is able to grow and develop as an individual entity.

Some spirit weapons in history have even grown as powerful as beast companions and fought side by side with their masters in life and death battles.

This arcane power is the only reason the dwarves are continuing to stand their ground and force the elven army into forging a peace treaty rather than direct onslaught and captivity.

So how could they possibly be killed in a swift singular cut in their jugular region?

The Crown Prince Xander's secluded cultivation session was immediately postponed and all the royal generals assembled in the main courtroom to address this unfortunate incident.

This was a serious enough issue and required immediate action.

If they didn't deal with this carefully and decisively, the dwarves might no longer be a friendly faction and turn hostile.

And a huge number of lives will inevitably be lost in the battles which ensue.

Xander never again wanted to revisit the bloody and gory years of the past.

True to his famed "cold-blooded tyrant" title, his hands and soul were already irrevocably drenched in blood from the countless lives he had taken.

He didn't want history to repeat itself.