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However, this curse provided the dark elves with a shortcut to significantly increase their population.

The gestation period for ordinary elves is three years, and it takes about one hundred and sixty years for an elven infant to mature enough to reproduce. Moreover, an elven mother has to wait nearly a hundred years after giving birth before she can conceive again. This lengthy cycle severely limits the elven population. Were it not for this, the elves would have long since eradicated humans and orcs, and there would be no issue of competing for dominance over the continent.

After the gods' curse took effect, unlike the high elves who strictly adhered to bloodline purity and the reclusive wood elves and moon elves, the female dark elves became quite liberal, or rather, licentious. They quickly discovered that by mating with humans to produce half-elves, they could obtain offspring capable of reproduction within twenty years. These half-elves could then mate with dark elves, and the gestation period for half-elven females was just one year, with the ability to conceive again two years after each birth. Through this method, they could quickly produce a large number of pure-blood dark elven infants. Although their growth period remained as long as other dark elves, the population growth was ten times faster than other methods of reproduction. It was by this method that the dark elves' numbers steadily increased. Similarly, it was because humans noticed this issue that they increasingly perceived the threat from the underground world, leading them to place forbidden spell casters over the underground world to deter the dark elves from expanding too much and encroaching on the surface human world.

In fact, the slave traders who created Ye Ge and Xue Li used the same method. However, unlike small-time merchants, the dark elves elevated this practice to a matter of national importance.

Of course, this method of reproduction also came with many technical issues. For example, the talents and intelligence of half-elves born from humans of different qualities varied, which directly affected the abilities of their pure-blood dark elven descendants. It is important to note that among elves, there are both geniuses and mediocrities. The more geniuses a family has, the more prosperous it becomes, and the higher its status in the underground world. Therefore, whether a dark elven family possesses a group of human slaves with excellent bloodlines became one of the key factors determining its rise or fall.

Thus, the human adventurers' raid brought significant losses to the Seventh Family. After all, gathering so many human slaves of excellent bloodlines and continuously "maintaining" them had cost the Seventh Family immense effort.

After the attack, the Seventh Family's immediate reaction was that the assailants were sent by a rival family, as the attackers' plan was too meticulous, as if they had mastered all the defensive weaknesses of the family's city. It was hard to believe they were sent by surface humans. However, within the following half month, two more cities of the Nine Families were raided, using the same methods, with the same objectives, and achieving the same results. Due to the mutual hostility among the dark elven families, other families did not immediately receive news after the Seventh Family was attacked. By the time all families were informed and began to defend themselves, the human adventurers had already vanished without a trace.

Nevertheless, the dark elves did obtain a clue. When these human adventurers made their final raid on the Third Family's city, they were once surrounded. To break out, several of them jointly cast a high-level Light God divine spell, allowing them to escape.

The Light God divine spell is not the same as light magic. Only humans who sincerely believe in the Light God can use the Light God divine spells (note that it is the Light God, not the Light Temple. For example, Jin Luosha, who only believes in the Light God but is hostile to the Temple, can also cast divine spells). Therefore, it is certain that these humans were definitely not subordinates of the dark elves who worship the Spider Queen. Combined with their equipment, martial prowess, and team coordination, they must have originated from a major light religious faction. Being underground and isolated from news, the matrons were unaware that the surface's light faith had divided into two factions: besides the Temple, there was also the Holy Love Heaven that served the orcs. Thus, the matrons naturally attributed the attackers' identity to the Light Temple.

Families that lost their human slaves could only recover by capturing new slaves. Otherwise, once a family's manpower was interrupted, it would inevitably be annihilated by external enemies. However, to ensure the same quality and quantity, the number of people they needed to abduct would likely be in the tens of thousands. Even if divided into multiple operations, these three affected dark elven families would have to deploy their main forces. Just before they could act, Chen Xuanfeng had already sent Ye Ge to conduct comprehensive harassment in the corresponding surface regions. Human villages and towns within the dark elves' activity zones were already on high alert, and nearby human nations began to increase their military presence and set up defenses. As a result, human armies and the underground world's forces led by the dark elves inevitably clashed. Although it had not yet escalated into full-scale war, confrontations and skirmishes were frequent.

Traditionally, when a dark elven family was in trouble, it would be a situation of being nibbled at from all sides. However, when the issue rose to the level of religious conflict and was directed at the Light Temple, the situation changed. The light forces had always been committed to eradicating all dark faiths. Although the dark elves enjoyed internal strife, if the cost of eliminating the enemy was their own destruction, they would respectfully decline. Therefore, in the face of this attack, the dark elves unusually refrained from internal conflict. Though not a united front, the three families that dispatched troops no longer had to worry about rear security and even received some assistance from other families.

All these changes were naturally orchestrated by Chen Xuanfeng.

Having Ye Ge establish a family and control a city was merely to gain a foothold for intelligence gathering and small-scale operations, with no intention of advancing further to seize control of the entire dark elven or even the underground world, as that would be pure fantasy. However, the existence of this small family became the foundation for him to stir up both surface and underground forces.

The several thousand dark elves he could mobilize were of little help in determining the outcome of a real battlefield, but they were sufficient to create a sense of momentum. After all, the dark elves' fearsome reputation was even more deeply embedded in human consciousness than that of the high elves. As long as a significant number of dark elves appeared, humans would immediately become alert and tense. At the same time, this force was also very effective in intelligence gathering. The dark elves did not have a unified nation, so there was no comprehensive secrecy system. Each family guarded against the others while continuously leaking information about their rivals' weaknesses to attract third-party forces to attack their opponents. Although this manipulation of information was confined to the dark elves' internal affairs, making it difficult for humans to obtain, it was very easy to collect such information as a dark elf. With Ye Ge supplying a steady stream of intelligence, Chen Xuanfeng could naturally and calmly dispatch another team of human experts he had sent into the underground world to incite the Nine Families of the dark elves, ultimately prompting the entire underground world to pose a threat to the surface human forces.